Can HR consultants buy cold data and turn it into clients?

“What do you think to buying cold data, James? Will it work for me?”

I’m sure you’ve thought about this before too – so when one of my clients emailed me this question, I wanted to make a great article about it for you to read.

The short answer is yes and no. Depending on how you plan on using the data as I believe there’s a wrong and right way.

The wrong way to use cold data is by sending a few salesy type emails and hope to get new clients – if you do this, it’s very unlikely that you’ll get the results you had hoped for and ROI. Cold data can sometimes be a little pricey, after all.

But if you take a more long-term approach, then I believe you absolutely can use cold data to win new clients in the future…

Why shouldn’t you take a short-term approach to your marketing?

Put yourself in the shoes of your prospects and clients.

When it comes to choosing a HR consultant, there are lots of things to think about.

And timing is KEY.

Take inertia loyalty as an example.

This type of loyalty puts people off moving services from one provider to another because it is perceived as too much hassle – so they end up staying where they are, even if they are dissatisfied with the service they’re receiving.

If you’re talking to people who are in this position, they have to be SO frustrated with their incumbent HR consultant that they’re prepared to go through the pain of switching. And they have to go through all of these motions before they’re even ready to start speaking with you.

Other prospects are too busy to think about it right now, maybe they have big urgent project that needs to get out of the way first, or they’re still shopping around.

It’s only when they’re ready to look at options, that they go out looking for a new HR consultant.

And that’s why winning new clients if often about being in the right place, at the right time with the right message

Wouldn’t it be great if you could speak to dozens of people who are at this stage ready to look for a new HR consultant?

The reality is that you can.

As an experiment, I researched “HR consultants in my area” and one of the first business listings I saw was from Bark.com.

If you don’t know what Bark is, it’s like a ‘Compare The Market’ type website. You search for what you're looking for, put your contact details in and lots of potential providers get in touch.   

Within an hour of putting my details in, I must have had around 10 HR consultancies all contact me via phone, with most leaving voicemails and texts trying to win my business.

I can see that for some consultancies, this is an easy way to speak to people who are actively looking for a HR consultant.

But, what a rat race to be in. Trying to build a relationship with people who are at this stage is really difficult, because you’ll be in competition with everyone else they talk to.

You’re too late.

I believe you have to build a relationship with them before they get to that stage.

Instead of thinking about one time marketing efforts, like sending an individual email and the odd social media post you instead need to:

• Build multiple audiences (such as your email list or Facebook group)
• Build a relationship with those people over time using multiple touch points

If you can persuade someone to join your email list, then you’ve got potentially years to get to know them until the timing is right for them.

For most prospects, the timing is not right today. It might be right tomorrow. Or the day after. But if you can stay in touch with them and get in front of them day after day after day after day... you're much more likely to be there at the point they are ready to buy.

The ultimate goal:

Let’s focus on building your email list, because I think this is the most powerful thing you can do.

The ultimate goal is to move data from your cold list, into your own CRM (Customer Relationship Manager software). Because this data then belongs to you (so long as the person doesn’t opt out) and you're given permission to contact them more often in the future.

We call this ‘opting in’.

Your list of ‘opted in’ contacts are your future gold mine, because these people are most likely to buy from you in the future. The bigger your list is, the more relationships you have with potential clients and the more clients you’ll win as a result.

This is the most important thing you can do to systemise your marketing and sales for the future. Which is why you should protect this CRM and your data at all costs.

And this ‘philosophy’ of growing your business should extend into everything you do, not just for cold data.

Sending an email to cold data? Get them to join your list.

Running a Facebook ad? Get them to join your list.

Posting a letter? Get them to join your list.

Because your list is your business’s greatest asset. Apart from you, of course.

Now that I’ve laid this foundation and understanding of how you should be marketing your consultancy, we can now look at what you should be doing.

Buying the right type of cold data

This can seem quite overwhelming. Where do you start? Who do you start with? Etc.

When buying cold data, I’d want to be as focussed as possible. Either on a particular industry that you’re wanting to target or geographical location, or both!

Be very suspicious of data that is very cheap. There are a lot of companies out there that promise the world and delivery very little.

Only buy data from a reputable source. I’ve always used Selectabase – out of them all, I’ve always had a good experience with them.

Refine your data as much as possible. Again, trying to get rid of the rubbish and only contact people that are your target market. On Selectabase you can refine data by SIC codes, industry type, financials, branches, locations. They have quite a good online list building tool which is easy to use and if you ever get stuck you can just give them a call and they’ll build the list for you.

Make sure you select only email addresses and get postal addresses too – you don’t want to buy cold data without email addresses. Because sending emails to cold data is the most efficient way of moving that data to your own CRM.

Buy a 12 month license and unlimited use – so you can reuse the data during this time period. Be very careful about using this data after this time period.

Always look at the demo data and research every company (they usually provide an extract of 10 businesses) to make sure that they’re the right type of businesses you want to target.

Now that you have your cold data, you’ll want to import it to your burner CRM.

There are two types of CRMs you should be using.

1. Burner CRM

A burner CRM is a CRM that you use for cold data only.

2. Main CRM

Your main CRM is a CRM that you use for opted in data only.

Why do you have to use different CRMs? Because you need to protect the reputation of your website domain and the deliverability of your main CRM.

When emailing cold data, you can easily run into quite a few spam issues.

Not because you’re sending spam, but because you’re emailing email addresses that haven’t heard from you before and you could be emailing bad email addresses.

If your emails get high unopen rates and spam reports, this can put a red mark against your domain name which can affect deliverability in the future.

That’s why it’s very important to use a different CRM to your main one (which you’ll use for opted in people) and use a different domain name to your main one (because you don’t want any spam to be marked against your main domain).

This all sounds a bit scary, but it’s just a precaution you need to take. Don’t let this put you off using cold data.

There are sooooo many different CRMs out there, but for the purposes of this article I am going to list the ones I personally prefer to use. Just because they’re easy to use.

For your burner CRM, you could use Mailchimp or Mailerlite. They’re the best ones I’ve used.

For your main CRM, you could use software like Infusionsoft, Active Campaign or ZOHO.

1. You need an ‘ethical bribe’

People won’t just complete a form on your website and hand over their details.

You instead need to offer them something of value. Whether that be a free resource, educational guide of white paper.

The more specific advice you can offer to a particular industry about a particular subject, the more traction these ‘ethical bribe’ will have. Which is why I’m a big fan of niching your services and offering.

2. You need a great lead page

Once you’ve decided on what your ‘ethical bribe’ will be, you need to create a dedicated lead page to promote it. Complete with web form.

3. Embed your main CRM webform into the lead page

To get cold data from your burner CRM to your main CRM, prospects will need to complete a webform. You can create this webform in your main CRM and embed it onto the lead page.

4. Send emails to your cold data promoting your ‘ethical bribe’

I suggest sending one email a week for a month to see how you get on encouraging people to get the ‘ethical bribe’.

I have really generalised the steps above, because it really does depend on what industry you’re targeting, what type of businesses you’re targeting and what issues you may need to solve for this audience as to what type of ‘ethical bribe’ you create and how you angle it.

But you’ve been through this process already as you’ve downloaded my book: “Firing People Doesn’t Grow Your Consultancy.”

My book is my ‘ethical bribe’. I wanted to target HR consultants that wanted to grow their business but enjoy a better work / life balance too. Which is why the title of the book and its contents is very specific to this problem and outcome.

I promoted the book via LinkedIn and via data that I didn’t have a relationship with and sent emails promoting the book.

The call to action of each email was to visit my lead page, where I promoted the book even more and encouraged you to complete the form in order to receive a free paperback copy.

You’ve now given me permission to contact you in the future, I’m building a relationship with you by offering you even more great advice and maybe, just maybe, we’ll go on to work together sometime in the future.

Once people have opted in, you can then send them more emails on a regular basis about topics and subjects that they’ll find incredibly useful. Quality is key here.

And if you do this consistently, when they’re ready to look for a new HR consultant, you’ll be the first one they think about.