If someone called you and asked who would be the person that looks after purchasing widgets then you immediately identify the call as a telemarketing call and your reaction becomes defensive straight away. If on the other hand a telemarketer calls and asks for a person by their first name it creates an entirely different outcome.
Although in house lists may also have contact details for decision makers they are almost always out of date. Even if it isn’t out of date then most likely those same prospects will have been called recently for another campaign and as a result maybe less responsive when it comes to your campaign.
So with directories, the time taken dancing around trying to find out who is the correct decision maker can end up costing much more then the cost of purchasing a current, fresh prospect list. If you have your own list then that’s even better.
There is one other consideration however. With a list that has contact names within it, you are more likely to get past any receptionist (gatekeeper) however you are also more likely not to speak to that contact on the first, second or even the third call resulting in a very high unreachable count. This becomes more evident wither higher ranking job titles.
So it is important to weigh up the pros and cons of either chancing it with the receptionists or chancing by targeting a specific person and not being able to reach them at all.
It is also important to ensure your prospect data is compliant and not out of date otherwise you may be in breech and held responsible by failing to ensure your contracted party complied with any national blocked phone number registry.