Here are the finest 5 B2B prospecting strategies and best practices that you may use to expand your B2B business.
Strengthening your B2B prospect lists with the B2B Sales Prospecting Strategies to Grow Your Pipeline guide Identify the best prospecting strategies for attracting the suitable customers.
Prospecting is an essential part of every B2B sales team's job, but finding the proper customers and avoiding wasting time on those who aren't likely to purchase requires some forethought.
In this post, we'll discuss some of the most effective methods of prospecting available to today's sales teams.
1. Prospect lists for the B2B market
List of contacts and firms that are likely to be interested in your product or service, which offers your sales staff a sense of where they should be focusing their efforts. Typically, a database or CRM platform like Salesforce is used to build up and manage prospect lists, which may be updated when additional information is obtained about the prospects.
First, you must choose which firms and customers to target before you can begin the process of building a prospect list. A good place to start is by creating ideal client profiles and buyer personas.
What sectors and verticals are most likely to make use of your solution? Identify certain industry verticals.
Are you working for a large corporation, a small or medium-sized firm, or a start-up company? How many people work here?
Income per year: Another common way to gauge a company's size. To what extent does ARR look like for businesses who use your solution?
Who do you speak with at such businesses?
Executive level: Are VPs and directors responsible for purchasing your product? Managers and other decision-makers in the company could be a better target for your efforts. If your product addresses an issue, you may need to reach out to both top-level executives and lower-level experts.
Depending on the business unit, is your solution more suited for marketing or IT?
A combination of primary research (such as targeted outreach, interviews, and focus groups) and third-party market research may help you identify your ideal customers. For additional information, see EBQ's piece on creating buyer personas for prospecting strategies.
Your B2B prospect lists' most critical feature is that they are narrowly focused on the individuals and organisations most likely to be interested in what you have to offer.
An account-based sales technique is used by many B2B organisations, particularly those with high-cost services and corporate clients. The organisations they target are those that have already been recognised as possible consumers, rather than casting a broad net by focusing on a particular sort of company or buyer.
Using an account-based approach, your sales representatives will know exactly who to target. With a list of target accounts, your sales staff just need to locate the right person to talk to and develop interest in those customers.
How do you feel about this question? The reputation of lead list providers is notoriously tarnished. The vast majority of those contacts may turn out to be inaccurate or do not fit your target customer profile, even if they can provide you with hundreds or thousands of names.
Doing so will help you build a more personalised list of potential customers. Prospecting tools can help you identify potential customers, gather contact information, and learn more about your target accounts.
Compiling a list of potential customers does take some time and effort. Just so everyone is on the same page, there are reputable list companies out there.
A good example is EBQ's B2B data services, which focus on highly targeted, human-curated prospect lists. You can save time and money by working with a partner who takes the time to learn about your target audience and who works closely with you to ensure high-quality data.
2. Using a Cold Calling Approach
One of the most effective ways to find new clients is through cold calling. A recent survey of ten sales experts found that all agreed that cold calling is not dead as a strategy: it's alive and well.
Considerations for B2B organisations when it comes to cold calling include:
Many of us have to deal with long sales cycles that necessitate a number of touch points.
Our salespeople are simply too busy to keep cold-calling leads.
For these reasons, many B2B companies employ sales development reps, a specialised sales role, to conduct prospecting and cold calls, follow up, qualify new leads, and set appointments for closing reps.
This means less time is wasted on bad leads when you have an SDR on your team. This means better prospecting for your company, as an SDR can devote their full attention to the top of the funnel only for prospecting strategies.
If you're thinking about adopting a cold calling and/or SDR strategy, check out our Ultimate Guide to B2B Appointment Setting.
A successful cold-calling approach needs a few elements. Before you begin, it's a good idea to create the following:
The best way to maintain track of your cold call prospects is to establish a regular lead qualifying procedure.
EBRating is an example of a lead qualification rating system we created for our own sales development efforts:
When a lead is cold, it has an EBRating of 7, and as they warm up and become a sales-qualified lead, their EBRating decreases.
This lead qualifying system provides a single view of accounts for both our sales and sales development teams during prospecting. Using a simple numerical assessment, both teams can evaluate how ready a potential customer is for a genuine sales conversation. Once the first sales meeting has been scheduled, the close sales representative may take over the nurturing process.
We also recommend that you create a typical cold calling cadence before you begin calling. Cold calling requires an average of eight tries to get through to a potential customer, so follow-up is essential. Having a call cadence in place advises your sales people when and how to follow up.
The sales development representatives of EBQ utilise the following cold calling cycle as an example:
As part of a cadence block, the call cadence is broken up into various steps. Our sales professionals know to de-prioritize a contact if the cadence block is repeated too many times without a response from a prospect.
This cold calling cadence ensures that the SDR follows up on leads often enough, while also preventing them from wasting too much time.
3. Warm Calling
Warm calling refers to making contact with potential customers who have previously had some experience with your brand or are at least aware of it. In addition to cold calling, warm calling is an even better prospecting approach.
Making cold calls to someone you've already established a relationship with is known as "warm calling."
If a prospective consumer is referred to your firm by a friend or family member, they are more likely to convert than any other kind of lead. Referrals from inside your firm or a delighted client are two possibilities.
HubSpot reports that 84% of B2B buyers begin their purchasing journey via recommendations. These are the best leads since they're ready to purchase and the person who suggested them has shown some confidence in your brand.
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Trade exhibitions and conferences are the most common sources of these prospects. As a result of the event, they've likely had a dialogue with a member of your firm, or at the very least, given you their contact information.
Marketing initiatives such as content marketing and social media create inbound leads. If you have a contact form on your website, you may also generate inbound leads by requesting to talk with a sales representative.
Because they've made it plain they'd want to be contacted by you, prospects who ask for your attention are deemed highly warm or even hot.
Customers that download instructional information, for example, are examples of inbound leads with variable degrees of interest. It's a great chance to build a relationship with a potential customer and pique their interest in what you have to offer.
4. Outbound Email
Cold-calling through email is the same as outbound email prospecting. In our opinion, outbound emailing is most successful when paired with phone calls.
Observe how the follow-up routine comprises a mix of phone calls, voicemails, and emails in our cold call cadence example above. When your reps are using a variety of approaches, they have a better chance of connecting with potential customers.
You have a higher chance of establishing a relationship with a new customer if you speak to them on the phone. Many of your B2B prospects, on the other hand, prefer to interact through email.
One of the most important aspects of a successful cold email or cold call is grabbing the attention of the target audience. Think about the fact that decision-makers get a lot of emails in a single day. In order to be noticed, you'll need to think strategically.
Tell them why you've chosen to get in touch with them right from the off (following up, scheduling a call, etc.)
Concentrate on a single selling point for your product or service. How will it affect their daily routines and the company's bottom line? Rather than focusing on the features, focus on the consequences.
Tell them what you want them to do next with a clear call to action. If you want to set up a meeting, provide a link to your calendar.
Keep your emails to a minimum and be mindful of their hectic schedules.
Use email templates to save time, but personalise the message for each recipient based on the information you have about their company and its goals.
5. Using LinkedIn to Find New Clients
As the most commonly used professional social networking site, LinkedIn makes sense for B2B salespeople to shift their focus to prospecting on the site.
Sending "connection" requests, sending direct messages, and networking via relevant groups are all features of LinkedIn that enable you to get in touch with key decision-makers in your sector.
Additional professional tools are available on the site to assist you improve your LinkedIn prospecting talents.
To assist salespeople get more leads and keep track of their progress, LinkedIn created the LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a subscription-based set of tools.
Lead referrals, complex search filters, and contact information updates in real time are just a few of the services offered. Prospects with whom you do not have a connection may be contacted through InMail using Sales Navigator. You can even link Sales Navigator with your CRM on the higher tier subscriptions.
The LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI) provides you a score based on how successfully you connect with potential clients on LinkedIn.
Your SSI score is determined by how well you do in the following four areas:
You may keep these prospecting best practices in mind while you experiment with these various approaches.
Even if you're looking for the best prospects, realise that the number of new leads is just as crucial.
In the early phases of your pipeline, don't spend too much time warming up prospects; you can do it later in your follow-up cycles. In order to maintain a high pace of prospecting while still establishing the requisite number of contacts, B2B organisations often turn to sales development representatives to do the heavy lifting of prospecting.
Prospecting may be sped up with the use of automation tools, however there are drawbacks to relying too much on these technologies.
Autodialers and pre-recorded voicemails might help you reach a higher volume, but they can also disregard the importance of customization in sales. Rather than relying just on automated contact, we consistently advocate for more personalised outreach and message.
Your marketing and sales teams must work together to construct a strong demand generating engine.
To achieve sales and marketing alignment, it is necessary for each team to have a clear understanding of who your ideal customers are, what constitutes a qualified lead, and how each prospect moves through the funnel.
EBRating is an example of a lead rating and qualifying system that can be enforced across the board to ensure alignment between sales and marketing. It's also a good idea to train your sales staff on how to produce marketing leads by teaching them about various lead generation channels and tactics.
This collection of B2B recruiting tactics is tested and effective, however the implementation might vary depending on the firm and its offers. See how your prospects respond to them as a starting point. Then, based on actual market feedback, refine your recruiting efforts over time.
EBQ's sales development teams have helped hundreds of firms from a range of sectors fill their sales pipelines with quality leads. Please do not hesitate to contact our staff for help in locating your target customers.
Using the B2B Sales Prospecting Strategies to Grow Your Pipeline guide, you can improve the quality of your B2B prospect lists. Determine the most effective prospecting tactics for recruiting the most qualified consumers with the help of all these mentioned topics.
