In order to maintain a sustainable sales pipeline, you need to perfect your prospecting process. So how do you transform prospects into clients?
In this post, we’ll go over:
- What is a prospect in sales?
- 4 key differences between a lead and a prospect
- 5 proven prospecting techniques
Download the Ultimate B2B Appointment Setting Guide
Learn what it takes to identify prospects, get in touch with decision-makers, and set more meetings for your sales reps.
What is a prospect in sales?
In the sales world, a prospect is any nurtured lead who expressed interest in purchasing your solution. You’ll notice that we said “nurtured leads” and not just “leads.” While many use the two terms interchangeably, key differentiations exist between a lead and a prospect.
4 key differences between a lead and a prospect
A lead is anyone who expresses interest in your solution — while a prospect is any lead who is nurtured and has a higher likelihood of converting. The subtle nuances that differentiate the two will help you elevate your sales strategy.
| Lead | Prospect | |
|---|---|---|
| Definition | Anyone who has expressed interest in your solution | A lead who has been nurtured and is considering your solution |
| Location in the funnel | Top of the funnel | Middle of the funnel |
| Source |
|
|
| Decision-making stage | Far from decision-making | Close to considering |
Now you may be asking yourself, “How do I find prospects for my business?” In short, you’ll want to start implementing an account-based selling strategy, create an ideal customer profile, and then find a trusted data vendor to provide a list of verified contacts. You can read more about our tips for successful business prospecting in Chapter 1 of our Ultimate B2B Appointment Setting Guide.
Next, let’s go over five proven prospecting techniques to get your foot in the door with the right people.
Subscribe to EBQ's Bimonthly Newsletter
Subscribe to EBQ's Bimonthly Newsletter
5 proven prospecting techniques
1. Attend in-person events
Trade shows and conferences are great ways to network with the people you are trying to reach, establish a point of contact early on, and forge strong relationships with your leads.
However, this is assuming that you have a strong trade show strategy. If you are planning to attend a few trade shows this year, check out our B2B Trade Show Planning Guide. We give you tips on choosing the best brand representatives for the show, marketing your conference attendance, and following up on trade show leads effectively.
2. Cold call leads
Contrary to popular belief, cold calling is not dead. In fact, you can proactively get on your lead’s radar and quickly disseminate your sales messaging in a short call. By investing in a sales development representative (SDR) team, you can dedicate an entire group of people strictly to prospecting.
EBQ Tip: We highly recommend utilizing an all-bound SDR approach. From our experience, you will be able to mitigate call burnout by allowing your team to balance between cold calling and inbound marketing follow-up. We will dive into what inbound marketing is later in this post.
Another huge benefit of utilizing sales development is that you can use these cold calls to validate a market. Since your SDRs will have direct conversations with your leads, they can give you insight into how your targeted market is responding to your sales messaging. From there, you can optimize your messaging for better impact.
3. Utilize inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is the process of attracting prospects to your brand through search engine marketing, social media, and email marketing. That way, you can increase your visibility and create a credible brand for your prospective clients.
Using inbound marketing to find prospects is highly effective because you enable people who are already interested in a solution like yours to find you. If you’re looking to elevate your B2B marketing efforts, check out our Ultimate Guide to Business Branding.
4. Leverage advertising
Because organic marketing efforts are slow and long-term strategies, you can accelerate your marketing goals by leveraging advertising. In our experience, utilizing paid search ads and LinkedIn ads are great ways to market a B2B company; a lot of your prospects are already on those channels, and they might already be actively searching for your solution to address their pain points.
Of course, your advertisements’ success highly depends on your paid ad specialists’ level of expertise. Otherwise, you risk creating low-converting and expensive ads with little positive impact on your sales pipeline. Consider partnering with EBQ’s paid search and pay-per-click management team if you are looking for quality advertising at a fraction of the cost of building an internal marketing department.
5. Encourage referrals
Let your customers do the work for you by encouraging referrals. You can give them time-sensitive monetary incentives to attract more prospects. That way, you can also leverage social proof to attract prospects — which is a psychological concept around peers influencing each other to act similarly.
It is why review sites, such as Clutch and AppExchange, are so successful. After all, people tend to trust their peers and like-minded people’s opinions. Referrals encourage your customers to become brand ambassadors and advocate for your brand to their peers — thus bringing more prospects to your sales pipeline.
Download the Ultimate B2B Appointment Setting Guide
Learn what it takes to identify prospects, get in touch with decision-makers, and set more meetings for your sales reps.
Perfect Your Sales Prospecting Process
In short, you need to utilize an omnichannel prospecting strategy to attract more leads to your sales pipeline. Our recommended five prospecting techniques are:
- Attend in-person events
- Cold call leads
- Utilize inbound marketing
- Leverage advertising
- Encourage referrals
Are you ready to start widening your sales pipeline? Discover how our services can help you find high-quality prospects to start sales conversations with. Contact one of our Business Consultants to learn why thousands of businesses chose to partner with us.
