Understanding the Importance of Data Freshness for Quality Leads

We now have more data than we truly know what to do with. As we turn to a new decade, there are now over four billion people using the internet worldwide. These four billion people have created what is estimated to be approaching 20 zettabytes of data. That amount of data is almost unfathomable.

As time goes on, we all age accordingly, and so does our data. While some of it is evergreen and always relevant other data loses it’s meaning and accuracy over time. Every industry and business process now use data, and they each have their own data needs.

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What Is Data Freshness?

Data freshness refers to the recentness and accuracy of the data. Again, depending on different businesses and their associated processes, the data freshness will have varying degrees of importance. In the case of sales, data freshness matters a good deal. The sales world moves at the speed of light, so the data that salespeople use to make decisions, also need to move at this speed.

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What Makes a Quality Lead?

There are several specifications that define quality leads, but for now let’s focus on why quality matters more than quantity for leads. Sure, salespeople are looking for as many opportunities to close deals as possible. That said, some leads really aren’t worth the time pursuing. The best salespeople do not waste their time chasing dead ends. Creating leads just for the sake of creating leads is not a good or fruitful habit to develop.

As for what makes a good lead, let’s look at a few good guidelines. First and foremost, it has to be qualified. This will mean that it has to be in the salesperson’s market for them to go after its. It needs to be the correct decision maker. It needs to be someone who has the ability to buy and actually is buying your services or products.

Guaranteeing that your leads are quality depends on data freshness.

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Scrubbing Leads for Quality with Data Freshness

Scrubbing a lead is a process of vetting it and its details. In our case, it refers to going through and verifying all business and contact information. You first want to skim through the business details and make sure things like company name, address, phone number, website, etc, are current and accurate. Then you look at the decision maker. An obvious place to start is by ensuring that the decision maker actually is the decision maker. Do they have the authority to fully make the decision? You need to know this for sure and make sure that there aren’t more talking heads involved. Lastly, do you have their correct contact information?

Leads made in haste, usually have missing or incorrect information, and this is a waste of time for the salesperson. Whether they generated the leads, or the leads were created by another team or even company, the act of needing to double check leads is a waste of time. Attempting to make contact with leads with incorrect information is also a terribly inefficient use of your time and gives the leads the impression that you don’t have your act together.

In sales, information is leverage. Having accurate information, or data, is essential to a well-run sales machine. Data freshness is vital when it comes to lead generation for a salesperson. When you make contact, you want the proper and correct information to streamline your process. Data freshness will allow you to do this.