Let’s face it, as a business owner you probably don’t place as much value on your data as you think. Just take a look at your accounting system, vs. your sales system, vs. your marketing system.
Yep, your sales team want to make sales. But they aren’t worried about updating the bill payer.
Your accountant just wants the books to balance, they don’t care who the decision maker is.
Your marketing team are focused on correct email addresses and the number of times some transient or external telemarketer has used extra.co.nz instead of Xtra. Fixing those sorts of mistakes can be time consuming and annoying.
As for you, the business owner, you just want growth and a return on investment from your inbound and outbound sales teams or your external marketing partnerships. And of course, you want your client’s billing details to be accurate, so the bills get paid on time.
So, what’s the problem if a few contact names are wrong? Why should an incorrectly populated address field worry you? If telephone numbers are in multiple different formats, who cares? if email addresses are missing a letter, a full stop, or the correct service provider address – is that such a big deal?
The short answer is ‘yes’.
Here’s why you should care about the accuracy of your data (the long answer)
If a phone number is missing a digit when you need to chase a debtor, your accountant has to check online, or elsewhere, for the correct number. Sure, only a 60 second job. That’s unless the same record has a missing letter in the company name, or part of that name is incorrectly spelled, or maybe the branch address is listed instead of the head office. Okay so now it’s a couple of minutes to sort out. All good. But then again at the rates accountants charge, aren’t you paying over the odds for data cleansing when they do it five times a day?
Or perhaps you think it’s sustainable at that level. But if you looked at every minute your accountant, sales team, marketing team etc. spends each day researching the right contact name, number, job role, phone number, mobile number, DDI, email address, street address, postal address and multiply that by their hourly rate over 12 months – we’re not talking peanuts (as we’re sure you don’t employ monkeys).
And it’s stealing productive time that should be going towards growing your business and making it more profitable.
Another reason why you should love your data
As a professional lead generation business, we utilise a sophisticated, intuitive cloud-based system to run your lead generation campaigns. This maximises the opportunity to generate qualified leads for your business.
We use a streamlined, cost-effective and efficient call making and recording process. We can’t do that off a spreadsheet which has been printed out or has to be kept open on their screens. That’s just downright nasty and cumbersome (and old-fashioned).
Why does this matter? We aim to deliver accuracy, clarity, and brevity in all our reporting, and minimise the time spent in project management and set up. We can’t do this if we are diverting time to repairing unloved and neglected data.
The dirty data list of shame
Lead generation is our business, so we see a lot of data. And sadly, we spend a disproportionate amount of our time correcting that data before we can get on with contacting with your prospects.
Here are some of the issues we most frequently encounter:
- Incorrectly or inconsistently formatted phone numbers – e.g. – 091234567, 6491234567, +64091234567, +6491234567 and more.
- Mobile numbers added to the Main Phone field, or vice versa.
- Multiple phone numbers added in one field.
- Email addresses in the incorrect field.
- Incorrectly spelled first and/or last names resulting in incorrectly addressed emails.
- Inconsistent naming conventions for company names – e.g. ABC Company LTD, A.B.C Company LTD, ABC Limited, and other variations. This often results in duplicate records or multiple calls being placed to the same company unnecessarily – and annoyed prospects.
- Various business address details, especially in data systems running NZ formats versus US formats. Most CRM, ERP and SAP systems use the US format for addresses.
Who you gonna call?
So, what’s the fastest way to verify address details and update the correct contacts? Picking up the phone is always the quickest option – but your team don’t have time for that, it is Christmas rush after all!
That’s where our Dirty Data Hit Squad comes in. Let us start the big clean up now, so you and your team can start the New Year with clean, green data.
Imagine:
- Your sales team will have the latest decision maker details for renewing contracts or upselling.
- Your accountant will have a clear contact to deal with, potentially minimising slow payers.
- Your marketing team will get minimal to no email bounces.
- And as the business owner, you’ll have clean, current data so you can hit 2019 hard!
Give me a call. Send me an email. Let’s talk.
