Sales Prospecting

Sales prospecting is a marketing approach that involves defining, researching, and engaging prospective customers to convert these leads into paying customers. This process is an essential part of every sales cycle as it helps identify people interested in a company’s product or service.

In this article, we’ll unveil why prospecting is important in sales, review some crucial statistics, and figure out how sales prospecting works. We’ll also discover some effective techniques, tools, and tips.

Why is prospecting important in sales?

The success of every business depends on the number of customers it has and the purchases they make. Prospecting is essential for generating leads and converting them into consumers. It enables business owners to create a pipeline of clients for their brands. In addition to establishing a customer base, the process helps build trusting relationships with potential customers.

Through prospecting, sales representatives send emails, make cold calls, and reach potential customers at events to expand the company's customer base. The more qualified leads they acquire, the higher the conversion rate.

Prospecting is a complex process that involves finding potential customers, interacting with them through the most effective channels, and encouraging them to buy. Email campaigns, calls, events, and social media networks are the touchpoints for communication with prospects.

Before contacting leads, sales reps should conduct research, qualify prospects, and create a personalized sales pitch. Going through all the stages is crucial for finding common ground and establishing strong relationships with potential clients. Prospecting helps understand leads’ needs, preferences, problems, and interests, enabling them to communicate a relevant offer. When sales reps reach potential customers with a personalized pitch, they increase the chances of conversion.

Now that you know some key facts, let's support them with real statistics that highlight the importance of implementing sales prospecting for your business.

Sales Prospecting Statistics

The importance of sales prospecting can be supported by statistics which we’ll review in this section. These insights will highlight the effectiveness of different techniques and help you understand trends and best practices. Here are some crucial sales prospecting statistics to pay close attention to:

• 96% of potential customers search for information about businesses and their products before communicating with salespeople;
• 71% of leads choose independent research over interactions with sales representatives;
• 63% of sales teams incorporate cold outreach;
• the initial follow-up email campaigns can improve reply rates by 49%;
• 72% of businesses use social media to search for new potential customers;
• 37% of sales specialists generate the most prospects using phone calls.

Now that you know what sales prospecting is, it’s time to figure out how it works to start implementing it into your strategy.

How does sales prospecting work?

Since sales prospecting can be a complex and time-consuming process, it’s necessary to understand how it works to use all the techniques and tools correctly. We’ll discover it in this section.

Sales prospecting starts with the company’s urgent need to identify and attract new prospects. Using various platforms and approaches, sales representatives effectively identify and qualify prospects. After scoring the likeliness of conversion, marketers focus on qualified leads. They research each of them to find personalized approaches encouraging more buys. Sales reps reach out to leads for the first time using LinkedIn and other social media, cold calling and emailing. They then focus on nurturing leads by providing relevant content and maintaining consistent follow-ups.

Now that you know how sales prospecting works, it’s time to differentiate it from lead generation.

Sales Prospecting vs Lead Generation

Sales prospecting and lead generation are two essential processes that businesses rely on for success. Although both aim to attract prospects to a company, they are often misinterpreted and used interchangeably. However, they differ in their objectives and approaches.

Sales prospecting is a proactive approach that focuses on identifying potential customers and reaching out to them through various channels. It involves cold calling and emailing, using social media networks, organizing or participating in industry events, webinars, conferences, trade shows, etc. This process aims at identifying and qualifying potential customers, initiating the first contact, building relationships with leads, and encouraging them to take action to move down the sales funnel.

Lead generation is the process of capturing attention and converting people who show interest in your product into prospects. It focuses on driving attention to a company's product and collecting their contact data for further interaction and marketing campaigns. During lead generation, businesses usually gather customers’ email addresses and phone numbers to nurture and qualify them.

Now that you know the difference, we’ll uncover the best sales prospecting techniques, which are slightly different from those for lead generation. So, let’s explore.

13 Sales Prospecting Techniques

We’ll provide you with a list of the most effective techniques that prevent you from racking the brain on how to start with prospecting. Let’s have a look!

1. Use lead magnets. By offering potential customers valuable resources such as eBooks, free trials, and templates, you can encourage them to share their contact data in exchange. To make this approach effective, you need to ensure that your lead magnet is relevant and useful and resonates with your target audience’s needs and challenges.
2. Create useful Reels for social media. Useful content on Instagram and TikTok has the potential to go viral, allowing you to expand your reach and establish brand awareness and visibility at no cost. The more users who view your videos, the more potential customers you can attract.
3. Run paid ads on search engines and social media networks. As ads become increasingly popular for establishing brand awareness and capturing leads, they are worth considering for your business. Sponsored content allows you to reach your target audience and effectively communicate your message. Additionally, consider partnering with opinion leaders to gain exposure and increase your following base.
4. Introduce your brand to prospects. First, you need to initiate the first contact with your potential clients to set the stage for warm calls and email campaigns. You can achieve this through shared connections, paid ads, or influencer recommendations. This way, your brand’s name will be familiar to leads before you make direct contact.
5. Make calls. If your potential clients are already familiar with your brand and the product you offer, it becomes easier to make warm calls. These calls help you explain your product's benefits and increase the chances of conversions by communicating with prospects in real time. Calls allow you to provide personalized offers based on customers' needs and problems. By listening to their requirements directly over the phone, you can work together to find the perfect solution.
6. Send email campaigns. Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing channels, enabling you to reach potential consumers with news, product releases, and attractive offers based on browsing history and wishlists. With email campaigns, you can send targeted offers that meet customers’ needs. Platforms like SendPulse empower you to create professional, personalized emails and schedule them to reach the right clients at the right moment.
7. Demonstrate your expertise. To earn the credibility and trust of prospects, you need to show that your product and company offer the best solution available. If you aim to become an opinion leader in your industry, consider running a blog, creating guest posts, and speaking at webinars, trade shows, and other events. This approach will help you establish brand recognition.
8. Use social media networks as a medium. With more people using social media to search for brands, listen to product recommendations, and make purchases, consider prospecting through these channels. Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok serve as valuable sources of information about prospects, tools for communication, and promotion channels for your products. Social media allows you to gather essential information about customers and reach them with highly targeted offers. Paid ads can enhance this approach by using targeted advertising to reach people based on specific criteria. For instance, if you sell pizza in one specific city, the ad will communicate the message to prospects from this city with a related search history.
9. Implement a referral program. Referral marketing is a wise way of attracting qualified leads with minimal intervention from your sales reps. If your existing customers view your brand positively, they will naturally recommend it to friends and family. Encourage participation by offering incentives to both current and potential clients. For instance, you can motivate new customers to make their first purchase by offering additional benefits. As a result, you attain high-quality leads by spending little money on the lead generation process.
10. Consider hosting a webinar. Webinars allow you to reach a wider audience and attain more prospects for your brand. They allow you to position your company as an industry expert and highlight your competitive advantages. By engaging with the audience and demonstrating the benefits of your product, webinars offer a cost-effective method for generating qualified leads and building brand awareness.
11. Represent your company at various events. Attending trade shows, conferences, and industry-specific events can significantly boost your brand’s recognition. Start by identifying the events related to your industry and participate in them. This provides an opportunity to connect with individuals interested in your product. Engage with prospective customers face-to-face, present to a wide audience, and showcase what sets your product apart. By demonstrating your product effectively, you'll enhance your chances of converting attendees into customers.
12. Monitor Q&A forums. Forums are excellent channels for educating your audience and engaging with prospects. Platforms like Quora and LinkedIn Groups are ideal for this purpose. Search for questions related to your industry and provide insightful answers. Begin by offering valuable tips and guidance, and gradually introduce your product. By building trust and demonstrating your expertise, you can effectively position your product as the best solution to their problems.
13. Use Twitter for communication. Twitter is a great social media network where you can discuss topics and share opinions. With Twitter, you can establish relationships with your prospects and build brand awareness. To discuss a topic, interest, or trend, you should use a specific hashtag. Consider joining a chat based on the product you offer by searching for an appropriate hashtag. Chat runners share the topic of the discussion under a specific hashtag, and users provide their opinions and questions under this chat hashtag.

Knowing the techniques is just the beginning. To achieve your key goals in sales prospecting, it's essential to understand and follow the process step by step. We invite you to explore this process in detail to ensure you implement it effectively.

Sales Prospecting Process

Sales prospecting is a process that should be strategically developed to convert as many people into leads as possible. To effectively navigate this process, follow this detailed guide.

1. Identify the characteristics of your ideal customer. Begin by defining your ideal customers based on industry, company size, location, job title, and buying behavior. This helps in tailoring personalized solutions. Analyze existing customer data to identify common traits and create an ideal customer profile for targeted prospecting.
2. Outline a prospect list. Identify prospects that match your ideal customer profile. You can do it by incorporating different platforms like CRM and other sources. Segment these prospects based on relevant criteria to streamline your outreach efforts.
3. Search for information about your potential customers. Research each of your potential customers to collect all the essential information and personalize your interactions with them. You can take advantage of LinkedIn, websites, news articles, and social media.
4. Make initial contact with prospects. Establish initial interaction through various methods, such as cold calling, cold emailing, or other channels like social selling and networking. Connect with prospects on LinkedIn and attend industry events, conferences, and trade shows to engage with potential customers and educate them about your product.
5. Nurture leads. Engage with leads using the preferred channels and techniques to provide value and address prospects’ concerns. Publish blog posts, articles, and case studies on your site. Use email campaigns to highlight product benefits and keep your brand top-of-mind. Personalize your messages based on customer insights to maintain relevance.
6. Qualify potential customers. Assess whether a lead is a good fit for your product using frameworks like BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timing) or CHAMP (Challenges, Authority, Money, Prioritization). Score leads based on their interest and potential to purchase.
7. Organize product demonstrations. For qualified leads, arrange discussions or demonstrations to showcase your product in detail. Tailor your presentation to address the leads' specific needs and challenges. Ensure your team is prepared to answer questions and handle objections.
8. Follow up with leads. After demonstrations or meetings, send follow-up emails summarizing key points and outlining the next steps. Continue to provide valuable content and use CRM tools like SendPulse to monitor interactions and set up automated follow-ups with Automation 360.
9. Close the deal. When leads are ready to purchase, present a clear and compelling proposal or contract. Negotiate terms and conditions to finalize the agreement and move forward.

Now that you understand the sales prospecting process, explore the techniques tailored for B2B companies to optimize your approach.

B2B Sales Prospecting Techniques

B2B sales prospecting involves identifying, interacting, and negotiating with decision-makers. To enhance your efficiency in this process, consider employing the following techniques.

• Develop referral programs. Create referral programs to attract qualified business clients. Encourage satisfied business customers and partners to refer new prospects in exchange for attractive incentives. This approach helps you acquire high-quality leads while minimizing customer acquisition costs.
• Participate in online and offline events. Engage in webinars, trade shows, conferences, and other industry-related events to connect with potential clients. By presenting your product and its benefits directly to a wide audience, you can generate interest and foster valuable connections.
• Use LinkedIn and other social media. Take advantage of LinkedIn's advanced search filters and other valuable features to search for potential customers. Publish relevant content and join industry-specific LinkedIn groups to build connections and engage with prospects. Utilize other social media platforms to reach and interact with your target audience effectively.
• Leverage account-based marketing. Prioritize high-value accounts by tailoring marketing campaigns to their specific needs and concerns. Use personalized email, SMS campaigns, product recommendations, and chatbots to address their pain points and capture their interest.
• Add lead magnets. Enhance your landing pages with lead magnets such as eBooks, checklists, or whitepapers. Offer valuable resources in exchange for contact information to attract and capture more leads from search engines.
• Use video marketing. Create engaging video content for social media and YouTube to showcase your product’s benefits visually. Videos can effectively communicate your value proposition quickly, reducing the need for lengthy explanations and addressing potential objections.
• Consider cold emailing. Personalize your cold email campaigns based on insights about your leads, including their preferences and behaviors. A tailored approach increases the likelihood of your emails being opened and engaged with.

In addition to these B2B sales prospecting techniques, make sure to leverage LinkedIn to connect with decision-makers and further enhance your outreach efforts.

How to use LinkedIn for sales prospecting?

If done right, Leveraging LinkedIn for sales prospecting can make a big contribution to your business. That’s why we’ll provide you with some valuable tips on using LinkedIn to your advantage, so let’s dive in.

• Pay attention to the “People Also Viewed” sidebar. When viewing the LinkedIn profile of a top potential customer, check the “People Also Viewed” sidebar. This feature lists similar profiles, potentially revealing more leads who could become valuable prospects.
• Research users who interacted with your posts. With a LinkedIn Premium account, you can access detailed information about users who engage with your profile and posts. Track who visits your profile and how they interact with your content, allowing you to engage new followers and guide them through the sales funnel.
• Use LinkedIn ads. Leverage LinkedIn’s advertising options to target individuals based on industry, job title, and company. Promote your best content through sponsored posts to reach a broader audience and attract more potential customers.
• Join LinkedIn groups. Find and participate in LinkedIn groups relevant to your industry or target audience. Engage in discussions, answer questions, and share valuable insights to showcase your expertise and connect with prospects.
• Build a search alert. If reaching out to specific companies is challenging, set up a search alert for job openings at those companies. Follow the company’s profile, activate the “Job Alert” feature, and stay informed about new hiring opportunities to make valuable connections with hiring managers.
• Explore competitors’ networks. To find new prospects, consider analyzing your competitors’ networks. Identify their clients and highlight the advantages of your product to attract those customers to your business.

Now that you understand how to utilize LinkedIn for lead prospecting, it’s time to explore additional channels to expand your prospect list. To enhance your efficiency, consider using specialized tools. Here’s a list of five top sales prospecting tools to consider.

SendPulse 

SendPulse is a perfect combination of eight marketing tools you can use for sales prospecting. Its CRM, landing page builder, chatbots, web push notifications, email marketing tool, and SMS service will help you collect your prospects’ contact data in one place and use it for follow-up emails and messages. The platform will be a great fit for businesses of all sizes and industries, including B2B and B2C companies.

With SendPulse’s Automation 360, can set up automated sequences of messages to target your potential customers with relevant offers and valuable content. You can create hints for salespeople in its CRM to find the right approach to these leads and successfully convert them into customers soon.

Below you can see how to add a new contact using SendPulse’s CRM.

Pricing: You can use the benefits of SendPulse’s CRM for free. It includes 4 invited users, 2 sales pipelines, 5 flows, 1 event, and 50 elements in Automation 360, and 2 boards. The cheapest paid subscription will cost you $6.40 for 1 user per account, 2 sales pipelines, 8 flows, 5 events, and 50 elements in Automation 360, 2 boards, and unlimited task templates.

Leadfeeder

Leadfeeder is a comprehensive sales prospecting tool designed for B2B companies. The platform helps you easily identify your website traffic and add users visiting your site to your prospect list. It also allows you to find the names of anonymous companies, discover which pages of your website they explored, and identify marketing channels bringing high-value prospects.

Custom feeds enable you to filter your prospects by the pages they visit, traffic source, campaign source, quality of the visit, custom tags, and tags from your CRM. Then, you can search for company information to find the emails and social profiles of decision-makers.

Below you can see an example of a custom feed with website traffic in Leadfeeder.

Pricing: The platform offers a free start with unlimited users, data from the last 7 days, and 100 identified companies. If you need to exceed the limitations, consider buying a paid plan for €99 monthly, billed annually. It covers unlimited visits, data storage, and users.

Hunter

Hunter is an email outreach service that allows you to connect with potential customers with less effort. This AI-powered platform enables you to identify the right prospects, verify, and get their contact data. Based on buyer persona, the tool provides you with a list of potential business clients. With the service, you’ll be able to implement cold emailing that works and brings quality leads. By using Hunter, you can create personalized email campaigns that resonate with prospects' needs, encouraging them to engage with your content.

The platform prevents your email campaigns from going to spam folders. It verifies your lists and sends email campaigns to your leads from your own Gmail, Google Workspace, or Outlook account for better deliverability and sender reputation.

Below you can see how to find the necessary emails by simply inserting the company’s domain, name, or site.

Pricing: The free plan gives you access to a comprehensive B2B database with advanced market segmentation and 25 searches per month. If you need more features, you can upgrade to a plan for $34 per month (billed annually). This plan includes 6,000 searches, 12,000 verifications, and allows you to reach up to 500 recipients per campaign.

Reply.io

Reply.io is a multichannel sales prospecting tool that empowers you with B2B data, real-time data search, contact enrichment, audience suggestion, and many other helpful features. The platform enables you to generate prospects using multichannel sequences with unlimited mailboxes, convert users into booked meetings, or hire AI SDR Agents to manage all these tasks for you.

Real-time data search and its advanced filters allow you to find the right potential customers, along with their emails, company info, and direct dials. You will also have access to the “reply data” B2B database with more than 89 million contacts.

Below, you can see how to find potential customers' contact data using the platform’s B2B database.

Pricing: The service offers a 14-day free trial to test its features. After the trial period, you'll need a paid plan, which costs $49 per month if billed annually. This plan includes access to 1,000 active contacts, email automation, unlimited mailboxes, email warmup, contact storage, emails, 1,000 data search credits, and a centralized inbox.

MailChimp

MailChimp is a good choice for companies of various industries and sizes. It allows you to create lead-capture forms, send lead-nurturing email campaigns, and use automation necessary for sales prospecting. Even more, the platform provides you with access to social media tools, and all the necessary analytics and reporting for seamless communication with potential customers.

When using behavior-based triggers, you can create pop-up forms and make them visible to users who perform specific actions on your website. MailChimp allows you to build exit intent or scroll pop-ups to collect potential customers' data after they explore specific elements of your website.

Below you can discover how to build a subscription form using the service.

Pricing: The service offers a free plan that includes 1,000 emails to 500 subscribers, one seat, forms, and landing pages. If you need to send more emails, a paid plan is available starting at $13 per month. This plan includes 500 contacts, 10X the contacts in email sends, 3 seats, and 3 audiences.

Now that you know how to improve efficiency by using special sales prospecting tools, it’s time to uncover the benefits of AI.

How to use AI for sales prospecting?

When you use AI for sales prospecting, you can significantly improve productivity, efficiency, and consistency across all your communication channels. We’ll uncover these and more reasons for utilizing this technology below.

Why should you use AI for sales prospecting?

More and more businesses implement AI for sales prospecting for a variety of reasons including higher lead quality, improved efficiency, better productivity, scalability, personalization, cost-effectiveness, and many more. Below you’ll find a full list of perks artificial intelligence brings to companies:

• Higher efficiency;
• More quality leads;
• Innovative techniques and approaches to customer communication;
• Competitive advantage;
• Well-thought-out decision-making process;
• Seamless data management;
• Consistency across all channels;
• Accurate sales forecasting;
• Reduced number of employees needed;
• Around-the-clock support and assistance;
• Automatic content creation;
• Messages tailored to customers’ needs;
• Repetitive tasks on autopilot;
• Higher accuracy.

Now when you might want to incorporate AI into your sales prospecting process, we’ll provide you with some excellent tools that will help you do it with a minimum effort.

3 Best AI Tools for Sales Prospecting

If you are sure you need AI for sales prospecting purposes, we invite you to explore the 3 excellent AI tools. You can discover the details of each below.

SendPulse

SendPulse is a multipurpose solution providing businesses with all the necessary tools for promotion and sales. It has everything a marketer requires for effective sales prospecting, including chatbots, web push notifications, email campaigns, pop-ups, and landing page builder. Its CRM will keep you posted regarding all the interactions with prospects.

The platform allows you to build chatbots for WhatsApp, Instagram, Telegram, and Facebook without any coding skills. Even more, you can connect the GPT model to your chatbots to provide prospects with even more proficient automated replies and help them solve additional issues.

Below you can see an example of a message sequence for the Facebook Messenger chatbot.

Pricing: SendPulse provides a free plan covering 3 chatbots, 10,000 messages across all of your chatbots, 10 variables, and 10 chatbot triggers. If you need to build more chatbots, you can purchase a paid plan starting at $8 monthly for 500 subscribers, unlimited chatbots and live chats, messages, variables for personalization, segmentation, and user data collection, triggers, and pre-made chatbot flow templates, if paid annually.

Drift (Salesloft)

Drift (Salesloft) is a marketing solution that enables salespeople to manage their communication with potential customers. With its help, you can interact with leads and act when prospects have a big intent to buy from you. The platform recommends AI-generated email content based on relevant buyer activity.

Drift allows you to identify high-quality leads and provide them with personalized experiences, boosting engagement. and increase engagement. The platform has all the necessary information about your prospects, like company name, and can send them personalized greetings.

Below you can see how to run a promotional campaign using the platform.

Pricing: The pricing for the paid plans isn’t available on the website, so you need to contact custom service for this information.

People.ai

People.ai is an AI-powered platform empowering sales teams with all the necessary tools and features for sales prospecting. It enables them to capture prospects’ data on autopilot, receive actionable insights, and align sales and marketing teams for higher efficiency and productivity.

With People.ai’s Sales AI Assistant, you can find out whether a specific deal is on or off track and receive recommendations regarding the best action to help you win the deal in the future. You can also ask the AI Assistant some other open-text questions and get answers even for complicated questions. In addition, it provides you with a bulleted action plan to mitigate any risk associated with your deals, leading you to more closed-won deals.

Below you can see how People.ai captures every interaction with prospects.

Pricing: If you want to get information about pricing, you need to contact the platform’s customer support for details.

Now that you know how to use AI for sales prospecting, let’s discover some more valuable tips to ensure the effectiveness of this process for your business.

10 Sales Prospecting Tips

In this section, we’ll unveil some effective tips to work with your potential clients successfully. By using these best practices, you’ll be able to become closer to your main business goal. So, let’s start.

1. Develop a buyer persona. Before prospecting, find out who your ideal customers are, including their needs, problems, requirements, preferences, age, gender, and occupation. Conduct research to gather the data needed to create an ideal profile. Once you have this information, you can tailor your approach to your audience. A buyer persona will guide you through the process.
2. Establish a presence on social media channels. Social media has become a part of everyone’s life. People read news, search for information, and buy products through platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Create content for these accounts, such as stories, posts, reels, and paid ads, to reach a wider audience and educate them about your product.
3. Share relevant content with your leads. To convert leads into customers, you need to demonstrate the value and benefits of your product. Use effective channels like email campaigns, landing pages, tutorials, videos, and blog posts. Send these materials directly to your leads’ inboxes. With SendPulse, you can create and send relevant email campaigns about promotions, product benefits, features, and discounts to your leads.
4. Create videos to demonstrate your product. Video is the best tool to reach your potential clients and show the real you. Instead of polished production videos, consider making informal videos with sales reps sharing information about your products and their results. Add these videos to your articles and social media accounts, and send them to prospects’ inboxes. You can explain how to start using your product, share tips and tricks, and cover new topics.
5. Improve your call strategy. Making calls is still effective when done right. Prepare your sales reps to have constructive dialogues with leads by researching their needs, issues, and requirements. Understand your prospects’ problems to offer the right solutions. Prepare your pitch and anticipate any questions prospects might have. Develop a script to guide sales reps in various situations.
6. Support your clients at every stage of their customer journey. After closing the deal, you need to follow up with your customers. Send them relevant email campaigns with products they are interested in, answer their questions, and share tutorials on how to start with the service. This way, you show customers that you care and ensure they use your product or service effectively.
7. Write scripts for different communication channels. It can be challenging for new salespeople to find the right approach and convert leads into customers without preparation. Scripts can be useful as references. While some companies avoid scripts to sound more natural, they are still helpful for new sales reps. Scripts help new salespeople use the right language, avoid pauses, and handle objections. Over time, salespeople will learn the product well enough to work without them.
8. Leverage CRM. Consider using a relationship management system like SendPulse to keep all the contact data secure in one place. By mentioning all the interactions with your prospects in your CRM, you allow your salespeople to develop a more personalized and relevant approach.
9. Use automation. Automation tools will help you run campaigns on autopilot and prevent human error. With such a platform, you’ll be able to ensure consistency across the channels and personalized offers for potential customers.
10. Stick to consistency. Prospecting can be a challenging and long process yet you should always stay consistent across all the channels. Make sure that all your marketing campaigns are aligned with your sales prospecting strategy.

Congrats, now you know what sales prospecting is and why it’s crucial. Hope that our tips and techniques will be useful when working with prospects. Use SendPulse to automate the process of capturing leads, nurturing relationships with them, and converting them into your loyal customers.

Last Updated: 28.09.2024