Executives aren’t prematurely jubilant over any type of information gathered on a buyer segment. Examining data consistency, completeness, and relevance is still vitally important to sales success. In recent years, data quality improvement just hasn’t been a top priority for most companies.

“Many executives pay only lip service to their company’s need for quality customer information—until they realize how much is really at stake. Poor customer information means not only wasted money, but also key performance indicators and thus the basis for guiding the corporate strategy might be flawed.”
—Wolfgang Messner, Associate Professor at The Darla Moore School of Business

A study from the Harvard Business Review confirms that data is in far worse shape than most executives currently realize:

• 47% of newly-created data records have at least one work-impacting error
• Only 3% of B2B data meets basic quality standards

How Low-Quality Data Hampers Your Sales Performance

As long as the connection between data quality and sales outcomes goes unnoticed, experts will keep raising the flag to warn that steeper consequences may follow.

A database that contains duplicate entries or inaccurate buyer information adversely impacts many areas of business performance—low-quality customer data weakens decision-making and dramatically reduces sales productivity. More importantly, “poor data quality is a major contributor to a crisis in information trust and business value, negatively impacting financial performance,” says Ted Friedman, VP of Research at Gartner.

Suppose you’re hyper-personalizing your outreach to a specific audience segment only to deliver it to the wrong individuals. Or worse—use outdated information and misspelled records to capture a customer’s attention.

An outreach plan that is based on erroneous company details or incorrect contact data can spoil all the efforts you have put into engaging a high-potential customer. It could also weaken the connection between you and a long-term client, which may cause an irreversible loss of revenue.

Accurate Buyer Data Is a Prerequisite for Sales Success

Whether you’re capturing the contact details of key decision-makers or tracking buying intent, this data will inform every aspect of your sales strategy.

Accurate, timely, and consistent buyer information plays a pivotal role in the level of success achieved by sellers. It helps to enrich sales productivity, improve business credibility, and build stronger relationships with high-value customers.

What else? What are some of your thoughts on using high-quality data to propel your sales growth?

If you liked this post, here is a brief intro to Infotelligent…

We are a leading “Sales Intelligence” SaaS platform for the world’s most successful sales and marketing teams.

Infotelligent’s mission is to give you accurate contact information about your ideal customers with buying intent insights to help you grow your sales faster. Our platform provides accurate and comprehensive information on your target customers. This enables you to reduce your sales cycles, increase your win rates, and grow your sales.

Are you a CRO, VP of Sales, or a VP of Marketing? Take a look below on how you can identify your target buyers accurately and in real time when they show an intent to buy.

While B2B buyer data validates a company’s sales strategy and helps sellers hyper-personalize offers based on their client’s buying patterns, the bad news comes quickly: data has its limits.