Should You Buy Phone Number Lists For Cold Calling and Prospecting?

Effective prospecting often relies on having direct dial phone numbers to reach prospects. While purchasing phone number lists can provide a convenient solution, weighing the pros and cons before buying is essential.

This blog discusses the advantages and disadvantages of choosing whether or not to buy a phone number list for cold calling and prospecting, helping you navigate the potential benefits and challenges. 

But, before we even get started, we’re going to throw out any contact and phone number list offers that show up in your inbox as cold outreach. You’ve likely already encountered someone you’ve never heard of offering a cheap Excel sheet. Any B2B data source you consider should be from a trusted provider that can offer legal and accuracy guarantees. Any phone number list showing up in your inbox unprompted is at worst a scam and at best a waste of your sales reps’ time.

Now, let’s review what you should consider before finding a B2B data partner to provide phone numbers for sales outreach.

The Pros of Buying Phone Number Lists:

Time and Effort Saving: 

Purchasing phone number lists can significantly save your sales team’s time and effort. Finding phone numbers manually can take time, diverting valuable resources from core sales activities. Buying phone number lists eliminates the need to scour through directories, websites, and other sources to find contact information. Instead, you receive a comprehensive list of phone numbers ready for outreach, allowing your team to focus their efforts on making meaningful connections with prospects.

Increased Reach: 

Buying phone number lists help you to expand your reach and target a broader audience. Reputable providers offer lists segmented based on specific criteria such as industry, job title, company size, or geographic location. This segmentation allows you to tailor your cold-calling efforts to reach prospects more likely to be interested in your product or service. By narrowing down your target audience, you can improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your prospecting, increasing the chances of connecting with qualified leads.

Improved Efficiency: 

Reputable providers ensure their available phone numbers are regularly updated and verified. A regular re-verification process ensures the accuracy and reliability of the data, reducing the chances of wasting time on disconnected or incorrect numbers. Access to reliable phone numbers allows your sales team to maximize productivity by focusing on meaningful conversations with prospects. This efficiency allows you to make the most out of your cold-calling efforts, optimizing your sales pipeline and increasing the likelihood of conversions.

The Cons of Buying Phone Number Lists:

Quality Concerns: 

Not all providers deliver high-quality phone number lists. Even official lists from B2B providers may contain outdated, inaccurate, or incomplete information. Inaccuracies lead to frustration and wasted resources as your sales team encounters disconnected numbers or spends time trying to verify and update the data. To mitigate this risk, it’s crucial to thoroughly research and choose reputable providers known for their data accuracy and quality. Look for providers offering sample data or transparent insights into their data collection and verification processes.

Compliance and Legal Considerations: 

Cold calling is subject to various regulations and legal requirements, such as Do-Not-Call lists and privacy regulations. Ensuring the phone number lists you purchase comply with these regulations is essential. Buying lists from non-compliant providers or using outdated or improperly sourced data can result in legal issues, financial penalties, and damage to your company’s reputation. To stay compliant, choose providers who prioritize data privacy and comply with relevant regulations in your jurisdictions.

Lack of Personalization: 

Personalization is a crucial element in successful cold calling. Purchased phone number lists may lack detailed information about individual prospects, making it challenging to tailor your pitch and messaging effectively. Without a deep understanding of a prospect’s background, pain points, and specific needs, your outreach will likely be generic and unengaging. To address this challenge, consider supplementing the purchased phone number lists with additional research and data enrichment tools. This allows you to gather more insights about your prospects and personalize your outreach, increasing the chances of building rapport and generating positive responses.

Choosing a Reliable Provider

If you’re cold-calling and prospecting, selecting the right provider can make all the difference.

Finding Numbers

The conventional way to find phone numbers is by asking your sales team to play as a researcher on different platforms and websites, which impacts the time dialing and pitching to decision-makers. Even worse, when they find numbers to dial, the number will rarely be a direct dial number and will seldom be a work mobile number.

However, many organizations have recognized the inefficiency of manually prospecting for phone numbers and have begun working with a data partner that can accelerate and streamline the process. The obvious caveat is that your data partner must offer accurate and useful numbers, i.e., work mobile numbers. You can have a list of 100% accurate company HQ numbers, but they won’t help sales talk to a decision-maker.

Unfortunately, work mobile numbers are notoriously tricky to track down. But the best data providers have developed the means for effectively gathering work mobile numbers.

Since Direct-Work Mobile Numbers are challenging to collect, most B2B data partners limit access to desk phones and company switchboards. If they have work mobile numbers, they charge a premium for them beyond the basic terms of the contract. Even when data partners promise mobile numbers, the data you buy is generally machine-processed. And when you have machine-processed data, you can’t trust the accuracy without human verification.

Fortunately, SalesIntel provides you with an additional layer of human verification. With over 54M work mobile numbers, SalesIntel has the highest coverage of human-verified work mobile numbers on the market. And all human-verified mobile numbers are re-verified every 90 days by our research team to ensure data accuracy.

The best part? You don’t have to pay more to access them, as SalesIntel’s entire dataset is available to all our customers.

More Than Just Numbers

Our comprehensive data solutions are invaluable for prospecting and cold calling. With our reliable contact data, you can directly reach decision-makers and key influencers. Accurate direct dial and mobile numbers streamline your prospecting process and increase the chances of connecting with interested prospects. Sales reps can have more conversations every hour.

But we’re not just phone numbers and emails. Our intent data allows you to identify buyers actively displaying purchase intent, enabling you to prioritize your outreach efforts and tailor your messaging to their specific needs. Our technographics and firmographics also provide insights into your prospects’ technology stacks and critical company data, helping you tailor your pitch and target your ideal audience. You can also stay updated with the latest company and industry news through our news alerts feature to time your cold calling strategically.

By leveraging accurate contact data, intent data, technographics, firmographics, and news alerts, you can optimize your outreach, personalize your messaging, and connect with the right prospects at the right time, ultimately driving more productive conversations and increasing your chances of success in prospecting and cold calling endeavors.

Want some specifics on how SalesIntel can help your efforts? We offer an ROI calculator that can help you assess the potential benefits for your business.  

Making a Decision

Deciding whether to buy or build a sales prospecting list depends on factors such as time, budget, target audience, and personalization requirements. Buying lists can save time and provide access to niche markets, but data quality and cost must be carefully evaluated. Building your list allows for customization and cost savings, but it requires investment in resources and effective data management. Consider your specific needs, available resources, and desired level of personalization to determine the best approach for your sales prospecting efforts.

If you’re looking for a reliable provider of high-quality prospecting data, explore SalesIntel’s services and sign up for a free trial to give us a test drive!