Sales professionals need to be continually Prospecting, so getting good at it isn't optional, it's essential!
Unsure of where to begin? Look no further, as we have compiled a comprehensive list of the most effective prospecting techniques to ensure you are covering all aspects of your sales strategy!
Prior to diving head first into prospecting, it is crucial to dedicate time to researching your prospects. This will ensure that they align with your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and that you have gathered sufficient information to tailor your outreach effectively. Personalising your outreach will give you for better results.
Even if your prospect seem like a good fit for your ICP, it is essential to have the answers to these types of questions -
Research can be a daunting task, especially when you need to scour the web, pour over LinkedIn, and blog articles to find valuable information. It's possible to streamline this process with the assistance of ChatSpot.
ChatSpot helps you dive deep into company data like funding rounds, locations and technologies used, saving you time with valuable information gathered in one place.
Begin your initial outreach with a concise and targeted approach aimed at addressing specific issues [relevant to each Buyer Persona] with a tailored solution. Utilise insights gathered during the research phase to connect the prospect's current challenges or goals with your offering, ensuring your message is not only relevant but also engaging.
Psychographics takes things to the next level. Originally introduced over 50 years ago, psychographics empowers sales and marketing teams to create precise strategies that target specific audiences based on psychological factors.
Companies use psychographic data to drive revenue by understanding what emotionally resonates with their audience and delivering relevant, compelling messaging.
While psychographics first emerged in consumer behaviour research, today B2B sales teams are leveraging this data to personalise engagement with key personnel and management within their target accounts.
Next step is active Outreach. Is it Inbound, Outbound, or a blend of the two?
Inbound is where the leads come directly to your business. Typically, these leads are generated through form submissions (but could be other sources such as webinars, etc.) and then directed to a sales representative to follow up. Inbound prospects are already familiar with your business and are actively seeking a solution.
With Outbound Sales, sales teams use various strategies for lead generation, including cold calling, LinkedIn messages and cold emails. Let's explore the top B2B Prospecting Methods.
Social Selling has become the talk of the town, thanks to the ever-evolving buyer's journey and the widespread use of social media platforms. It's all about using these platforms to connect with prospects, nurture relationships, and ultimately drive those sales numbers up.
Social sellers can build trust and credibility in the digital realm by sharing valuable content, engaging in industry conversations, and actively listening to customer feedback.
Choose a suitable platform for your business and build long-term relationships with prospects by sharing valuable content, infographics, industry trends and commenting on posts.
In the B2B sector, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter are commonly utilised. These platforms are ideal for locating your target audience as they are frequently active there. By strategically utilising platforms that B2B prospects and customers are active on, sales reps can effectively nurture leads, showcase their expertise and establish a robust online presence that resonates with their target audience.
LinkedIn Automation helps you expand your sales funnel and increase your sales pipeline with the ability to focus on social selling, build campaigns to 1st, 2nd or 3rd degree connections, send personalised messages and synch with HubSpot, making it a real game changer for sales folk that currently spend a lot of time prospecting on LinkedIn.
We know online interactions heavily influence decision-making and mastering the art of social selling can provide sales professionals with a competitive advantage and unlock new opportunities for growth and success.
Visit our blog article on social selling and how to use the VECE framework for an in-depth look at what Social Selling is and what it isn't!
Email is a powerful tool that is both cost-effective and quick to use. By sharing valuable information about your business through emails, you can showcase the value of your product or service to customers.
Email outreach helps keep your product or business at the top of your consumers' minds. Establish and nurture relationships with your customers by providing them with informative content.
Note: Be mindful of email deliverability - you don't want to damage your domain reputation with emails that are considered spam. Email campaigns that have a high bounce rate can also damage your domain reputation so it's important to keep your CRM update to date..
Cold calling can be very difficult. Warm calling is a better and more effective strategy for securing appointments with key decision-makers in your target accounts.
Warm Calling entails contacting prospects with whom your business already has a connection or prior interaction. Typically, this means speaking to individuals you've previously engaged with.
To capture your prospect's attention, it's essential to have a compelling message ready, so take the time to truly understand their business, their challenges and preferences.
Exploring your prospect's social media profiles and website can uncover valuable insights to personalise your approach. Look for common ground, whether it's a shared interest, connection, or group, to establish a meaningful connection.
Depending on whether they have opened their emails or social media messages, it is important to reinforce brand awareness. These leads are easier to nurture and convert later in the sales pipeline.
Using the Double Tap technique is one great way to boost your response rate when making warm calls. This involves following up your initial call with another form of communication, such as an email, LinkedIn message, or video. Showing your determination and persistence with the Double Tap method is sure to catch your prospect's eye!
NO MORE “where is your pain?” or “what keeps you up at night”
Successful sellers do the research so they know the answers to these questions before calling any prospect
Content marketing is the process of planning, creating, distributing, sharing, and publishing valuable and relevant content via channels such as social media, blogs, websites, podcasts, apps, press releases, print publications, and more. The goal is to reach your target audience and increase brand awareness, sales, engagement, and loyalty.
According to HubSpot research, 70% of companies use Content Marketing in various forms. Useful content types include blog posts, paid ads, social media posts, infographics, checklists, videos, ebooks, webinars, and podcasts.
This type of content can be helpful to share not only in nurture campaigns but also with your prospects in your sales campaigns.
Direct mail can create impactful experiences that establish trust and captivate decision-makers and c-suite executives.
In addition to boosting response rates, direct mail offers a unique opportunity for creativity and establishing a personal connection. Unlike email and text messaging, direct mail does not require initial permission for GDPR compliance. Therefore, if reaching a customer via email is not feasible, you can still engage them with a personalised message and thoughtful or quirky gift through direct mail.
Direct mail is a great way to initiate an account-based sales campaign. However, due to higher costs, focusing on larger, more lucrative accounts is advisable.
Referral prospecting is all about leveraging your existing network of contacts, clients, and business partners. Begin by identifying individuals who may have connections to the prospects you are targeting (such as business associates, strategic partners, or clients) and kindly request an introduction. You can do this by making a phone call or in person which leads us to networking...
Networking, like sales prospecting, is a process and not an event. It takes time to develop a network, especially if you’re new to the working world or still trying to establish yourself in your industry. Identify your reasons for networking. Is it to find new business, contacts or introductions, or is it to retain and build existing relationships? Identify the people you should network with. Do you know the names of the people you need to develop better relationships with? If you haven’t already met them, can you arrange to meet them?
A community for Sales Professionals to ask questions and share tips on all things Sales. Listen to other sales folk comment on their current challenges, top tips, and burning questions.
Visit SpokeSpeak to send us your questions, comments and tips...
Your CRM is like a secret weapon in your sales arsenal. By integrating automation tools into your prospecting strategy, you can nurture leads effectively and share valuable content faster.
These tools streamline the process of distributing content, managing customer relationships, and engaging with prospects on social media platforms. They work together seamlessly with your website to guide potential customers through the sales funnel, ensuring that they are well-informed and ready to make a purchase. With a high lead score indicating their interest, it's the perfect time to close the deal and seal the sale.
Using Sales Hub you can keep on top of your daily prospecting tasks with the dedicated Prospecting Workspace. Calling, email, video and research all in one place makes much more sense than jumping from one system to another!
Without marketing automation, you are shooting without aim. Close ratios tend to be higher for leads that are nurtured over time and when you are viewed as a thought leader.
To get started, consider taking an integrated approach to generating, nurturing, and converting leads into customers by automating various sales and marketing processes to optimise your pipeline. Import your contacts into your marketing automation software, (HubSpot smart CRM comes to mind 😍) and segment each group with the criteria that are important for your business. Identify the goal of your conversion points and highest needs, and create engaging content for each stage of the buying process.
One critical element of your prospecting is the availability and the quality of your data. Getting access to clean, precise, and reliable data is vital to making a connection with your prospects. This is where tools like Clearbit are invaluable. The first HubSpot Native Data Provider, Clearbit, goes beyond enrichment and is now supercharged with AI, Clearbit records, scores, routes and reveals buying intent from your visitors. Gold dust for B2B sales teams! LinkedIn is a good place to start the search for B2B prospects, helping you validate your data and carry out research.
List Building is a key task for anyone involved in prospecting. There are a variety of methods and tools (Clearbit, Apollo, Cognism, Zoominfo, LinkedIn, etc.) you can use to build prospect lists. While starting to build lists with spreadsheets is an option, it's not the most scalable solution. Purchasing lists is an option for some businesses, but it often leads to issues with poor-quality data.
A more effective approach is to create your own lists. even though it can be time-consuming and tedious, it is a valuable and essential task.
The main success factors to list building are:
Establishing clear objectives is crucial for evaluating progress. Developing a daily strategy will guide you in determining the most effective B2B prospecting techniques to prioritise. By time-blocking, you ensure that you have dedicated, uninterrupted periods specifically allocated for prospecting. This is key as an ad-hoc approach to prospecting is a recipe for disaster.
Use SMART Goals - they must be Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Realistic, and Time-Bound
Having many leads may seem appealing, but their true value diminishes if they aren't progressing through your pipeline. That's why focusing on a select group of high-quality, engaged prospects is more beneficial. While cultivating quality leads requires time and effort, your B2B sales team will appreciate the impact of prioritising quality over quantity, especially when they experience a boost in their closing rate.
By filtering out low-quality leads, you can enhance productivity, expedite the sales cycle, and streamline your sales pipeline.
Fuelled by digital interactions and cutting-edge technology, a Multi-threaded outreach strategy efficiently coordinates interactions with diverse buyers, delivering personalised support and seamless communication. Stakeholders receive customised assistance by aligning messaging with individual needs along their distinct purchasing journeys.
This strategy puts the customer at the centre and opens up multiple avenues to advance a deal, as salespeople are not confined to communicating with just one stakeholder. Building relationships with multiple contacts in a single account is a smart move that can lead to greater success in closing deals.
Multi-channel outreach is the process of using multiple sales channels to reach out to your sales leads. For example, your first point of contact could be a cold email. Then, you send them an Email on LinkedIn or a cold call on their office direct dial. This is where the concept of multi-channel outreach comes into play – a strategy that leverages multiple communication channels to engage, inform, and build relationships with your audience.
Example
Accelerate your campaigns and improve success rates by combining Multi-Threading and Multi-Channel outreach is the same campaign.
NOTE: Engaging this powerful duo in the same campaign does, however, increase the risk of errors. Navigating the complexities of combining multi-threading strategies with multi-channel outreach can pose challenges in managing your strategies effectively. Accordingly, it's crucial to have the appropriate tools in place to streamline operations and prevent mistakes from spoiling your efforts!
This type of campaign is easily set up and managed in HubSpot Sales Hub.
Be prepared for what prospects often say when they push back on your messaging.
Balance is key. Adopt a helpful not pushy approach and your prospect will be more open to continuing the conversation.
It's crucial to follow up promptly as it plays a vital role in closing deals successfully. Some sales opportunities are missed because of delays in responding to leads or prospects showing interest. While some may hesitate to follow up, being proactive is key to sealing the deal and should be a priority for all of us.
From Lead Generation Campaigns, Go To Market Strategy, defining Ideal Customer Profile, Pricing and Packaging review and Sales Process audit, we guide you on what to do and how to do it. And, show you how Sales Hub could be a great option for your sales team...
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