We need to incur more resources in the business to expand it. However, one of these resources is time, which is a finite resource.
In the competitive and dynamic business environment, you want to tap the right customer in the first attempt.
It is very much frustrating when you realize that amongst the list of prospects, half of the contacts are inaccurate. You cannot convert a single prospect into a sales lead.
You spend a lot of money on developing a high-potential salesforce and hence Hence, wasting their effort is intolerable.
Now you understand the criticality of an accurate contact list validated by multiple stakeholders.
Why is It Important to Have a Good Contact List?
You want to develop trust amongst your salespeople. Hence, you want to give them an accurate and valid list of contacts.
To achieve that, you need to take a close look at the list. See that it is updated.
It is very much essential to check the source of the contact list. When you get the data from a reputed source, there is a high probability that the data is correct. So-called “free source of data” normally doesn’t maintain the latest credentials. Hence, the probability of error is high.
Thus, it makes no sense to give such lists to your sales team. They will not be able to get much success even after putting in their best efforts.
Experts emphasize the validation step because of this reason only. You may get it done by some third party.
Since the business listing is a primary source of consumer data, it is even more important to validate and correct that.
The improper listing becomes a reason for disappointment and frustration for the salesforce.
How Do Inaccurate Prospects Force Your Sales Team to Struggle?
Since it takes many resources to develop an efficient and productive sales force, one cannot afford to waste their energy. But it happens when you provide an invalidated, junk list of contacts to them.
How does it affect their morale? And what could be the aftershocks? Here are some of them.
You Get Low Productivity
Low productivity results in insufficient demand generation. Your sales team tries to contact people, who do not yield any result. Every time salespeople call an incorrect number, they get frustrated. It is because they attempt a fruitless call. It is just a time waste.
It could have been spent on some constructive activity.
Sometimes, you get the contact information correct, but the preferences or job roles mismatch. Again, it doesn’t make sense to make the call.
Your Team Cannot Establish Any Relationship
The sales team is always interested in gathering valuable customer information when they call a lead.
They get a sales journey, minutes of the meeting, and a trail of activities.
This information is valuable and useful in subsequent interactions.
When you give them an improper list, it results in poor relationship management. All the efforts of recording important pieces of information go wasted.
It is a double loss. Your time and efforts get wasted. And you do not get the customer also.
It Brings The Morale Down
You cannot expect results from a team of the frustrated sales team. When they cannot perform because of not their incapability, but due to an inaccurate list; their frustration is humongous.
It worsens when the salespeople cannot justify the underperformance. Their skills are questioned, and they cannot say anything.
It brings the morale down. Negative sentiments prevail, and the efficiency dips further.
When the sales team loses its confidence, it becomes difficult to boost it.
Moreover, next time you will face great difficulty in convincing them about the correctness of the contact list.
A majority of them would refuse to work without checking. It means that either someone else or the sales team needs to spend time in rechecking.
Therefore, one should take every possible effort to validate the contact list and check it from all angles.
Conclusion
It is easy to fix targets and assign them to the salesforce. Indeed, they are skilled and trained for meeting aggressive targets.
But sending them to bring leads with a faulty contact list is like sending a soldier on the war front with a defective rifle that will not fire when it is needed the most.
The responsibility should be fixed with some other people than the salesforce. They are the front liners. You can’t expect validation from them.
Therefore, validate your customer list twice before handing it over to the sales people. By using the right list, they will be able to add a good number to the customer base. It is the reason validation is a vital step.
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