Sales Prospecting: Tips, Benefits, And Techniques

What Is Sales Prospecting?

Every sales rep’s dream is to find prospects interested in what you have to offer and convert them quickly. But first, you should generate qualified leads by contacting them and placing them on your sales funnel, hoping they will reach the conversion stage. Sales prospecting has three main stages: research, qualification, and outreach. Your goal is to find out as much as possible about each prospect by visiting their company website and social media pages and reading about company information. Next in the sales prospecting process is qualification, where you identify who is worth pursuing and which ones to prioritize. It’s the same as account-based marketing, where you want to focus on high-intent, high-value clients first. Therefore, lead scoring is necessary to understand who is more likely to purchase.

Customer prospecting concludes with outreach. You don’t have to try for a hard sell immediately. Start by curating engaging and relevant content they may appreciate. Maybe many of them don’t even know who you are and what you do, so you need to approach them in a non-salesy way. You can send them an email or call them to arrange a meeting so you get to know one another, for example.

Keep reading if you want to explore our comprehensive prospecting guide!

Sales Prospecting Vs. Lead Generation

Most companies implement a combination of B2B lead generation strategies and sales prospecting. Marketing teams are largely responsible for lead generation. The goal is to create content and online experiences that attract business leads. Blog posts, comprehensive eBooks, whitepapers, case studies, and infographics generate attention. eBooks and webinars are great options if you require people’s contact details in exchange for access. This way, you can qualify your leads effectively. Many companies use customer relationship management (CRM) systems to automate the score-leading and qualification processes. For example, when someone is a company executive, they will receive more points than someone who is a junior-level employee.

Sales prospecting, on the other hand, is tackled by sales teams. These professionals usually identify business prospects manually and contact them on various platforms. Instead of using elevator pitch examples from the get-go, they start by introducing themselves to break the ice and create a friendly environment. Prospecting in business is a personalized and laborious approach that takes time and lots of effort.

The Benefits Of This Process

Have you ever heard the phrase “pipeline is a lifeline”? To generate high-quality business leads, you need to develop a clear pipeline that scores your leads and organizes marketing and sales efforts. A prospecting sales process gives you the information you need to take action and target customers who are worth your time and resources. And having a smooth-flowing pipeline gives you an endless number of prospects to contact. Therefore, the more people and companies you have on your list, the more conversions you can achieve, increasing your revenue significantly. Additionally, communicating with new prospects allows you to identify emerging trends, new pain points, and varying needs. This offers you a better understanding of the market and how you should shift your approach.

But sometimes, no matter how targeted prospecting is, you won’t close all the deals you want. Brand awareness is still a massive win as you get people to know you and your products. Buying leads may often seem like a good option, but sales prospecting is superior. That’s because even when you fail to convert clients, you recognize their challenges and can improve your pitch for next time.

The Stages Of Creating A Sales Prospecting Process

1. Target List

Whether you’re prospecting customers or building your lead generation techniques, the mindset is the same. Which industries are you targeting, and what job titles do you want to book meetings with? Do you want to attract organizations of a certain size, and which events can help you meet people? The more questions like these you ask yourself, the more targeted your sales prospecting will be. Start with your existing clients, as there is a big chance they are not buying as much as you’d wish.

Then, look back at your past customers and leads that didn’t convert. Connect with them on LinkedIn and stay in touch. Locate professionals in decision-making roles and find intricate ways to engage with them. Many sales reps make the rookie mistake of contacting low-authority people who have no say in decisions. Your goal should be to target companies you know your product can offer value. Then, you can identify each company’s decision-makers and ask them to book a meeting.

2. Research

SaaS lead generation won’t be useful unless you do thorough research on your leads. Knowing exactly who you’re talking to helps you target only the right people, those who are more likely to spend their money on your product. However, qualification takes time, and you need to be strategic about it. For starters, check your CRM system to see the actions your leads took. Did they download a free eBook, register for a webinar, or send a query through your contact form? Also, browse their website, read press releases, and review any publicly available financial disclosures to get a better idea of their needs and challenges. This process helps you understand how your product can benefit them.

Additionally, you can do some extra social media digging by searching for decision-makers and their companies on LinkedIn, X, and Google News. This part of the prospecting workflow shouldn’t take you more than 30 minutes.

3. Offer

Once you are certain that your prospecting process has generated potential buyers, you can start crafting personalized offers. Based on each prospect’s goals and pain points, you may offer relevant services and resources. If you’re wondering how to close a deal, keep in mind that it’s not only about trying to make a sale from the get-go. To warm up your leads and keep the conversation going, you can offer free stuff, including templates, guides, eBooks, trials, etc. Prospecting in business starts with getting to know the unique characteristics of your customers. You need to know exactly the problems they’re facing, the solution they think they need, and their end goal. You don’t want to explain exactly how your product can help them. This stage is designed to help you realize whether prospects are worth running after.

4. Campaigns

Did you know that it takes about 7 touches before you can even book a meeting with a prospect? One of the most precious prospecting tips is that you should create coordinated, multi-touch promotional campaigns that feature strong offers. This process may take months, depending on your industry. The touches may include emails, phone calls, social media messages, and even direct mail. The latter is quite outdated, while phone calls may work only in certain niches. Emails and social media are the two most popular in today’s era. Whatever you choose, your campaigns should be tailored to each prospect’s needs and challenges, so avoid generic and cliché messages. Instead, try to create personal connections that prove to clients how much you’ve learned about them and care about helping them grow.

The Two Types Of Prospecting In Sales

To generate new leads, companies can either enforce outbound or inbound processes. But what’s the difference? With outbound prospecting, you’re contacting people directly, explaining who you are and what your product does. On the other hand, inbound sales prospecting focuses on creating and promoting content, aiming to attract website visitors.

1. Inbound

One way to prospect for sales is to wait until someone interacts with you by visiting your website and taking action or engaging with your social media pages. Let’s say that someone signed up for a product demo or registered for a future webinar. There are plenty of email drip campaign examples you can follow to create an email flow. For instance, someone interested in your demo or your pricing page may be willing to book a meeting and discuss further about your product’s capabilities and prices. Therefore, warm emailing is the first inbound prospecting tactic.

The second is social selling. Keep track of those who interact with your page frequently by leaving comments, liking your posts, and asking product-related questions. Instead of answering such a specific question under your posts, you can send them a private message. Maybe the conversation evolves into a sales pitch.

2. Outbound

When you buy B2B leads, you are basically contacting people who may have no idea who you are. They may even not be interested in your product. Similarly, outbound sales prospecting depends on cold emailing, cold calling, and cold social media messaging to generate interest. These tactics rely on strong subject lines and convincing mechanisms. On social media, you may start engaging with decision-makers in your field on a personal level before you make your pitch.

For instance, you may congratulate someone on their promotion or wish them a happy birthday. While these ways may speed up the lead generation process, they may also annoy people. You are basically intruding on their personal space when they haven’t given their consent. As a result, they may send your emails to the spam folder, worsening your email reputation. Even if you get someone to reply, the quality may be low as you don’t always know whether they are the right prospect for you.

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4 Ways To Find Ideal Prospects

1. Social Selling

Social selling doesn’t only refer to social media but also to sales technology tools that help you identify the decision-makers of target companies. Based on the person you’re talking to, you can target relevant and accurate messages and speak directly to their needs. Your goal isn’t to initiate a hard sell but to build meaningful relationships relying on trust. For example, if you want to craft an SEO sales pitch example, you should first create content and posts explaining how important SEO is for any business to maximize visibility. When you interact with a sales prospect, you should provide valuable insights to gain their trust and establish yourself as an expert in your field. Be authentic in your approach and show genuine interest in people’s struggles.

Salesy tactics only annoy professionals and make them run far away from you. Even if you exchange a few messages with someone without them making a sale, stay in touch. Don’t offer them your products but keep engaging in meaningful ways. And be patient—no customer acquisition strategy is successful overnight.

2. Emails

There is probably no B2B business out there that doesn’t enforce emails to attract leads and qualify prospects. The prospecting guide says that emails should start with a top-notch subject line. It should be intriguing, engaging, relevant, and genuine. Avoid trigger words (click here, best price, buy now, winner) that may send your email straight to the spam folder. One of the best email marketing practices is to personalize every email by adding recipients’ names. This tactic increases the open rate and adds a personal touch.

Moving on to the main email body, you should make it relevant to each prospect’s characteristics. If you want to book a meeting, explain why you want to talk to them and what they should expect from the meeting. If, however, you’re making a sales pitch, explain in depth what your product offers and which of their problems it can solve. It’s best to keep these prospecting for sales emails short— about 50 to 125 words.

3. Referrals

One of the top prospecting strategies is asking your existing and past customers to refer you to their peers if they are happy with your services. In fact, satisfied buyers are more than willing to suggest you to others. However, why should they do it? What’s in it for them? You can offer incentives for each successful referral. Some good examples are free trials, discounted product features, early event passes, and merch. Therefore, trusted sources generate targeted leads that increase your revenue chances. Also, when you attract buyers through referral programs, you cut down the consideration time since prospects already trust you.

To increase your sales prospects, you can ask your social media following to share your referral opportunities regardless of whether they are paying customers. Sometimes all people need is a trustworthy recommendation, and they are ready to move further down the pipeline.

4. Events

Conferences, trade shows, and other networking events used to be the number one choice for businesses back in the day. However, in the digital world we live in, many companies avoid these gatherings to save up on transportation costs. Instead, they organize digital events, webinars, and Q&A sessions. Nevertheless, you can’t organize or attend such symposiums without an event digital marketing strategy. Publish press releases to notify your audience that you’ll be attending a physical event and create digital promotions to boost webinar signups. If you are taking the trip to attend physical events, ensure you choose the most relevant and high-value ones. During these gatherings, you may ask people to connect with you on social media or take down their names, industries, and job titles. This way, you can identify valuable prospects.

6 Useful Techniques That’ll Help You Find The Right Prospects

1. Start With A Small List

Strategic prospecting doesn’t focus on large lists with varying levels of prospect importance. While some professionals start with narrowing down big lists, we think it’s better to create a targeted small list from the beginning. Imagine that you have gathered 200 high-quality, high-intent prospects. Your sales reps can showcase their selling skills knowing these people are interested in your offerings. The chances of converting 150–180 of them are more than realistic. It’s way more viable than talking to 1000 people and getting only 100 of them to convert. Basically, you want to spend time, money, and human resources only on those with high chances of spending their budgets.

2. Follow Up With Content

Many businesses fail to implement this sales prospecting technique, sending irrelevant and generic content. Content marketing ideas take time to produce, especially when you have to cater them to each prospect. However, it’s pivotal you take the time to address their unique pain points, explain how your product will help them, and what results they should expect. Content hooks people easily and makes them want to learn more. Examples of great content are case studies, podcasts, articles, templates, guides, and videos.

3. Book Meetings

The majority of buyers want to connect with sellers early in the sales process when they are looking for new products and collaboration possibilities. They may have stumbled upon your business while searching online and even taken action on one of your lead magnet ideas. Instead of waiting to see what they do next, you can craft an outbound prospecting strategy and start by asking to book a meeting. There is a false belief that buyers refuse cold meetings, but that’s just not true. They do accept them when your reason for contact aligns with their needs and challenges.

4. Build Strong Relationships

Making a sale isn’t a 100m sprint but a marathon requiring perseverance and patience. One of the biggest turn-offs while prospecting clients is pushing them to make up their minds. There is a right and wrong time to ask for the sale, and it’s not early in the process. What your customers need is to listen to their needs and be empathetic. This is one of the best demand generation practices that showcase your genuine interest in helping others, not just grabbing their dough. Once you provide all the content, resources, and helpful discussions, give prospects some time to think about it and then ask for the sale.

5. Be Active On Q&A Forums

The future of digital marketing isn’t all about paid ads and video marketing. It is also about creating a strong presence in online communities and Q&A forums. Platforms like Quora allow you to establish thought leadership and expertise in your niche. Publishing useful information and answering people’s burning questions helps build trust with sales prospects. Once potential buyers start seeing the value you bring, they may dig more to see who you are and what services you offer. You don’t necessarily have to promote your business on these forums. Spread your knowledge and let people come to you!

6. Use Customer Feedback

Have you ever built a market intelligence report? One of the tactics companies use to create this document is customer interviews. To succeed with targeted prospecting, you need to know what convinced your existing clients to choose your product. Ask them why they chose you over your competition, why they have stuck with you for so long, and which product features are the best. Maybe they can also mention some drawbacks that you can improve on. Therefore, you have a solid understanding of which prospecting techniques work great with your target audience and which ones you should drop.

Key Takeaway

Have we given you a solid base regarding how to find prospects for your business? We are sure you already enforce various online marketing strategies to increase your brand’s online exposure. However, following up on low-quality leads doesn’t mean that your efforts are fruitful. Your sales team needs prospects, not leads. They need decision-makers in specific industries and companies who have already warmed up to the idea of buying a solution like yours. Whether you are using inbound or outbound prospecting, the goal should remain the same: creating and promoting content that is relatable and personalized. To do that, though, you must research each prospect carefully to identify their needs, preferences, and pain points.

To create a successful prospecting campaign and accelerate business growth, you have to enforce a multi-channel approach. Emails, content, referrals, and events are great ways to gain your prospects’ interest and keep the conversation going. Don’t be afraid to request a meeting even if you haven’t built a deeply personal relationship just yet. Maybe that first meeting will be the beginning of a wonderful professional friendship. The same goes for forums and social media. So, keep engaging with your audience without being pushy.