Master in sales prospecting: Know tips techniques and tools; The prospects you want to sell to – are the fuel for your sales pipeline. Each perspective represents a possible deal. So, increasing your potential customer base and working to nurture them will increase your revenue.
Master In Sales Prospecting: Tips Techniques and Tool
While prospecting is essential, sometimes it can feel like you’re just wishing and hoping that the right people will come along. So let’s see how to make prospecting a science – less like drilling for oil and more like supplying gas.
What is sales prospecting?
Prospects are potential customers, and prospecting is finding potential customers. So, sales reps use prospecting to expand the size of their potential customer base. They will reach out to leads (potential sales contacts) and nurture them on “opportunities” (leads that have warmed up over time).
Several sales prospecting techniques include:
- Making calls to sending direct mail.
- Attending networking events.
- Connecting on social platforms like LinkedIn.
So, how do I find new sales prospects?
So, we could talk about all the different platforms, but let’s be realistic. When it comes to prospecting customers online, LinkedIn is the biggest game in town. So here are tips sales prospecting techniques to get started:
- Follow the lead before connecting: So, unless you’re sending InMail, which is a sponsored message, you’ll need to connect with potential customers before you can send messages on LinkedIn. Start by following them. You can start commenting, liking, sharing their status updates and entering their world. So, if they think you’re providing value, they’ll be more likely to respond to a connection request.
- Find them in groups: Joining a group your prospect is active in can provide a shortcut to connect. So, look for the groups they belong to on their profile and see if there are any that also make sense to join. You can then contact the group’s posts. Even if you can’t reply directly, you can still receive email notifications for top comments in the group. This is a great way to access your inbox directly.
- Cheer them up: Everyone wants to go viral. So track potential customer activity and help increase engagement. So, this is a great way to show that you are interested in your prospect’s ideas. You can also see the information they highlight on their profile – such as courses, presentations, and so thought leadership – and “endorse” them for the skills that matter most to them.
How has the sales perspective changed?
Prospecting used to be a volume game. Salespeople could make 200 calls a day, send out bursts of emails, and know that enough of them would be worth it.
Cold reach is still an important puzzle, but sales development reps (SDRs) and sales reps will need to balance high quantity reach with targeted quality reach. Here’s why:
- The new perspective isn’t waiting by the phone like it used to be: Potential customers are spread across digital platforms—mostly LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and messaging apps—and have strong opinions about where they like to communicate.
- New perspectives are flooded with more information than ever before: Our mailbox has never been so full. So first, in a trend that the Economist calls “probably email,” meetings are getting shorter – 20 percent shorter, according to the Harvard Business School study. This is because conversations that used to take place in meetings are now conducted via email. Second, the same study showed that and sent more emails during the pandemic (up 5%) – more average recipients (up 3%), and after-hours (up 8%) %). And so the question is, how do you get people’s attention when their inboxes are overflowing?
- The new perspective wants more from interactions: The intense and shared experience of the pandemic has taught us to go beyond the surface layer. To grab a prospect’s attention, you need to be authentic and relevant.
What are sales prospecting techniques?
The prospects you want to sell to – are the fuel for your sales pipeline. Each perspective represents a possible deal. So, increasing your potential In most organizations, prospecting is at the beginning of the sales process. But they can build prospecting processes differently. So whether you’re creating a new prospecting plan or your current strategy needs updating, here are 10 actionable tips sales prospecting techniques to create a successful process.
1 – Define the ideal customer profile (ICP)
So, you might be surprised at how many sales leaders don’t profile their ideal audience. And still-
The ICP tells you whether the person you are trying to reach is likely to buy your product or not!
You can start to define an ideal client based on their location, company size, and budget. Then refine the profile quarterly as you learn more about the prospect.
Once you know who fits your overall target market, it’s easy to focus your exploration techniques on the right target to save time and money. Targeted ICP usually means better lead quality and higher conversion rates.
2 – Do your research
And knowing as much as possible about your potential customers before contacting them is an essential step in the customer acquisition strategy process.
LinkedIn is great because all the information you need is on one screen. Then rate them to ensure that prospects meet your ICP standards. So, for example, you can check if they are already using your competitors.
In addition to trying to market to them, don’t forget to find ways to connect with potential customers.
3 – Understand the company’s internal structure
Understanding the company’s internal structure is one of the most important tactics in B2B prospecting and is often overlooked. So, to increase your chances of closing a deal, you need to connect with people at different levels of your business. It is helpful to understand who is who and who reports to whom.
You can start prospecting for juniors and middle managers to understand the company’s pain points better. This will help you adapt your sales pitch when you speak to decision-makers at the top of the company ladder. This prospecting tactic is used in corporate sales and can also be used in small and medium-sized business prospecting.
4 – Set your goals before contacting us
Having a clear goal before you start prospecting in business helps you set the stage for achieving it. For example, the goal is not always to close a deal; it could be to set up a meeting or schedule a sales demo.
For example, if you reach out to a cold outlook (who has never heard of your company), your goal may be to build a relationship with them. Potential customers want to make sure that the company they are dealing with is trustworthy. They tend to trust the organizations they have had good relationships.
5 – Discover potential customer pain points
During a discovery call, it’s important to ask the right questions to gather information about a prospect’s needs. Focus on understanding the problems they’re working on and what’s going well for them. You can ask if metrics fluctuate and how this affects team performance.
When calling potential customers, don’t try to tell them everything about your product. Instead, actively listen to their answers and connect the dots, positioning your product as the answer.
Promotional methods like this allow you to emphasize the benefits of the product rather than its general characteristics without sounding too aggressive.
6 – Take advantage of sales triggers
Taking advantage of sales triggers is a great tip for sales prospecting, sales triggers are events that create an opening for contacting prospects, such as a prospect promotion, new funding round, mergers, etc. Then, of course, the trick is to identify them! But once you do, you can better engage prospects and ensure higher conversion rates down the funnel.
So, how do prospects use sales triggers?
You can track it manually, but it will take longer. To do this, we recommend using technology. Prospector’s flagship tool has many event-based triggers built into the platform.
7 – Build your brand
Here’s a great prospecting idea—Your potential buyers visit all kinds of social media channels, so you’re missing out if you’re not there. It does not replace other B2B sales prospecting activities but complements them. For example, about 82% of customers say they look for suppliers on lead sources like LinkedIn before responding to their contact.
So, you start by creating a social media profile and interacting with your connections or followers. When you share valuable content with them, it increases your brand awareness. People have started to trust your expertise and are eager to hear your recommendations.
8 – Get support from all departments
When prospecting for large organizations, you will need to be more strategic. So, you may need to talk to different people in different departments, for example, RevOps, sales, and legal. The trick is to get them to approve your product before demonstrating it.
During your research phase, use what you discover to develop a personalized outreach for each team. By all means, use cold calling scripts and email templates, but don’t stick to them rigidly. Instead, always adapt your approach to make it relevant.
9 – Be active in the sales prospecting process
Be active is a great tip for sales prospecting and be prepared that not all conversations with potential customers will lead to the desired results for you. According to a Gartner survey, it can take 18 calls to contact the buyer. Therefore, you need to have as many conversations as possible. There is no shortage of information for you to know. From the company’s key decision-makers to the tools they are currently using and the problems they are having.
This is especially important when contacting a company. In this case, the best advertising strategy is to contact the junior staff all at once. Moreover, all you need to do is respond to one or two of them.
10 – Evaluate your results
So, this is a crucial step in the sales prospecting process as it tells you which tactics deliver the best results. Then, you will be able to focus on the most profitable ones and find areas for improvement.
Analyzing the results helps you understand what drives potential customers to convert and reset your ICP every quarter. You can also evaluate each interaction with potential customers and think about what went right and what went wrong.
