I’ve been fortunate in my career to have a business partner, Dan Taggart, who is an expert salesman. In the early 90s, every computer and bookstore that he visited agreed to carry our products. As a telemarketer he is superb. Once when our in-house sales reps were only closing about 20% of incoming calls (to upgrade to our newest CD ROM product), to demonstrate how it should be done, he took 17 consecutive calls and closed 100% of them.
As a marketer, I focus my attention on generating leads for my sales teams. For consumers, this can easily be done on a web site by giving something away of value in exchange for contact information and permission to contact. For B2B sales I love Hoover’s service, although a subscription can be pricey for a startup.
I’ve recently seen a full page ad for Credit.net (from InfoUSA) that offers unlimited usage of 14 million business credit reports. I thought the ad said $50 per month. The web site says $75 per month and then $250 per month for unlimited “sales leads.” The sample data shows contact information, including key people, number of employees, revenue, SIC code, and competitors. It looks outstanding.
Question to my readers: has anyone used a Credit.net subscription to generate sales leads?
