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Sales Leads databases fall in two categories:
Cold Marketing Databases:
These are 'marketing databases', which are collected through various sources, and a business approaches them through mailers, tele-calling and other means. The quality of these cold databases is always a suspect, because they are collected through a 3rd OR 4th party sources. The data many a times is outdated by years, and also not scrubbed enough. Thirdly this data is scanty, in terms of providing you enough information for you to filter out the list. Even if you have good data, these databases have a low strike rate because it’s a cold lead, where you have no idea of the level of interest OR need a prospect may have about your product.
Sales Leads Databases collected using lead-generation channels
We have discussed in the lead management chapter, various lead-generation channels like tele-marketing, point of sale, events and advertizing. These channels produce the leads databases, which are used for prioritization, classification and forwarding to different parts in the organization so that these leads can be followed up for sales.
Through all of these channels, you can ensure a basic quality in the following manner, at the time of getting the customer information:
- Checking that a customer is using valid PIN, telephone numbers, email ID formats (though a customer may still enter a wrong mobile number).
- Encouraging customer to enter the right information, and sharing on how you are going to use that information.
- Stating to the customer on privacy policy of your company and committing that her information will not be used for unauthorized purposes.
As customer is approaching you in most of the cases, customer has got an interest in providing the information. However, in many cases, a customer may share a correct address and email ID, but may not share the correct telephone number to avoid intrusion on privacy.
As you go through the leads prioritization, classification and follow-up, the leads database needs to be updated constantly. One big issue with leads is that post the forwarding to sales people, the central management of the leads database is lost. A good lead management system should be able to take care of it.
We have a complete chapter on the issues and solutions linked to the data quality in customer databases.
The success drivers for Sales leads database quality
- The design of the form in which you collect customer information. This can be a paper form OR a form which a person fills-up on a computer.
- A system to scrub data quickly and find out the level of quality issues (refer searching and matching)
- De-duplication capability
- Ability to store and track the leads centrally.
Measures/Facts for quality of Sales leads database
- No. of dead leads (information is provided, but is out of date OR wrong. For example, it’s an existing address, but not of the person it is stated as)
- No. of incomplete data leads (all information is not provided)
- No. of in-consistent data leads (information is available, but inconsistent)
- No. of garbled data leads (garbled data- 12345678 for a telephone number)
- No. of leads with updated status
KPIs-Metrics for leads database quality
- % of accurate data leads vs. total leads
- % of dead leads vs. total leads
- % of inconsistent data lead vs. total leads
- % of garbled data leads vs. total leads
- % of leads with updated status vs. total leads in the database
Dimensions/Attributes for quality of leads data-bases, around which you can slice and dice your measures and KPIs
- Location (with outlet being part of the location hierarchy)
- Product
- Lead value-slab (high value, medium value)
- Lead priority (high, medium, low)
- Lead Source (external database, existing customer, point of sale..)
- Time
- Lead Source
- Lead owner (the person to who the lead is forwarded for action)
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