Even the day we settle on Mars seems closer than reaching the bottom of the sales funnel! But efficient sales prospecting can aid you in closing sales more easily.
Sales prospecting is the crucial process of identifying and engaging with qualified leads, aiming to convert them into paying clients. Prospecting is positioned within the top of the sales funnel (TOFU) activities, immediately following lead generation.
While prospecting, sales reps focus on qualifying leads by researching and evaluating their fit for the business. This derives a conclusion on the reliability and value the prospects hold. By methodically nurturing these prospects, business drive growth opportunities that build strong relationships.
In this article, let us discuss the importance and methods of sales prospecting.
Sales Prospecting vs Lead Generation
Before diving deeper into the process of prospecting, it is essential to know the differences between two key stages at the top of the sales funnel: lead generation and sales prospecting.
- Lead Generation:
The initial step of B2B sales cycle is lead generation. Most often, marketing teams handle lead generation. The goal is to create awareness and spark an interest in the business and gather contact information of potential customers.
Marketing professionals use various channels like paid advertising, social media marketing, content marketing, SEO, and so on. The target set generated by marketing teams through qualifying leads are categorized as marketing qualified leads (MQLs).
- Sales Prospecting:
Occurs right after lead generation, sales prospecting is the stage where sales reps filter and evaluate the raw marketing qualified prospects aiming to convert them into potential customers.
B2B sales reps engage with the prospects, thoroughly understand their pain points and analyze if the product or service can solve the issue the prospects hold. Sales reps use means like cold emails, cold calls, and networking to connect with these prospects.
Leads that result by this sales process are called sales qualified leads (SQLs).
In B2B, sales prospecting happens after lead generation and has a goal of pushing high-quality leads further down the sales pipeline, improving conversion rates.
Why is Sales Prospecting Important?
According to Spotio, 67% of sales opportunities are lost due to improper lead qualification. These lost opportunities can easily cost you years of business growth, or even worse, deprive you of your current business stage.
Only strategic and data-driven sales prospecting techniques can pull your business safe to the shore. Below are some of the reasons why:
- Streamlined sales cycle
Strategic prospecting helps you streamline your B2B sales process into a more efficient and focused affair with your target audience.
- Accelerate revenue and growth
Sales prospecting helps you identify and engage with the right prospects that fit your business model, increasing revenue and growth.
- Boost productivity
Strategic sales prospecting techniques reveal the anchors that are holding back your B2B sales teams. This helps you steer clear of those anchors and lead your team towards better productivity.
- Data-driven decisions
Prospecting gives salespeople access to analytical data that is gained in the process of qualifying leads. This helps them make data-driven decisions on matters of sales.
Prospecting holds a vital place in the sales funnel. Sales prospecting involves a lot of effort and consistency.
How Sales Prospecting Works: Tips & Strategy
There are multiple ways to improve your sales cycle. But most of them start from prospecting. Here, let’s see a few sales prospecting tips and strategies to improve your prospecting process.
Define your ICP:
Identifying and defining your target audience and ideal customer profile (ICP) is a step that needs to be taken before qualifying leads. Conduct thorough research and analyze the demographics of ICPs that can work for your business. These demographics will help you understand and craft your approach in accordance with your audience.
A well-defined ICP would align with your product or solution objectives and ensures that your outreach performs the best.
Leads:
As we have discussed before about MQL and SQL, both MQL (Marketing Qualified Leads) and SQL (Sales Qualified Leads) can be pushed down the sales funnel if they are valid and have a requirement to solve the pain point that you address. But sourcing a list of leads that fit your ideal customer profile or buyer persona, needing your product or service can be a hard nut to crack.
Qualify leads:
Aggregate both the SQL and MQL leads, engage in leads research and qualifying leads to the next steps. Know if those leads are fit for your company profile and if they have the potential to become paying customers in the future.
Outreach:
Deciding on outreach strategies hinges upon your business model and the profiles of your ideal customers. The usual outreach methods that sales reps prefer are cold calling, cold emailing, LinkedIn networking, and a few more. These allow tailored engagement with prospects and position the goal of your business in front of them.
Convert leads into prospects:
Once the outreach is done, analyze and be prepared to shoot personalized follow-up messages to those who have shown interest or at least checked out your business through your outreach efforts.
A study by Invesp revealed that five or more follow-up phone calls while cold calling, have had a success rate of more than 80%.
And the same study showed that nearly half of all sales professionals (48%) never make any follow-up attempts and 44% of salespeople give up after a single follow-up attempt in their cold calling process.
The irony though!
Bailing on follow-ups is like letting all your efforts die with no regrets. Following up 2-5 days after the first engagement can bring better results.
To help you prospect better, there are dedicated prospecting tools in the market that can be used by salespeople.
Top Sales Prospecting Tools
Zintlr
With the potential to become one of your biggest assets while prospecting, Zintlr is a B2B sales intelligence platform that gives you access to a diverse contact database and an extension with access to over 250 million contact information and 50 million companies. Zintlr can supercharge your prospecting with accurate and reliable contact information while also enabling you to personalize your sales strategy and sales pitch with detailed personality analysis of your prospects.
Features to look for:
- Personality Analysis
- Chrome Extension
- Accurate and real-time data
- Advanced filters
Zintlr chrome extension will allow you to connect with any of your prospects on the fly. Zintlr leverages the use of AI, transforming the B2B sales intelligence landscape forever.
Apollo.io
Apollo.io is a B2B sales database provider who has combined comprehensive data with powerful tools like sales engagement and automation. It seamlessly integrates with your marketing or sales workflows, empowering teams to streamline their outreach and enhance productivity.
Features to look for:
- Free account
- Chrome Extension
- Call recordings
- Automated personas list
ZoomInfo
A go-to-market platform that provides contact information and company insights that equips marketing and sales teams with rich contact and company intelligence to accelerate growth. ZoomInfo can be used to align your sales and marketing teams while prospecting, optimize prospecting strategy, and improve operational efficiency.
Features to look for:
- Addon Packages
- Chrome Extension
- Data Suites
Lusha
Lusha can help you with lead management, sales intelligence, and contact information of small businesses. Lusha also is very prominent in the market for its lead intent data which finds you your ideal customers.
Features to look for:
- Intent Data
- Chrome Extension
- Data Suites
Lusha can work for all types of sales teams and help them function with more productivity.
Adding to these, there are few other notable tools like Cognism, UpLeads, EasyLeadz, Kaspr.io that can assist your sales teams in strategic prospecting and identifying potential customer personas to push purchasing decisions.
B2B sales prospecting process, though it feels impossible, can be done with the right sales strategies and prospecting tools. Follow the above tips and choose the tool that best fits your organization and connect with potential buyers at higher rates.
