Contacts are at the heart of any business. They are essential to any sales or marketing efforts and bring the main source of revenue for the company. Contacts play a huge role in the narrative and have the power to make or break your ROI. Given their importance, it’s essential to ensure your contacts and databases are in good standing. The quality of your contacts and the amount on information on them dictates who you can reach, through what means, and how well. The more contacts you have, the more analysis you can do, and the more accurate your findings will be. This information can then be used in all aspects of business from targeting demographics to positioning yourself in the market. Keeping your contacts clean and up-to-date can translate to a large, accessible system with good quality data to pull from as needed.
Health checks are tedious whether its for your own personal health or your company contacts. Just like regular checkups are essential to a healthy life, regular contact checks are essential to a healthy database. From reviewing information, editing, and removing outdated contacts, this process benefits everyone in the business- including the stored contacts themselves.
When cleaning up your contacts, the first thing to consider is how often these contact quality checks need to be performed. The answer varies depending on many factors such as industry, company size, etc., but considering the buying cycle is a great starting point for any business. Companies with a longer buying cycle may choose to clean less often to avoid removing relevant data too soon. Companies with quicker buying cycles may choose to clean more often, to remove invalid leads and improve quality of analytics.
Contact databases are a space where quality rules over quantity. Having a large database of unreachable contacts and irrelevant details is not nearly as effective as a smaller database with in-depth information that provides an accurate picture of the environment. Many modern technologies offer a personalized experience when contacts access them. An accurate database ensures that automated sales technologies can pull the correct information and provides continuity when using ‘smart content’ and workflows. Having outdated contact information can render these technologies useless or cause glitches, making the business look unorganized and unprofessional.
So, why exactly is contact quality important for sales and revenue? Cleaning out the old and outdated leaves you with only good quality contacts. Better contacts allow you to personalize touchpoints and tailor your marketing campaigns. They have the potential to become qualified sales leads instead of remaining just a name or an email address logged in a messy system. Passing along good quality leads to your sales team results in deals being closed and revenue being generated. When you have the ability and foresight to understand the contact and their history, needs, and wants, you can better determine where they are in the sales cycle, make better recommendations, and have more meaningful interactions with them.
