The Ultimate Guide to B2B Prospecting
Majority of salespeople are hesitant when it comes to prospecting. Prospecting is one of the most valuable and strong sales weapons as it separates proactive salespeople from the reactive ones. High achieve salespeople are best when it comes to prospecting.
There are lot of stories and statistics and techniques on how to become an effective prospector when it comes to sales. There are lot of resources and articles on web that offer the ultimate hack for prospecting which sometimes guarantee the results as well.
Things like how many times to call/email/voice mail prospects. What time/day of the week to make touch points. What to say in the first, second or third call.
There is no doubt that success of a salesperson is depending on the number of leads and opportunities in the pipeline. There is absolutely no doubt about this. So I guess the question is how important for salesperson to become a world class prospector and how it can help them hit their target.
The answer is simple: prospect like your life depends on it.
Nothing is more important for a proactive salesperson to separate himself in the marketplace as a world class, quota crusher consultant who has no fear of reaching out to people on his own and start offering help to solve a business problem. If this is your positioning, you should have no fear of facing cold contacts or leads to see if they like to see you and share their pains.
To me, there is a big difference between reactive and proactive salesperson and that is; prospecting.
To stress how important is this skill, I went to several interviews during my career and it is interesting to know all the sales leaders were asking how I do cold calls and how I find qualified prospects. This is absolutely a game changer when it comes to show your passion for sales and making difference.
I always wonder why salespeople are not do prospecting and why not taking the proper proactive approach to gain net new business. These are few reasons that salespeople are not prospecting:
1. Fear of rejection
This is ironic because salespeople are known to be resilient when it comes to handling rejection. However, in each profession, we have high achievers and low achievers and of course mediocre. This group of people could not still handle the rejection as they are maybe in account management roles and deal with existing known people for a while and they cannot imagine themselves going through the process of reaching out to strangers and get rejected. In some other cases, they are coming from technical background or are pre sales engineers and still have their tech engineering mindset which cold call is not my thing. I do not cold call as it is below my level.
The fact is, if you are in sales organization and you are receiving commission, you MUST do cold call and prospect no matter what. It is absolutely unacceptable to sit down in the office and not making phone calls or not sending emails to your targeted personas.
Let’s not forget that achieving net new business is not possible with out prospecting and without that, hitting your target as business development manager will be impossible.
2. Lack of focus
Salespeople may do prospecting but it is all over the place and it is not a focused activity. If you do not have a solid planned strategy on who to call and what to say, your prospecting activity will lead to nothing and you may think by mistake that cold call is dead.
There are literally lots of ways to reach out to prospects and there may be millions of them outside. The fact is you cannot contact everybody all the time. This is not possible. You need to be focused and have a proper strategy and target on who to contact.
Draft a list of high, medium and low priority personas or geography or industry when it comes to plan. Try to come up with finite list of people in the same industry or region, and then start reaching out to them in structured way. It is a good practice to have a excel sheet to register the results as well so you can track your success.
Being focused on who to contact is the key when it comes to prospecting.
3. What to say
Lot of sales leaders offload this task to inside sales team or even 3rd party agency to contact leads and qualify them. I personally have nothing against outsourcing when it comes to simple repetitive tasks. However, prospecting is a high value activity and is not something you can outsource unless we are talking about millions of leads.
Senior Salespeople like BDMs and Channel Managers should be equipped with strong messaging and a short power statement, so they can grab prospects attention in a very short period of time (less than 10 sec on the phone and the first couple of emails). Only in this situation they can become super effective and deliver great results.
The message should be tailored based on persona, industry, company, previous year results and future business goals of the prospects.
4. Lack of confidence
believe it or not, many salespeople are suffering lack of confidence. Yes, I said it. I saw lot of salesmen and saleswomen that are not confidant enough to make a cold phone call and introduce themselves to a person who they are sure that are qualified.
It is absolutely important for salespeople to come to work everyday with the right attitude and killer level of confidence and believe that their company is the best company to work for, their product or service is the best in the market, and of course, they are the best salesperson in the world as well.
Attitude is everything. If you think that you are not good at prospecting, you are not good at prospecting. Change your mindset immediately to get a different result.
The ultimate guide
Now that we know what may prevent a salesperson from prospecting, lets investigate what is the best way to approach this task.
First of all, block your calendar and everyday for 3 to 4 hours to prospecting. Anything less than that, will not lead to strong results. I normally do prospecting 5–6 hours a day as my life depends on it. The benefit of this approach is, you are committing yourself to do this on a daily basis and also nobody else in your organization can disturb you as they cannot book things in your calendar. So you are protecting yourself and dedicating your time and expertise to a very high value activity.
Do it every day. Do not miss a day. You are building your pipeline with this sales tool and pipeline’s health depend on the days and your effort. So, if you miss few days, you will suffer the weeks after by not having enough leads to follow up.
Surprisingly, there is no magic number or formula to this. Start cold calling early in the morning and continue to late at night! There is no golden hours. Do it whenever you are in the zone and block your calendar.
I normally start from 9 am to 3 pm. I got very good respond rate and result. Someone else may do it from 6 am to 12 pm. Still a good practice. Please remember to be consistent on what time you do it so it becomes a habit.
Also, I do this form Monday to Friday, unless I go to an industry event or seminar, which means I do my prospecting activity over there. Practically, this means I am not missing a day at all.
So if someone tells you Mondays or Fridays are not suitable for cold calling and prospecting, there is a high chance they are not a good prospector. Do it every day! No matter what.
If you want to take your prospecting skill to the next level, here is one of the best book written in this space.
About Author:
Houman Asefi is world authority and visionary on B2B technology sales and startups, award finalist blogger, focusing on building and scaling sales strategy and making sure companies achieve their targeted revenue.
Contact Info: Houman Asefi
Phone Number: +61 452 219 022
Email: houman.asefi@gmail.com
