Do you have a market map? A what??
A list of every account and contact that you can potentially sell to. Think for a second about how important it is to get this right.
When you’re doing outbound. The list is everything. Anyone not on the list, doesn’t hear from you.
Anyone that has outdated information doesn’t hear from you.
If they don't hear from you, they can’t buy.
Okay sounds important to get this right, right?
So how do most organizations build these market maps? They give their SDRs an ICP description and a license to Zoominfo and LinkedIn Sales Navigator and say good luck kid.
This is almost criminal.
There is no centralized oversight. There’s no process for determining whether or not there are gaps in the list. There’s no process in place around how to make adjustments or additions to this list over time. It’s managed disparately by people that may have been in the company for just a few months.
If you’re doing it this way, here’s the steps to take to change it.
Create single threaded ownership
Invest in more than one data provider
Centralize the process for identifying contact information in these data platforms
Channel Validate your data
Create Single threaded Ownership
At Sales Science we have a head of Data Operations (James). James owns everything related to the development and curation of contact lists. Yes he has a team working under him (they do other things as well), but James is ultimately responsible for the completeness and accuracy of the market maps that we develop.
Why is this important?
Because if there are issues with this process everyone knows who’s responsible for correcting them. There’s no ambiguity, there’s no finger pointing, the job just gets done.
Invest in more than one data provider
If you're taking your data strategy seriously, you need to invest in more than one data provider. No matter the claims of these platforms, no one has perfect data coverage. We’ve been able to see 10% lifts in data completeness by adding additional data providers. If you have a TAM of 2000 accounts (10,000 contacts), that gives you potentially another 1000 mobile numbers. Not insignificant.
Centralize the process for identifying contact information in these data platforms
SDRs shouldn’t be looking up contact information in data platforms. You want your team focused on having conversations with prospects, not sifting through databases. Most of these data platforms have APIs that you can use to pull records from the system against lists you’ve generated. Develop a process whereby the reps submit requests for data to be pulled and have this filled by a team focused on this. You’ll get better results because a consistent process will be followed, and you’ll free up SDRs to execute their core role.
Channel Validate your data
There’s nothing more demoralizing for an SDR than making 80 dials per day and having 4 conversations. Have your data channel validated so that reps know which channel to use to reach each individual prospect (email, phone or LinkedIn). You’ll see 25-35% connect rates on cold calls and your team will love you for it.
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