You’ve followed part one of this blog and spent the time and allocated the resources to conduct an internal audit of your database. You’ve evaluated and implemented the multiple tactics in part two of this blog to grow your prospect list. Now what? The last, and arguably most important step to an effective prospect list is to maintain, maintain, maintain!

Step 3: Maintain, maintain, maintain!

Regular maintenance of your list cannot be stressed enough. This ensures your database is always fresh and accurate and steadily growing. There are two critical steps to maintaining your list:

1. Regularly scheduled clean-up—As I stated in part one of this blog, regularly scheduled list clean-up should become a part of your sales process. Develop internal processes that work for you, such as an annual sales team “spring cleaning” day, and bi-annual “update your profile” e-mails. Document the process that fits so you can use it going forward. Schedule the next list clean-up day(s) and “update your profile” e-mails ahead of time to ensure they do not fall through the cracks.

2. Tactical Evaluation—Once you’ve implemented multiple list building tactics, they need to be evaluated in order to determine any that are ineffective. Do this at least bi-annually and annually. You can schedule the tactical evaluation to coincide with your clean-up day(s) and “update your profile” e-mail blasts. Evaluate the investment and return (quality prospects added to your list) to determine if any tactics need to be eliminated and dollars need to be reallocated. Use the first evaluation as a benchmark going forward. Again, document these processes and schedule the evaluation days ahead of time.

The key is to develop and document processes that work for your company. Make it a part of your culture. It will take some time and effort, but with an accurate database, you will see higher ROI and business growth. 

Do you have additional information for people looking to implement a list development strategy? What best practices work for your company when cleaning, building and maintaining your list?

Jill Ruiz
Senior Project Manager
ClearEdge Marketing

This entry was posted on Monday, August 31st, 2009 at 4:37 am and is filed under Sales Best Practices. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.