Understanding Sales Prospecting

Sales prospecting is one process that B2B companies will have to handle. While technology seems to have made selling products and services easier for a lot of B2B solutions providers, the same problems still persist, and they can only be resolved by simply finding the right people for the sales pipeline.

Businesses, especially those in the B2B arena, have one goal in mind: Increase profit margins through selling. As simple as that, and yet, a lot of businesses in the industry are struggling with their sales processes. Much of the challenge includes not being able to conduct effective follow-up and the dreaded sales objections from clients! All this boils down to a lack of understanding of one’s sales prospects.

‘Buyer’s Bias’

The fact that no two sales prospects are similar is already an important challenge to deal with. Basically, it’s how companies try to understand their markets that takes a great deal of time and resources. It’s for this reason that B2B companies put a lot of effort into market research, thinking it could help them stimulate their lead generation and appointment setting efforts.

The only problem is that buyers have biases and can only respond positively to messaging that appeals directly to them. No matter how intense your research efforts may be, quantitative data is simply not enough to give you a substantial picture of what buyers really want from your business.

So, instead of focusing on statistics and metrics to inform your marketing efforts, you also need to understand your buyers in-depth, that is, you will need to know where they are coming from. Sales prospecting, in this sense, is a critical part of your effort to get more customers, simply because it allows you to know your audience’s actual needs and, in effect, be in their positions.

Impact On The Negotiating Table

When you sit down with a prospect to discuss your offers, you’re definitely not in the position to sell. Instead, you should be able to know the prospect and take a better look at what he or she needs to get done.

Objections are raised partly because you were unable to understand the prospect thoroughly. Come to think of it, understanding the prospect shouldn’t happen in the negotiating at all! It should instead be a critical part of sales prospecting. The advantage of this prospect is that it allows you to ask the right questions and make sure your salespeople will be targeting the right people.

Before they enter the later phase of the sales funnel, prospects will need to undergo a qualification process as part of the lead generation campaign. This is where they are able to answer questions based on their motivations and financial capacity. This also provides an opportunity for your salespeople to know their needs and see how they can help prospects move forward. As a result, the amount of information collected from sales prospecting can have a large impact on a sales negotiation. Considering that they already have substantial knowledge about their prospects, sales reps are able to increase their chances of closing a deal.

Surefire Sales Prospecting Tips

Sales prospecting doesn’t have to be a difficult process to pull off. Using these simple tips, you can greatly increase your prospecting skills to acquire more sales:

Focus on your ideal audience. Come up with a list of qualities for your ideal client profile so you can zero in on the right people.
Work through your contacts database. Use data cleansing to scrub your lists clean of duplications.
Prepare stellar content. Your prospects need all the information they can get in order to decide on accepting your offers later on. For this, you can opt to send your prospects case studies, whitepapers, or any substantial document that will introduce your brand.
Maintain intense follow-up. Never assume that your initial contact is good enough. Keeping your communication lines open allows for ample opportunities, so make sure you spend time making follow-up calls.

Along with lead generation and appointment setting, sales prospecting is an activity you wouldn’t want to push to the sidelines. Considering the impact they have on your bottom line, it’s only best to invest time and resources in understanding what your market really wants from you.

Want help with your sales prospecting? Find a company that has all the skills and tech you need to get started.