Lead enrichment
Lead enrichment is the collection and analysis of data about a lead or a client in order to relate to their needs and improve the sales process. Even more simply put, it is knowing more about a lead to “enrich” the chance of a sale. Lead enrichment gives you a detailed insight into your lead, providing you with actionable information that lets you interact more effectively.
The lead enrichment data – what to look for and why
Deep knowledge of your client’s pain points, needs, and interests helps you build a stronger relationship with the client, and good relationships lead to bigger and faster sales. What’s more, the more information you have on your lead, the easier it is to recognize what affects their decision making, making your sales team’s job much more efficient. That is the main purpose of lead enrichment.
The data you are looking for can vary based on your industry, business type, product, etc., but the overarching goal is information that identifies the suitability of a lead. The gathered data can be broad or specific based on your and/or the leads’ needs, but either way, the goal is to find the most relevant information. This can include data like the number of company employees, physical location, revenue, etc. It’s imperative that the data is kept up-to-date and accurate, otherwise, it will be untrustworthy and even harmful when used for communication with the lead.
How to find data for lead enrichment
There are many ways to find data, but the three key factors of usefulness are:
- Accessibility
Is it readily available and can it be directly associated with a specific lead? - Reliability
What are the quality of the data and its source? - Ease of transfer
Is the data easily transferred in order to be used for any specific purpose?
Professional social networks such as LinkedIn are a go-to resource for many B2B sellers collecting data for lead enrichment. For B2C the most commonly used sources are social media like Facebook and Twitter.
You can only really achieve large-scale lead enrichment through automation. There are simple ways to automate parts of the process, using integrations with systems such as web forms, CRMs, and email finders along with incorporating enrichment data from multiple other sources, tools, and programs. Lead enrichment can be done manually, but at mostly any scale, large or small, it will be necessary to use automated systems.
There has been a lot of focus on data mining and big data in the media, but in reality, most of the useful data used in lead enrichment is found within business operations. The data needed for lead enrichment is generally more specific than the large-scale broad range of data mining can provide.
Why you need to enrich leads
The point of all businesses is to make business. Lead enrichment raises the chances of making business by helping you make the right decisions regarding your leads. It helps you understand the people you are selling to, which in turn helps you understand how to sell it to them. Through lead enrichment, you will be able to find data about the decision-makers that will help appeal to them with surgical precision, instead of making uninformed guesses and trying to convert with generic offers.
It is possible to organize and incorporate lead enrichment into almost any business through:
- Integration of internal data sources to make data available to all other processes
- Integration of external data sources to automatically add data to contacts
- Offering user interface elements that allow and encourage users to add, update and correct data as a matter of course while performing other tasks
- Automating data cleansing activities – validating and cleaning at the point of entry or flagging for cleaning at the earliest possible time
In the end
Taking the time and effort to find out more about your leads gives you the upper hand when interacting with and choosing leads.
After all, for the lead you are approaching, it is refreshing (and frankly much less annoying) to communicate with someone who is knowledgable about their pain points, needs, and desires. This makes the lead feel more catered to, which leads to easier conversion.
There are many programs and tools available for organizing lead enrichment that you should absolutely take advantage of if you want to get the most out of every lead you collect. Having an organized cache of enriched leads only works to your success.
