Sales prospecting is defined as a proactive and strategic process of identifying, qualifying, and initiating contact with potential customers who are likely to benefit from a product or service.
Prospecting sales leads involves thorough research, personalized outreach, and relationship-building efforts to create meaningful connections, ultimately driving successful sales opportunities and fostering long-term customer relationships.
The main goals of prospecting in sales are to:
- Find potential customers that fit your ideal customer profile (ICP)
- Start engaging with qualified leads
- Identify how your product aligns with leads’ pain points and challenges
Prospecting is the first step in the sales process, so it’s important that you set yourself up for success in the prospecting stage to build a strong sales pipeline.
Here, you’ll learn about:
- The importance of sales prospecting
- Common bottlenecks in sales prospecting and how to avoid them
- How to do prospecting in sales, with examples, strategies, and tips
- The best sales prospecting software
📘 Related: Prospect Easier With Seamless.AI
The importance of sales prospecting
Why is sales prospecting important? It’s more than simply finding the right people to sell to.
Sales prospecting is important because your success in this first stage of the sales process sets the tone for your success in the rest of your sales pipeline.
Strategic sales prospecting helps you:
- Connect with potential customers who are ready to buy, or at least interested in it
- Stand out from competing solutions or products
- Learn about prospects’ unique pain points
- Reach your full total addressable market (TAM) potential
Who does prospecting in sales?
Usually, sales development representatives in sales teams are responsible for prospecting.
While anyone can do prospecting in sales, this stage of the sales process is a key building block to growing necessary sales skills for newer sales professionals.
SDRs are typically in charge of cold prospecting, B2B contact data list building, communicating with new leads, and more.
📘 Related: How to Be a Great Sales Development Representative (SDR)
Sales prospecting strategies and techniques
Sales prospecting can get overwhelming, but there are prospecting strategies and techniques to help you stay on top of your prospecting goals.
While there are many techniques and approaches to prospecting, here are three common prospecting strategies and techniques that most SDRs use:
- The 5x5 prospecting method
- The 3x3 approach
- The 80 20 rule
What is the 5x5 prospecting method?
The 5x5 prospecting method is a simple and effective sales prospecting technique that suggests choosing 5 accounts and 5 prospects and focusing on an account each week.
This sales prospecting strategy makes it easy to organize your sales prospecting. It’s also useful for SDRs to stay on track with their sales outreach schedule.
You can apply the same concept for more or less prospects and accounts, but five is a great starting point.
What is the 3x3 approach to prospecting?
The 3x3 approach to prospecting is a strategy to spend three minutes finding three relevant pieces of information about a sales prospect.
This sales prospecting tactic helps you find information to personalize your outreach messages to prospects within a dedicated time.
Limiting yourself to three minutes helps you avoid wasting too much time on researching the prospect.
If you have more time, you could do five minutes to find five relevant pieces of information.
What is the 80 20 rule in prospecting?
The 80 20 rule in prospecting, AKA the Pareto Principle, is the idea that 80 percent of your sales will come from 20 percent of your customers but also that 80 percent of your sales will come from 20 percent of your sales force.
How to do sales prospecting, step-by-step.
Sales prospecting is a process that goes beyond simply identifying and finding prospects that match your ICP.
In this first stage of the sales process, you need proactive strategizing and research rather than a reactive approach.
In Brandon Bornancin’s words, it’s about doing all the work upfront to make it as easily as possible for your prospects to say yes:
“Make it as easy as possible for your prospect to do zero work, and keep your CTA as simple as possible.”
👇 Here’s a step-by-step guide to doing sales prospecting–successfully and efficiently.
1. Identify your ideal customer.
Define your ideal customer profile (ICP), or your target audience.
You can do this by identifying a set list of characteristics that make up your ideal customer.
This might include defining your target customers’ geographic location, company size, needs, pain points, their industry, and more.
Understanding who you want to talk to helps you narrow down your sales prospecting search from “anyone” to a specific persona that’s most likely to buy your product.
2. Build a targeted list.
B2B contact list building is about finding all the people that match your ICP, but your goal is to capture your TAM.
You can create a list of potential leads that match your ideal customer profile from various sources, including:
- B2B contact databases
- Web searches
- Social media platforms
- Landing pages or gated content marketing
- Email newsletters
The difficulty with contact list building is that it’s time-consuming. It’s also difficult to find accurate, up-to-date, and complete B2B contact data.
💡 Our suggestion? Use a B2B contact data search engine tool like Seamless.AI to find and verify your contacts as efficiently and accurately as possible.
3. Research prospects.
Before reaching out, research prospects (their position, their industry, their company, etc.) because you never want to get on the phone cold and unprepared.
It’s like researching a company before going into an interview.
You want to make sure you know who you’re talking to and how to craft your first pitch to them in terms of their unique needs or challenges.
If you’re using a tool like Seamless.AI, you could also leverage buyer intent data to gather insights that add more context to your prospects before the first point of contact.
4. Use multiple channels for sales prospecting.
Employ a combination of various sales channels, like email, social media, phone calls, and in-person networking for outreach.
In order to reach your full TAM, going full force on a single platform won’t cut it.
For example, let’s say you start sales prospecting on social media platforms. That will give you a good start to building a contact list, but there could potentially be hundreds of other prospects who don’t use social media.
Sales prospecting is about going all-in on all the possible platforms to make sure you’re not missing out on any prospecting opportunities.
5. Craft a compelling story.
Follow the golden rule of sales pitches: Don’t do sales pitches.
💡 In other words, don’t just sell features and product packages. Sell a compelling story, a feeling of success, an experience–not just another fancy tool to add to their budget.
In today’s world, buying a Tesla isn’t just about the smart features of the car. It’s about the experience of driving one and the emotions that come with it.
You should apply this same concept to your sales pitches. Develop a concise value proposition that highlights how your product or service can solve prospects' problems.
From the first point of contact throughout your conversations, always deliver value upfront.
There’s no use “burying the lead”. What is the most direct value that you’re offering to the sales lead?
Once you’ve established your main value proposition points, then you can sweeten the deal with more secondary and tertiary benefits of your solution.
6. Warm up your prospects.
Reaching out to complete strangers is always difficult, especially when they have no idea who you are.
The idea behind warming up your cold prospects is to find a way to make them familiar or comfortable with you as a person, or with your product/brand.
Here are a few ways you can warm up cold prospects:
- Establish a connection with prospects through social engagement or personalized outreach
- Publish thought leadership content pieces in online communities that your prospects are active in
- Complimenting or congratulating prospects on a recent win
7. Personalize your outreach.
We can’t stress this one enough: Always personalize your outreach.
All the work you did in the list building and research stage should set you up for success to craft personalized messages that address prospects' specific needs and challenges.
If you have access to a smart sales prospecting tool, leverage the insights you gain from your B2B contact data and buyer intent signals.
While there are many things you can mention or do to personalize your sales outreach, the key to this sales prospecting technique is to keep it short and simple.
Don’t bombard your prospects with compliments without delivering value. Tie in one of their recent wins with the value proposition of how your solution can help them keep their winning streak.
Our suggestion is to come up with a sales script beforehand. Having a set of messages and responses prewritten can help you tweak your message according to the situation.
💡 Don’t know what to say? Try Seamless.AI’s AI Writer feature to help you craft winning sales scripts in seconds.
8. Follow up.
Consistently follow up with additional value or information to nurture leads.
Sometimes sales prospects forget to respond, or sometimes they get lost in a flood of emails.
Following up is an important part of sales prospecting because you can learn:
- Why a prospect didn’t respond
- How well your sales pitch messages work
- What reservations the prospect might have about the offer
If you don’t hear back from prospects the first time, wait a few days to follow up with another message.
9. Qualify leads.
All sales leads are not equal. Some are more likely to convert than others, and it’s important that you’re dedicating enough time to nurture highly qualified leads.
Let’s say you only have white space on your calendar for the week to schedule in 5 more emails or phone calls.
You should prioritize using this time to reach out to promising leads that are ready to buy over prospects that have no interest in purchasing.
It’s like spending time convincing someone to upgrade their phone to the newest version, but they were already shopping around and wanted to buy a new phone anyways. You’ll prioritize selling a new phone to that person over selling it to someone who’s in the middle of a phone contract and still has payments to make.
Qualify leads to make sure you’re being efficient with your time and your leads’ time.
10. Measure and adjust.
Continuously track and analyze your prospecting activities to refine your approach.
Track all the measurable KPIs that will help you improve your prospecting in the future.
You can measure success in sales prospecting with metrics like:
- Open rates on emails
- A/B test results
- Demos booked
- Conversion rates
Without critical insights like this, you won’t know how to identify weak points in your pipeline.
All this has to happen before you actually reach out, learn the prospect’s needs, nurture the relationship, and hopefully convert cold leads into loyal, buying customers.
Examples of sales prospecting
As mentioned before, there are many different sales prospecting techniques. That also means you have a variety of sales prospecting platforms and methods to choose from.
Here are a few examples of prospecting in sales, in real life:
1. Email prospecting
If you work in the B2B industry, writing cold emails for sales prospecting isn’t new–especially if you’re selling a new and innovative product in your industry.
Many SDRs choose to do sales prospecting via email. Email is a double-edged sword for sales prospecting because you risk the chance of your message being drowned in flooded email inboxes, but you also get the chance to get your full message read by new prospects.
👇 Here’s an example of a sales prospecting email:
Subject: Get a free trial of [premium product]! (limited time only)
Hi [Prospect's Name],
We’re offering a special discount to a select few contacts, including [Prospect's Name or Company], based on [offer eligibility requirement].
This offer is only available for this month!
Let’s schedule a call to discuss how you can take advantage of this special offer.
Best regards,
[Your Full Name], [Your Title]
[Your Company]
📘 Struggling to get responses to your email outreach? Get 15 free B2B Email Outreach Templates and Best Practices
2. Cold calling prospects
According to Crunchbase, organizations that don’t cold call experienced 42% less growth than those who used the tactic.
In other words–yes, cold calling is still a thing.
Calling a new sales prospect on the phone for the first time can be daunting, especially if you’re a stranger. Prospects might be less inclined to immediately hang up on the phone as opposed to immediately clicking out of a prospecting email, but you still only have a few seconds to engage them.
👇 Here’s an example of a cold call in sales:
Hi, [first name]! I’m [your name] from [your company name]. I was speaking with [mutual connection name] and they suggested we connect as we both do work in [industry]. I know I called out of the blue but I wanted to properly introduce myself. Can we schedule more time for us to reconnect and talk more about [pain point/problem/solution]?
📘 Looking for more cold calling script templates? Read our free Cold Calling Guide for cold calling script templates, examples, and common objections.
3. Social media prospecting
On social media, your social media profile is like your trade show display. It’s the first big thing that prospects encounter when you start reaching out to them.
A great example of sales prospecting on social media is through LinkedIn. You can send LinkedIn connection requests, send InMail messages, interact with prospects’ posts and more.
The key to prospecting on social media platforms like LinkedIn is to keep it simple, direct, and digestible.
📘 Learn how to start generating highly qualified leads on LinkedIn in this article: Unlocking the Power of LinkedIn Lead Generation.
Why is sales prospecting difficult?
Strategic sales prospecting is the crucial first step to the sales process, but it can be the most painful because it eats up so much time.
It’s also difficult to do at scale without the right strategy or tool in hand.
Related: What is GTM Strategy
You may connect with an unqualified prospect. Or you might waste an afternoon building a list of hundreds of contacts, only for half of them to be invalid.
Here are some of the most common reasons why sales prospecting is difficult:
- Lack of time or bandwidth
- Lack of accurate, complete, and up-to-date contact data
- Unclear idea of your target customer profile
- High volume of competition
- Limited time or resources
- Sales objections and rejection
Without the right prospecting tools or strategies, you could waste twice as much time as your competitors building your pipeline.
What is a prospecting mindset- sales prospecting tips from a successful CEO
Want to avoid those common bottlenecks in sales prospecting? Learn from a sales prospecting expert who’s experienced it all.
Brandon Bornancin, the CEO of Seamless.AI, went from losing $4 million from his first failed startup to building a company worth over $150 million in sales. (Read: Seamless.AI’s origin story here).
👇 Here are a few of his best tips for sales prospecting from his own experience:
1. Know how to respond to common sales objections.
When it comes to sales prospecting, you’re bound to get a few common objections to your outreach messages.
A few common sales objections you might hear from leads include:
- “It’s too expensive.”
- “We already have a solution for that.”
- “I don’t have time.”
- “I heard bad things about your product.”
…And the list goes on.
The best thing you can do is to understand what your product’s weak points are and know how to position your product messaging in terms of the prospect’s objections.
Learn how to customize your offers to turn the prospect’s attention from your solution’s weak points to the strong value proposition.
The best way to prepare for sales objections is to draft up sales scripts to come up with a roadmap of how to respond in different sales prospecting scenarios.
2. Figure out your “sales math”.
What’s your sales quota?
How many opportunities are needed to hit your sales quota?
Once you find out these numbers for your quotas, increase it by 2x-5x to ensure you always beat your quota.
Next, you need to put in the daily activity to make this happen. This might look like scheduling more calls, sending more emails, connecting with more people on social media, or looking for more leads.
Do the math to figure out how much work you need to put in sales prospecting to hit your quotas, and then map out actionable steps to reach these numbers.
3. What does a qualified prospect look like? Focus on BANT.
A qualified prospect looks like someone who meets the requirements of BANT.
BANT is a framework for evaluating a prospect that stands for:
- Budget
- Authority
- Need
- Timing
You should apply this framework to make sure that the prospect meets these requirements.
BANT is also a great way to help you craft tailored sales pitches to the right person at the right time.
Here’s how Hubspot explains it:
A successful sale usually happens because the product or service you sell was within the prospect's budget, you had the authority to convince them, they actually needed the service or product, and the timing was right.
You should aim to target sales prospects who have the right budget for your product, have the authority to make buying decisions, actually need your product, and are ready to buy now.
4. Use sales prospecting tools to your advantage.
Don’t fall victim to doing sales prospecting the hard way.
Strategic sales prospecting is about having the right strategy and tools in hand.
With sales prospecting tools, you can work more effectively, giving you back time in the day to focus on boosting close rates and making money.
There are many sales prospecting tools to choose from, but a few features you should look out for are:
- B2B contact data list building automation
- Buyer intent data
- Sales pitch message templates
- Browser extensions and integrations
Solid sales prospecting software is the ultimate multiplier because it can help you decrease the time it takes to close, generate more leads, close more deals, and ultimately drive more revenue.
A great sales software tool will not only help your business thrive during a recession.
Simplify sales prospecting with Seamless.AI
Seamless.AI is the #1 sales software and the top lead generation tool you need for all your prospecting.
Seamless.AI uses artificial intelligence to research and verify contact information in real-time, so you know the data you’re getting is always fresh. With over 3 billion contact and company profiles, you can replenish your pipeline with real-time verified contact data.
Curious to see how you can use Seamless.AI to save 3-5 hours a day in prospecting work? Sign up for a demo!
Sales prospecting for small businesses requires dedication and persistence. By understanding your target audience, personalizing your outreach, and providing value, you can build a robust pipeline of potential customers and increase your sales opportunities.
Related sales prospecting resources
- How to Find Emails to Generate Revenue
- The Best Sales Prospecting Software
- The Ultimate Guide to B2B Contact Databases
- A Guide to Pipeline Generation: Strategies and Best Practices
FAQ about sales prospecting
What is the first step in a prospecting strategy?
The first step in a prospecting strategy is to define your ideal customer profile. Come up with a list of desirable characteristics that your ideal prospects have so you have an idea of who you’re looking for.
How do you create a prospecting plan?
You can create a prospecting plan by first knowing what your sales goals are, knowing who you want to target, and finding the right sales channels to prospect in. First, figure out your sales quotas and break each quota down into smaller, more achievable goals each week. Then, you need a detailed ICP to help you find the right prospects. Finally, identify multiple sales channels to start prospecting in.
How do you determine sales prospects?
You can determine sales prospects by having a strong ICP and detailed lists of desired characteristics you’re looking for.
Identify a specific location, job titles, industry, company size, and other things.
How do you organize sales prospecting?
You can organize sales prospecting using the 5x5 method and qualifying your leads. This method helps you focus on five accounts and five prospects in a given time so you’re not lost on which prospects to prioritize.
Qualifying your leads is also a great way to help you organize your prospects according to priority and their likeliness to convert.
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