What is commercial prospecting?
Strategies and expert advice
If you think that commercial prospecting consists of non-stop cold calls, followed by a semi-personalised e-mail campaign and then more cold calls, you’re wrong.
The art of prospecting is constantly being revolutionised by new techniques and technologies. This allows salespeople to be more successful and save time. Read on if you are rethinking your prospecting process or planning it from scratch.
In this article, find out how to successfully prospect and win more business.
What is prospecting in sales and marketing?
Sales prospecting is the process of identifying and approaching potential customers or buyers. Salespeople prospect by communicating with targets to decide whether or not to move them into the sales funnel.
Sales prospecting is carried out on an individual basis through outbound activities, for example when a sales development representative makes a cold call, sends an e-mail or a direct message. Marketing prospecting involves tasks such as pay-per-click advertising, content marketing or newsletters.
Prospecting is generally a short-term approach aimed at :
- Start a conversation
- Qualify the prospect in or out
- Position your product as a solution to their problem
It’s easier to understand the meaning of “prospecting” in sales if we go back in history and recall the prospectors during the gold rush. Their job was to sift through the rocks looking for signs of gold. The principle of B2B sales is exactly the same.
In short, a prospect is synonymous with a potential customer. But that doesn’t mean no contact on your mailing list!
Our call center in Tunisia defines prospects as qualified contacts who can enter the sales process because they meet certain criteria defined in your company’s ideal customer profile. For example, if you sell cybersecurity services to SMEs, your prospect is a manager of a small or medium-sized organisation who can afford your solution and make the purchasing decision.
How do you go about prospecting?
To answer this question, let’s take a much closer look at the definition of prospects and differentiate between marketing and sales prospects.
Marketing leads are people who can become prospects. They are potential customers who have not confirmed their interest in your product or service. For example, they have only signed up to your mailing list.
On the other hand, prospects are further down the sales funnel because they have expressed their intention to buy. They are ready to discuss the details of your solution with sales development representatives. They are generally considered to be good prospects because they are aware of the need and more willing to communicate with sales representatives.
At this stage, you may want to discover the difference between leads and prospects and learn more about lead scoring models to increase conversion rates.
How can sales prospecting tools improve the process?
It’s no longer a question of whether technology can help the sales prospecting process, but how.
Although no software can ever replace the value of a personalised approach to sales prospecting, there are dozens of prospecting tools you can use to automate the process. They allow you to reduce repetitive and tedious tasks so that you can concentrate on closing more deals.
The best ones available help you gather accurate information about your potential buyers, qualify them, engage them meaningfully and even schedule meetings.
For example, sales prospecting software allows you to create comprehensive prospect lists that match your ideal customer profile, so your sales agents can call the right people at the right time.
When you create lists of targets to call or email, you need the most detailed and up-to-date data. Otherwise, your sales agents risk wasting time trying to reach people who left the company years ago. Poor quality prospecting data can significantly affect your team’s performance, so make sure you do your research thoroughly when looking for a B2B data provider.
How to prospect effectively
Effective prospecting campaigns can vary depending on the type of business and industry. For example, sales agents sometimes prospect warm prospects, i.e. people who have already engaged with your brand in some way. While working in other companies, they contact B2B prospects for the first time, often through cold calls.
But there are common ways of finding new prospects. If they seem too familiar, scroll down to discover some expert prospecting strategies.
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By telephone
Don’t listen to anyone who says that cold calling doesn’t work any more. It’s still a fast and effective sales prospecting technique. No less than 69% of customers accept telephone canvassing! It’s a huge opportunity for your business if it’s done right.
With the right skills, a sales agent can start a conversation with a prospect and link their product to the prospect’s problem in just a few minutes.
Where cold calls have an advantage over emails is that you can show more of the ‘human touch’. You can also have a conversation (rather than a sales pitch) where you ask questions, listen to the answers and follow up.
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By e-mail
Sending commercial e- mails is quick and one of the most profitable prospecting ideas. Once you have an e-mail model that works, you can prospect on a large scale. It can also be a precursor to a telephone call to add a more personal touch.
A useful email prospecting idea is to create email sequences that present your prospect with the benefits of your product, as opposed to the features. You can use software to set up sequences that also monitor responses on the back-end.
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Via social networks
In B2B, all your leads are on LinkedIn. It’s easy to send direct messages on LinkedIn to try and make a connection, although it can be difficult to rise above the noise.
Many sales agents succeed by recording short videos for their prospects, which they send via LinkedIn. Integrating video prospecting allows you to inject a little personality into the process and use the information you find about your prospects on LinkedIn to add personalisation.
What are the sales prospecting techniques?
In most organisations, prospecting is at the very beginning of the sales process. But they can build prospecting processes differently. Whether you’re creating a new prospecting plan or your current strategy needs updating, here are 10 sales prospecting techniques you can use to create a successful process.
1. Define the ideal customer profile
You may be surprised at the number of sales managers who don’t create a profile of their ideal target audience.
The customer profile indicates whether the person you are trying to reach is likely to buy your product or not!
You can start by defining an ideal customer based on their location, the size of their business and their budget. Then refine the profile every quarter once you know more about your prospects.
Once you know who fits your total addressable market, it will be easy to focus your prospecting techniques on the right targets to save time and money. A targeted customer profile generally means better quality leads and higher conversion rates.
2. Do your research
Knowing as much as possible about your prospect before making contact is a crucial step in the strategic prospecting process. You need to make sure that the person you are targeting is a good match for your product or service.
LinkedIn is ideal for this, as all the information you might need is all on one screen. Evaluate them to make sure they meet the criteria of your target customer profile. For example, you can check whether they already use your competitor.
Don’t forget to look for ways to establish a link with your prospect, as well as trying to sell to them.
3. Understand the company’s internal structure
This is one of the main prospecting tactics in B2B prospecting that is often overlooked. To increase your chances of closing the deal, you’ll need to contact people at different levels of the company. It helps to understand who is who and who reports to whom.
You can start prospecting juniors and middle managers to better understand the company’s weak points. This will help you tailor your sales pitch when talking to decision-makers at the top of the company. This prospecting tactic is used in corporate sales, but can also be used when prospecting for SMEs.
4. Define your objectives
Having a clear objective before you start prospecting helps you prepare the steps you need to take to get there. The objective doesn’t always have to be to close a deal, it could be to book a meeting or schedule a sales demonstration.
For example, if you are talking to a cold prospect (someone who has never heard of your company), your aim may be to establish a relationship with them. Potential customers want to be sure that the company they are dealing with is trustworthy. They tend to trust organisations with which they have established good relationships.
5. Discover the weaknesses of prospects
During a discovery call, it’s important to ask the right questions to gather information about the prospect’s needs. Focus on what they’re struggling with and what’s going well for them. You can ask if any metrics are fluctuating and what effect this is having on the team’s performance.
When you call a prospect, don’t try to tell everything you can about your product. Instead, actively listen to their answers and connect the dots to position your product as the answer.
With sales prospecting methods like these, you can highlight the benefits of your product rather than its generic features without sounding too pushy.
6. Take advantage of sales triggers
Sales triggers are events that create an opening for contact with prospects, such as the promotion of a prospect, a new round of financing, mergers, etc. The trick is to identify them! The trick is to identify them! But once you do, you can better engage prospects and ensure higher conversion rates in the funnel.
So how do you prospect using sales triggers?
Well, you can track them manually, but that will take time. It’s better to use technology to do it for you. such as prospecting tools that integrate numerous event-based triggers into its platform.
7. Build your personal brand
Your potential buyers visit all types of social media channels, so if you don’t have a presence there, you’re losing out. It doesn’t replace other B2B sales prospecting activities, but complements them. Up to 82% of customers say they look for suppliers on lead sources like LinkedIn before even responding to their contact.
You start by creating a profile on social networks and engaging with your connections or followers. When you share valuable content with them, you increase your brand awareness. People start to trust your expertise and become eager to hear your recommendations.
8. Work as a team
When canvassing large organisations, you’ll need to be much more strategic. You may need to talk to different people in different departments. The trick is to get your product approved before you demonstrate it.
Use what you discover during your research phase to develop personalised awareness for each team. By all means, use cold call scripts and email templates, but don’t stick to them rigidly. Adapt your approach each time to make it relevant.
9. Be active
Be prepared for the fact that not all conversations with prospects will have a desirable outcome for you. According to research, it may take 18 calls to make contact with the buyer! That’s why you should have as many conversations as possible. There’s no shortage of information you can uncover. From a company’s key decision-makers to the tools they currently use and the problems they have with them.
This is particularly important if you’re talking to companies. The best prospecting strategy, in this case, is to contact juniors en masse. All you need to do is get one or two of them to respond.
10. Evaluate your results
This is a crucial stage in the sales prospecting process because it tells you which tactics are giving you the best results. You can then focus on those that are the most profitable and identify areas for improvement.
Analysing the results helps you to understand what drives prospects to convert and to redefine your quarterly target customer profile. You can also evaluate each interaction with potential customers and think about what went well and what went badly.
Top tips for targeted prospecting
Even if you use the best prospecting techniques and strategies, you may find the process difficult. Some of the biggest prospecting problems salespeople face are lack of time, connecting with the wrong people and lack of research to personalise presentations.
Here are some of the best sales prospecting practices for getting more warm leads:
1. Start with a small list of prospects
Many sales professionals start with a long list of prospects and then whittle it down to a small list of actual buyers. But one of the best sales prospecting tips you’ll ever hear is to start with smaller lists of better-qualified prospects. Armed with accurate B2B data, you can create lists of potential buyers.
So instead of a list of 1,000 prospects that only generates 30 buyers, have a list of 300 people and get 200 of them to make the purchase.
2. Follow up with relevant content
When some sales fail, it may be due to the type of content you send out. The best practice in sales prospecting is to adapt sales proposals to the recipient. This means addressing your customers’ weak points right from the intro to connect with them. You can also create a prospecting cadence to better maximise engagement and reach targets.
3. Know when to stop chasing prospects
This may not seem like the best sales prospecting advice at first glance. Some salespeople still see disqualifying prospects as a step backwards. But it is a breakthrough. If you notice that a prospect isn’t right for you, you can focus your attention on opportunities that have better conversion potential.
This doesn’t just mean walking away from a potential customer when they haven’t replied to your e-mail – it’s another reason for a faster pace of prospecting! Prospecting also means setting criteria for not pursuing a lead. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved.
4. Update your customer profiles every quarter
Sometimes sales prospecting doesn’t work because you don’t update your ideal customer profile. For example, you may identify SMEs as your potential buyers. Over time, however, this may turn out to bring more value to your business.
The best way to improve prospecting is to collect and analyse qualitative and quantitative data. For example, you can calculate customer lifetime value or talk to the customer support team. They know exactly who is really buying and which customers are the most loyal to your product or service.
5. Plan your calls
Planning your calls is important for two reasons. Firstly, it helps you to better involve the decision-maker. Secondly, it reduces any anxiety you might feel before picking up the phone. You can use a cold call script if you don’t have much prospecting experience.
It’s easier to plan what you’re going to say if you assume that the prospects you’re calling have similar goals and challenges to your existing customers. To make better assumptions about your potential buyers, you can join industry associations, subscribe to their newsletters and join their LinkedIn groups.
How do you measure the success of a sales prospect?
Each organisation will focus on slightly different sales prospecting metrics for sales agents, but here are some ways to measure the success of your outbound prospecting:
- Activity-based metrics: dials per day, emails per day, time spent on the phone.
- Results-based metrics: number of qualified leads (SQL) generated, number of meetings scheduled, number of booked meetings held.
- Prospecting guide
Telephone prospecting: complete guide