How to Build a Lead List That Converts

What is a leads list?

At its core, a lead list is a comprehensive database that contains detailed information about potential clients. It's also a tracking system that allows you to organize, segment and prioritize your leads based on criteria. An effective leads list should provide a holistic view of each prospect including firmographic data, contact information, sales cycle stage, and lead scoring. This information allows an organization to allocate their resources effectively, thereby saving time and money.

Lead lists don’t only act as a source of information, either. Lead lists can also act as a tracking system that allows you to organize, segment and prioritize your leads, with things such as lead scoring, sales cycle management, and so on.

When done right, a leads list can be a central (and very important) part of any sales workflow. Hence, some companies are willing to invest a lot of money into building a high quality list.

3 tips for making a quality lead list

There are several key aspects of creating a high-quality lead list. The essentials of a good list include defining your ideal customer profiles, identifying decision-makers, and getting accurate data.

Define ideal customer profiles (ICP)

Take a good long look at your company’s past and current clients. You will likely notice that some of them share similar firmographic data in terms of type of industry, company size, geographic location, or business model.

By identifying the shared traits of your best and most profitable clients, you can accurately predict what other companies would be an ideal fit for your products or services. These similarities often provide valuable insights into the needs, challenges, and priorities of your target audience.

For example, if the majority of your clients are mid-sized healthcare companies in the USA who are using your service to streamline patient management, your ICP would probably be a healthcare company of around 100-500 employees located in the USA that requires efficient patient tracking software.

Identify decision makers

Once you understand the firmographics of your ICPs, the next step is to identify the key decision makers involved in purchasing. These are the people who have the final say on whether you close the deal on your sales pitch.

Smaller companies tend to have fewer decision makers. Major purchasing decisions are usually made by the CEO, founders, or owners who are still taking an active role in the company. As a company expands into the mid-sized level, the decision to invest in a purchase is usually evaluated by a team with managers, directors, or vice presidents from various departments. For larger and more complex enterprises, procurement involves multiple stakeholders. While the C-suite executives usually have the final say, the evaluation process will likely involve a dedicated procurement team, regional heads, and a board of directors.

Knowing who is in charge of the decision-making process allows you to tailor your approach and deliver your sales pitch in a timely manner. If you can successfully address all the pain points that these key people have while aligning your values with theirs, they will be more likely to convert.

Get accurate data

Data accuracy is crucial to lead conversion and successful sales efforts. Incorrect firmographic data creates misaligned ICPs, causing you to reach out to companies that are unlikely to convert. Misidentification of key decision-makers often result in longer conversion times. You end up navigating through multiple referrals and introductions before reaching the relevant person-in-charge. In the worst-case scenario, you might end up contacting a person who no longer works at a misaligned company, wasting your time, money, and resources.

Your lead database should be verified and updated routinely, a process that requires a lot of time and effort. Events and referrals generate one-time leads that may become outdated over time, while website forms only return leads that are already interested in your services.

Data providers can provide extensive accurate and updated data. However, these providers may exceed the budget of smaller companies. Another way to simplify getting accurate data is with data enrichment tools such as Sapiengraph. With data enrichment tools, you can enrich the data of your existing leads to ensure accuracy and get new leads that match your ICPs.

Build a quality leads list with Sapiengraph

If you’re looking to build accurate and targeted lead lists efficiently, why not try Sapiengraph? Sapiengraph is a Google Sheets add-on that allows you to enrich data using simple formulas, all within Google Sheets itself. It also provides access to a vast database of company and contact information (email addresses and phone numbers), allowing you to append missing details with just a few clicks.

All you need to get started is to sign up for a free account and install the Google Sheets add-on and that’s it! Every new account gets 100 credits to start out. Formulas consume anywhere from 1 to 30 credits per returned result depending what information you want to retrieve.

How does it work? Let’s take a look.

Imagine you’re an account executive at Stripe, a software-as-a-service company that offers online payment to any business size. You intend to reach out to fast-growing startups in the US market to offer your services as a payment processor.

Step 1: Search for companies

Before you can start reaching out to people, you’ll need a list of companies that fit your ICP. In this case, it would be US-based, fast-growing startups. You can do this with the formula =SG_COMPANY_SEARCH(COUNTRY). This formula comes with a list of additional attributes that you can specify according to your needs.

• Credits: 30/LinkedIn Profile Returned
• Formula: =SG_COMPANY_SEARCH("US",10,,,,"2021-12-31",1000000,,,2019,,50,500)

The only required attribute is the country code, which is “US” for the USA. All the other attributes after that are optional.

For this case, we will limit the maximum number of results to “10”. The funding should be limited to those raised after December 31st, 2021 and the amount of funding raised should be a minimum of 1,000,000 USD. Ideally, since we’re looking for startups, we can limit our search to companies that were founded after 2019 with 50 to 500 employees.

You can enrich the LinkedIn Profiles with additional firmographic data about the company such as company name, size, industry, and location using other Sapiengraph formulas.

Step 2: Find key decision makers

Now that we have a target list of companies, we can now look up the key decision makers. As these companies are startups, we can guess that their CEOs are most probably the ones making important purchase choices.

We can use the formula =SG_LOOKUP_ROLE(ROLE, COMPANY) to search for the CEOs of these companies.

• Credits: 30/Linkedin Profile Returned
• Formula: =SG_LOOKUP_ROLE("ceo", Company_LinkedIn_Profile)

This formula only returns the LinkedIn profiles associated with the roles you’re searching for. If you need additional information such as their full name and official title, you can use the =SG_PERSON(LinkedIn_Profile_URL, “Attribute”) formula to retrieve more data.

Step 3: Find contact information

With this list of prospects, you can begin searching for contact information.

Sapiengraph can retrieve emails and phone numbers associated with a LinkedIn Profile using two main formulas. Take note that these formulas consume 10 credits per email or number retrieved, not per profile!

• Credits: 10/Email Returned
• Formula: =SG_PERSONAL_EMAILS(LinkedIn_Profile_ URL)

• Credits: 10/Number Returned
• Formula: =SG_PERSONAL_NUMBERS(LinkedIn_Profile_ URL)

With the emails and numbers you’ve retrieved, you can start thinking about how to tailor your sales pitch and value proposition to your prospects.

Bonus tips: Use Sapiengraph’s Lead Tracker Template

Keeping track of your leads and where they are in your sales cycle can be difficult at times.

Why not try Sapiengraph’s free Lead Tracking Google Sheet Template? This template allows you to enrich and track your leads all within the comforts of Google Sheets.

First, make a copy of the template in your drive (see the step-by-step guide here). Head to the tab “Add New Lead”. Type in the LinkedIn URL of your new lead. You can add their full name now, or type it in later. Then, click the button “Add to Lead Tracker”.

If this is your first time using Sapiengraph, a pop-up will appear, asking you if you want to run the script. Click on “Allow”. The lead will appear in the tab “Lead Tracker”.

Here comes the fun part: tick the box next to the LinkedIn Profile and click “Enrich”.

Voila! You’ve just retrieved all the contact and job information available about your lead.

You can categorize your leads according to where they are in your pipeline. After you reach out to people and deliver your value proposition, you can recategorize them as ‘working’. If their company is aligned with your products and services, they become an ‘opportunity’ and hopefully ‘customer’ when you eventually seal a deal. Should you find that they are not a good fit, you can choose to disqualify them, or nurture them as future prospects.

This template also comes with a “Pipeline Overview” tab where you can keep track of the leads and deals you are handling at the moment.

On the left side of the tab, there is a list of your target sales amount for each month. As you close deals, the bars on the right will fill up, showing you just how much you need to achieve your goals. Sapiengraph helps you to focus on high potential deals by ranking them according to deal amount. Once they become a customer, they are removed from the ‘High Potential Deals’ section. Our template also provides a little visual about which lead has been in your sales cycle the longest, ensuring that you keep track of who is most likely to make a decision soon.

Convert leads to loyal customers

Being able to seal deals with your leads starts with a quality leads list, which requires a lot of time and effort. From searching up companies that align with your ICPs, to retrieving contact information that allows you to reach your prospects, each step has to be filled with accurate and updated data. Only with fresh information can you prioritize your work and increase the efficiency of your sales outreach.

Convert your leads into customers now and try Sapiengraph today!