What Is Sales Prospecting? A Comprehensive Guide To Succeed in Sales in 2024

Law of the Universe: Nothing happens until something moves.
Law of Business: Nothing happens until someone sells something. 

― Jeb Blount, Fanatical Prospecting

Every business needs to sell. Tale as old as time, sales reps have to pitch solutions and get people to buy. Or make them interested enough to do so.

With every company aspiring to sell, finding the right people to do so is fundamental. Here comes prospecting. You look for potential customers and find the ones you think are most likely to purchase your product. And this should be enough to generate revenue and help your business grow, right? Right?!

Well, it’s a little more complicated than that. You need to know who your ideal buyer is, create a list of people to reach out to, personalize your pitches…there’s so much to do.

But it must be done. Prospecting is the foundational stage in the B2B sales process, as it sets the tone for the rest of your sales journey.

If you envision a booming business with an ever-fattening pipeline, you must master prospecting. And to help you with this venture, we bring you the only guide to sales prospecting that you will need. Buckle up, and let’s dive in.

What Is Sales Prospecting?

Sales prospecting is the process of searching, recognizing, and engaging with the target audience who might be a good fit for your solution. Sales reps carry out prospecting with the hopes of moving prospects down the sales funnel and converting them into revenue-generating customers.

Prospecting usually involves:

• Researching your Ideal Customer Profile
• Qualifying the leads 
• Outreach: email, phone calls, etc., 

Why Is Sales Prospecting Important?

Every good sales team needs to have a solid prospecting plan. 

But why?

Prospecting determines who will most likely buy your solution, so that you don’t have to shoot in the dark trying to sell to everyone and their mother. Regardless of the pricing or how valuable your solution is, if your intended audience doesn’t find use for your product, you will simply not sell. 

“With a solid prospecting system you will find qualified people to present your products and services to; with a solid marketing system, buyers will find you to learn about your products and services, whilst during this process your brand is born.”

—Farshad Asl, Author of No Excuses Mindset

With the growth of your business resting on prospecting, it’s vital that you prospect right and ensure you have increased chances of booking more meetings. 

So, let’s unpack the sales prospecting process and look closely into 3 ways how prospecting can help you hit your goals. 

Get Better Quality Leads

A company promoting a demographic that won’t buy their product is doomed from the start. Imagine how foolhardy it would be for a video gaming company to open a store in a neighborhood predominantly occupied by senior citizens.

Similarly, sales teams need to be able to get leads that fit their solution and can help their business grow. 

For this, reps need to focus their energy on converting leads who fit their ideal buyer criteria. These leads are the ones who have the highest chances of purchasing the product. 

If you already have a solid knowledge of who you are selling to, you can personalize your sales pitch according to their goals and challenges and get them interested in your solution. We can learn all about formulating the criteria for your ideal buyer in the next section.

Have a Healthy Pipeline

Every sales rep dreams of enlisting an endless stream of prospects to the pipeline. And having a healthy pipeline with high-quality leads doesn’t have to be a pipe dream. 

Let’s rewind a bit and understand what sales pipeline health is. Sales pipeline health can be determined by how consistently reps move leads through the pipeline and how many deals they manage to close. The more leads you convert, the better it will be for your business in the long run. 

Having a steady flow of high-quality leads will dictate if your pipeline is in optimal health. Say your rep needs to book 15 meetings this month. To accomplish this, they might contact 100s of leads to check their fit and move them into the pipeline. 

So, with prospecting, you’ll keep the pipeline filled to the brim by consistently introducing leads to your pipeline and giving reps more opportunities to work with.

Gain an Edge Over Your Competitors

8 out of 10 buyers accept meetings with sellers who reach out to them first. Sales reps who engage in proactive selling by identifying their prospect’s questions, pain points and challenges first will win way more prospects than those who don’t.

With a strong prospecting strategy, reps will be able to contact more prospective buyers and book more meetings. 

By being the first to reach out to prospects consistently, you will establish a relationship with your ideal buyers before your competitors do, convince them of your solution’s value, and stay ahead in the market. 

To make sure you are consistently meeting the right prospect at the right time and carrying out a grade-A prospecting strategy, you need to first distinguish between prospects and leads. 

Lead vs. Prospect: What’s the Difference?

A lead is someone who has shown interest in your solution or services. A lead might have simply read your blog, social media or looked your business up online. They might have even signed up for a free trial. Leads can be found in the early stages of the sales cycle.

Prospects, on the other hand, are leads that you have qualified after further research. They are often considered a good fit for the solution offered and worth pursuing. They might have displayed a level of interest that qualifies them as someone likely to purchase from you, such as booking a demo. 

Despite the small but noticeable differences between leads and prospects, sales reps need to focus on nurturing both kinds of these potential customers until they convert into customers. 

Some organizations use ‘leads’ and ‘prospects’ interchangeably. The important thing is that you agree on a definition among your sales and marketing teams and stick to it to ensure a smooth sales process.

5 Steps for Successful Sales Prospecting

So far, you’ve grasped what sales prospecting is, its importance, and the crucial differences between a lead and a prospect. Now, it’s time to get into the nitty-gritty, the how of prospecting.

To ensure your prospecting efforts are successful and predictable, there are 5 steps you need to follow:

1. Define your ideal buyer.
2. Build a database of contacts.
3. Prioritize prospects based on intent.
4. Make personalized pitches for prospects.
5. Create your outreach sequence.

Let’s look at each of these steps in detail now. 

1. Define Your Ideal Buyer

The first step for companies to focus on identifying who their target audience is, their needs, preferences, and challenges is creating the ideal buyer criteria. 

There are 2 components of an ideal buyer: the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and the buyer persona (BP).

Think of ICP as a profile that identifies the characteristics of the ideal buyer who is fit for your solution. It usually takes into stock attributes such as the industry type, revenue, employee count, tech stack, etc. 

While ICP factors in who the ideal business to sell your solution would be, buyer persona covers a broader framework. Buyer persona targets individual customers and uses a more rigorous template to further refine its profile. Individual pain points, education, background, and motivations are things a buyer persona will include. 

Knowing your ideal buyer will allow businesses to: 

• Gain insights on how sales teams can map their strategies and generate more leads.
• Focus your efforts on getting more leads who actually fit your solution. 
• Sales teams can allocate their resources better and not waste time on ineffective leads. 

To fix your ideal buyer, look at your current customer base for common attributes and work from there. For instance, if your customers with the highest purchase frequency are from small and medium businesses, you can use this as a measuring stick to draw an outline of your ideal buyer.

2. Build a Database of Contacts

Now that your ICP is perfected, you are good to go.

Psych!

With your ICP ready, you will need a list of targets to reach out to—a database of contacts. 

A database of contacts is a repository of filtered-out lists of leads that are yet to become sales opportunities. The relevant data collected can be used to match with the ICP. These lists are segmented to categorize prospects based on company size, industry type, turnover, etc. 

Developing prospect lists will help sales teams to easily store, edit, and retrieve information on leads. Housing all the relevant information in one place gives sales teams a reliable source to collect information. 

Sales teams can also input how they want to segment and organize their contacts. Prioritizing and deleting contact information of potential customers will help reps streamline their prospecting process. With a consolidated list of prospects ready to be used, you can genuinely knuckle down on acquiring prospects and generating revenue. 

Here’s a 3-step framework to build your contact database:

1. Use related filters to segment your leads based on your ICP. 
2. Segment further based on your buyer persona. 
3. Rely on channels such as chatbots, website downloadables like e-books, etc., to collect prospect information and organize them.

If you’re looking to create your contact database in-house, keep in mind that it’ll consume your time and resources. So, use prospecting tools to automate the process and focus only on valuable selling activities. 

3. Prioritize Prospects Based on Intent

Once you have your prospect database down, you need to get ready to segment the contacts based on who is most likely to buy from you. 

To do this, gauge the buying intent of your potential buyers by identifying their buying behaviors and assessing their level of interest. By doing this, you will quickly sift through endless contacts and find the ones most suited for your solution. 

To determine intent signals, check how a lead engages with your content, be it opening a link in your email or accepting your LinkedIn connection request. Assign scores for each activity and prioritize clearly so that sales teams can direct their efforts towards leads showcasing the highest intent signals. 

Amidst a chock-full schedule, it feels hardly fair to saddle sales teams with yet another task, even though it is meant to augment time efficiency. The solution? You can confidently entrust tools such as Bombora, Clearbit, and 6Sense to comb through contacts and help sales teams with their prospecting endeavors.

4. Make Personalized Pitches for Prospects

Picture this: You have 2 emails in your inbox. One is from a generic-sounding company with an equally generic promotion of their product, and another email is addressed personally to you promising to solve a problem you care about. Which one would you choose to reply to?

Of course, the one addressed personally sounds less spammy and more personalized. In recent years, prospects expect to receive personalized content from companies. More than 75% of the companies have reported in a survey they receive more prospect engagement if their content is personalized. 

Making personalization a standard practice is no longer a nice-to-have, but a necessity for sales teams to make their prospecting efforts a success.

To stand out from the crowd and impress your prospects, incorporate some of the following methods into their prospecting routine:

• Prospect research: Sales reps need to dedicate a certain amount of time to research their prospect before they execute outreach. Kyle Coleman’s 5x5 method is a popular framework wherein sales reps are to spend no more than 5 minutes researching a prospect and another 5 to draft an email. 

• Help, not sell: When pitching your solution, highlight how it will make their lives easier. This works better than just listing down the features of the solution. 

• Give facts and figures: By backing up your claims with numbers and studies, your pitch gains more credibility in the eyes of your prospects. 

• Prepare for objections: Always prepare a list of objections your prospects are likely to bring up and ready counterarguments that will help convince them that your solution is exactly what they need. 

5. Create Your Outreach Sequence

Having decided your personalized pitch, it’s time to decide the channel through which you’re going to pitch your leads—email, phone, social media, or a combination of many channels.

To level up your prospecting game, it is best advised that sales reps rely on multichannel outreach to get hold of prospects. Why, you might ask? 

It’s simple: No two prospects are the same. Some prospects might respond to emails while others might prefer phone calls. Some might even feel more inclined to reply on LinkedIn. 

Instead of relying on one channel for prospecting, reps can create a multichannel sequence comprising different touchpoints like emails, phone, LinkedIn and texts to maximize their chances of getting a reply.

Sales outreach sequence, aka sales cadence, is a systematic series of touchpoints that uses all the different channels to reach leads and prospects. Sales cadences also allow you to reach prospects at scale and drive engagement.

Though setting up a sales cadence sounds ridiculously easy, it needs to be executed strategically, Before you set a multichannel sequence, consider the following steps:

• Define your cadence objective: Set a realistic objective that you want to achieve. For instance: “I can be getting the prospect to sign up for a free trial.” 
• Evaluate the channels: Take stock of the channels and resources you have at hand. Try different channels to create a more dynamic and engaging outreach. 
• Understand your prospects: Research your prospect’s goals, pain points, challenges, etc.
• Identify your value proposition: Draft how you are going to pitch your solution and see which pain points will resonate with your prospects the most.

Most Effective Ways To Reach Out to Prospects

There are a plethora of sales techniques to reach a prospect. The method sales reps choose must depend on the prospect and the scale. Having a multichannel outreach will enable you to reach prospects across various channels and at scale. Here are some tried and tested ways to hook your prospect and reel them in.

Cold Calling

(Phone rings..)

Respondent: Hello?

Sales Rep: …uh - hello?...so …um .. I'm calling from {company} and if you are interes-

(line gets cut)

Every cold calling rep would face this when they start out.

Cold calling can be surmised as the act of calling a potential lead, someone you have had no prior contact with, and pitching your solution to them. Cold calling as a sales prospecting technique has been in use for as long as phones have and sales reps have relied on phones to find more leads and prospects ever since.

Despite the unsolicited nature of cold calls, it helps in getting hold of more potential buyers. 8 out of 10 buyers are shown to accept meetings from reps who reach out to them. You can find previously unfit leads and have increased chances of convincing them that they are an ideal fit for your solution. Leads and prospects who don't engage via other channels can be found through phone calls. 

To get you started, here’s a sample cold calling script that you can use after sending a cold email:

Hi Robert, it's Amelia with iCandy. Does that name ring a bell?

(The prospect responds with a yes or no, depending on whether they've noticed your email.)

Yeah, I had sent you an email this Wednesday about how optimizing Skypark's website could increase your traffic by 20% in under 3 months. I thought I'd reach out to you and see if you are interested in hearing more about that. Do you have a minute?

(If "Yes")

Before I tell you more about our solutions, shall I ask you a few questions to better understand your situation?

(If "Yes," ask qualifying questions)

Cold Emailing

Now that we have covered cold calling, let’s move on to cold emailing. 

Similar to cold calling, cold emailing is the act of emailing people you have no prior contact with and aren’t related to your company. 

Cold emailing helps sales reps expand their reach, get more leads and move prospects up the pipeline. If done right, cold emailing can be quite efficient and cost effective than cold calling. 

Usually the first touchpoint in a multichannel outreach strategy, cold emails can be successful if crafted cleverly. Boost your prospecting email by employing the following strategies and craft a winning cold email:

• Make sure your email address sounds professional. If it sounds remotely scammy, forget any chances of leads opening the email.

• Your cold email subject line should be captivating. Make sure it isn’t too long and include the name of the business.

• Add personalized touches to the subject line. Simply adding the recipient’s name to the subject line increases the chances of opening the email by 2.6%. And that is without any further personalization.

Since email sequences with multiple attempts promise a boost in response rates by 160%, it is worth investing time into learning how to craft cold emails. We are including some cold email templates to help you bolster your cold email campaign. 

Prospecting Email Template for Establishing a Connection by Sending Related Content

Subject: [First name], This might be useful!

Hello,

I came across your post on LinkedIn about [topic] that caught my attention. 

I found [related content] that I think might interest you. It might help in learning more about [topic].

Here’s the link: [URL]

Hope you found this information useful.

Regards,

[name]

Prospecting Email Template to Suggest Ideas

Sub: A few ideas: How can you improve sales?

Hi {{FirstName}}, 

I’ve already started looking at {{Company name}}, and I have a few ideas about how you can drastically increase your {{specific type of sales}}. 

For example, {{how you can help with prospect’s existing issues}}. 

We helped companies like {{Customer 1}} and {{Customer 2}} to implement similar ideas. Here’s what they have to say: 

{Testimonials from Customer 1 and Customer 2}

I have a lot more ideas that may be useful for you. 

I'd love to schedule a call to explore if there are any opportunities for us to help accelerate what you're currently working on. 

You can book a chat here {Link} or let me know your availability.

Best,

{Your name}

LinkedIn Selling

While we might have come across the terms cold calling and cold emailing before, the emergence of more channels has given birth to cold prospecting. Cold prospecting simply refers to contacting a person who you have had no prior contact with and tell them about your solutions. This is done via social media platforms such as LinkedIn.

Also known as social selling, LinkedIn is currently one of the most sought after channels to execute multi-channel outreach. A simple InMail on the platform can catch the attention of a cold prospect and get them to accept a connection request. You can also identify and contact your ideal clients via LinkedIn. 

To get the most promising prospects on LinkedIn, here’s a workflow recommended by social selling expert Dana Lindahl for sales reps:

• Look at social media profiles to find an ideal buyer (but don’t connect yet)
• Post an update relevant to their industry
• If they look at your profile, connect with them. Otherwise, wait a day to connect.
• In that LinkedIn connection request, give a personalized reason as to why you’re connecting.
• Follow that up with some kind of value – industry or persona-based
• Send a follow-up message on that topic and prove how it’s relevant to their company

The principles for writing an InMail on LinkedIn are more or less the same as writing an effective cold email. Here’s an example of a LinkedIn InMail template you can use:

InMail Subject Line: Increase your {Task} ROI without {doing something necessary to do task}

Hi {prospect name},

{A big shot in your prospect's industry} recently increased their ROI from {task} by {percentage} without {doing something necessary to do a task}. Too good to be true?

I would have said the same had I not been involved in this. I'm {your name}, {job role} at {company name}, the {agency/company} who helped {a big shot in your prospect's industry} achieve this 'too good to be true' result. But don’t take my word for it. There’s a case study video that explains how we did it.

Just type 'yes', and I’ll send you their story.

See you on the other side.

Who Should Be Responsible for Sales Prospecting?

The responsibility of prospecting is carried out differently in different organizations, as it depends on the size, nature, and budget of the business. Bigger the organization, the more intricate the process of prospecting becomes. 

Most companies assign their Sales Development Representative (SDRs) to carry out prospecting. Sometimes, you see Account Executives take part in prospecting as well. Let’s take a quick look at how different sales professionals execute prospecting:

Sales Development Representative (SDRs): SDRs are often responsible for getting new leads through outbound prospecting methods such as cold calling and cold emailing. The channel used to carry out prospecting depends on what the sales team feels represents their ICP best.

Account Executives (AEs): AEs usually overlook the process of closing deals. Their main aim is to close deals and move prospects up the pipeline. However, some AEs dedicate parts of their day to scouting prospects to create more pipeline.

Sales Managers: While they don’t carry out prospecting themselves, sales managers, at any given time, need to know where the sales prospects are in the pipeline. They need to be aware of the active and on-going deals and forecast the sales trajectory. In case there is a dearth of prospects, sales managers need to guide and redirect their teams.

9 Foolproof Sales Prospecting Tips To Win Over Your Prospects

With sales prospecting being as challenging as it is, having cheat codes will help you win prospects over and move them up the pipeline. Following are some tricks of trade that you will find actionable and can adopt into your daily sales ritual:

1. Perform In-Depth Research

As mentioned earlier, doing adequate research on the prospect prior to approaching them will allow you to give prospects an unforgettable sales pitch. A memorable sales pitch is crucial in making prospecting a success and ultimately book more meetings. 

Take an instance of a business selling software. If you are able to gauge how you can pitch the solution to the prospect based on your research and explain to them how the solution will benefit them, you can adequately personalize your sales pitch to better convince them. 

2. Allocate Fixed Time for Research

Sales leader Vinh Vong recommends spending no more than 6-8 mins to research a prospect. Even spending a few extra minutes prospecting will affect your overall quota. 

By following this, you can execute outreach at scale, improve your conversion rates, and step up your sales productivity. 

3. Use Account-Based Prospecting

A Gartner study reveals that a typical buying group for a complex B2B solution involves six to 10 decision makers. So, reaching out to just one prospect in a company won’t cut it.

Experts recommend reaching out to as many potential prospects within a company, a strategy known as account-based prospecting. Beginning with one or two, build your way up and reach out to others within the targeted company. 

Here’s an example of how you can execute account-based prospecting from Winning by Design:

• Try to target 3 to 5 contacts per account. 
• Look for 1–2 decision makers, which could be targeted by AEs 
• Next, target 1–3 initiators (champions), which could be targeted by SDRs.

4. Leverage Sales Triggers

Sales triggers are “events” that are triggered due to prospect’s activity. It can indicate anything from engaging with the business to a merger recruit, opportunities that can generate more pipeline.  Sales triggers create a chance to interact with the prospects and convert them. 

Sales triggers are crucial to booking meetings and eventually closing deals. Think of them as the butterfly effect of the sales realm. And to ensure they don’t end up cataclysmic in nature, there are a few sales triggers you might want to be in the look out for. 

Some of these triggers include, but aren’t limited to:

• Prospect’s company acquiring a new round of funding 
• Any major developments related to the prospect’s industry.
• Company relocation, expansion or merger
• Following the prospect’s career trajectory, like promotions or change in roles.

5. Ask More No-Oriented Questions

No-oriented questions are simply questions that are meant to elicit “no” as a response. For instance, “Would you be opposed to me sending more related content your way?” This kind of a question would get you a “no”, which is a positive response.

Asking more no-oriented questions will win you more information and insight on the lead. If a lead straight up denies your request for a meeting, a no-oriented question will make them feel inclined to explain their intentions. This will help you get more insights on the lead. 

6. Have Time-blocks for Your Outreach

Cold calling can be tough, given that you’re dealing with hostile prospects. So, use dedicated call blocks to avoid facing back-to-back calls and take a breather when necessary. It is also important to remember that a single bad call must not cast a shadow over the rest. 

While it’s nearly impossible to radiate positivity every waking moment, it is important to make leads feel important and make them believe a call was for them. You might have reached out to 100s of leads before, but this is the first time they are hearing from you.

7. Collect Referrals

Much like the Infinity Stones, sales reps must look for referrals wherever possible. Requesting for referrals from existing customers might lead straight to a trove of high-quality leads. Asking for referrals isn’t as uncommon as one would think. It becomes a means to generate more leads.

To ask for a referral, don’t hesitate to bring it up with the prospect! You can rely on different channels and put in a word while following up. Here’s an email template that you might find useful:

Hi [customer’s name],

I hope you’re doing well!

I am ecstatic to hear that you and your team find the solution has been beneficial. I’m really glad I got to work with you. Hoping this drives significant impact for [business’s name].

Encouraged after seeing how well the solution has been working for you, I wondered if you might know someone who might be interested in the same. I would love to help them experience the same benefits that you are experiencing.

Regards,
[Your name]

In case you feel hesitant to bring up the referral, wait till a potential lead or prospect has gone through your solution and then you can determine their reaction. If you find their reaction to be more than just lukewarm, you can highlight the referral. Provided that the prospect is happy enough with the pitched solution, they might be more than willing to put in a word for you. 

8. Warm Up Your Cold Outreach

Even though it sounds like an oxymoron, cold outreach doesn’t have to be all that cold. 

You can warm up your leads by identifying your target market, highlighting their pain points, and attempting to contact them strategically. Beware of overwhelming leads and flooding them with unrelated content. This will be sure to put them off. 

9. Deal With Pricing Objections Like a Pro

One of the most common sales objections raised by prospects before making the purchasing decision is the pricing. Arguing about pricing is as mundane as it gets. 

When dealing with pricing objections, take into consideration the challenges that the prospect might face. Ask questions and uncover the reasons the prospect is raising objections and make the customer realize if the solution is more of an investment. 

Most prospects attempt to get a discount. As a sales rep, you need to take the call if the pricing objection is simply an attempt to save money or a very real one.

Take Your Prospecting to the Next Level With the Right Tool

Prospecting, while necessary, can be tedious and long-winded. There are many roadblocks one encounters while prospecting. Sales teams, who don’t have the right sales prospecting tools, often find themselves bound by the following hurdles:

• Manual data entry 
• Executing the same touches for different prospects
• Unable to personalize touchpoints adequately
• Not reaching out to different prospects in an account 

And what’s the result of these aforementioned snags? Businesses lose sizable revenue over wasted time and excessive resource consumption. And if you are looking for sales prospecting tools to help overcome these stumbling blocks, look no further.

We bring you Prospect IQ by Klenty, a prospecting data platform that helps you enhance prospecting, drive engagement, and increase conversions. With Prospect IQ, you can 

• Filter prospects based on company name, domain, or specific revenue slabs.
• Create ‘ICP’ and ‘Best Customer Lookalike’ filter views to save time.
• Isolate prospects who belong to specific departments or hierarchy levels and execute high-touch or low-touch strategies accordingly.
• Target prospects with unique needs based on industry, geographic, or technographic data.
• Start a tailored set of activities for prospects as soon as you get their contact data.
• Sync prospect data into CRM and keep all records automatically updated.

You can also execute account-based selling, as Prospect IQ helps you:

• Find all prospects within a given account, and start reaching out via voice or email.
• Download a list of accounts instantly that match criteria like employee count, revenue slab, geographic and technographic data.
• Identify and engage decision makers in an account through multithreading. 
• Spot new prospects who belong to untouched segments of accounts, and keep them warm till you get into an active cycle.

Want to know more about how Prospect IQ can help you convert more leads and book meetings? Book a demo now to learn more about how the tool can help actualize your sales goals. 

FAQs