Typically, companies that sell to police equipment and supplies businesses find it hard to meet their lead generation requirements using in-house resources. That's where lead lists can help . . .

Characteristics of High-Converting Lead Lists

The best lead lists share several characteristics that are essential in selling to police equipment and supplies businesses. For starters, 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 police equipment and supplies businesses, a large database makes it easy to narrow the list of prospects to companies that meet precise sales criteria. Since lead quality has a significant influence on conversion, you'll also want to focus your efforts on providers that are well established and reputable.

Lead Lists: Build or Buy?

Sales managers often question the value of lead lists based on the belief that their sales teams can generate the same leads in-house. In fact, lead list providers are specialists who are extremely adept at identifying targeted leads. So a decent list provider can produce a list of prospective police equipment and supplies businesses for a fraction of the investment required for in-house lead generation. Additionally, the best list providers have developed mechanisms that capture new police equipment and supplies businesses as they enter the marketplace and regularly update the contacts that are in their database. For many in-house sales units, it's just not possible to keep pace with the professionals.

Use Lead Lists to Reach Off-List Leads

Many business owners don't fully appreciate how lead lists can expand their prospect pool, sometimes even beyond the names contained in the list itself. After you have qualified the police equipment and supplies businesses on the list, each contact is an on-ramp a larger network of police equipment and supplies business contacts that can be tapped into through telemarketing, sales calls and online social networking.

By working its network of contact, you extend the list's ROI far beyond the initial campaign. Although you will likely purchase additional lists in the future, you'll improve your industry presence when you conduct follow up networking with the leads you acquire right now.

Types of Data Available from Lead Database Vendors

When buying business leads, you will typically get Company Name, Contact Name, Address and Phone Number. The actual data varies depending on which lead database provider you do business with. For some vendors, for example, you can get fields like Subsidiary Status, Credit Rating Scores and Type of Business (SIC/NAICS).