Lead List Purchase: What, How, and Where to Buy Leads
Buying lead lists is a great way to expand your reach. You get a ready-made collection of contact information of people who can potentially buy from you. Your sales reps can start making calls and setting up email outreach campaigns right away, right? Yes, if the list you bought isn’t full of random contacts who have no interest in your product.
You need to be careful about where you get lead lists from. It’s important to remember that buying leads from a third-party lead list must fit your criteria. If you don’t want a situation that leads to business failure, learn the do’s and don’ts of lead purchase. Here goes our effort to explore where to buy leads and how to handle lead lists.
Where and How to Buy Leads
Buying leads from a third party is the first step to finding your next client. But if you’re not careful, it can also be the last.
Buying leads: What
When looking for leads, you want to make sure they fit your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). They are likely to buy from you, which means they fit your buying criteria. If you’re looking for a list of buyers who might be interested in purchasing from your company, it’s important to make sure that their needs and interests match up with what your company has to offer.
Buying leads: Where
If you want to buy leads, there are two main ways to get top-quality lists of leads: either buy them from a list broker or purchase them from a subscription-based lead generation service (BuiltWith, Echobot Target, LeadFeeder). If you’re looking to purchase leads from a list broker, be sure you find one who promises to sell only hand-curated leads that fit customers’ ICP (for example, BELKINS’ sales team).
Tips for buying lead lists
Keeping your pipeline filled with fresh leads is a process that requires time, persistence, and effort. If you want to supplement your sales team’s efforts with a purchased list, it’s commendable. Make sure you take all the necessary steps before and after buying a list from a reputable source.
Before
- Check before you pay. When you buy a lead list, you are a buyer and have the right to check the product before making a purchase. It is your responsibility to ensure that you buy a top-quality product. A contact list should contain only one name per business contact. Email or call a certain number of contacts to check if the list is accurate and has no duplicates. If your list has a high bounce rate and a low response rate, purchasing it is probably not cost-effective. The data will be more valuable if your reps aren’t spending their time enriching it.
- Trust only AI-enhanced sources. When buying lead lists, ensure they are continually updated using artificial intelligence and data from the latest automated information sources. Buying static lead lists doesn’t normally work for B2B companies. Once a list is pulled up, it goes stale pretty quickly without continuous AI-enhanced updates. Typically, B2B sales require fresh business leads available only with Data-as-a-Service software. Salespeople who use Data-as-a-Service software can benefit from fresh leads updated regularly by AI processing.
- Hire a dedicated person. If you’re planning to buy lead lists, you’ll want to hire someone to manage the process. A lead manager does prospect research, data enrichment, and lead qualification—all before handing the leads over to sales. This person will do prospect research and data enrichment before handing over the business leads to sales. This will offset any disadvantages of buying third-party leads. Why? Because even if buying leads has some drawbacks, it’s still worth it for your business if you can get enough qualified leads to make it worthwhile.
After
Now, you’ve purchased a contacts list and are ready to shoot cold emails. But wait. Using a lead list is just the beginning of your lead generation endeavor. With banner blindness and ad fatigue, people are highly resistant to most advertising and marketing propositions. Good advice leads to business opportunities. Following are some tips on using a lead list.
- Research leads. Research is essential when working with lead vendors. First, Sales development representatives verify leads’ contact information and perform background research before reaching out to leads. Next, SDRs look up data about the contact to personalize their outreach.
- Take your time. When approaching a potential client for the first time, take your time to establish trust and connection. You cannot expect to receive a response to your initial outreach right away, and sales cannot begin immediately from the first contact. Wait until you have built some rapport with the prospect before attempting to close the deal. Be patient. Use the data you gathered while doing your research.
- Use non-aggressive tactics. When cold emailing, don’t try to be overly aggressive. Don’t use deceptive subject lines or give unrealistic promises. Use subject lines that invite the reader to open your email and avoid giving false promises. You aren’t Mr. Smarty-Pants or Miss Know-It-All so make sure the tone you choose conveys respect and cordiality.
- Use technical advice. Technical tips are the same for all. Don’t use a list of email addresses you’ve never used before. Warm up your address by sending a test message to yourself. Avoid spam-like words in your subject lines. Provide simple unsubscribe options. If your email deliverability rates stagger, use email checker software.
What Makes a Good Lead List?
If you have a sales team and set up your lead generation channels, you have all to keep your lead database breaming with new leads. However, knowing the rules of buying contacts from a third party will help you make a reasonable purchase. We hope the tips and best practices we share will lead to sale opportunities for all who seek them. Also, BELKINS’ sales development team if you are looking for hand-curated prospects who fit your ICP.