Sales prospecting is the process of researching and qualifying potential customers (prospects) for your business. It is essential for building a healthy sales pipeline and ensuring consistent business growth.
The sales prospecting phase is crucial for our entire sales strategy and is also quite complex; we need to be able to identify prospects who genuinely need our product or service to solve their problems. It's only these types of clients that provide greater long-term value compared to those who, after closing a deal with us, decide not to continue a commercial relationship. So, what's the best way to identify these prospects?
As sales directors, we must ensure that the process our salespeople follow is similar to the following:
Conduct Focused Research. The most important aspect of sales prospecting is research: salespeople must ensure they identify prospects, understand their needs, and offer them added value through our company's product or service.
The main objectives of this phase are:
Determine if the identified prospect is correct.
Qualify and begin prioritizing various prospects based on the size of the opportunity and the value of the potential long-term relationship.
Find ways to develop a connection through building stable relationships and fostering trust.
Establish Priority Groups. Classifying our prospects based on priority can save time for our salespeople and help them better organize. While the classification will vary for each sales organization, the main idea is to create clusters of prospects ranked according to their likelihood to purchase, allowing us to focus on one cluster at a time based on priorities. The qualifying dimensions used by major lead management software are the prospect's purchase opportunity value (expressed on a scale from 0 to 100) and the importance of the business relationship within the sales process (expressed as a percentage).
The process involves classifying prospects on a scale from 0 to 100, and by multiplying the two qualifying dimensions, we obtain a score based on the priority of each prospect.
Prepare the Offer. The goal of this phase is to gather in-depth information about our prospects to refine our approach for outbound prospecting. It's crucial to determine what interests our prospects and then find a reason to connect with them, understanding the topics of interest that link your business to the prospects. In this phase, creating a decision map to outline the options and final goals of our prospect, comparing them with those of personas, can be useful.
Contact Directly. Whether it's a phone call or an email, the message must be highly tailored and customized, taking into account the prospect's context. Here are some tips to share with your salespeople:
Refer to a specific problem the prospect is experiencing with a specific solution.
Stay relevant and updated, ensuring the prospect's problem is still relevant.
Use an empathetic and human tone of voice.
Provide valuable information.
To approach our potential clients, we can consider two paths: outbound prospecting and inbound prospecting.
The main difference between the two strategies lies in the different starting mode of the sales process: with inbound prospecting, it's the potential customer who takes the first step, through a search, reading an article, participating in a webinar, or making an informative call, while with outbound, it's a sales consultant who contacts the prospect first.
But does it still make sense to choose between one approach or the other? Today, what seems to be more effective is deciding how to integrate them correctly: the methodology of inbound prospecting, integrated with a minor approach and through some outbound tactics, such as cold calling and cold outreach, can be among the most effective solutions.
This is because our world is characterized by infinite easily accessible information every time we want it, so before making a purchase decision, we rely on word of mouth, friends and social media, previous customer ratings, online analyst reports and recommendations, or media articles.
Even before a salesperson has the opportunity to contact a prospect, they are already halfway through the sales process, and yet many salespeople continue to make cold calls as if buyers were unaware. According to a Baylor University study, experienced sellers expect to spend an average of 7.5 hours cold calling before obtaining a qualified appointment.
Today, it is therefore necessary for companies and representatives to pay more attention to buyers, thoroughly studying their context and understanding who they are and what they need.
Companies that use inbound prospecting, integrated with outbound prospecting, are better positioned and achieve greater profit. It is important to mention the case of IBM, which increased sales by 400% in 2016 after implementing the Inbound sales program.
Sales prospecting, in addition to bringing a prospect deeper into the sales funnel, can be a positive experience for both sales representatives and potential customers, who, if the process is carried out correctly by balancing inbound and outbound prospecting, create a "win-win" situation for both parties, laying the groundwork for a value exchange and a stable commercial relationship.
Finding leads and prospects who genuinely need your product or service provides greater long-term value than those who, after closing a deal with us, decide not to continue a commercial relationship.
The most effective process for sales prospecting involves four main phases: researching qualified prospects, defining priority prospect groups, preparing offers based on prospect characteristics, and direct, human, and empathetic contact.
Salespeople should not choose between inbound and outbound prospecting but rather how to integrate them correctly: the methodology of inbound prospecting, integrated with outbound techniques, such as cold calling and cold outreach, can be among the best strategies.
Sales prospecting is the process of researching and qualifying potential customers (prospects) for your business. It is essential for building a healthy sales pipeline and ensuring consistent business growth.
The process includes, for example, researching qualified prospects, defining priority groups, preparing personalized offers, and direct contact.
Inbound prospecting focuses on engaging customers through content that generates attraction to your company. Outbound prospecting, on the other hand, involves a proactive approach to directly contacting potential customers, such as through cold calling or email.
It's not a matter of choosing between the two, but of how to effectively integrate them. Combining inbound with outbound techniques, such as cold calling, can offer the best results.
