If your organization is selling into the Fortune 500 companies and the leads you generate through online and other inbound channels are not enough to fill the lead pipeline thats probably because the Fortune 500 companies have turned a bit cautious in the down economy and active buying or exploring buying options in this phase would be lower than ususal. When the companies are not coming after you, the best response is go after them and sell proactively.
Having access to a lead database like the Active Contacts Fortune 500 Lead Database can be a great source of leads for cold calling, tele prospecting or other outbound campaigns. Supplementing the lead funnel with leads from a database subsciption could give you that additional push into cracking some of those larger deals in the Fortune 500 and help expand the flow into the lead funnel.
So if the fortune 500 is where you have your sales sights set, then having a look at the ActiveContacts database is a must to explore.
The news of the fall of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers & Merrill Lynch was a shock to everyone. Then there was the news flash that AIG was next in line for collapse. It’s almost impossible to imagine that these are some of the massive giants from Fortune 500 that are amongst the biggest buyers for just about everything b2b businesses have to offer. Would anyone have even suspected a year ago that it was even remotely possible that some of these names would not even feature anywhere on the Fortune 500 list the next time its published?
We were certainly taken by surprise. As part of maintaining an up to date database of technology decision maker business contacts in the Fortune 500 companies to provide technology companies with business to business leads, we keep an eye on the Fortune 500 rankings to note changes in rankings and update new companies that have made it to the list. While there are updates from the past few years, this year seems to be one where we can expect to see some surprising changes in the rankings. With the domino effect of the crisis on the global economy we can definitely expect to see some names leave the Fortune 500 list while other large companies who will be hard hit will slip down the ranks possibly by several places and be replaced by others. Needless to say the Fortune 500 list may never look the same as we remember it. Only time will tell.
Anybody who has experience selling technology into IT organizations of large companies within the Fortune 500 companies will tell you that IT or technology decision makers within these companies are amongst the most difficult professionals to reach especially on the phone. If navigating through the fortune companies and finding someone within the IT department was not already hard enough, business contacts within the IT organization are usually away from their desk, busy and not the most likely people to pick up the phone on your first attempt to call them. Many a salesperson has had stressful days trying to get to someone within these companies to pitch their offering and its tough to break into large companies unless you have a good number of contact points within them to start off with.
Having a few options for business contacts within these companies will give you a better chance at being able to connect within these IT departments and get started with the process of selling into them. We built the ActiveContacts Fortune 500 IT Business Contacts Database keeping in mind that if you have quick access to a range of contacts within each of these accounts it provides more options or doorways into the technology departments of the F500. So whether you build your own database, use a custom business contact list service or subscribe to a database like F500 IT Database always have your contacts ready before you start selling and those voice mails and dead ends won’t seem as bad.
