You already know the importance of valuing contacts and relationships if you work in B2B sales and marketing. Companies are continuously attempting to maintain existing customers while also attracting new ones. The most important component in enabling them to do so is having an up-to-date and accurate B2B contact list and that should be included in your b2b business plan. Business cards, emails, website landing pages, and social media are all good places to look for new leads and contacts. Each year, data from a variety of sources can add up to hundreds of thousands of contacts in the CRM.

Individuals, particularly those on client-facing teams, may have hundreds or thousands of contacts recorded in their phone address books or in organizational systems. Data can become unorganized, outdated, and redundant over time, resulting in duplicates and other issues. Companies could lose millions of dollars in sales possibilities as a result of this. The process of following up and contacting prospects and clients are made easier with an up-to-date contact list. As a result, it's critical to keep the database clean and orderly. The experts of business plan writing services will tell you the significance of maintaining an update contact list. 

How to get your B2B contact list?

You can obtain your B2B contact list in a variety of methods. Renting or purchasing B2B contact lists may appear to be a quick fix, but it comes with its own set of drawbacks. You must first locate a reputable list vendor. You'll have to pay each contact, and there's a good possibility you'll end up with the same list as your competition. Furthermore, the contacts on these lists could be outdated or obsolete. Because these lists were created from a B2B contact database that had been kept for some time. If this is a part of your b2b business plan in updating the contact list, you have to very specific.

According to studies, contact data in B2B contact databases degrades at a rate of 22% per year. Even if you purchase a list, you must verify all of the contacts on a regular basis to ensure that they are still legitimate. After you've paid a large money for the lists, you'll need to do this. It's a difficult challenge for marketers. As a result, experts advise that creating your own B2B contact list is always preferable to purchasing lists from providers. 

How to build your B2B list?

Step 1 - Mark your ideal customer

You'll want to figure out who your ideal consumer is before you start creating your list. This guarantees that you only speak with prospects that have a genuine need for your product or service and are more likely to convert. How do you go about doing this? Simple - get down with your entire sales team and uncover common attributes and traits that your consumers share. What industries do your consumers come from?

 1. What is the size of their businesses? (Employee count and/or annual revenue)
 2. What are the job responsibilities and roles of your customers?
 3. What are the difficulties they experience in their work?
 4. What are their key performance indicators (KPIs) and responsibilities?

Step 2 - Identify the decision makers

Make a list of organizations that meet the bill now that you know who's likely to convert to a paying customer and what type of company they're likely to work for. Once you've done that, focus on the departments and decision-makers you want to contact. Use the Fortune 100, 500, or 1000 list as a starting point if you want to reach out to established organizations with more means to pay for your product/services. You can look for leaders or decision makers at such companies on LinkedIn after you've compiled a list of relevant companies. 

Step 3 - Work through to get your lead's contact details

Ask the experts of business plan writing services and they will tell you how taxing the entire process is; similarly, the research process can be exhausting when making your own contact list for the business. You'll want to look at their social media profiles, their company's website, the interviews and profiles they've done, and the press releases they've published to find out their contact information. 

Step 4 - Validate the contact information

The typical B2B sales and marketing database degrades at a rate of over 36% every year, so if you acquired a prospect's number through a press release distributed in 2015, there's a good possibility it's no longer valid. Keeping this in mind, double-check the contact information you've obtained to ensure your list isn't primarily comprised of spam leads. Make a quick script and call the numbers you've gathered. Keep this initial call brief; simply introduce yourself, ask your lead a few qualifying questions, and inform them that your colleague will contact them in a few days to discuss how they can assist your lead in eliminating XYZ pain problem.

The challenges in building the contact list 

You've prepared your B2B contact list. However, creating your own B2B contact list takes a significant amount of time and effort. If you have some Internet research abilities, it could take weeks or even months to construct your B2B list, depending on your requirements.

Sales and marketing professionals are too busy to devote numerous hours to establishing B2B lists. Their main goal is to call their leads and convert them into customers. As a result, you'll need to hire a separate resource or team to generate B2B lists.

It also increases your expenses. This is exacerbated for small and medium businesses, startups, and entrepreneurs who are unable to devote both time and money to creating B2B lists. 

Conclusion 

It's not enough to just amass a large B2B contact list on your database. Yes, having a large list will assist you in generating leads. Contacts, on the other hand, become outmoded and unimportant with time. So, if you want to be really productive and increase your conversion rates, make sure your contact database is always up to date. With these suggestions, your work will undoubtedly become faster and easier.