To dominate in sales to office furniture installation services, you have to target your sales and marketing energies toward specific segments of the marketplace -- and that means you have to be thoughtful in assembling your prospect lists.

Collaborative Uses for Mailing Lists

If you limit the use of office furniture installation service lead lists to direct mail and cold calling, you're not getting the best possible return for your investment. A good lead list can serve as a collaborative resource for sales, marketing and other business divisions. For example, after you have acquired a lead list that has been sorted by geography, your marketing division could test a handful of marketing concepts in each area. If the marketing division's efforts are coordinated with the sales division, you could then evaluate outcomes and adjust your approach to each area rather than launching a generic sales campaign.

Reasons to Buy Lead Lists

Isn't it possible to create your own lead lists without paying an outside provider? Yes, but obtaining lead lists from an outside specialist is much more cost efficient than generating lead list in-house.

You'll get higher ROI from first-rate list providers because they have massive industry databases that are updated regularly for accuracy. The bottom line is that lead lists improve the speed and effectiveness of the selling process.

Criteria for Lead List Vendor Selection

In our experience, third-party lead list providers are definitely not created equal and Experian Business services stand out from the crowd. Unlike other vendors on the market, Experian has all of the qualities we look for in a good lead list provider, including the following:

• Large database. We think it's important for businesses that sell to office furniture installation services to cull their leads from an expansive business database. Why? Because more contacts equates to a higher volume of truly qualified leads.
• Updated contacts. Contact updating is lead list 101. Long contact lists are worthless unless they are regularly updated for accuracy.
• Delivery speed. When your business needs a fresh injection of office furniture installation service leads, you can't afford to put your operation on hold until the vendor gets around to filling your order. Good list providers feature fast turnaround times measured in hours or less.

Types of Data Available from Lead Database Vendors

When buying business leads, you usually receive Company Name, Contact Name, Address and Phone Number. What you actually get depends on which list broker you do business with. For some vendors, for example, you can get fields like Executive Titles, Email Addresses and Number of Employees.