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The 3 Best Practices in Sales Prospecting

Are you having trouble keeping prospects? When your potential buyers disappear off the face of the earth, it relays a bigger problem in your sales pitch. You need to ask yourself these questions: Did I not listen enough? Was I too pushy on that last call?

Research shows that 91% of prospects are willing to give 10 minutes of their time to listen to an offer early on in their journey. That is if you have something valuable to say. So bite the bullet, go in headstrong to nail your 10-minute sales pitch call.

Best practices in sales prospecting keep your prospects locked into your pipeline. Once your leads are in, you can nurture them through a longer sales cycle and convert them into winning sales. Here are three of the best ways to do exactly that.

3 best practices in sales prospecting for B2B sales

sales prospecting 101

The first step for turning prospects into sales is research. You need to browse through B2B company websites and social media profiles to gather valuable information about your ideal customers. Then you need to delve deeper, using technology that provides firmographics—data on industry, location, company size, etc.—to confirm whether these potential prospects fit your ideal customer profile.

Once a prospect qualifies, you must track down their email address and phone number to start planning your initial outreach. Framework your outreach method around a cold call, cold email, direct message on social media, direct mail, or SMS. Once a connection has been made, your prospects enter the sales funnel where they will continually be nurtured till a purchase is made. The ultimate goal is to fill your sales pipeline with new prospects.

B2B sales prospecting isn’t always about finding new leads. You can also dive into your CRM database to find lost prospects and develop a new strategy to re-engage and win them back.

In a survey, 77.3% of salespeople stated that their company only provides one-quarter of their leads. That leaves three-quarters of leads in your hands. The best way to bring them in is to put best practices in sales prospecting into action.

3 best practices in sales prospecting

  1. Create an emotional bond

It’s time for some cold hard truths about sales prospecting.

The UK’s self-proclaimed “most hated trainer” Benjamin Dennehy says that many SDRs still don’t understand what sales prospecting truly means. On the podcast INSIDE Inside Sales, Dennehy speaks about seeing salespeople stuck on the never-ending hamster wheel of prospecting, trapped in the preparation phase, never building up enough of an emotional connection before pitching to their prospect. They under-research and don’t have enough material to make a strong, hyper-personalized outreach message. There’s also the opposite problem, when reps over-research, wasting time on prospects that haven’t been confirmed as sales-ready.

An emotional bond is the only way to escape the endless cycle of preparation and move on to receiving engagement through marketing channels and book meetings.

So how do you create an emotional bond?

Put logic on the backburner. Decision-makers make rational choices, but they are also human and will make purchasing decisions based on emotional triggers, like:

FOMO (fear of missing out): Most companies in your industry are already using influencer marketing and are seeing an increase in sales, are you looking to train your marketing team? Status: Is your office furniture outdated? We have furniture to make you look more professional Tapping into your target buyers’ reputation, power, and fears is a best practice in sales prospecting. Equally important is knowing when to quit. If a prospect doesn’t show interest then they are not ready to progress to the next stage of the cycle, get back to them later and move on. Always set a time limit and remember what the endgame is—to get your pipeline qualified ready and hit your monthly quota.

Use 75if to find your ideal prospects and crack the code to converting them into customers.

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