⚡ Get All Content for 20% Off ⚡

Why You Have a Lot Fewer Sales Leads to Follow Than You Think Businesses often drastically underestimate how fast their customer information databases go out of date.

By Peter Daisyme

entrepreneur daily

Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.

"More leads!" Sales teams want them. Marketers spend their time and money trying to acquire them. However, in the race to hoard as many leads as possible, many businesses forget that quality trumps quantity. The result is a bloated database, filled with thousands of leads that that are unlikely to convert.

Effective sales and marketing teams take the time to build a leads database with accurate, data-rich customer information. However, even quality leads have an expiration date. The reason is data decay.

A growing problem

Across all industries, data decay is an ever-present problem. A business can source the perfect lead and incorporate it into their marketing or sales funnel, only to have the contact person take another job. Address changes and business discontinuations are two additional issues. According to NetProspex, 84 percent of B2B marketing databases are "barely functional" due to incomplete or erroneous data.

To make things more complicated, data decay is a bigger problem in some industries than others. Data for an industry with high turnover or that tends to be transient might decay far faster than an industry where change is far less frequent. Businesses should be aware of the typical decay rates for their specialty industries and put technology in place to keep data updated as often as needed.

Related: Here Is the Equation for Increasing Your Sales Team's Success

The impact of data decay.

Data decay has a direct impact on businesses, leading to wasted efforts from your team and seriously zapping your overall productivity. Making matters worse, the job market has gone through severe turmoil in recent years, leading to higher-than-average decay rates. Businesses that haven't revisited their mailing lists in a while may find their sales and marketing efforts are far less effective because of outdated information.

Over time, inaccurate databases can take a serious toll on businesses, starting with the time your employees waste calling outdated numbers. Employees look out of touch when they initiate contact by using the name of someone who is no longer with the company. Marketing emails may come across as spammy when they go to a person's successor, as well, putting a business at risk of being permanently labeled as spam in an organization's email system.

Related: Marketers: Your Sales Team Needs Leads, Not Inquiries

Preventing bad data.

To automate and streamline their marketing and sales efforts, companies are adding more and more data points to each contact in their database. Detailed information about a prospect's company, buying history, social media activity and many other points are being added to lead databases to provide more targeted messaging. However, the more data points that are added to a database, the more that can go bad.

It is extremely difficult to see the errors in a database without specialized tools. Someone can manually go through the list and research each contact, but that takes time. Depending on the size of a business's database, this process could require the attention of a full-time employee for weeks or months at a time. This effort could be better directed toward other activities.

Next steps.

You may be surprised by just how quickly your database is becoming outdated. LeadGenius offers a B2B database decay calculator that helps businesses estimate their data decay by industry. Often businesses are surprised by the results they see. By getting a detailed look at their own data decay rates, businesses can make decisions about where they'll go next.

Often once you gain insight into how your data is decaying, you can begin researching technologies to keep information up to date. Some solutions let you verify emails as soon as you get them or update contact info after it's been in your system a while. These solutions use the power of publicly-available data to keep databases updated with little human effort required.

Dead-end leads are an ongoing problem for companies. Fortunately, there are many tools available to help. Businesses should gain insight into the challenges they face within their own industries, as well as those challenges unique to them, before making a decision on how they'll avoid data decay.

Related: Why 'Smarketing,' or Integrated Sales-and-Marketing Strategy, Is the Future for Small Business

Peter Daisyme

Entrepreneur Leadership Network® Contributor

Co-founder of Hostt

Peter Daisyme is the co-founder of Hostt, specializing in helping businesses host their website for free for life. Previously, he was co-founder of Pixloo, a company that helped people sell their homes online, which was acquired in 2012.

Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join.

Side Hustle

The Remote Side Hustle a 43-Year-Old Musician Works on for 1 Hour a Day Earns Nearly $3,000 a Month: 'All From the Comfort of Home'

Sam Ziegler wanted to supplement his income as a professional drummer — then his tech skills and desire to help people came together.

Business News

Costco CFO Reveals Uncertain Fate of $1.50 Hot Dog and Soda Combo

CFO Richard Galanti reveals that the price will stay the same — but only "for a while."

Business News

The Most Unexpectedly Popular Side Hustle of the Decade Has Low Startup Costs and High Markups

A new report shows that vending machines are a popular investment — and the industry is set to grow up to $3 billion by 2031.

Marketing

Ever Wonder Why Certain Websites Rank Higher Than Yours? This SEO Expert Reveals The Secret to Dominating Search Results

It's often the smart use of SEO, now supercharged with AI, particularly in keyword optimization.

Business News

AI Is Impacting Jobs. Here Are the Gigs Affected the Most, According to an Analysis of 5 Million Upwork Postings

The researcher said in the report that freelance jobs were analyzed first because that market will likely see AI's immediate impact.

Leadership

Former Interrogator Shares 5 Behaviors Liars Exhibit and How to Handle Them

Five deceptive behaviors to look for and how to respond to those behaviors when you encounter them.