Garbage in, garbage out.

Clean data is they key to all successful marketing programs.

Every list you purchase online is going to be full of holes.  Every list we purchase is, too.  There are no magical inexpensive sources of good data, no matter what the market and software companies tell you.

(You can get FREE company lists with a library card.  They’ll be garbage, too – but they’re free.  You don’t need to buy data.  Buying data gives you data faster and easier than finding it for free somewhere, that’s the value in buying lists over finding free ones.)

The places you’re purchasing your lists from are using prospect-provided data, which is only as accurate as the people providing it wish to be.  Privately traded companies have no obligation to release any data about their companies.  We may do it to apply for awards like Inc. 500 or MSP 501 status.   These results are third party verified (meaning you have to provide documentation to support your statements of revenue, etc.) whereas the companies that sell lists online don’t have any such requirements.  If a business owner takes a survey and lies about this size of their company, there are no repercussions from this.

Most inexpensive lists are built from other lists.  Things get lost in translation and often, due to turnover, businesses closing, or from fast growth, the data is inaccurate by the time it gets to you.

This doesn’t make your new list unusable, but it does makes it inefficient and expensive to use for all marketing programs.

Using a nice round number, let’s talk about a list of 1000 leads, and how that data being 30 percent inaccurate affects your marketing initiatives.

If you’re paying per contact for your email marketing platform, 30 percent of your investment is wasted, and you’re losing 300 opportunities to market to the right person.  The BEST open rates to curated lists sit around 20%, so when you’re emailing cold, assume that – even with the best content possible,  using a targeted list – about 20% of recipients will open your email.  With a cold list your open rates drop to well under 8%, so 56 contacts might open your email.  MIGHT.  And that open might be their inbox registering the open as they were deleting your email unread.

Story time:  one of our clients was using a marketing platform to “nurture” leads prior to calling.  They had a lead  that the marketing group declared to be highly qualified, because they had opened emails, and visited their website multiple times.  It turned out to be a junior sales rep at a car dealership looking for a new job, not a hot lead.  Arbitrary lead scoring on cold data hurts your marketing funnel.  This company was using content they bought from experts, and a process they bought from experts.  Turns out the hottest lead in their pipeline, by this platform’s standards, wasn’t a lead at all.  They hadn’t scrubbed their list for accuracy prior to beginning their marketing campaign – nor had they been told of the importance of this.  Emailing 7000 random leads and praying something sticks isn’t a great strategy.   Since this discovery, our client has taken a different approach to email marketing.  Now they verify contact information, identify the correct decision maker and qualify the lead prior to adding them to their marketing funnel.   Guess what?  Their open rates have improved, and they know that the people reading their emails are genuinely qualified leads.

Now let’s talk not just about contact information being incorrect, but in the scope of a managed services campaign, there are some “must haves” required for ongoing successful marketing programs that a purchased list won’t give you.  Employee count doesn’t give you number of desktops on premise.  SIC code doesn’t tell you their level of dependence on technology, or their current preferred method of receiving IT support.   You could spend a lot of time and effort marketing to a 20 employee law firm.  On the surface, yes, great lead.  In reality, the managing partners husband does their tech support.  Will you ever win this business?  No.  So, why are you investing in marketing to that firm?

If you’re mailing out information to your 1000 person list, you just spent $150.00 on postage for postcards that go nowhere.  And another $300.00 on postage for items that got binned before they hit anyone’s desk.  The worst part of direct mail is there is no way to measure who actually saw your marketing piece.   Maybe $500.00 is no big deal one time, but after ten mail drops that number scales up prohibitively for a small business.  Sending a larger package, or a gorgeous glossy marketing kit?  You just spent an enormous amount of time, energy and money to create the very best representation of your business that you could.   Open up that box of  brand-new brochures and pens and whatever else it is you’re going to send out. Now just throw half of them in the garbage.  Welcome to the world of marketing to unqualified leads.

Moral of the story – get your data clean first, identify who your real leads are, then start to market to THAT much smaller, more targeted list.   Outbound calling will help you learn about your leads before you invest in marketing and nurturing them.   There’s been an entire industry built around trying to sell faster and easier and with fewer human interactions.  It doesn’t work selling services to the SMB market.   There are of course exceptions to all rules and outliers.  If you’re reading this article now and you’re not one of them, the odds on you becoming one of them are pretty slim.  So what do you do?

Every summer I spend a lot of time thinking about how we can create a program that would be inexpensive (or less expensive than our done-for-you prospecting programs) and valuable to the market.

Why?  Well, first of all, I believe that all MSPs need outbound calling to grow their business.   Interested in actual client results?  Hilltop Consulting reports an 1100% ROI on their last calling campaign.   We’re extremely proud of those numbers – but let’s face it — Hilltop was successful before they engaged with us.  They have the budget to be patient.  They have a great understanding of their sales cycle.  They needed someone to augment their already successful sales process.  I’ll brag about that campaign to anyone who will listen, but what makes Hilltop successful is Hilltop.  We help, but they’ve got a defined process, a nurturing strategy, and (let’s face it) a war chest that your MSP may not have.

This summer  I put Tracie Orisko in charge of designing a program that would cost less, and I challenged her to create the most value we could  for a smaller MSP.  I’m excited to launch our first few clients in this program next week.

This lead development program is intended to support MSPs who are just starting to move from word of mouth and referral-based growth into active outbound prospecting.  It’s founded on a few of our fundamental beliefs, and incorporates some of the things we’ve learned about successful MSP prospecting over the last few years.  This program is intended to teach you how to nurture your leads in-house, after we do the initial cold call, data collection and qualifying.

Here’s what you need to know about this program:

  1.  You can’t set it and forget it.  This program requires you, the MSP owner, to participate in it, get good at a few things, and do some of the work.
  2. The first step in this program is taking one of our MSP prospecting courses, or hiring Managed Sales Pros for consulting or on-site training.  If you don’t want to learn how to prospect, measure results and improve your process,  this program isn’t for you. Our team will only get you halfway to the win, and you’ll need to be able to follow up to derive value from the work we’re doing  for you.
  3. This program isn’t a forever solution.  We’ll do the initial heavy lifting, but it’s meant as a stopgap to support you in doing your own successful prospecting until such time as our managed solution makes sense for you (or you hire your own in-house team).
  4. This program is focused on identifying decision makers, qualifying leads, and developing a pipeline with an accurate forecast (when are they likely to close).  We don’t nurture your pipeline, we hand it back to you built, and YOU nurture it.   We collect contact information and obtain opt-in email marketing permission.  We promote events and webinars that you’re hosting in your community.   And we’ll even schedule appointments for you if and when it makes sense to do so, though this is not an appointment scheduling program.

This program will give you clean data, qualified leads and the knowledge you need to create and manage your sales funnel effectively.   No more garbage in.  No more garbage out.

To learn more about this program, email us at hello@managedsalespros.com, or give us a call at 844-466-2624.