Has the Lead Changed Addresses?
More on real-time and opt-in sales leads later. Telemarketing and teleprospecting are two similar but distinct methods of generating sales leads. In teleprospecting, the callers don’t talk from a script. Instead, they familiarize themselves enough with the product or service to be able to gauge the client’s interest. Telemarketing, unfortunately, has a terrible reputation for being a nuisance (calling during dinner hours, offering products that have nothing to do with the potential client, et cetera) and has led to the creation of the National Do Not Call Registry. Operators sell a product or service directly to the public over the phone. Companies contract the services of a telemarketing firm that employs operators who read from a prepared script.
Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) codes and the newer North American Industry Classification System (NAISC) codes are used by the government to classify businesses for census and tax purposes. The advantage of a business specialty list is that a salesman can quickly gain access to thousands of targeted sales leads. Business specialty lists vary in cost depending on how much additional information a salesman wants about the lead (mailing address, credit rating, lawsuits, etc). Unlike real-time and opt-in sales leads, business specialty lists may have been sitting in the database for years. Greeting cards, for example, are 2771 and dental equipment is 3843. With this information, salesmen can request business specialty lists for companies in their geographical area that file taxes with certain SIC or NAISC codes.
It’s important for salesmen to have a well-defined, well-organized system in place for tracking sales leads as they move through the sales pipeline. The more a salesman knows about his leads, the easier it is to offer the right services at the right time. Is the lead planning to initiate a large project in six months? Has the lead changed addresses? For example, has the lead asked for a sample of the product?
If a client wants to know more, the teleprospector refers the client to a salesman. The quickest way to assemble hundreds or thousands of sales leads is to buy a sales lead list. We’ll talk more about specialty lists later in the article. The advantage of these lists is that a salesman can get instant access to thousands of names and numbers for a few hundred dollars. There are dozens of direct marketing companies who collect and sell specialty lists for certain business and consumer sectors.
