For startups with no pipeline, buying sales leads can seem like the only option to keep your business afloat.
It doesn’t matter how innovative your ideas are or how great your product is, if you don’t have anyone to sell to, you aren’t going to be in business for long.
There’s no doubt that generating leads drives revenue, helps businesses scale, and forms the foundation of any successful venture.
But if you’re just starting out with your organization…Are the potential returns with buying sales leads worth the possible costs?
We weigh the pros and cons of buying leads, some strategies you can leverage to reduce the risk with purchasing leads, and free alternatives.
What Is a Sales Lead?
A sales lead is a prospect who has some interest in your product or service (they’ve visited your website, etc.). They aren’t a customer just yet, but there’s a good chance you can qualify them and turn their curiosity into a definitive “YES.”
Are Sales Leads Worth Buying (the Pros)?
When you’re a new startup, you’re in a volatile “grow or die” environment. 70% of startups fail during the first five years of business.
Buying a sales lead can seem like a great option because if you luck out and get thousands of high-quality leads who have the need and the means to help you take your venture to the next level, you can scale quickly.
Purchasing leads where the majority end up being qualified can also save your sales and marketing teams countless hours of grunt work and stress.
Instead of searching every corner of the internet for leads, coming up with elaborate social media strategies, website redesigns, and going through all the testing and optimizing– which can take time, money, and energy– pulling out a credit card to buy leads that boost conversions and generate revenue can be the optimum move.
Related: How to Generate Sales Lead
We hate to abruptly burst your bubble, but if you thought this all sounded too good to be true, you’re right!
It’s actually rare that you will buy sales leads where the majority are qualified. In fact, when you buy sales leads, there are plenty of cons to look out for…
The Unavoidable Cons With Buying Sales Leads
The biggest issue with buying sales leads is the same issue you run into when you try to buy email lists– data quality.
Data sellers share all these different ways you can compare one provider to the next (sure you can check out G2 or look at the reviews for the data seller), but the only way you’re going to truly find out if a seller is of quality is if you take the risk and buy a list of leads.
More often than not, when you buy your leads, the majority of the info you get is going to be inaccurate. On top of that, many sites that sell leads are selling you the same information to 10 other organizations.
So your best case scenario here is that you connect with a prospect who’s already been pitched to countless times and wants nothing to do with you (along with some colorful language).
And your worst case scenario is that your team reaches out to contacts that have been spammed multiple times and you end up doing serious damage to your reputation (check out this article for tips on avoiding getting flagged as spam).
Regardless of the outcome, with leads costing anywhere from $30 to $60 a pop, your team can’t afford to buy a list of hundreds or thousands of leads, only to retrieve a fraction of clean data.
Your wallet can’t afford it and your brand can’t afford it either.
What Is The Best Free Source for Sales Leads?
Because data quality is such a huge question mark with purchased sales leads, and there is so much risk involved, your best bet is to avoid buying sales leads altogether.
What should you do for sales leads then, if purchasing them is off the table? You still have an empty pipeline to fill right?
Well, if you want to flood your pipeline with qualified, ready-to-buy decision-makers, and consistently book appointments, get your sales leads through Seamless.AI.
Seamless is an AI-powered search engine that finds and verifies (in real-time) the contact information of professionals and companies who need your B2B product or service.
Considering that Seamless has a dynamic capture of nearly 2 billion contact and company records (with machine learning-driven verifications), you never have to worry about running out of leads when you use this free platform.
Driving revenue, scaling your prospecting efforts, and reaching your total addressable market (TAM) are all possible with Seamless. Don’t believe us? Check out these customer success stories.
Related: What is TAM
If you want to start growing your business today, sign up for Seamless, download the Chrome Extension, and go through your records to build an Ideal Customer Profile based on your best customers. Next use Seamless to find all the lookalike customers in your target market. And then leverage our pitch intelligence to do prospect research and develop relevant, value-driven messaging that speaks to your prospects’ biggest pains and greatest goals.
Wanna test out Seamless before you sign up? Schedule a demo today!
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