How much of a bought lead list is usable?

In my experience, about 55%. The rest had fax numbers, missing names, or P.O. boxes.

How long does a verified list take?

About twice as long as a database export. The website check alone runs about 20 minutes per 100 businesses, and there are three more passes after it.

How many businesses survive verification?

About 75% to 80% of the original list.

Where do the real phone numbers come from?

The business’s own website first, then an enrichment service for the decision-maker’s direct line and email.

Roughly 8:30 to 4:00, when buyers answer the phone. Verify lists outside it.

Should a small agency skip big companies?

Usually. The bigger the deal, the longer the sales cycle.

Half my list was fax numbers. How to build a lead list with real phone numbers.

Why do bought lead lists have so many bad phone numbers?

Bought lead lists go bad because nobody at the database ever dials the number. A record gets in once and sits there. The business moves, the main line turns out to be the fax, and the export still says “phone.” Those databases were one notch below the phone book.

The filters make it worse. Industry codes can’t tell a real buyer from a lookalike. Then you have to cut the ones too small to spend time on and the ones too big to move, because the bigger the deal, the longer the sales cycle. Trying to get a large company to move is like trying to turn an ocean liner left.

What do most agencies try first?

Most agencies subscribe to a lead database, filter by industry and size, and export whatever comes out. That’s what I did. Every quarter I ran out of leads, which is the calling card of a new SDR: “Don’t I get more leads?” This was 2009, and every three months I spent an hour in Salesgenie (now part of Data Axle) filtering, and out came a list where 55% of the rows had data in every field. The other 45% were littered with fax numbers, missing names, or a P.O. box for an address.

Here’s what that costs. Green means go, green means money, and in the business world green time runs from about 8:30 to 4:00. If your producer spends green time confirming names, addresses, and whether the phone number is a fax line, that’s selling time gone. A bad list doesn’t cost you the list. It costs you the morning.

Wanna fix it?

A lead list with real phone numbers gets fixed with a verified public source, a website check on every business, a scrape for contact data, an enrichment pass for people and emails, and a person who decides who’s worth the call.

Start from a verified public database, the kind government agencies publish. One of the few times we should trust the government.
Verify the website. Pull 100 businesses and run a cheap website search. It takes about 20 minutes. No site, or a site that’s dead, and the business comes off the list.
Go back and scrape. Crawl or map each site for the address, the phone number, a leadership page if there is one, and maybe an email.
Enrich the people. Run the survivors through an enrichment service that has a people search and an email search. This is where the decision-maker’s name and direct email show up.
Expect four runs over the same list. You’ll come out with about 75% to 80% of what you started with. It takes twice as long, and you’re getting twice the verified data. Garbage in, garbage out.

What does it look like once it’s running?

Once it’s running, the four passes happen without you, and your job is deciding who gets called. In my system a scout agent builds the list. Its first version failed at the filter, for the same reason my Salesgenie exports did: industry codes couldn’t tell a real buyer from a lookalike. With the filter fixed, the agent was phenomenal at following instructions. What’s left for a person is judgment. You cut the ones you’d never call and start dialing at 8:30 with numbers that ring.

Can you do this yourself?

Yes, and for a small agency the best first list doesn’t come from a database at all. Take your favorite existing client. Build a referral list of 20 names: 10 businesses in that client’s geographic vicinity, and 10 connected to their decision-maker, which you find by peeping their socials and their connections. Then put the list in front of the client and say, “I took the liberty of pulling some businesses I think might be a fit for what we do. Can you take a look and tell me who I should not reach out to?” The reverse psychology confirms which ones they actually know.

The four-pass method works by hand too, up to about 100 businesses. Past that, the website checks and enrichment lookups eat the green time you were trying to protect. If you’ve got 20 names, use the referral list. If you’ve got 1,000, build the machine.

Quick answers

How much of a bought lead list is usable?: In my experience, about 55%. The rest had fax numbers, missing names, or P.O. boxes.
How long does a verified list take?: About twice as long as a database export. The website check alone runs about 20 minutes per 100 businesses, and there are three more passes after it.
How many businesses survive verification?: About 75% to 80% of the original list.
Where do the real phone numbers come from?: The business’s own website first, then an enrichment service for the decision-maker’s direct line and email.
What is green time?: Roughly 8:30 to 4:00, when buyers answer the phone. Verify lists outside it.
Should a small agency skip big companies?: Usually. The bigger the deal, the longer the sales cycle.