Rejection is key to success in sales.
It helps you accurately assess the effectiveness of your technique and the quality of your leads; determine whether the timing was just off and the “no” is just a “no-for-now” or if the prospective customer is just not the right fit.
A “no” can feel like a failure, especially when cold-calling for insurance or home service products. If you’re in front of the wrong customer you are wasting both your time and theirs. Cole Information has been putting salespeople in front of the right customer for over 70 years with powerful lead lists. But where does Cole Information get its…information?
There isn’t a magical spring deep in a hidden forest. Cole leverages public records from County Assessors to provide detailed homeowner data. Cole’s compilation and validation processes are where the magic happens, refining the raw information and transforming it into actionable insights that inform sales conversations with targeted accuracy. A multi-step, data validation process eliminates unusable homeowner data while extracting valuable details – providing real estate agents, insurance agents, and home services providers actionable data they need to add context to sales conversations.
On episode 2 of The Info, the new podcast by Cole Information, VP of Marketing Bryce Curry is joined once again by CEO Jim Eggleston for a deep dive into the data that powers Cole Information’s products and how starting with usable data puts you in front of the right people.
Check out the episode where you get your podcasts!
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Get in Front of the Right Customer | Episode 2
AUTOMATED TRANSCRIPT
Bryce Curry:
Getting a no isn’t failure in selling. When you’re in front of the right person, have a great product or service, and deliver your pitch well, getting a no is just confirmation that it wasn’t a good fit or wasn’t the right time. But what failure is in selling is when you’re having the conversation with the wrong person. You end up wasting your time, and theirs, with something that was never going to work out in the first place. Welcome to the Info by Cole Information, a podcast that equips you, sales leaders, to reach the right customers at the right time. Hi, I’m Bryce Curry, VP of Marketing at Cole Information.
In this episode, I’m joined by our CEO Jim Eggleston, to talk about how salespeople can get in front of the right customers at the right time, serving the customer better and driving results for your business. Please make sure to subscribe on whatever platform you’re on. Thanks for listening to this episode of The Info by Cole information.
Hello everyone. Welcome to the Info podcast, brought to you by Cole Information. And in this episode today, I’m excited to have our CEO back on to talk data.
Jim Eggleston:
Thanks for having me. That must mean I did okay on the first one that you invited me back for a second?
Bryce Curry:
I talked to our producer, and I said the first one went so well that we need to have Jim back on.
Jim Eggleston:
And plus, your first guest canned out on the deal. So, I’m here.
Bryce Curry:
Well, we’re not going to bring that up. We’re not going to bring that up.
Jim Eggleston:
Okay, okay, okay. All right. We’ll leave that alone. I’ll take your compliment.
Bryce Curry:
We’re building followers.
Jim Eggleston:
I’m happy to be here.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
These are fun. We enjoy this. If you don’t notice, we enjoy these.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, no, these are fun. It’s fun to talk about our business. It’s fun to talk about some of the stories and you, hopefully, as a listener or watcher can feel the passion that we have behind the brand. And one of the reasons that I, on the VP marketing side, and Jim as the CEO, have been with Cole Information for so long is our passion behind what we talked about in our first episode, and also look forward to bringing with our guests and future episodes around technologists that are really helping in the PropTech industry go to the next level with technology.
We saw a demo the other day that I’m super excited to have an episode on of how even AI around chat and stuff like that and just seeing some of the innovation that’s happening there.
Jim Eggleston:
Isn’t that incredible?
Bryce Curry:
It was incredible.
Jim Eggleston:
Amazing.
Bryce Curry:
I mean, it’s all over in the news, but yet it’s exactly what we were talking about in our first episode where it’s taking something that’s big technology, but it’s applying it to real world solutions for sales, focused producers, in that case. And we’re looking forward to that episode here in the near future.
Jim Eggleston:
Can I come back for that? Or are you going to invite somebody else for that one?
Bryce Curry:
You’re welcome anytime. I think we can fit a third chair in here. You might have to stand behind-
Jim Eggleston:
I’ll stand behind the TV.
Bryce Curry:
… the TV.
Jim Eggleston:
It’ll be fine.
Bryce Curry:
But, yes. So, when we think about our company, one of the core things of our company is not only being in tune with our customers and what they’re looking for and providing them a data set, a way to get at that data in a timely fashion, the ability to segment. But there’s the things that go behind the curtain, we want to pull that curtain back and, in this episode, talk a little bit because Jim, I look up to him a lot because he has been in our industry, hopefully, you take this as a compliment, for some time. He’s been involved in data compilation and in the data industry for some time, and he is really good at navigating through crappy data versus quality data. What are ways that we can architect that data? Again, we throw back when we first talked in our first episode with the importance of being stewards of our brand. And so, our database is pretty big, right Jim? I mean, let’s brag a little bit. I mean, sometimes you’ve got to brag a little.
Jim Eggleston:
It’s a unique opportunity to do that because we never talk about the data behind our products.
Bryce Curry:
Not outside our company.
Jim Eggleston:
To us, it doesn’t matter. And to our users, it doesn’t matter. What they want to know is who are the next door neighbors of that house that just sold on Washington Street because they’re my best prospects. So, that user could give a rip about the data behind it. But this gives us an opportunity to talk about that data and the importance of it and how we deal with it. So, I guess to start off, I think, it’s like a public service announcement, I guess. All of the data that Cole compiles is in the public domain, right?
Bryce Curry:
Yep. It’s important point.
Jim Eggleston:
If you have heard of the personally identifiable information, the PII, which gets really in the weeds. But things like driver’s license numbers, social security numbers, credit cards, medical history, all that, we don’t touch it. We don’t look at it. We don’t even know where to source it. We don’t deal with that. It’s just not important. And mainly, it’s not important for our users not going to help them sell, right?
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
So, why get there? So, first off, everything we compile is in the public domain. Everything. You don’t maybe think about it all that much, but the most of the Cole data comes from the public offices of the register of deeds. Every county assessor in the country is assessing taxes.
Bryce Curry:
Right, right.
Jim Eggleston:
Unfortunately,
Bryce Curry:
It’s foundation, right?
Jim Eggleston:
And so, they have all the property information. Who Bryce is, when he bought his house, how much he paid for his house is all in the public domain. Many of you can go online and get it yourself. You just log onto your assessor website-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
.. and it’s all there. Okay?
Bryce Curry:
It’d be nice if you were a subscriber of Cole, but it is out there.
Jim Eggleston:
That’s right. It is out-
Bryce Curry:
But, yes, I understand what you’re saying.
Jim Eggleston:
So, yeah, it’s out there. It’s not very usable-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… in its current format, but it’s out there. So, I just want to assure everybody that that’s the primary source of the data.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
There’s no magic. What’s magical is how we take that data and validate it and present it in a solution that works for the individual, in this case, real estate or insurance agent.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
So, that’s what’s important. But just to set the story, so we compile data from all across the country. We start off with a feed from various sources of about 400 million records in the country.
Bryce Curry:
So, that’s a lot of zeros.
Jim Eggleston:
I’d have to write that down. 400 million records. And it’s made up of, again, a lot of different sources, a lot of different uses, a lot of different opportunities. But you start with 400 million. We take it through a validation process because there’s inaccuracies in those 400 million.
Bryce Curry:
For sure.
Jim Eggleston:
Or there’s things that maybe aren’t inaccurate but are not appropriate for our audience.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
So, if you have an adult, my son is 36 years old. He lives in Arizona. Some of the sources have him associated with my address. Well, he is,-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… associated with my address.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
He’s my son.
Bryce Curry:
At one point in time, he lived there, too, right?
Jim Eggleston:
He lived there at one time. But for a real estate agent, for an insurance agent, for a home services provider, knowing that Ross is there doesn’t really matter it. So, we clean up the database through a validation process, and we only publish about 300 million records. So, we leave a hundred million records on the sideline.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, just cut it right out.
Jim Eggleston:
Just cut it out. And some people might say it’s overkill, but for our audience and how they use our product, we want to deliver usable data to them. So, we go through a validation process at the highest level. It’s a three step process. We have to know from three very different sources that Bryce Curry lives at this address.
Bryce Curry:
Right, right.
Jim Eggleston:
Okay? That’s the baseline. If we don’t have three people agree on it, if we get one that’s, it doesn’t go in the database. So, first off is that validation. Then, we take it through a nine step validation process to further refine it through nine steps of actual verification in nine steps until that record gets in the database. And that’s how we go from 400 million down to 300 million. Now, again, our users wouldn’t even see the difference.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
I mean, it would be hard to process the difference, but it’s important. Because our goal, I mean, it is accurate information. We want accurate information, but we want information that makes you, the real estate agent, the best opportunity for success. We want to make you successful. It doesn’t matter if, say, you call somebody and they answer the phone and they go, “Hi, yeah, I’m Jim.” But they’re not living at that address.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
That doesn’t help you as a real estate agent. You’re not going to sell that. I could argue with you that it’s correct, but it’s not going to help you sell.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
So, we start off by pulling all of that extraneous information out because it doesn’t help the person that subscribes to our product.
Bryce Curry:
I think that that is a real key thing to focus in on this episode is there are options out there where more is better. And when I think about the end users of our product, just like you said, they’re looking to connect with the neighbors of it just listed or just sold. Or they’re looking to farm a neighborhood, and the accuracy of that information is very important. And so, those extra steps that Cole goes through and has, in some ways, innovated along with its data partners to really cleanse the data, but position the data in such a way that the end user will be the most successful with that.
When you start talking databases and database architecture, some people might find that boring, or it could be kind of a snooze fest, but it actually is really important. And a lot of today’s technology is driven by data and data sets, and database management and architecture is super important. And so, moving from 400 million records down to 300 million records, that’s still a huge database, right?
Jim Eggleston:
Oh, yeah.
Bryce Curry:
So, we’re still at a big universe. And let’s talk a little bit about the next layers of Cole’s database, because Cole is unique in a lot of ways with its competitors, but also just kind of in the way that we offer access to our information.
Jim Eggleston:
Well, we start off by, again, looking at how our users want to access our information. And we have different products for different industries.
Bryce Curry:
Verticalized, right?
Jim Eggleston:
Yeah. Yeah. Because it’s not the same for everybody.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
A real estate agent has one set of needs.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
An insurance agent has another set of needs.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
The guy putting roofs on-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… replacement roofs after a storm, right?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. For sure.
Jim Eggleston:
A different set of needs. So, all of our products are verticalized so that we mine that data differently depending on the audience that it’s being presented to. And if you think about it like that, again, everything we do starts with the end user. What is it they’re doing in their daily life? How do we support that?
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
And it goes to the data. And an example would be in the insurance space, I’ll use an insurance example. So, we know that the insurance agent wants to prospect-
Bryce Curry:
Yep.
Jim Eggleston:
60, 90 days ahead of the renewal, right?
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
I mean, you don’t want to go in afterwards, okay?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. Yeah, after.
Jim Eggleston:
Everybody hates the conversation of, “Well, thanks, but I just renewed in December.”
Bryce Curry:
You should’ve called me then.
Jim Eggleston:
Yeah, “Call me next fall. Thanks, bye.” You just lost a sale for nine months. That’s not fun, right?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. That’s frustrating, right?
Jim Eggleston:
We know that. But we take it one step further. And so, what we do in our product for the insurance industry is we not only give you the people whose policy is expiring at that date. But then, we also manipulate it, sort it so that we put your best prospects right in front of you. Okay?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
So, we take that data and we say, “You know what? Out of the 500 people who renew in February, who do I want to talk to first?” Well, you naturally want to want to talk to people who just bought a new home last year.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
When you buy a home, you don’t think about insurance. You-
Bryce Curry:
Right. Yeah, there’s too moving parts.
Jim Eggleston:
… sign a paper. Yeah. And they’re like, “We’ve got insurance. It’s right here. Sign document number 415.”
Bryce Curry:
Most of the time, you call your parents, and say, “Who’s your insurance agent?”
Jim Eggleston:
That’s right. And so, a large number of homeowners switch companies their first year.
Bryce Curry:
Yep. Yep.
Jim Eggleston:
So, we just sort that to the top.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Right? Why not?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
We want to make our customers successful. So, we sort at the top. Secondarily, sorry for being this way in the sales business, but you want to sell more expensive policies.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
So, we sort to the top the more expensive homes. So, now you’ve got this product that delivers to you-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… every month a set of leads, which is great because they’re going to renew next month. But within that, we deliver it in a way by using other data elements, we deliver it in a way that makes your opportunities for success much greater.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
And most of our customers, I’d probably bet all of them, don’t even recognize that, don’t see that.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
But every month they open it up, they start at the top of list, start calling down.
Bryce Curry:
Sure.
Jim Eggleston:
We put them in front of the best prospects there, and we do it because of the data that powers those decisions.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, especially for those that are in insurance that are listening to us or watching us, when I’m asked what should I be doing for my agency to expand my book of business, what Jim just talked about is the first thing I tell them to do. Is social important, all that stuff? Okay, that has a place. But getting expiring homeowners that are right in your market that, hopefully, you as an agent are staying top of mind and using the Cole data set. Not that you’re just going to blanket the whole area, you’re going to focus on these 22 people that their homeowner’s insurance is likely to be expiring in that given month that you selected.
But a key point is what you’re talking about is that the product gives you, at the top, those first year renewals and also higher valued homes with potential other expansion of insurance needs, as well. So, that’s the first thing I say when I talk to, whether it’s at one of the new insurance agent shows we go to, or even these big huge insurance tech shows. And all that other stuff that you might be as a sales individual or producer or if you’re in charge of quoting for your agency, there’s different things that have a place from a social media standpoint or from a different prospecting activity. But this is core stuff.
Jim Eggleston:
And that’s why it really brings to bear the importance of data, right?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, exactly.
Jim Eggleston:
And again, it’s not data, about there’s 300 million of them. How do you want them?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. No.
Jim Eggleston:
Data powers our solution-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… and in ways that you see-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… but in ways that you don’t see that happen in the background because we understand the market, we-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… understand your needs, and manipulate it that way. And in real estate, it’s the exact same thing. If you’re a real estate agent, you don’t want to be prospecting for new listings to a bunch of people that have moved in the last 12 months.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Yes, they’re people. Yes, we have their phone number.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Yes, we have their names.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, you can call them.
Jim Eggleston:
We have all that. You can call them.
Bryce Curry:
And talk to them.
Jim Eggleston:
But it’s not going to make you successful.
Bryce Curry:
Right. Right.
Jim Eggleston:
Right? It’s going to make it much, much harder. And so, that’s how you take a company like ours. That’s how we take 300 million records-
Bryce Curry:
Yep.
Jim Eggleston:
… and distill it down into something that will help make you successful.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, that’s right.
Jim Eggleston:
Because as an individual realtor, insurance agent, whatever, as an individual, you don’t possess, I don’t possess the knowledge to be able to think through that.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
So, those are the things that takes big data.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
I mean, you hear big data.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Big data’s great-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… as long as you have the technology that can manipulate it in a way that makes it usable, actionable-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… for you.
Bryce Curry:
That’s one of the unique things about our products is they’re tailored to those verticals. We’ve obviously talked about the insurance space and there’s other facets of that. I mean, you can go on our YouTube channel and look at different videos that get into specifics around auto information and stuff like that. Again, just helping you trying to increase your response rate by standing out in that mailbox or also increasing your contact rate with some of our unique data that we do offer that we’ve spent quite a bit of time in Mindshare in looking at different various sources when I think about different ways to contact the customers. And really, what we encourage our customers to do is create drip campaigns, right? So, I’m in marketing. I’ve been in marketing for over 20 years. And when I first started out, I thought if I did a one campaign, I’m going to get this great flood of response. And then, I would just sit and wait for it, and I’d be frustrated.
Jim Eggleston:
Oh my goodness.
Bryce Curry:
So, one of the things that our products allow, or empower, our customers to do across all verticals, again, 300 million records paired down to these use cases, is they can do drip campaigns because I don’t know. I think even some of the best marketers in the world, it’s pretty tough to get a huge response on that first point of contact or attempt, right? So, the unique thing about our products is you have multiple points of contact, but it’s still centered around some indication, a trigger, a time of need for insurance, or, “Hey, I just sold the Anderson’s home. We got above market.” Stuff like that, which is really important right now during this type of-
Jim Eggleston:
Yeah. Real estate market.
Bryce Curry:
… real estate market.
Jim Eggleston:
Tough market right now.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Absolutely.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
And when you think about it, everything comes down. It starts with data-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… big data. We need it. It supports it, right? But then, our product adds the ability to take care of the second part of the equation, which is essential, which is bringing relevancy to the conversation, okay? There’s so many offshore telemarketers-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… that are just slamming calls out.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Right?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Okay? And they’re calling from the Philippines.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
God bless the Philippines.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
They’re calling from the Philippines-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… but they don’t know your neighborhood.
Bryce Curry:
Right. Right.
Jim Eggleston:
They don’t know your neighbor. They don’t know you. Okay? So, it’s important for our customers to have context, and our product is built in such a way to give you that context.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
For instance, in a real estate space, we talked about real estate, and several examples of real estate marketing. But one of the things you want to do in reach out is you want to present yourself as the local expert.
Bryce Curry:
Absolutely.
Jim Eggleston:
Okay? I’m not from out of town. I’m not from around the country, around the world. I’m your local expert, okay? Our product has the ability to provide an aerial view, all right, of the house that you’re calling so you can look at the house.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. It’s one of my favorite features.
Jim Eggleston:
It’s nothing magical, it’s Google Street view, right? But you have the ability to look at the house. And it’s like, “Oh, Bryce, how are you? I see, you’ve got a two-story just like-“
Bryce Curry:
That’s right.
Jim Eggleston:
… “just like your neighbor who just sold their home.”
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
“You have a swimming pool, you have a,” right? “You back to the cul-de-sac,” right?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
“You’re in a cul-de-sac.”
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Cul-de-sacs are real popular. Okay. That one comment in a selling situation might get you the deal.
Bryce Curry:
That’s right.
Jim Eggleston:
Right?
Bryce Curry:
That’s right.
Jim Eggleston:
I know you live on a cul-de-sac, and cul-de-sacs are important.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
Okay. Somebody calling from offshore-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… doesn’t know.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
They just know you as a name and phone number.
Bryce Curry:
That’s right.
Jim Eggleston:
They don’t know that you live on a cul-de-sac. They don’t know that you back up to a busy street. Right?
Bryce Curry:
That’s right.
Jim Eggleston:
Tired of that noise off of 168th Street? Hey, you know what? We’ve got a new neighborhood-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… being developed that’s really quiet.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
Right?
Bryce Curry:
That’s right.
Jim Eggleston:
It’s those other data elements that some people think of as disposable, not usable, fluffery, but it allows you to add context to your conversation that presents you as the local expert, the knowledgeable expert-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… and you get those little points of reference that might just be enough to get that person to sign up-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… as a new listing for you.
Bryce Curry:
Well, absolutely. I mean, as a sales producer across all our verticals that we serve, if you step back, you could try to contact the whole neighborhood. And I mean, just think about the effort and time that you would be spending, and still you’re staring at a goal that you have to achieve. And so, by using our products that are backed by this huge database that’s paired down to a specific campaign that you want to do, it provides time efficiencies, but it also increases, like we talked about, your contact rate. And one of my favorite things is some of the features that allow you to tailor your pitch to stand out is really a unique thing across all our verticals. And in the home service space, one of the things, I just came out of a great event out of Utah called Door to Door Con, and we look forward to having them on a future episode.
And the theme there is is they are out there hustling, trying to get that next job. And really it’s trying to connect with the neighbors, as well. And all the different types of apps and technology in the home service space is connecting you with the neighborhood. And so, we have a product called Cole Neighborhoods that are for the broad vertical of home services. But really, I think about the directories, again, to throw back. And I won’t always do that, but to throw back to the directories, I think about the home service individual that has the directory in their truck, and they’re looking for that next job, right? And it sounds basic, but it’s so important.
Jim Eggleston:
Well, yeah. And sometimes, again, the contrast of big data, we’ve got 300 million records, all that. Sometimes, it’s just one simple thing that makes the difference, right? And our friends in the solar space-
Bryce Curry:
Yep.
Jim Eggleston:
… taught us this. If you’re solar is, you might have run into it.
Bryce Curry:
Yep.
Jim Eggleston:
They’re big door to door-
Bryce Curry:
It’s hot, it’s hot.
Jim Eggleston:
… to door salespeople. When they knock on your door and come in for a presentation, they’re going to spend an hour minimum, right?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
And so, what they taught us was, “Hey, guys. Here’s the one thing I need to know. I don’t care about anything else.”
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
“I’m going to knock on that door unless it’s a renter.”
Bryce Curry:
Yep.
Jim Eggleston:
And you think, so what? People don’t identify themselves as renters. So, you knock on a door and you say, “Hey, Mr. Curry. Hey, I’d like to talk to you today about solar and how you could save money on your energy bills.”
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, that’s very real.
Jim Eggleston:
And you’ll be like, “Oh, that’s interesting.” You invite them in, they sit down, you talk. Now, that salesperson spent an hour talking to you.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Okay?
Bryce Curry:
Because they’re curious about the technology.
Jim Eggleston:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bryce Curry:
Or whatever.
Jim Eggleston:
They want to learn about solar, right?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
I mean, you didn’t say, “I want to sell you solar.” You said, “I want to talk to you about solar.” And so, one simple data element-
Bryce Curry:
Yep.
Jim Eggleston:
… that we have. We know whether the occupant of the house is the homeowner or not. And it’s so simple. As they’re walking down the street, getting ready to come to the next house-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… they look online, and they look and they go, “Oh, Bryce is a renter. Okay.” And they just keep walking. You don’t even know. You might be in your yard. You might be mowing your lawn.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
You don’t know that guy just walked by.
Bryce Curry:
Right. Right.
Jim Eggleston:
Right? But he did.
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
Because he then went down and looked at the next house and said, “Okay, this is a homeowner. They’ve been there seven years.”
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
So, one little data element makes all the difference in the world. And, again, it doesn’t necessarily in this case help you get more sales, but it helps give more time in your day because you just didn’t waste an hour-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… talking to somebody who you can’t work with.
Bryce Curry:
Well, and that adds up, right?
Jim Eggleston:
Oh, yeah.
Bryce Curry:
If you’re talking-
Jim Eggleston:
Every day, once a day, yeah.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. If you’re trying to talk to five people, it just takes away time and energy from you. So, that’s a great application of how a large database can power you as a producer, your specific actions. We have the pleasure of talking to a lot of different customers in different verticals and also just different people in our daily lives. And I was talking to a contractor, actually, yesterday. We have a solid surface sink. So, it’s 16 years old. It cracked. It just straight up cracked. So, I call around the main entities around here in our area, and no one services that specific service anymore.
And through a lot of web researching and social digging, I found an individual in the local area that does solid surfacing.
Jim Eggleston:
Really?
Bryce Curry:
So, the reason I’m bringing up that story is I was talking to him and I was like, “Hey, man. There’s so many of us that have a need. We have this solid surface because we couldn’t afford granite at the time or whatever. You need to be contacting my neighbors because they are having, if not now, soon, certain situations like that.” And so, it’s like, “Hey, I can show-“
Jim Eggleston:
I can show you how to market your product in my neighborhood.
Bryce Curry:
Right. and just doing things like how old is the home? You can make some basic segmentation. It doesn’t take a data scientist, everyone that’s listening and watching. It doesn’t take a data scientist to build these huge marketing campaigns. There’s a place for that, big logos, stuff like that. But for the end users of our product, it’s all about what we’re talking about. And we’re taking this data, and we’re putting it in the features of the product to be able to do segmentation. It might be segmentation that fits your sales style.
Jim Eggleston:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Bryce Curry:
Maybe you like muscle cars, so you want to talk to people or insure people that have muscle cars. You could do niche things like that. It’s cool when we get feedback, when we talk to people, especially now that we’re starting to do more face-to-face events.
Jim Eggleston:
To learn how they use the product-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… in ways that we didn’t even-
Bryce Curry:
That’s right.
Jim Eggleston:
… consider-
Bryce Curry:
That’s right.
Jim Eggleston:
… but they find successful. That by combining this and this and that-
Bryce Curry:
Right.
Jim Eggleston:
… all of a sudden turns into a positive sales experience.
Bryce Curry:
Right. Right. And then, the uniqueness of being able to have multiple ways of contacting the homeowner also helps with your campaign efficiencies and the KPIs that you use to track, whether it’s in your CRM and stuff like that. And I do need to say that a lot of our products are incorporated with a lot of the industry-leading technology that’s out there from CRMs to campaign management services, which we look forward to having those individuals-
Jim Eggleston:
Right.
Bryce Curry:
… on future episodes, as well. It helps compliment what we’re talking about from our data.
Jim Eggleston:
Oh, it absolutely compliments what we do. And we also, not only do we integrate with those service providers, great service providers-
Bryce Curry:
Yep.
Jim Eggleston:
… in different spaces, CRM, but they’re also thought leaders in the industry.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
So, we get to tap into their world, understand what’s important to them, and then we can adjust to how they think about it-
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
… is really, really successful for us.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. So, on this episode, we’ve, I think, approached data a little bit different. And then, talking about like, “Hey, we have 300 million records. You can do huge campaigns.” And we brought it back to the core of what Cole does and what our value prop is from a small business owner or a salesperson that’s faced with producing at a hyper-local level. It’s a term we got from a past friend of ours or of Cole. A lot of hyper-local marketing takes place with our products. And in order to do that, in order to have 16 records, it takes the top, taking that 300 million, like we talked about, and having a process that we’ve developed to help bring that down to being as accurate as we can when that service professional or that insurance agent or “producer” calls or acts on that piece of information.
And so, our goal is to provide that information so you can reach out to homeowners in a timely manner at the right time. And like you said at the start, not, “Hey, would you be interested in homeowner insurance?” “Absolutely. I would be, but call me next year.” Or, “Oh, no, I just listed my house. I’m sorry.” Or stuff like that.
Jim Eggleston:
Absolutely.
Bryce Curry:
Or my little story of being a frustrated homeowner, looking for somebody that specializes in the service and just not getting their message out based off of a search.
Jim Eggleston:
But the thing is, the overarching is, we get asked the question, “How many,” all the time.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
So where we started.
Bryce Curry:
It does start with that. Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
We’ve got 300 million, right?
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
And we get the question, “How many records do you have?”
Bryce Curry:
Yeah. How accurate is it, right?
Jim Eggleston:
Yeah. And we always start with, “Well, we have 300 million.” And I always want to ask people, I want to go, “So, is that a good number or a bad number? Do you know?”
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
“What, if I had 290, it wouldn’t work? If I had 310, I’m exaggerating.” I mean, it’s funny because there’s no point of reference.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
And so, we always try to assure them that the 300 million are the best of the data we can find. And they’re triple validated.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah.
Jim Eggleston:
Now, let’s talk about how you’re going to use it. Let’s talk about the action items. What do you need? Because you don’t need 300 million. Well, that’d be a big door to door campaign.
Bryce Curry:
A big campaign. If you’re looking for doing a campaign of 300 million individuals, give us a call.
Jim Eggleston:
Call us.
Bryce Curry:
Yeah, give us a call. But our day in and day out users are not looking at that big of a database.
Jim Eggleston:
No.
Bryce Curry:
So, Jim, again, it was a pleasure to have you on this episode as we continue to talk about the legacy of Cole, but also the importance of taking that legacy and the data and the technology and delivering it to an actual level for our sales professionals across our different industries. So, thank you again for your time.
Jim Eggleston:
You’re very welcome. Glad to be here.
Bryce Curry:
I hope this episode provided value to you as a salesperson. If you enjoyed our content, please like, subscribe, and leave a review. Make sure to join us for the next episode of the Info by Cole Information.
