NetProspex - Blog

Blogging Around

We'd like to share with you some of the blogs we've been looking at recently:

Sales Machine
DemandGen Report
Sales 2.0
Forrester's Marketing Blog
Selling Power

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Boost eMail Marketing Success with Free Trials

If you’re a marketer looking to jumpstart your demand generation program, consider this time-honored tactic:  try giving your product away.

For a short time, that is.

With online services and hosted applications assuming greater prominence in the market, “try and buy” offers are not only a smart marketing tactic – they’re an essential step in the sale process.

“You can’t sell online services today without letting people try it first,” says Seth Godin, author of Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing Out of Synch? Because customers are both value and risk sensitive, “if you can answer the risk question and you can answer the value question, then you are going to get the sale. One of the best ways to do both of those things is to put in front of people and get them to try it.”

As important as these offers are, it’s equally important to target them appropriately to ensure adoption. David Lewis, president and founder of DemandGen, a marketing automation consultancy headquartered in Danville, CA, advises marketers to pre-qualify trial users, as well as to create a sense of urgency so that the trial customer will be driven to test the product in a real world environment. Lewis also advises companies to implement an effective “nurturing” program to complement the trials, keeping in contact with trial users and being available to answer questions or provide assistance. 

With an effective nurturing campaign in place to support free trials, Lewis estimates that companies can expect 70% to 80% of people who sign up for a free trial to actually use the application, and from there conversion rates to actual customers can reach between 20-30%.

The success of companies like Salesforce.com bear this out – in fact, Salesforce promotes its trial-to-conversion ratio as a selling point.

“When you are evaluating the digital body language of a prospect,” Lewis concludes,  “signing up for a free trial is one of the strongest indicators of real interest.”

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Expand Your Sphere of Influence to Capture More Customers

“Stop obsessing over the decision maker.”

So says  Aaron Ross of Sales Machine.com.  According to Ross, the decision making process is now more important than the decision maker.  While collaborative decision making involving different people and teams approving a purchase has always been an important element of B2B sales, it is now the rule at most organizations.

Ian Campbell, CEO of Nucleus Research, takes this concept a step further, and advises technology sellers to re-think their prospecting targets.  “Technology decisions, including purchasing decisions, are being taken out of the hands of CIOs and handled instead by line-of-business managers,” he tells Information Week.  This means that successful prospecting includes identifying all potential members in the network of decision makers and creating a variety of offers to appeal to the various players.

A recent study released by the Direct Marketing Association, The B-To-B Sphere of Influence: Best Practices in Reaching the Right Person, confirms this approach.  The study shows that 60% of marketers rely on prospect titles or reports from the sales force to tailor their messaging and value propositions to each recipient.

Of course, all of this doesn’t mean prospectors should ignore the “decision maker” entirely, cautions Ross.  “You do want to build a relationship with the decision makers early, but don’t ‘sell’ them until you’ve begun winning over the influencers.”

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Think Beyond the Numbers Game: The Real Key to Sales Success

For years, sales gurus have told us that successful prospecting is a numbers game:  X cold calls = Y leads = Z sales.  Methodologies, books, and entire companies have been built around this formula.

But experienced marketers know there’s more to it.  While it’s nice to believe the conventional wisdom that “everyone is a prospect,” in reality there are far fewer companies ready, able, and willing to buy from you.

According to Nigel Edelshain of Sales 2.0, a New Jersey-based sales improvement consultancy, getting the right target list is the #1 determiner of sales success.  “If you call the wrong people, you won’t sell anything.  A name here or there does not seem like a biggie, right?  But this all adds up.”

NetProspex customer Dan Zasloff of Varolii Corporation agrees.  As Senior Manager of Marketing Programs, he’s not merely interested in the numbers – he’s interested in getting the right numbers.

To Dan, a clean database means more and better opportunities to reach deeper into target organizations and tailor his offers to meet the needs of the business owners who are the most likely matches for Varolii’s solutions.  Data quality – the freshness of his contact list, the detail provided about a contact’s title and responsibilities, and the ability to “get ahead” of turnover at a prospect organization – is essential not only to efficiency, but to effectiveness as well.  The less time he spends on list management and cleanup, the more time he can spend developing appealing offers.

“A ton of companies are out there trying to get share of mind,” he explains.  “Reaching the right person with the right offer is what’s key.”

Or, as Edelshain puts it, “The details count a lot.”

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How Dr Who and NetProspex both benefit from cyberspace!

I noticed something interesting with my kids this weekend as we talked about TV programs like Dr Who (timelord) and TopGear (car consumer report revamped) on BBC America. Beyond scheduled shows, they also watch old episodes on YouTube with neighborhood friends who are fast becoming fans. They are asking me to sign up to domestic BBC on cable, so they can see the first runs of these shows.  I haven’t given in yet, but I am intrigued by what’s going on.  It’s a great example of how more open markets drive content demand across old boundaries.  This glimpse into real world dynamics in the media resonates for me in terms of what NetProspex is all about.  Content creation and distribution has become much more dynamic even in business publishing. NetProspex has added over 240,000 contacts in the past few months. We are busily validating those contacts before we put them up onto the system…that’s where we add value.  I’m not sure my kids will be looking for NetProspex on YouTube, but the possibilities are equally exciting for the new generation of business publishers who are embracing these changes.

NetProspex Releases NetProspex Exchange: Easy and Accurate Sales Contact Trading

Waltham, MA, February 15, 2008

It’s an age-old problem for sales and marketing professionals: How do you realize value from existing contacts in your Rolodex, and how do you find new leads? The answer is NetProspex Exchange, launched by NetProspex, Inc., a provider of accurate sales intelligence.

NetProspex Exchange is an easy-to-use online service that allows sales and marketing professionals to pool their contacts. In return, contributors download new leads from the database. Also, if another user downloads the contributed information, the contributor is further rewarded with more contacts, so the value of contributed contacts can really add up. NetProspex already has over 2 million contacts that go deep into mid-management decision-makers at over 350,000 companies across North America, complete with titles, phone, address and email address.

What sets the Netprospex model apart is adding value to community contributed content by actively ensuring data accuracy with rigorous quality control measures before the data is published to the database.

“The power of user contribution is that the combined knowledge of sales and marketing executives is aggregated into one place, providing enormous benefits to the sales community. The key issue is ensuring integrity and accuracy of the contributed data. Our job as data experts and as the publisher, is to weed out good contacts from bad ones,” says Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex. “The goal of NetProspex is to reduce the time sales people spend digging for accurate, targeted information so they can spend more time selling, which has a direct impact on sales cycles."

NetProspex clients welcome the addition of the NetProspex Exchange service. “NetProspex Exchange is extremely easy to use. NetProspex makes trading contacts quick and efficient, taking care of checking the data behind the scenes. In just a few minutes I had credits I could use to access new contacts from the database.” said Brian Mackley, President of Techadvocacy.

To learn more about NetProspex Exchange, or for a free trial, visit www.netprospex.com/exchange.php.

In other news, NetProspex has recently secured Series A funding, which it will use to produce new tools to further enhance database quality.

About NetProspex
Founded in 2006, NetProspex understands that effective sales efforts require the most in-depth and accurate prospect data. The company's core product line overlays user-contributed and commercial sales lead data with layers of quality control to produce an entirely unique and highly effective sales and marketing contact database. With over 2.5 million accurate business contacts across 350,000 companies, NetProspex is a major new source of contacts - including difficult-to-find mid-management decision makers across North American businesses. In its first year of business, the company has seen sales growth of more than 200%. For more information or a free trial, visit www.netprospex.com.

NetProspex Secures Series A Funding for Accurate Sales Lead Exchange

NetProspex Inc., a provider of accurate sales intelligence, today announced it has secured Series A funding from angel investors. The company will use the funding for further development of its highly accurate user-contributed database of sales leads. The key to providing the most effective sales lead generation tool is to provide a combination of breadth across a wide range of companies and industries, depth into those organizations, and just as importantly, to actively ensure data accuracy. This user-contributed/centrally maintained model sets NetProspex apart in the market and has already generated a sizable customer base for the company in its first year of operation.

"Simply put, we save sales people time by letting them target accurate contact information deep into organizations and across markets," according to Gary Halliwell, CEO of NetProspex. "The thrust behind NetProspex is to reduce the time sales people spend digging for information so they can spend more time selling, which has a direct impact on sales cycles."

NetProspex also announced that beta testing for its NetProspex Exchange feature is well underway, allowing sales people to pool their contacts, increasing coverage deep into mid-management decision-makers at over 350,000 companies across North America. NetProspex Exchange is backed by rigorous quality control measures that ensure data accuracy of user-contributed data before it is published to the database.

NetProspex has acquired over 350 clients from a diverse range of industries in its first full year of operation. Many of these value Netprospex's focus on depth, breadth and data quality. "We have been very impressed with NetProspex's reach and accuracy" said Tom Weinbaum, Director of Marketing for FoundationSource. "It's been a valuable tool in reaching new prospects in a targeted and cost-effective manner."

The company will use the Series A investment to produce new tools to further enhance database quality as well as tools aimed at speeding up workflow in the acquisition of new clients.

NetProspex angel investors include business media publishing veterans Rikki Tahta, Simon Murdoch, Roland Beaulieu and Gary Mueller. "I'm honored by the support of these great people, and humbled by the combined experience they represent. Most have been partners and friends over many years, and they all lend their unique perspective to the NetProspex model, as well as providing great insight into building innovative online media companies." said Halliwell.

About NetProspex
Founded in 2006, NetProspex understands that effective sales efforts require the most in-depth and accurate prospect data. The company's core product line overlays user-contributed and commercial sales lead data with multiple layers of quality control to produce an entirely unique and highly effective sales and marketing contact database. With over 2.5 million accurate business contacts across 350,000 companies, NetProspex is a major new source of contacts - including difficult-to-find mid-management decision makers across North American businesses. In its first year of business, the company has seen sales growth of more than 200%. For more information or a free trial, visit www.netprospex.com.

NetProspex Releases Quarterly Update

NetProspex has completed its quarterly update process, adding new contacts and companies that are available to you right now for your sales and marketing campaigns. As always, we've purged old records to ensure that your prospect list is accurate and up to date. We have added and updated over 1 million contacts in this update, so you should find plenty of new opportunities in the database. If you have a active account...click here to get straight to the new data - it's top notch!

Also, we have added several new features, including one which allows NetProspex users to contribute contacts directly to the database, and already many new records have been contributed. Our new trading feature promises to boost our totals with some unique and often hard-to-find contacts.

Rest assured we will put contributed records, and any records, through our rigorous quality checks. Like you, we know that effective sales requires accurate contacts - and that's what NetProspex delivers

November - Record Sales Month

We are thrilled to announce that our one year anniversary in November was marked by a record sales month.

New enterprise customers added include Citrix, Sunlife, CapitalIQ, Double Positive, Casewise, Upper Deck and Global Insights.

NetProspex Launches New Website

We launched a new look for the NetProspex website this morning with some new features.  Users can now browse by industry list, job function list or geographic list making it easier to target relevant markets in seconds.

Since we launched ten months ago, over 4,000 sales and marketing executives from leading corporations have registered as users. We continue to differentiate with a unique combination of breadth of coverage, depth into mid-management decision makers, and focus on accuracy. Our customer list continues to grow as a result.

The website make-over also heralds some exciting changes from NetProspex in the next few weeks. Our aim is to go further and build on the key features of breadth, depth and accuracy. Our upcoming release of NetProspex Exchange will allow customers to contribute contact data. The goal is to expand coverage further, go even deeper into mid-management decision makers and maintain a higher level of accuracy than is achievable in static executive directories.

If you would like us to alert you when NetProspex Exchange becomes available, please click here to provide us with you email address so we can notify you when we release this feature.