SaleScout: Revamping Marketing and Sales Through Data Accuracy

Chris Lynde, CEO

Data accuracy is one of the most important factors directly influencing the growth trajectory of the B2B marketplace. A significant portion of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) data in B2B marketing databases today is critically error-ridden with “bad data,” such as missing or incorrect contact names and titles, or changed contacts due to people switching jobs or relocating offices. The cost of bad data to enterprise level organizations is staggering, with some reports estimating an average of $13 million per company, per year. These costs are primarily related to wasted marketing spend and increased costs associated with marketing automation contact volume. This is compounded by the loss of sales productivity and opportunity as reps spend time chasing bad leads. While the market has traditionally taken a programmatic approach to cleaning up bad data (e.g., transliteration, data parsing, address standardization), there remains a growing demand for a solution that guarantees contact accuracy. This is where SaleScout comes into play.

Founded in 2014, SaleScout offers data solutions and a SaaS platform for B2B sales and marketing teams in large enterprise organizations. The company’s customer list includes major brands in the telecom, unified communications, cybersecurity, IT and cloud computing,office services, and commercial real estate markets. The company’s product suite includes marketing qualified leads (MQLs), competitive brand and tech targeting, CRM contact optimization, Account-Based Marketing and its flagship product, ScoutFeed, which provides high conversion sales triggers. These triggers comprise 25 different types of alerts including executive changes, company relocations, mergers & acquisitions, company funding events, lease terminations and hiring’s that are all indicative of ripe sales opportunities. Chris Lynde, CEO of SaleScout says, “In the process of sourcing all this data, we built one of the most accurate B2B databases in the U.S. and we only make it available to our customers.

From a technological perspective, we are on the leading edge of sourcing unique data and using predictive sciences to score confidence levels and enhance the value and accuracy of that data

We’ve sourced more than 10 million companies, with millions of highly qualified contacts predominantly consisting of CXOs and IT professionals.” Data is ingested directly into the client’s CRM and marketing automation systems allowing them to call on or target leads at exactly the right time. All data is human verified for accuracy and completeness at the contact name, title, phone number and email level so clients aren’t paying for leads that don’t meet their CRM business rules. Further, SaleScout customer success teams train the sales and marketing teams on use of the data and the talk tracks that the sales rep uses to turn cold calls into warm calls that convert.

A common target for both sales and marketing is a buyer that is going through a significant change in their business. This buyer constitutes a good lead for sales and is positioned as an accurate target for marketing. A good example of this would be a company that just completed a round of funding where according to Lynde, they are eight times more likely to be receptive to a sales solicitation.

SaleScout targets two different personas with the CMO or head of demand genon one side and the head of sales on the other. Talking about the difference in the approach of both sales and marketing, Lynde discussed how SaleScout has garnered success with data products that support both camps. Whereas sales is focused on closing leads at the middle of the funnel, marketing departments are supporting demand gen activities that require broader scale at the top of the funnel. Ultimately however, both are measured on conversion, and Lynde asserts that accuracy, timing and intent are the fundamental drivers of success for both agendas. To underscore the performance of the ScoutFeed data, Lynde cites a major national telecom company that over the last 12 months has generated 15 percent lead to opportunity and 21 percent close/won rates across 13 major metropolitan markets.

According to Lynde, SaleScout revenues have grown by 400 percent this year alone and he projects continued month-over-month growth of 15 percent or more for the foreseeable future. The company is moving into new corporate headquarters in February and plans on quadrupling its size in the coming 24 months. SaleScout is working on an entirely different approach to CRM hygiene, and they hope to launch this new product in 2018.

“From a technological perspective, we are on the leading edge of sourcing unique data and using predictive sciences to score confidence levels and enhance the value and accuracy of that data,” concludes Lynde.