How to Tell if Your Sales List is Actually Good

Hello and welcome to the podcast. Today I'm going to be talking to career sales people in particular, although some of the things we're going to talk about will have implications for business owners who like to do outreach. Now, if you remember, in previous episodes, I've spoken about how I have been having some sessions with one of my clients, one of my past clients, who is currently trying to hire some sales people.

And I've been sitting in on those or I call it on those interview sessions to help them select staff. So like I mentioned, it's not something that ioffer because, you know, hiring is not my expertise, it's not my area of specialty. But like I said, if you've given me money before, then you are my friend. And this guy has given me money in the past, so therefore he's my friend. And I don't mind doing favours for my friends.

So I sit in, I listen, and then I give my own opinion on what, or rather on who is going to make a good sales hire or not. And in the sales process, of course, we're asking these people questions about their selling history, about their selling philosophy, their selling frameworks, their approach to sales and business development in general. So we're asking them quite a bit. We're asking them lots of questions. And I've noticed some themes that are coming up, some themes that are reoccurring.

And I think it's a problematic trend. I know that in America, people are already engaged in this kind of behavior. I just didn't think it would seep into Niger. And that is this whole thing of people recycling lists. Now let me explain, OK, Some industries, right when you're about to head out, you find a list of potential customers somehow, maybe because you run an advertising campaign and people respond and then they give you their contact details,

or maybe use a, what are these things called, a crawler or a bot to scrape details off the Internet and then you start calling people. But either way, those are also our professional sales people who are used to the idea that there is a list that we're working from. Now for some of you who are business owners, you know, you're self-employed. Some of you are also OK with that idea. Like you're used to the idea that there is a list that we're running through.

OK, no problem. So what I've noticed is that there are some sales people who believe in recycling lists. In other words, you have a list like 300 people you call through this 300, you talk to some people, some people say F you, some people you know caught the phone on you. Some people goes to you. You know, anyhow, Shah, you've gone through the list once you've closed some deals, you now keep that list again, hoping that in another maybe nine months, six months, one year,

they would have forgotten about you. And then by you blast the list again. And then you start from the beginning and start running the thing all the way through now. Well, like I said, in America, that was that's how they run their things. But it's not even in America itself. It's not considered best practice. And so it's not something that sales people should be doing here. Oh, by the way, sorry, forgive me for the noise in the background.

I'm making today's recording at home and I didn't use my that my my new microphone, the one I Jack into my phone. I'm not using it. So there's going to be a lot more noise spilling into the background then. Plus the kids are home. So you hear a bunch of stuff. So even in America where people do this, no recycling list, it's not considered good practice or it's not considered best practice. So Nigerians are big. We should not be adopting this kind of thing of recycling lists.

All right, Because The thing is, if somebody told you to F off last year, what are the chances that if you call the guy again in nine months time, you think the guy will be much more amenable to talking now? Yes, he has forgotten you, but is there any, has anything happened to give you an impression that this person's needs or this person's circumstances or their outlooks have changed? And so because of that, the likelihood of a pleasant conversation now are much more likely.

Has anything happened until you until you've gotten objective confirmation that somebody's now interested or things have changed in their personal circumstances? This whole thing of recycling lists, OK, let me put it this way. When you have a list, all right, your primary goal is to figure out, do I have a good list? All right, let's pay attention now. Salespeople, business owners, when you have a list, the primary concern is do I have a good list?

Now, do I have a good list is going to mean a couple of things. Number one, we're going to try and see if we have an accurate list because there are some phone numbers or nothing that will be wrong. Excuse me, There are some e-mail addresses that will be wrong. There are some physical addresses that will be wrong. There are some business addresses that will be wrong because it happens. Like, remember the guy who reached out to me sometime last week wanted to sell web design services for photography businesses.

So definitely I was on the guys list. But the guys list is not a good list because he has people on that list who the last time they did anything photography related was 10 years ago. And I happened to be one of those people. So if I'm on that list, I know for sure that guy doesn't have a good list. So no matter how you got that list, somebody gave you the list. Like, well, oh boy, I guess on leads call or you scrape the Internet for leads or you ran advertisements or whatever,

there will be some data there that is dirty or inaccurate or out of date. So number one, we're trying to figure out, do we have, do we have a good list? Is our list accurate? So that will be the way that you approach the phone calls. You won't be calling everybody assuming that this one is a done deal, that they're interested. You keep an open mind when you're dying, you're trying to figure out, are you talking to the right person?

You're trying to figure out whether information is current, whether people are interested, you know, things like that. Then when we pass through the whole stage of that's an individual conversations, we make sure that, OK, this person that we're calling the data is accurate. All the facts that we have on paper, everything checks out. The person I assume I'm talking to, OK, this is the person I'm actually talking to. That one checks out fine.

The next stage is actually is to figure out the people are interested. That is where traditionally in sales we do qualification and discovery. We're asking questions about the person. We're asking questions about the problem because we want to be sure that the person is part of our ICP. Our ideal customer profile, The kind of person that we like doing business with anyway, are the kind of people who derive value when they use our product,

when they use our service. Then we also want to figure out if they have a problem that our product or our service can solve. So that's the focus. We're not calling to try and pitch immediately or to try and close the cell immediately. We're trying to figure out is this a good list? The data, the names, the addresses, the whatever. Is this thing accurate? OK, good is accurate. Next thing we do qualification and then we do discovery.

Are we talking to the right kind of people? Do they have an interest and do they have the right kind of problems that our product or service can solve? Now, if you take that approach and you're walking through a list the first time and you have spoken to people where the data is accurate and you have spoken to people and possibly close some deals where people are properly qualified, logically, does that not imply that the people who are left over the data is incorrect or the people are unqualified?

Let me repeat again. If we run through the list the first time, all right, we did our job well, it means that we would have spoken to people who the information that we have on them is correct, is on point. Then those people definitely had an interest and those people had a need that our product or service could solve. They were the right kind of people to talk to. So logically now, the people will remain, our data is not correct and these people are likely not qualified.

There's no need why Nigerian people should be recycling lists. If you did a good job of going through it the first time, I beg, leave the list. The list is now dry. The people that you close the deal from in the first list, no problem. Those ones already moved. They're no longer on the list. They're now on our phone and now on our CRM. Our goal now is relationship building because we want them to buy from us again and then we want them to send their friends and their family members to come and buy from us.

So those ones that are not on the list, again, then you get some people where the data at first was correct, but then maybe they are partially qualified, like they're interested but they don't get money or you know, they get money but the need is not really a hot thing. Those people who should have also removed them from the list and put them into relationship building processes, relationship building funnels, those are the people that would have removed their contact details.

We put them on WhatsApp group or we put them in, you know, e-mail blasts so that once in a while then we'll receive message from us. You know, just regular updates, you know, Happy Valentine or new product release, 20% off. And now apart from that, valuable emails that you send out. Or are you still facing this problem? This is how you solve it. You know once in a while, you know every three to three weeks, every one one month, you know they would receive message from us.

Just so that we remain top of mind, we remove those ones from the list. Now the hope is because we're doing relationship building or relationship nurturing sequences with them. The goal is that maybe when they now need a product or service, they will now say, oh it's true that guy mean they message me regularly or this baby has been in touch with me, then they will now get back in touch with you. Well anyhow, anyhow, I hope you guys are following me.

Sorry for those of you who are new into the business space. This one might sound unnecessarily technical, but from what I'm seeing within only fear me. I just want to be sure that the this thing is not becoming widespread practice because this one that you know, we talked to 4 candidates, three of them are recycling lists no more. It's a troublesome I'm trying to they didn't even work in the same company. So please let us not be recycling lists.

If we do a good job the first time, we have already closed the deal on the prospects or the candidates where the team makes sense. We've already closed those ones, we've removed them. Then the ones that are somehow somehow qualified, we've already removed them so that we can use, we can be doing relationship nurturing, relationship building, relationship nurturing sequences. The people that are remaining on this list, if we did a good process the first time around,

the data is rubbish. The names are not correct, the e-mail address is not correct, phone number is not correct. You know, whatever data there is highly, highly, highly inaccurate, very problematic. Therefore, the ones where the data even checks out, they're not qualified. They're not in the market for the product or service. They are not interested in the product or service. They have no need for your product or service.

They cannot afford your product or service, which is the very reason why the first time round they caught the call on you or they blocked you or they said F off or whatever it is shot. They try to show you off. So please let us not be recycling lists. I beg you will hear it on other podcasts. Yes, and they do it in America, but also that even in America it is not considered good practice. It is not considered good practice.

The focus when you get a list is do I have a good list? Is this list clean? The information is up to date. The information is accurate. Then after that, are these people qualified and interested? That's the focus the first time round. Please stop recycling lists. You're better off walking through a list properly one time. Then when you get to next year or next month or next quarter and it's time for a fresh list, you're better off taking the learnings that you did from the last time and you need to get a better list this time.

So even last time what you did was you used a web crawler or a bot or whatever to scrape data like that photography guy did before reaching out to me. And then on the list there were people there who had not been in photography business for 1010 years or more. What you will now do is for those of you who are tech, you know, gurus and you know all these your stuff, you know how to program your crawler or your bot so that this time around when you're scraping the data,

it will only scrape for people that you know reasonably have done anything photography related in the last, you know, 2-3 months or something. So don't be recycling your lists. Go through a list properly. Take any learning that you get from the list and use those learnings. Use those insights to now inform how you're going to build your next list. So the last time you did advertising campaign, you got some contacts from it.

After you processed that list, what did you learn, the things you learned? Take it, throw it into the new advertising campaign so that when you run the campaign and you now get some contacts, get some leads, you'll get good quality, good quality leads because sales is hard. We don't make phone calls just for the sake of making phone calls while making phone calls or sending e-mail, sending emails and sending WhatsApp because we have a reasonable hope of closing a deal.

There is no point in recycling a list when the, the, you know, you separate the wheat from the shaft. So the, the shaft, The Dirty will remain. We don't have any reasonable hope that there's any, anything sweet, anything cogent, anything tangible inside. Again, don't be making phone calls for the sake of making phone calls. So that's it for the podcast episode for today. For those of you who just discovered the podcast for the first time, sorry that this one is a little bit technical.

Well, I'm assuming it's going to be a little bit technical if you're the first time. This is the first time listening to the podcast. So my name is Tavishma Aidi. I am a former lawyer turned business consultant. If this is your first time listening to the podcast and you found things a little bit too technical and have a couple of questions, reach out to me on 0806466 2140. You can call, send me a text message or a WhatsApp message.

So just let me know what you found confusing. I'll do my best to explain to bring you up to speed, but also make sure you subscribe to the podcast because you know, podcast episodes, you know, sometimes up, sometimes down, sometimes highly technical. And then sometimes I come here and I'm just faffing about just giving you guys general gist. Butcher subscribe so that you will get caught up to speed and you will get the overall context of all the ideas that we discussed over here on the podcast.

Therefore, those of you who are regular listeners, you've been in the business of recycling lists and you've been running into some problems. Give me a call, give send me a text message or a WhatsApp message on 08064662140. Reach out. Let's have a chat about how we can make sure that we go through our list well the first time or how we can process the insights, process the learnings that we are getting from our outreach activity.

So we can use that to make our future outreach better. Now, I'm not against giving people free advice. So when you reach out to me and if you want free advice, just let me know in the very first call, in the very first message, just let me know after you do that toasting thing that you guys like to do like, oh, this podcast is awesome, blah, blah, blah. I like it. Keep the keep the toasting coming. So after the toasting, you now go straight to the point.

You hit the nail on their head And you say, Bros, the free advice that I'm looking for. No problem. I'm cool with that. We will now schedule the time where we'll have a conversation. And because you're looking for free advice, I will answer one question only. So make sure that you do some research. You think hard about what are your one question is going to be. But then if you want us to go in depth and look at some things in total and examine this thing properly, then we'll have to book your consulting session.

If you have plenty of money and you want us to consult for a month, that's not a problem. If you don't have enough money, you don't want us to consult for a week, it's all good. If you are kind of Cray and you want us to discuss for one hour and it's not a problem. Even now, once every day I got you covered. But remember, if you don't get a couple, you have to limit yourself to one question only. All right, so that's it.

Thank you very much for listening. I will catch you or some other time.