What Is Prospecting in Sales? Top Methods and Tips for Success

To some extent, it’s true that the more people you reach out to in prospecting, the more customers you’ll attract. But only to a certain point. Beyond that, you might rapidly reach a point of diminishing returns. You may easily end up expending energy in vain, getting very little results for your efforts in return.

Every marketing expert out there can confirm that prospecting in sales can be quite a pickle when teams don't work with the proper methods, tools, and filters. Likewise, sales development representatives (SDRs) demand refined prospects to perform their lead generation activities. 

For this reason, this article aims to lay down a solid foundation for prospecting as a concept, with valuable prospecting tips and strategies for achieving sales success.

What Is Prospecting?

Prospecting is the process of identifying potential customers or clients for a business or organization. It involves researching and identifying individuals or companies that may have a need for the products or services offered by the business and reaching out to them to establish a business relationship. 

In sales, prospecting is typically the first step in the sales prospecting process, where sales representatives research and identify potential customers and reach out to them to generate interest in their products or services. Prospecting can involve various methods, such as cold calling, email marketing, direct mail, social media outreach, and networking events.

The main goal of prospecting in sales is to develop a massive yet accurate database of likely customers so marketers can have an easier time nurturing and filtering these prospects. Once these prospects are qualified, sales professionals take over to try to close those deals.

The prospecting process categorizes website visitors, followers, and potential customers who have shown some interest in your product or brand into the following groups:

Leads

These individuals and organizations may require a solution like the one you offer but aren't necessarily aware of your brand or value proposition. The mission is to raise brand awareness and familiarity with your business to discover if your solution fits their needs. 

Prospects

Prospects have confirmed their interest in buying from you at some point. For B2B prospecting, it is extremely important to discover the real urgency to access a solution for potential buyers, the decision-makers, and if the budget is solvent enough for your product.

Customers

To put it in simple words, a customer is a prospect who has already purchased one of your products or services. Upselling prospect strategies can be set in motion to further increase the size of the deals that both parties agreed on at a certain point.

The Importance of Prospecting in Sales

Cold phone calls

Cold calling is more alive than ever a one of the best prospecting methods. It can be defined as a prospecting technique used to start business conversations with decision-makers over the phone. The goal is to raise awareness and ultimately set up a discovery appointment with the appropriate individual.

Cold email campaigns

A cold email is an initial email sent to a recipient without prior contact to start business conversations. It’s similar to cold calling but much less intrusive. Email campaign strategies allow B2B companies to create tailor-made messages so prospects feel like you understand their pain points and know how to solve them.

Remember you can always use cold email templates to help you get started. Coupling these templates with the creative flexibility of a drag-and-drop email builder can make your cold email campaigns an even more powerful tool in your prospecting arsenal.

Remarketing campaigns

Remarketing is a prospecting method in which a marketer re-engages with someone who has shown interest in their company but has not yet taken the desired action. This could take many forms, like clicking a programmatic ad, visiting your website, opening a customized email, or even following your page on social media.

LinkedIn campaigns

Linkedin is an invaluable tool for prospecting. It is a great place to find potential leads and build relationships with them. It allows you to research companies, find decision-makers, and reach out to them directly. You can also join groups related to your industry and connect with people who share your interests. 

Website visitor tracking campaigns

Website visitor tracking is a useful tool for prospecting as it allows businesses to gain insights into their customer behavior. Additionally, website tracking can provide valuable insights into customer segmentation, allowing businesses to develop more effective strategies for reaching different customer groups.

Top 5 Prospecting Tips

Prospecting clients is about building trust-based relationships, which sounds like something that's hard to pin down. However, it’s possible to have a sound prospecting strategy in place to help you build those relationships, and if you pursue them diligently, the return for your efforts will be greater.

Here are five essential prospecting tips that will help your marketing and sales teams to engage your potential customers more effectively:

1. Thoroughly understand the customer you hope to find.

If you don’t know precisely who you’re looking for, there is a chance you might find the right prospect anywhere. But at the same time, you’ll waste most of the time pursuing people who are uninterested in the products and services you offer. That’s why it’s essentially important to outline your prospecting strategy. 

You'll need to understand the demographics and other special characteristics that fit your ideal customer to identify their needs. At the start, you can focus your efforts more on using referrals and researching your existing clients.

Then, search for prospects with similar needs to them. Developing an ideal customer persona and appealing to the problems they want to solve when getting to you shows consideration and empathy, rather than just trying to win a sale. 

2. Know where to find your potential client.

Sales leads may be found in places other than where you expect. Years ago, Land Rover created a ruggedized mobile phone that they expected to sell to outdoor laborers like construction workers. It didn’t take long for them to realize they had another market they didn’t expect: mothers of toddlers in the suburban jungle.

While you want to make the most of the knowledge you get from your customer base, it’s worth expanding your concept and figuring out who might be well-served by your products as well. Then, do a little research, and find out where they tend to congregate online, their areas of interest, and what needs they have. 

If you don’t have the bandwidth or a team dedicated to prospect research, companies like CIENCE are able to supply qualified leads and research directly to you every week. 

3. Define and articulate your unique value proposition.

Your unique value proposition (UVP) is a concise statement of the benefits your product or service delivers to your ideal customer. This includes a description of the product or service, the definition of the target audience, and the value of your product or service.

In other words, with a UVP, you explain what is so special about your offer that your prospects can’t do without. This can be something as simple as getting more time, increasing the cost-efficiency of the product, or improving customer service. Your UVP should clearly define what the ideal customer will gain and experience after they buy from you.

To do good customer prospecting for business, you should clearly understand your unique value proposition and be ready to articulate it to others.

4. Devote time to prospecting with a disciplined strategy.

No doubt, there is an art to prospecting. But success largely depends on making the commitment and sticking with it. Developing a disciplined prospecting strategy helps to ensure you maximize the returns of your effort and that you don’t forget any important steps that might let customers slip through the cracks.

To start with, you can designate thirty minutes each morning to client prospecting, set a goal of a certain number of prospecting calls per week, and determine how much of each week should be devoted to new business development. Tracking your results and refining your approach should also be part of the prospecting strategy. While measuring spending time prospecting is important, this shouldn’t harm other sales processes which need your undivided attention.

5. Use sales prospecting tools and services to give you the advantage.

Without the right tools or system in place, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of prospecting. How do you know which leads are active or even ready to buy? Which ones do you target and which ones do you leave for now? Data service providers like CIENCE have the tools that make prospecting easier to navigate. 

Client prospecting starts with a careful evaluation of your ICP. Your parameters get entered into the database and are matched with actual contacts. These records are ready for prospecting and available to you throughout the whole course of your subscription.  

Meanwhile, if you want to go deeper, there are highly professional researchers who can conduct data analysis to segment your customers into specific categories. It's later followed by creating personalized advertising and outreach campaigns to deliver unique customer experiences across multiple channels.

Outsourcing a prospecting team like this is more cost-effective than hiring one in-house. Instead of spending time on routine tasks, you can focus on building meaningful relationships with your clients. 

Get Ready to Prospect

Customer prospecting isn’t easy, but with the right prospecting techniques, software and dedicated amounts of time can become a more seamless process. Be sure to measure the amount of time your team dedicates to prospecting daily.

If it takes up more time than you’d like, working with a lead generation company is worth the investment. It enables you and your team to focus on the sale and increases the likelihood of closing even more deals. 

CIENCE's meticulous outbound solutions take care of prospecting your clients. With the help of cutting-edge technology and human intelligence, you get personalized campaigns targeted to your ideal customer profile, customized email and phone outreach, and reliable appointment setting. Sounds good? Don’t hesitate to book a meeting with CIENCE and improve your sales process today.