Jigsaw Turns the Contact Puzzle into a Business Solution

That's because Jigsaw has created an online business-contact database that is robust and very affordable to use for businesses of your size. Small businesses are always trying to sell things to big companies— after all, it's their bread and butter. But as often as not, you don't have the information you need to get the job done: Most particularly, you may not know who to contact.

Jigsaw will work for you in those situations, because if you don't have a contact at a company you're targeting, Jigsaw probably does. If you do know, or know of, someone in that company, but have no access to a company directory, Jigsaw probably knows how to contact that person. Perhaps even better, if you're just looking for a broad array of contacts across an industry or some other market segment, Jigsaw has the tools and the data you need to find them.

Typically, people who want such contacts subscribe to databases such as Hoover's or Harte-Hanks. "But they're expensive," says Jigsaw founder and CEO Jim Fowler, "and their update mechanisms may not operate frequently enough to provide you with the right information for right now." Fowler used such databases in his own sales career, but wanted something better. "I started Jigsaw out of sheer frustration and pain," he says.

Jim Fowler, CEO

Jigsaw's contact-data collection-and-distribution mechanism is really the result of a member marketplace that's operating in the field, not a research organization plodding away in a cubicle farm. Members who want to access Jigsaw's huge volume of contacts can buy or contribute their way in. "Members can buy, sell, or trade their contact information through the Jigsaw system," says founder Jim Fowler. A very clever and productive member may not have to pay anything, but that would be rare, said Fowler.

How Jigsaw Works

When a member signs up, he or she commits to buying contacts with a credit card or with points. "Basically a member pays $25 per month to gain access to the data," says Fowler, "or alternatively they can contribute 25 new contacts each month in which they are a member." Every contact a member contributes earns that member 10 points, and every time a member updates or corrects the information in a contact's entry, they also earn 10 points. A member can earn a whopping 125 points by referring a new member into the Jigsaw network.

Once in the Jigsaw bank, points can be used to buy contact information. "Each contact retrieved from the data base costs 5 Jigsaw points," says Fowler, "or you can think of it as $1.00." That is attractive for members, because each contributed contact earns 10 points, which means the earn/use ratio for Jigsaw points is 2:1.