Marketing and Sales Leads
Mailing Lists for Film Festivals
For those of you who sell to film festivals, sales prospecting is a top priority. So what can you do if your company is unable to find high-value prospects?
Selling to film festival businesses is a completely different ballgame than your typical B2B sales process.
Seasoned, industry veterans it's good to have all the help they can get. Towards that end, direct mail lists great for boosting lead volumes and sales revenue.
Lead Lists: Build or Buy?
Business owners often avoid lead lists because they feel they can produce the same results using in-house resources. However, they often overlook the fact that lead list providers are specialists who are highly skilled in identifying targeted leads. So a decent list provider can produce a list of prospective film festivals at a cost that is much lower than in-house lead generation. Additionally, the best list providers have developed mechanisms that capture new film festivals as they enter the marketplace and meticulously maintain their contact databases. For most in-house sales units, it's just not possible to keep pace with the professionals.
Leads vs. Prospects
A first-rate lead list provider, your provider will deliver an updated lead list that has been sorted according to company size, years in business, zip code and other criteria. But your work isn't done yet. Unless you are using the lists for mass marketing campaigns (e.g. direct mail), you'll need to qualify the contacts through telemarketing calls or sales calls. Since the film festival contacts have been culled from a larger group of updated prospects, you'll have better higher conversion rates -- but you'll still need to expend energy to achieve maximum return on your investment.
How to Tell If You Have a Good Lead List
The best lead lists share several characteristics that are essential in selling to film festivals. Right out of the gate, you'll want leads that have been created from a nationwide database. For example, Experian Business Services offers B2B lead lists that have been culled from more than 14 million active U.S. businesses. For sellers to film festivals, a large database makes it easy to narrow the list of prospects to companies that meet precise sales criteria. Since lead quality plays a primarily role in conversion percentages, you'll also want to focus your efforts on providers that are well established and reputable.
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