The 12-Point Lead List Quality Checklist

Thirty minutes of checking beats a week of wasted dialing. Run these twelve checks on any list before it reaches a rep.

Freshness

1. 1Can the vendor tell you when each row was last verified? An unanswered question means unknown age.
2. 2Do any rows reference businesses you know have closed? One confirmed closure suggests more.
3. 3Re-run a sample against a live source. If 10% of names have changed, the file is old.

Reachability

1. 1Sample-dial 20 rows yourself. Under 70% reaching a human or company voicemail is a fail.
2. 2Look for consecutive number blocks across unrelated businesses — that is a call-tracking pool.
3. 3Check whether emails are role-based (info@, contact@) or personal. Role addresses convert far worse.
4. 4Validate a sample of emails. A bounce rate above 5% will hurt your sending domain.

Targeting

1. 1Spot-check 10 rows against your ICP. Anything below 8 matches means the segment is too broad.
2. 2Confirm the geography is genuinely your territory, not a state when you sell in two counties.
3. 3Check decision-maker coverage. What share of rows have a named person with authority?

Hygiene

1. 1Measure the duplicate rate, including DBA variants of the same company.
2. 2Check field consistency — phone formats, state abbreviations, capitalisation. Messy formatting means a messy pipeline.

What good looks like

A workable local B2B list clears roughly: 75%+ connect on sample dials, under 5% email bounce, under 3% duplicates, 90%+ ICP match, and a named decision maker on every row you intend to call. Anything materially below that is going to cost you more in rep time than the data cost you to buy.