How to Master the Art of Prospecting

The world of sales is constantly evolving. To be successful, sellers must consistently develop new skills or update old ones. One of the most important of these is prospecting. After all, finding new business and opportunities are key to an organization’s success. However, in a rapidly changing sales environment, seeking and obtaining new business is fraught with challenges.

In addition, for many sales reps, prospecting is one of the most difficult activities. On the one hand, it can seem tedious, an endless loop of emails, voicemails, and hang-ups. But on the other hand, it can seem overwhelming. With so much to do, it’s tough to start. That’s why it’s helpful to cut through the clutter. Here, let’s examine some of the challenges sellers face when prospecting. This will be followed by a series of techniques sales teams can use to master the art of prospecting today.

Challenges Related to Sales Prospecting

According to SalesIntel, it can take up to eight calls just to reach a prospect. That’s before sellers know if the prospect is even worth pursuing. In addition, according to Crunchbase, it takes another six calls to close a deal. Think about that. It takes more work to reach a prospect than it does to close a deal.

This frustration can result in a lackadaisical approach. Indeed, some sellers find excuses to avoid prospecting, such as:

• Time management
• Not knowing what to do
• Tired of hearing no
• Pipeline is already full

Many sellers do not have a prospecting system. This leads to false starts, dead ends, and missed opportunities. To manage prospecting efforts, set specific activities on specific days and block times.

Phone calls and emails are prospecting staples. And social media also offers opportunities to connect. However, too many choices can lead to inertia. Some sellers do not know what to do first, so they do nothing or not enough. Remember, with up to eight calls to reach a prospect, many sellers give up after two or three tries.

An unfortunate truth is that you will hear more noes than you hear yeses. Today, many prospects are so inundated by sales calls, no is their default answer. And in a hectic environment, many will not even read/hear unsolicited communication, let alone respond. However, in sales, the right yes can negate several noes, so prospecting success requires tenacity and resilience.

With an abundance of opportunity, sellers may put off prospecting until their pipelines are depleted. This is a mistake. Pipelines quickly come and go. Consistent prospecting maintains various opportunities at different stages of development.

Now that we’ve discussed some major hurdles, let’s examine the keys to prospecting success. This includes identifying prospects, preparing the message, and making contact.

How to Identify the Right Prospects

To identify the right prospects, look at your best customers. In B2B selling, you not only target organizations. You should target the people in roles that can open doors. Central to this is your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). This is made up of the following:

• Demographics/persona
• Objectives and priorities
• Problems and challenges
• Value proposition

This requires an investment of your time to research and really understand your subjects, but it will have a considerable positive impact on your sales processes as a whole. Despite the negativity that often surrounds prospecting efforts, in particular cold calling and emailing, they can be effective if you do your research in advance. This is particularly helpful because your prospects will appreciate it and credibility is established early on when you don’t just blindly reach out to them.

Start with the demographics of your target organizations. List their size, geography, location, revenue, and number of employees. From this, move into your customer persona. As each persona is unique, you should build an ICP for each. This should include their interests, what they care about, and what would make them react.

Next, determine their objectives and priorities. What do they want to accomplish? For example, an automobile dealership may want to maximize new and used sales. In addition, they want to increase customer satisfaction. Lastly, they want to build better relationships with manufacturers.

Discern what prevents them from achieving their goals. For example, in our automobile dealership, perhaps it’s a communication breakdown. Maybe it’s the cost of labor or materials. These are the things that keep your customer up at night.

Your value proposition states how you can help this customer. It should differentiate your solution and tell how it solves their unique problems. This could include features and benefits. Maybe it’s integrating a uniform system to ease communication or establishing online payments. In any case, articulate your solution to resonate with the customer personas you created.

Here are some ways to get you started with identifying the right prospects:

1. Check out your potential prospect’s website

Peruse your prospect’s website, because it can contain a treasure trove of information. Skim through their content and analyze what they are focusing on and why. This includes current events and news, which could be announcements about recently launched products, promotions or awards given to the company – often announced via press releases.

Additionally, read through case studies and white papers posted on their site. This will give you an idea what it important to them, and what aspects of their business they like to emphasize and promote. Plus, you will also get a sense of what is important to their customer base. All of these elements can make for some great icebreakers, as well as help position yourself as someone genuinely interested in solving problems, not just closing a sale.

2. Review your prospect’s social media

If your prospect has social media, and who doesn’t these days, follow it. Start with the big 4 — LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or a combination of all the above (plus other networks). It will give you a direct window into a company and an opportunity to understand more about them while still being able to engage with them.

3. Pay attention to industry news

Another critical research component is learning about your prospect’s vertical or specific niche, and the top challenges associated with their company — then figure out how your products or services could help them. One way to do this is by following relevant websites and magazines within the industry.

You should also keep an eye on what your prospect’s competitors are doing. Perhaps one of them has recently come up with an innovative product that could spell trouble for your target down the road? In addition, try to stay abreast of research studies that are pertinent to their industry and vertical.

4. Research consumer behavior of your prospect

An essential component to getting your foot in the door is the ability to empathize and think like your prospect. This includes understanding their target customer, and how your product may provide a solution or bridge a gap in some way. This directly ties into my previous point about staying current on what competitors are up to because it will help you anticipate what might be on your prospect’s mind.

5. Be mindful of your timing when reaching out

Timing is critical in sales. Be mindful of your timing when you reach out to a prospect. Ideally you want to catch them at the right time in their buying cycle in order to be able to start a dialogue about your products and services.

How to Identify Where Your Prospects Are At in Their Buyer Journey

Your best practice as an organization before reaching out to any prospect is to first understand the three phases of a buyer’s journey and where your prospects are at on it. Tracking this will help you move your prospect from “awareness” to “consideration” to “decision.” Patience is the key word here: stepping up a lead from awareness to consideration, for example, can take months, if not years. But often it’s time well spent, because, for one thing, if an urgent need arises for the prospect, you could be at the top of their list. Below, we’ve identified each part of the buyer journey for you and explained in detail how you know your prospect as at this stage.

1. Awareness

In the awareness phase, the prospect, or lead, knows they have a need that requires filling, and shops around for a product or service that works as a viable solution for what it is they lack. Know that at this stage you may be invisible to the lead, particularly a cold, outbound lead. The field of sales is a crowded one, so you’re nobody till somebody comes along. And actually, that’s not even necessarily true, because not all inbound leads have a complete understanding of who you are and what you offer either. You don’t have to make a desperado of yourself by parachuting past the lead’s conference room windows in a bear costume to get noticed, you just need to be strategic about it. Once you’ve identified what phase of the buyer journey the lead is on, make yourself known through educational content or other forms of media, which could include case studies, white papers, blogs, analyst reports, ebooks, or videos.Or perhaps you have another mode for educating your prospects. Whatever it is, it’s important to consider how you use it. It will provide the lead with the necessary clarity to see who you are and what you have to offer that will be a value add to their business. Often an organization does this through their marketing team—professionals in the art of wooing via things like targeted offers and email campaigns.

2. Consideration

Your prospect is in the consideration phase when they express interest in your products and services. At this point, they start weighing their options and narrowing their choices, comparing vendors, etc. The world of choices get smaller for them. Be prepared: At this stage, too, they will likely want to schedule things like project demos and consultations. Now’s the time to look at your history and examine what’s worked well and what’s flopped regarding previous communications with leads. Which types of messaging have your leads responded to positively? Also, help the lead hone in on their decision by presenting them with relevant content. If and when they request a meeting, encourage the prospect to invite everyone at the decision-making level at the company, including upper management. It will save you and the prospect time, money, and energy if you get as many stakeholders to the party at the same time.Subsequent to meeting with you and hearing/seeing your presentation, the lead will typically take the time to mull over their options, and then do another round of narrowing the field. This is your opportunity to stand out by using social proof to make the case for your solution, and the time to demonstrate, without being a negative Nelly, the adverse impact on the prospect if they make a choice that doesn’t adequately fill their need. Things like testimonials, relevant examples and, yes, even references from your satisfied customers—especially those with a similar business model—could all earn you more checkmarks in the prospect’s yes column during the consideration phase.

3. Decision

Lastly, you need to be the one to move the process along in the final stage—”decision.” Once you’re certain the prospect has all the information they require, point out the progress you’ve made during the sales discovery phase and attempt to get a commitment from the prospect. Be strategic about it, but definitely ask if they’re good with moving ahead with your solution. Don’t assume that the prospect will ask you if you want to move it along; most often, that ain’t gonna happen. They’re being courted, so they expect you to pop the question. Don’t rush it, of course, but when you’re confident that the prospect is hip to your expertise and satisfied with your presentation, get down on one knee and hold back your tears of joy. It’s time! To repeat, a lead is not going to sit down at your table right from the start. In the test kitchen of business, the buyer journey is at times, a slow-cooked meal. Throughout it, make sure to stay engaged with the prospect and always be on hand to help along their process. Listen actively as they outline their problem. Gain their trust by fashioning a solution that perfectly fits their needs. In your planning, know their pain points and choose the right benefits to alleviate those. Asking and getting answers to the right open- and close-ended questions will help win over the prospect in the “decision” stage. Once you’re there and get the business, all that invested time will have been well worth the wait.

How to Prepare Value Messages That Work

To prepare effective value messages, target specific messages to the right people. Research is key. At Janek, one of the biggest differentiators we see in successful prospecting is diligence in research.

Also, the amount of research is based on the transaction. A product/service with limited application requires less research than complex sales to enterprise clients. Align your research to the sales environment.

First, determine the information you need about the organization and contact. Then, identify where you can obtain this information, such as Google, LinkedIn, industry databases, and subscription services. Next is using this information to craft messages that resonate. Consider a four-point system, which includes the following:

• Tell why you are reaching out
• Show what’s in it for them
• Highlight features
• Present a call to action

Tell the prospect who you are, where you are from, and the purpose of your message. For example, “Hi Walter, this is Max from XYZ Corporation. I saw your post about supply chain issues in the Midwest, and I think I can help.”

Next, clearly and briefly state what is in it for them. What will they gain from reading your message or taking your call? Remember, in prospecting, this is not yet about a specific product or service. It’s about establishing contact and providing a reason to respond.

Follow this with some features or benefits. This prepares the prospect for a potential solution. For example, “We have extensive experience in your vertical and region. And our products/services have proven effective for the issues you face.”

Then, state the specific action they should take. This could be asking them to respond to your email/LinkedIn message/phone call. It could be setting an appointment on your calendar. Present a specific day and time for a quick call.

How to Make Contact & Secure Appointments

Once you identify the right prospects and prepare your message, it’s time to deliver that message. For sales reps, this means building a prospecting cadence, an outreach sequence to connect with prospects. This helps track where you are in the process. Also, it ensures you don’t send the same message twice. Rather than repeat yourself, you want to consistently augment your cadence.

First, consider the following:

• According to ServiceBell, 80 percent of calls end in voicemail
• According to Nutshell, the average response rate for prospecting voicemails is only 4-6 percent

This showcases the difficulty of prospecting. However, we see the benefits of a sustained effort in the following from Sales Hacker:

• 22 percent get a reply on the second attempt
• 33 percent get a reply on the third attempt

With that in mind, let’s look at building out our cadence. Here are some considerations:

• Number of touches
• Timing
• Medium
• Message

Set your sales cadence for a fixed number of days and a range of channels. Then, consider how many touches you will need. For example, five to seven days might require three or four touches. More days require more touches. The goal is to build familiarity and allow time to modify your message.

Next, consider the timing of your touches. For example, a 30-day cadence could require as many as 10-12 touches. Space them for maximum effect, such as a LinkedIn message on the first day. Follow this with an email on the second day and a phone call on the fourth. This requires balance.

Today, email, phone calls, and social media are the top mediums. Here, the more the better, and you want to mix it up. According to InsideSales, leveraging three or more mediums can increase contact rates by four times over a single method.

With each touch, ensure your message resonates. For example, build on your message. Instead of repeating your desire to talk, offer something specific, such as a relevant data point or statistic.

In addition, measure the success of your prospecting cadence. This is shown in your leading and lagging indicators. For example:

Leading indicators

• Touches per response
• Number of appointments
• Number of qualified leads

With leading indicators, you see what is working or not working as you move through your cadence. You can then adjust in real time.

Lagging indicators

• Gross revenue
• Average deal size
• Win rate

These are outcomes. While they cannot be adjusted in real time, they are helpful for measuring the success of your cadences.

As the sales environment changes, the ways we prospect must adapt. For example, prospecting has shifted dramatically from what it was five or even three years ago. That’s why sales professionals must continually modify their activity. We hope this helps sellers master the art of prospecting today to achieve greater success.

Justin Zappulla

Justin brings over 20 years’ sales and sales leadership experience as Managing Partner of Janek Performance Group. Justin’s career has been highlighted by remarkable performance and is considered one of the top authorities and thought leaders in sales training, sales consulting and sales performance improvement. Justin co-authored the highly acclaimed sales book, Critical Selling and was a key contributor to the sales book Mastering the World of Selling. An often-quoted authority on sales and sales management practices, Justin has widely been recognized as one of the biggest names in sales.

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