There is a dynamic that occurs between marketing and sales organizations that revolves around data. Sales teams want leads, but they also want to know what the state of the market is. They want to know what is selling and who is buying. There is a sense that having data in hand will make the selling process easier. It might, but it might lead you astray.

The data we have in our hands today looks backwards. No matter what you read on the internet about the top 50 direct mail statistics for 2021 or the top 20 commercial print statistics for 2021, if you open them up and interrogate the sources, you learn quickly that many of the data points are from a time gone by. Some may even go back to the turn of the millennium. Others may go back to 2019 or earlier—the time before the lockdowns and changes in the market.

Looking at available data about response rates, return on investment, and even cost of sales refers to a different market. It can give you some clues about what it can be again, but it isn’t a great indicator of the current state of the market. Sales opportunities in 2019 are not the same as those that may present themselves today.