Contact lists and lead generation

Don’t buy contact lists or hire lead generation companies claiming to find leads for you.

People are sick and tired of nuisance calls. Calls which start “can I speak to the business owner” or is that “A N Other” how are you today? I’m not trying to sell you something, etc.

As a business owner, people will bombard you with nuisance calls and emails offering to sell your contact lists. Contact lists contain names, phone numbers, and email addresses of people who have allegedly opted into receiving your phone call. These lists do not deliver what they claim. No one ever agrees to be annoyed with nuisance calls and spam emails.

The vendor sells the same contact data repeatedly. List buyers then collectively generate vast quantities of annoying calls and Spam emails. People rarely want what is on offer and don’t have time to listen to all the annoying callers, so they usually hang up.

Our advice is to avoid these contact lists as they will waste your money and time and result in a lot of rejection and annoying other busy people.

Equally, companies that offer lead-generation services are unlikely to generate any business for you. Firstly they will be cold-calling people, probably using the previously mentioned phone lists.

Combining the fact people don’t want nuisance calls with the fact that cold callers don’t understand your business means the chances of any beneficial results are low.

Worse still, if they think they have found a lead, it is often not what you are looking for, and you waste time following it up.

Cold calling might work for some businesses, but for most, it wastes time, money, and emotional energy.

Find people who want to hear from you.

There is no substitute for finding a business by making personal connections: networking events and other places to meet business people. Don’t make the mistake of trying to sell to everyone you meet. Make connections and learn to look out for opportunities.

Make your website work for you.

Spend the time to make a proper website with content people want to read. Don’t believe adverts that claim you can have a website quickly without any effort. A decent website with helpful content requires a considerable investment in time both in generating the content and getting visitors. Our advice is to spend time planning the site first and writing the content. Only then buy a service to get the content online. So many people buy the web service before they have any content and end up paying for a site saying “website under construction”. These “under construction” websites won’t generate any business, so they are counterproductive. They will probably generate many calls from people who want to sell you a website.