How to build your Sales & Marketing Database from scratch?
It is a fact that no matter what the nature of a business is, sales are the deciding factor of whether a business will survive or not. The higher the sales, the higher are its chances of survival. Let’s say ‘survival of the ‘fittest business model’ is determined by the quality of its sales. Other factors, like after-sales and networking, are equally important, but this article will be sales-focused.
The definition of a database is a ‘structured set of data held in a computer, especially one that is accessible in various ways.’ A Database Service Providers that collects and stores information about all the prospects that it is looking to target and re-target can be termed as a Sales and Marketing Database. A well-structured database is an integral part of successful sales.
How to make a Sales and Marketing Database for your company?
Here are the steps that can help you build a Database for your company.
Step 1: Know your Customers
If you don’t realize who you are catering to, it will only make the objective of any business confusing. By knowing your customers, you will be only talking to leads who are genuinely interested in your product/services.
How to achieve this? Call for a meeting with your sales team and discuss the common character traits your customers possess. Some of the following questions can help you achieve this:
· Industries that your customers represent?
· Size of their company?
· Customers’ job profile?
· Common hurdles in their jobs?
· Their KPIs?
Step 2: Recognize the potential companies and their stakeholders.
Once you have filtered the industry that your customers represent and the companies they could work for, it is time to list those companies that fit the bill. Identify the various departments and their key decision-makers with whom you want to touch base with.
LinkedIn is a great source to connect with people of your interest.
Step 3: Hunt the web-jungle to find the contact of your lead
Getting your leads’ contact for making a rock-solid database is not going to be sunshine and rainbows. What appears to be a cakewalk first involves hours of stalking on the internet, from consuming any content that they might have published online to gulping down their Social Profiles and following them, literally everywhere, online.
Bear in mind that this has to be done for every lead.
Step 4: Authenticate the contact information
The next step in the process is to authenticate the data that you have collected. Why this is important is because you must bear in mind that the online data decays quickly. So, what you might have garnered could be obsolete data.
To confirm that the contact information you have is correct, you will have to call up each lead and introduce yourself. Often a script could help keep your call crisp and on point. During the call, you may ask some initial qualifying questions and tell them that one of your team members will get in touch to offer a solution (often a custom solution) for their ABC pain point.
You can create a database from scratch. But if you feel that the whole process of database creation is too much of a hassle, you can reach out to professional Database Service Providers, adept at providing exceptional telesales services.
