Obviously, the title above does not mean that the folks that worked so feverously to complete the Open Data Initiative are a bunch of dummies. I can be critical to the point of snarky sometimes, but I do more than sit around and shoot holes in my foot all day.
What I am talking about is that for everyone involved in BtoB selling or marketing, downloading Jigsaw’s company data FOR FREE makes so much sense that you have to be a nitwit to not at least check out the offering. Here’s why:
For our CRM partners, it is just too easy. Their biggest challenge to overcome with new and existing customers is data quality and maintenance. Salesforce took time off from counting their money to OK our idea and all the other major players are on board, too.
Entrepreneurs looking to start a BtoB company need to research their market if they want anyone to invest in the company- or come work there. I know all the MBA types are great at licking their finger, holding it up to the wind, and then pumping out a 30-page market report based on the population of Detroit times the GNP of New Guinea. Now anyone that can operate a computer can go to Jigsaw, download a million companies into Excel (FOR FREE), and get a look at their market based on tangible things like the revenue, employees, geographic location and industry for future prospective companies.
For smaller companies already selling to businesses: Stop hiring sales people based on how many company addresses they know off the top of their head and cobbling them together into an under licensed Act database. Now you can focus on 10,000 companies from Jigsaw that fall into your 2 top verticals that have revenues of more than what your product costs. Did I mention that this will cost you nothing? (Make it 100,000 companies if you want to get freaky- that’s free, too)
For companies that have been at it long enough to have amassed that ugly mess of historical data from 6 generations of salespeople (about 3 years) into your 2nd CRM database, you need us, too. Jigsaw won’t match, de-dupe, append and maintain all the companies that you have for free (we charge what amounts to pennies per record for that), but I bet you are paying some sales-ops guy who would love to get his hands on a list of 1 million up-to-date and complete company profiles that he could download into a spreadsheet that has been specifically created for the CRM system of his choice. (Maybe not- those guys do like to complain a lot and would rather buy a 10 year old tivo -because those are the ones you can hack- than pay $5 a month for the new service DVRs.) Jigsaw company data is better than yours because we have 500,000 sales people that are incented to enter and maintain the accuracy of the data. That is 499,999 more motivated people than you have. (there is always some dork who likes to update CRM data for fun)
For even larger companies that can afford to pay one of the traditional data companies millions of dollars to update and maintain your company data… good on ya. If that is working so great, why have you switched vendors so many times and still your sales people ignore your big CRM system- in- the- sky? Because it sucks and you know it. Come to Jigsaw and at least check out the companies we have. It probably isn’t as good as what D&B has today, and it doesn’t have some esoteric 20 digit code that maps out the location of every Burger King in Sheboygan Wisconsin. But it just might be good enough to power your sales and marketing efforts. And with the power of our user generated community, Jigsaw will be picking the data dinosaur’s bones pretty soon.
And yes, I believe so strongly in the Open Data Initiative I was willing to walk around Haight and Ashbury in San Francisco wearing tights for over six hours. You can watch me along with my co-founder and Jigsaw CEO Jim Fowler declare data independence in a short three minute video. Get a laugh out of it? Help me get my marketing department off my back and forward it to your friends.
