A veteran major account executive, and a former sales manager of mine, once told me that the second best answer you can get is “no.” That really sunk in, and from that point forward I realized that qualification is the most important stage in the B2B sales process.
Even the best sales consultants often fail to recognize that sustainable growth comes from matching the right prospects with the right products and services. B2B sales and marketing optimization is found with the “fit,” and the time to learn this is early on in the qualification stage.
Big data can help or hinder this process, depending on the objectives for leveraging it. There’s a lot of talk about big data in the online world, and rightfully so. More data is captured online in a week than was used offline in a decade back in the early days of direct response marketing.
But there are implications when trying to leverage it, especially for B2B. Even with all of the ad networks, ad exchanges, cooperative databases, lead generation programs, social media, and mobile applications in the technology marketing mix, the mindset of the B2B sales and marketing professional is still one-to-one. If that’s the case, then where’s the B2B “fit” for big data? The answer is CRM integration.
Business Response Alliance Database (BRAD) US Masterfile
Universe: 76,592,153
Price: $130/M
List Popularity Index: 100
Contact: Infogroup, Claude Marada, [email protected], 402-836-6274
Compass US Business Intelligence
Universe: 16,604,960
Price: $30/M
List Popularity Index: 97
Contact: Compass Marketing Solutions, Michelle Brown, [email protected], 402-438-3222
D&B Executives at Home File
Universe: 91,882,913
Price: $80/M
List Popularity Index: 95
Contact: Dun & Bradstreet Third Party Solutions, Jeffrey Hudes, [email protected], 914-949-1547, x125
DecisionMaker Global from mardevdm2
Universe: 64,686,036
Price: $270/M
List Popularity Index: 100
Contact: mardevdm2, Margaret Williams, [email protected], 800-323-4958
Valassis Business Database
Universe: 162,405,601
Price: $14.50/M
List Popularity Index: 74
Contact: Valassis, Rose Pappa, [email protected], 860-298-5726
Chris DeMartine ([email protected]) is director of business development at NextMark.
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