Definitive Checklist for Evaluating a
B2B Data Provider

Whitespace discovery

In today’s age of information overload, the task of whitespace discovery and database consolidation becomes crucial to look under the hood. Companies must leverage technology solutions to discover customers’ unspoken, unmet needs and uncover new business opportunities. Businesses must ensure that their database provider offers tech-enabled services to assimilate volumes of information, remove clutter, and tap into the hidden insights of their customer ecosystem. Whitespace discovery helps surface emerging trends, unexpected insights, changing technographic data, and more. Such untampered and fresh insights can help businesses quickly change their marketing strategy and stay ahead of their competitors.

Using advanced analytics, companies can integrate the collected data to create accurate buyer personas, conduct buyer journey mapping, and segment potential customers. Furthermore, with white space discovery, businesses can discover new customer segments, dive deep into the existing customer's purchase journey and identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities.

Depth Profiling

Beyond understanding how data providers source and verify their incoming data, the chief concern that an enterprise must address is how vendors document updates to professional and company profiles. Companies must evaluate whether the B2B database providers offer in-depth data profiling services to capture net new entity and contact data from their ideal customer profile ecosystem. Sales prospecting in any business begins with in-depth customer and corporate data profiling. As B2B lead generation becomes sophisticated and the buyers more stringent in their preferences, companies must recognize the importance of keeping their database error-free. A comprehensive data profiling system will track, segment, and continuously refresh key decision-makers and influencers within their existing databases.

A reputable B2B contact database provider segments data on multiple factors that drive purchase decisions. At the first layer, they conduct basic data profiling on entity level (vertical size, location, etc.) and contact level (job title, department, level, work email, etc.) In the next level, vendors must extract advanced technographic, firmographics, demographics, market signals, intent data, financial information, and more.

Data validation

Another consideration that companies must look after while searching for the best b2b database providers is their ability to provide automated data validation services. A vendor’s ability to deliver accurate contact and account information boils down to the process through which the data is aggregated, organized, and integrated into their system. Reputable b2b database service providers should provide transparency into sources, checks, and balances around their validation processes.

The best B2B database providers must be able to resolve some key data validation challenges for organizations, including lack of automation, data silos, and the absence of data standardization practices. Data is a volatile element subject to decay and inconsistency. Enterprises must evaluate that a profile within a vendor’s database includes all the key details required for sales outreach, viz., direct dial numbers, and email addresses.

Data governance

Issues of data privacy and legal compliance are always foremost in many buyers’ minds. New guidelines and laws are being issued every year globally to protect the privacy of users and curtail the misuse of data. Additionally, with the announcement of Google’s cookie-cutter policy, user consent has become paramount for data-first organizations. Therefore, enterprises would now want to work with a vendor that adheres to international regulations like GDPR, CCPA, etc.

Companies must examine every vendor’s data collection and verification process. It is important to understand how they source, validate, manage, and sell their data. Data governance should be a priority before companies buy database from a vendor and integrate those with their CRMs and sales stacks.

Human-verified data

The accuracy, reliability, and productivity of human-verified data are much higher. Enterprises need human verification to plug the data-quality gaps in their database and configure it better for their sales outreach campaigns. Companies must ask for ready-to-market contact data that is human-verified to check and weed out DND/DNC or anti-spam filter opted by the accounts.