My first ‘proper job’ was list rentals, syndications and reprints. The mainstay of my day was doing list counts for prospects, refining and offering refined numbers and quotes. I can say with experience, therefore, that my first boss’s comment to me on my very first day was spot on. “Data” she told me “is the lifeblood of any company”. Another colleague in the same circulation marketing team offered her own style of advice about two weeks into my shiny new list sales role.  “Always remember”, she said, “we have some of the best, most qualified B2B data around. That means that our product offers an ROI which can rival most other marketing channels because its on song, direct and, when done right ,can get faster results”.

I have had the good fortune of working in a company where they rent good data to companies with relevant products and, in turn, consistently see good results. After that role, I became the list buyer and experienced the other side of the coin.

Fortunately for me my experience had prepared me to ask the right questions and get the best possible data at the lowest possible rate. Getting the right data, however, means frequently sifting through the pile of crap which many so-called list vendors send my way.

For every decent list vendor out there, I’d guess that there are 100 one-man-bands with a poor list of contacts either scraped with questionable software, bought from a far off sweatshop with little or no local market context or, indeed, taken with them from their previous employer(s).

Follow up posts will help you identify the vendors who can offer you quality leads from the crowd of rootin’ tootin’ cowboy types. Just for now please remember: data is the lifeblood of any company but don’t entrust a cowboy vendor to provide the transfusion.