Help yourself to a million company records at no charge: Useful for B2B lead generation or not?

The big news is that Jigsaw, an online business directory of company and contact information, recently announced free access to the nearly 1 million company records in its database, including complete address information and firmographic data such as industry category, size, geography.

This complimentary company data comes with only a few strings attached (i.e. you have to sign up, you can’t resell the data, etc.)

Database-driven direct marketing is a proven tactic for B2B lead generation. So it makes sense to take advantage of free access to a million company records, doesn’t it?

As a consultant who specializes in B2B sales leads, you might think I would be excited about this big giveaway, but I’m not.

Companies Don’t Buy. People Buy.

To be most effective with your direct marketing for lead generation you need to target the business people, by title or job function, who use, recommend and make buying decision about your kinds of products and services.

It is unnecessarily expensive to generate leads by cold-calling companies by phone and asking, “May I please speak to the person who is in charge of…?” You waste too many calls just trying to determine who you should be trying to talk to!

Mailing to “Attn: Person in Charge of…” might be better than doing nothing, but you risk wasting precious marketing funds by not getting past the mail room trash cans, especially at large companies.

Or just try emailing to info@ addresses, asking the recipient to pass along the email to the right person. What are the odds of that working? Slim or none.

Back to jigsaw. Why is it giving free access to its database of companies? As InfoCommerce Group (a consulting, publishing, conference and research company focused on the specialized information and data publishing industry) reported in its ICG Weekly Perspectives e-newsletter today, “Need contact names to go with that company data? Jigsaw has them, but they’re not giving them away. Need to scrub your existing data to blend it with Jigsaw data? Jigsaw can help, with its proprietary data cleansing application, but that service isn’t free. Need ongoing re-verification of your data, including identification of dead records? Jigsaw can help, for a fee.”

Using loss leaders to drive customer visits and sales is a proven tactic. For example, Staples uses the tactic to drive B2B sales at its office supply stores and on its e-commerce Website by promoting low prices on a few key items. Why shouldn’t Jigsaw give it a try?