Sales Prospecting Techniques

These sales prospecting techniques will hopefully assist you in your prospect engagement and lead generation activities. It may sound oblivious, but the biggest challenge in sales prospecting is getting a sales opportunity started in the first place, and for that to happen, you need to get the prospect to listen.

Every prospect goes through a number of phases on their buyer’s journey, where they make certain decisions on the priority of solving the pain point, the solutions available, and the suitability of the vendors to make their buying easier. In the early and middle phases of their buyer’s journey, the decision to keep progressing with you will include the clarity and value proposition of the solutions you offer. They will also consider how familiar they believe you are with their business needs and comfortable they are with your company. These decisions and considerations can be directly linked to how much trust and confidence you have built up with them through your various sales prospecting touch points.

So as part of your sales prospecting techniques, we urge you that all your interactions and touchpoints should be geared towards creating specific outcomes, not for you but for the prospect. Outcomes that make the prospects’ lives easier, their jobs more rewarding, and ones that simplify their buyer’s journey.

Five Sales Prospecting Techniques

Carefully select your target prospects.

Using your ideal customer profiles (if you haven’t already created them, I suggest you start there), you will need to map the buyer’s journey. Before you reach out to them via social selling, cold email, or phone call, you need to be able to answer, “Why are they on your list of prospects?” What information, signals, or insights would make them a potential customer?

Proactive sales prospecting where you either have to find or create an opportunity isn’t easy. It involves quite a bit of effort to establish credibility and to get the prospect to listen so you can begin to engage with them over a period of time. There is no point in a haphazard approach, as research shows that only well-planned-out sales prospecting campaigns that include research and the use of sales tools find success; scattergun prospecting is mainly a waste of time. Core to every good salesperson’s sales prospecting technique is the importance of understanding the company’s needs, as well as the prospects’ desired outcome they will get by using your product or solution. Using LinkedIn, Google search, forums, and business directories are the most effective and efficient ways to find quality prospects that match your ideal customer profiles.

Your value proposition must reflect their potential pain points.

Prospects don’t care about what you have to offer; they care about their problems, challenges, and pain points. They are not looking for a nine-inch drill; they are looking for a nine-inch hole. They want to listen to salespeople who make sense, who create value, who are credible, and who will make their lives easier; this includes helping them through the phases of their buyer’s journey. If your sales prospecting pitch is product-led, then you will get little or no interaction; they don’t want to listen to product pitches. A prospect wants to hear solutions to their pains and problems, evidence that others have experienced this and got a resolution. They don’t need more vanilla-flavored content and sales messaging; they demand a value proposition that will make it worthwhile listening to you. They want insights; they want to see the end result (without the sales pitch) from the earliest step in the buying process.

So, develop your personal value proposition and run it by a few people. Does it make sense? And will it get a prospect to listen?

Social media is a critical part of modern sales prospecting.

The buyer’s journey and purchasing decisions are influenced more and more by social media. Within the next five to ten years, the vast majority of B2B and consumer buyers will be digital natives. Social media is their go-to channel for research, connection, reference, and education. Social media not only gives you access to buyer profiles but also rich data such as background history, connections, similarities, likes, interests, and deep insights into the company. Social listening can throw up signals about the prospects’ needs, trends in their market, or challenges within their industry. All this data can be used in your research and in your value proposition for a market segment.

But it goes further than that; social selling, along with inbound lead generation, has surpassed the older, more traditional forms of sales prospecting. Social selling training is now a must-have requirement in successful sales prospecting techniques and in sales training. Whatever other sales prospecting techniques you think will help you, the use of social media and social selling should be on your list.

The use of sales tools and content is growing.

While there is probably too much generic content posted on the web every day, buyers value content that really educates and fills in some blanks for them. As more and more selling will be conducted via the digital channels, you need to upskill yourself on the use of sales tools and content to engage a prospect. Content that supports your prospecting activity must be based on fulfilling your customers’ needs and requirements so that they come to build a trusted connection with you in your interactions. Buyers are drawn to thought leaders, and surveys show they prefer interaction with salespeople whom they consider to be a trusted adviser.

Forward-looking companies are now prioritizing the education of their target audience through the creation of deep and insightful content that makes buying easier, and they are doing this with a customer-first approach.

Sales tools such as video, ROI calculators, AI, scenario planning, live webinars, and messaging channels will grow.

Sales prospecting techniques prioritize nurturing and building long-term relationships.

At any given point, only 3% of your target market are actively seeking to buy, with another 6-7 percent in the consideration stage. This leaves a whopping 90% of your market that is in what we call the status quo position; in other words, while they may have pain points, no salesperson has made them critical enough that a buyer wants to prioritize a solution.

Maybe you’ll get lucky and find those 3 to 10% of the market seeking or considering buying; however, to be truly successful, you will need to nurture more relationships. Nurturing and engaging a focused group of ideal customer profiles should be an essential part of your sales prospecting strategy. This will take time and skill, but sales prospecting is now about getting in early, building credibility, cultivating a relationship, and getting the prospects’ trust that when the time is right, they will move with you.

I hope these sales prospecting techniques will act as a catalyst for you to want to learn more and explore the future trends for successful prospect engagement. You might also wish to read The Guide to Effective Sales Prospecting.