how much would you pay for a customized b2b leads list?

9 replies
hello everyone,

BRIEF: how much would you pay for a b2b leads list, which you customize by industry, location, size and other criteria, formulated so it's quick and easy to rule-out futile leads and focus on the really prospective ones?

(i know there are services offering the similar, but they all seem too expensive - like $250 for 1,000 leads, of those maybe 10% are actually prospective).

ok, now the long story:

i'm a freelance developer (hence i'm not all too familiar with telemarketing). i recently completed a project for a telemarketing company. that project involved composing lists of businesses & contacts details in the U.S. per location, industry, size, financial stats, and other parameters. each result - when said criteria set right - was actually a quite prospective b2b leads list.

the method i suggested and implemented impressed the client considerably, to a degree i'm now considering formulating it into a "shelf product" (software), for small/medium businesses looking for prospective leads. that goes for any business, not the telemarketing industry.

i need some advice on how to price the leads lists generated by my software. the process is as follows:

1) you are a small/medium business wanting new leads.

2) you use my software: you define industry,location,size, and some other parameters.

3) you get an extensive list of businesses matching your criteria.

4) you filter the results by many additional criteria, to focus on the prospective leads.

the list contains additional data organized in a table, to help you easily rule-out futile leads and focus on the prospective ones - for example businesses that work from home (or not), are a franchise (or not), have a web site (or not), sales volume, credit score, etc.

to illustrate, say you narrow the extensive list down to few hundreds leads. of those, say you filter-out 80% as irrelevant (for whatever reason), you get a really good shot at the remaining few dozens.

and the real beauty of it is that the entire process can be completed within the hour, and requires little to no knowledge of either marketing or using a computer: you get the extensive list within minutes. further filtering is as easy as filtering in Excel, with direct links to the business website and geolocation (and other resources) to help you build your impression of the lead in seconds.

so, how much would you pay for this kind of a service?

note that the contact information includes contact person(s) name, mailing address, and phone number. email is subject to the CAN-SPAM act, and (perhaps) may be retrieved as an additional step (but still not complicated and suitable for everyone's use).

any feedback is appreciated!
#b2b #customized #leads #list #pay
  • Profile picture of the author gjabiz
    Originally Posted by bgrubber View Post

    hello everyone,

    BRIEF: how much would you pay for a b2b leads list, which you customize by industry, location, size and other criteria, formulated so it's quick and easy to rule-out futile leads and focus on the really prospective ones?

    (i know there are services offering the similar, but they all seem too expensive - like $250 for 1,000 leads, of those maybe 10% are actually prospective).

    ok, now the long story:

    i'm a freelance developer (hence i'm not all too familiar with telemarketing). i recently completed a project for a telemarketing company. that project involved composing lists of businesses & contacts details in the U.S. per location, industry, size, financial stats, and other parameters. each result - when said criteria set right - was actually a quite prospective b2b leads list.

    the method i suggested and implemented impressed the client considerably, to a degree i'm now considering formulating it into a "shelf product" (software), for small/medium businesses looking for prospective leads. that goes for any business, not the telemarketing industry.

    i need some advice on how to price the leads lists generated by my software. the process is as follows:

    1) you are a small/medium business wanting new leads.

    2) you use my software: you define industry,location,size, and some other parameters.

    3) you get an extensive list of businesses matching your criteria.

    4) you filter the results by many additional criteria, to focus on the prospective leads.

    the list contains additional data organized in a table, to help you easily rule-out futile leads and focus on the prospective ones - for example businesses that work from home (or not), are a franchise (or not), have a web site (or not), sales volume, credit score, etc.

    to illustrate, say you narrow the extensive list down to few hundreds leads. of those, say you filter-out 80% as irrelevant (for whatever reason), you get a really good shot at the remaining few dozens.

    and the real beauty of it is that the entire process can be completed within the hour, and requires little to no knowledge of either marketing or using a computer: you get the extensive list within minutes. further filtering is as easy as filtering in Excel, with direct links to the business website and geolocation (and other resources) to help you build your impression of the lead in seconds.

    so, how much would you pay for this kind of a service?

    note that the contact information includes contact person(s) name, mailing address, and phone number. email is subject to the CAN-SPAM act, and (perhaps) may be retrieved as an additional step (but still not complicated and suitable for everyone's use).

    any feedback is appreciated!
    I'd gladly pay 250 dollars for the 100 good leads you claim some other company is already doing.

    (i know there are services offering the similar, but they all seem too expensive - like $250 for 1,000 leads, of those maybe 10% are actually prospective)

    It has to do with what I'm offering, and includes the Lifetime Value of my Customer, how long I stay in the red ink with them based on LTV, which determines my acquisition costs.

    So, 250 bux for 100 QUALIFIED "prospects" is 2.50 per lead. If my team is good and can close, and if they truly are prospects, and we closed 10% (low)...then

    I've spent 250 bux for 10 new customers, right? Or 25 each. If I only got 2 and half % from professional closers dealing with your lists or only 3 customers, it still could be a good deal for me.

    So, your price means nothing to me. It is what I'm getting and since ONE of the most important things I'd pay for, a decision maker's

    EMAIL

    is an iffy thing on your software,

    it wouldn't be worth that much, could easily get a fiverr type to use one of the dozens of huge businesses that already compile such data to create a spreadsheet.

    Give me the buyer's name and how much they spend on advertising each year, broken down by media...and you could get a heck of a lot more than 250 out of my pocket.

    You might consider what you did for someone already as the "control" price of what you did and test it out from there.

    gjabiz

    PS Competing with D&B, Gales, Hoovers, etc., etc., means bringing something fresh to DATA.
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  • Profile picture of the author bgrubber
    thank you gjabiz for your insight! and apologies for the late reply. your breakdown of the process into numbers is indeed enlightening (although i still find the professional slang a bit overwhelming :-)

    anyways, your bottom line i do adopt.

    as for your P.S., i'm not trying to compete with the "big guys"; what i've come to realize is that the big guys are offering their services to the big customers - those who are a professional marketing agencies, or well-funded enterprise marketing divisions. the typical small business mostly cannot afford the big guys services. i can change that to some extent, by delivering high quality data in small (thus inexpensive) chunks. i realize this is a niche service - and i'm wondering how big is that niche (in terms of customers base and in terms of acceptable costs).
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  • Profile picture of the author jordorules
    Hi everyone,

    gjabiz is correct in that it doesn't matter so much what your charging but what your able to deliver and what your customer is looking for.

    For me though I'm merely interested in the follow:

    1. Contact Name (CEO / Owner if Possible)
    2. City
    3. Phone
    4. Type of Business

    Extras would be:

    5. Number of Employees
    6. Annual Sales Revenue

    The think with InfoUSA or InfoCanada is I'm paying $1,500 per year per State / Province and I don't need (nor can I even work) many of those cities in the Province of BC. So I'm paying for what I'm not going to use. Also a lot of the information is overkill for me and I don't need it.

    Another issue I have with InfoUSA or InfoCanada is that their software is locked so that only 1 person can view it at at time. So this means if I have 2 telemarketers working for me I need to purchase two exact same versions of this software. Which seems insane to me. I purchased it once I should be able to have 20+ telemarketers using this data list to call from. Of course I get they don't want people sharing it and splitting the cost or something like that. But still it makes it difficult to create a "TEAM" of telemarketers to use this software to call from.

    So I'm wondering bgrubber if you have something that will be available soon and if so will it work in the USA and Canada and also will it be able to give me the above data?

    Thanks J
    Signature

    "Whether you believe you can or can't ... You're right." - Henry Ford, CEO, Ford Motor Company

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  • Profile picture of the author jordorules
    Also it would be great to be able to search by all of these for example search all types of businesses in certain areas as well as say for example search for all businesses with 50+ employees.

    Thanks J
    Signature

    "Whether you believe you can or can't ... You're right." - Henry Ford, CEO, Ford Motor Company

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  • Profile picture of the author TrickyDick
    What I'm trying to figure out is.....

    What makes your software different than the other half a dozen or so "scrapers" out there starting at $19?

    These aren't qualified prospects...... or even prospects.

    You're essentially providing general contact information....

    If you provide the decision maker's name, phone and e-mail, your product would be differentiated from the other "scrapers." That would take some serious programming and bandwidth to go to many web sites and "figure" these out..... You couldn't just give the Contact email from the web site or a "generic catch all email" address.
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  • Profile picture of the author bgrubber
    TrickyDick,

    i offer not a scraper, but access to professional business data (qualified leads), including contact details such as name and phone number of owner / CEO / general manager / HR manager, etc.

    regarding email, i tend to exclude it due to the CAN-SPAM act, and anyway it is intended for offline marketing so email is not a requirement.

    the "software" implementation provides a convenient way to search for leads by various criteria, and to present them in a concise manner.

    hope that makes it clearer.
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    • Profile picture of the author TrickyDick
      Originally Posted by bgrubber View Post

      TrickyDick,

      i offer not a scraper, but access to professional business data (qualified leads), including contact details such as name and phone number of owner / CEO / general manager / HR manager, etc.

      regarding email, i tend to exclude it due to the CAN-SPAM act, and anyway it is intended for offline marketing so email is not a requirement.

      the "software" implementation provides a convenient way to search for leads by various criteria, and to present them in a concise manner.

      hope that makes it clearer.
      So, your selling the businesses' contact information.....

      "Qualified Leads" would be business owners with credit cards in hand ready to buy a particular product or service..... and they have contacted you via phone or email.

      If you have software that does that, you're going to put tons of businesses out of business...

      All of the people who built "Local Lead" web sites and multimillion dollar companies like HomeAdvisor.com will not be able to compete with you..... The only problems you'll have are which island you want to buy and how many Bugattis you want.... :-)
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      • Profile picture of the author bgrubber
        Originally Posted by TrickyDick View Post

        So, your selling the businesses' contact information.....

        "Qualified Leads" would be business owners with credit cards in hand ready to buy a particular product or service..... and they have contacted you via phone or email.
        TrickyDick,

        there's a lot more than contact information - there's credit rating score, products/services offered, annual sales volume, number of computers, ground/floor area, number of registered professionals, holding status, franchise name or type ... many elements of data supposed to assist the telemarketer with deciding the best contact approach (this is of course after the initial filtering by industry, geography, employee count, etc.).

        i mentioned earlier that i'm new to the marketing terminology, hence my reference to "qualified leads" differs from your definition. i refer to "qualified leads" as leads who have a verified and up-to-date information, and that information can be used to distinguish the prospective from the futile, with none to very little additional surveying by the telemarketer.

        i do appreciate your attempt to steer me into proper terminology, and i will make attempt to avoid such incoherence in the future.
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  • Profile picture of the author roibert
    why don't you check out salesgenie they have good leads.
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