The high cost of bad prospect data is analyzed by Henry Schuck in this MarketingProfs article. A sales department can lose approximately 550 hours and $32,000 for every sales rep using bad prospect data.
Bad data includes incorrect phone numbers, outdated physical and email addresses, incorrect titles or job functions and misspellings. Sources of bad data include data input by prospects and data from the Internet.
Schuck points out that bad data has both soft and hard costs:
Soft costs include impact on morale caused by lower salaries for sales reps who depend on profitable leads.
Hard costs include missed sales opportunities for the organization.
Time wasted by the sales and marketing departments is also a cost to be considered.
The author recommends that marketers dedicate a team to more frequent data management or invest in sales intelligence solutions.
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