The B2B prospecting refers to the sales process that is followed for the identification of potential customers, or leads, from reaching out to their nurturing to converting them into sales. This outreach is regulated via numerous B2B sales and marketing activities, comprising cold calling, outbound email, content marketing, and PPC.
Importance of B2B Prospecting
- Sales
The B2B prospecting keeps the sales pipelines filled consistently with high-quality opportunities.
- Improved Lead Quality
It let marketing feed high-quality prospects to sales, increasing conversion rates.
- More Effective Outreach
It ensures that businesses are engaging with the right people at the right time on the right channel.
- More Targeted Content
The insights of B2B prospecting help in designing better marketing with more engaging and relevant content.
- Quicker Qualification
It enables marketers to eliminate non-suitable prospects for their product or service.
- Better Marketing Campaigns
It disciplines marketing and provides the basis for successful campaigns.
- Accelerates Sales Cycle
It speeds up the sales process leading to better productivity and more closed-won deals.
- Attracts More Customers
It helps in reaching more potential buyers quickly and creates brand awareness.
- Sales and Marketing Alignment
It aligns sales and marketing together empowering them to work as one revenue team.
- Revenue Generation
It attracts, engages, and converts people and organizations into customers.
What are B2B Prospects?
Any person or organization fits in the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) but is not aware of your brand’s existence. Now it’s the job of sales and marketing representatives to create your brand awareness guiding them about your business product or service to become your customer.
2 Types of B2B Prospects
- Sales Prospects
Prospects match the parameters of companies’ ICP and are deemed suitable for further outreach.
These are-
- Prospects gained from cold calling activity.
- Prospects are contacted via outbound mail activity.
- Prospects are contacted via social selling.
- Prospects were contacted via all above mention activities.
- Marketing Prospects
Prospects who are aware of your brand and have shown interest in your product and service by engaging content produced by the B2B marketing team.
Challenges of B2B Prospecting
- It is often longer than the B2C sales process as it requires companies to be assured that all the decision-makers are on the same page before making any purchase decision.
- Businesses that are larger or more complex, determine the in charge of making the decision as it is difficult to find the exact person within a target company.
- It often requires a more professional approach as their needs are more specific that take more time and effort.
Defining B2B Prospecting Strategy
- Set Sales Objectives
Before reaching out to any prospects, you must start with setting the sales objectives that you want to achieve. Doing so will assist you with the orientation to your sales team, progress tracking, and actions that must be taken. Your objectives should be SMART goals –
S- Simple or Specific
M- Measurable
A- Achievable
R- Relevant
T- Time Bound
- Target Profile Segmentation
Segmentation of the customer is a must for B2B marketing. It is the process of target audience segmentation into related groups to opt more personalized strategy that is a more effective sales approach as per the clients’ requirements. Define your segment parameters with –
1. The sector of the target company operates
2. Revenue or margin of the target company
3. Location of the prospects
- Prospecting Channels Selection
Choose the campaign channel that is under your budget giving the best ROI with maximum outreach. Another thing you must mind is the target audience. Choose the channel on which your target audience is most active to find their intent data easily.
- Sales Pitch
Convince your audience by presenting your product or service as the best-suited solution for their needs and problems. Your sales pitch should be focused on giving solutions to the pain points of the prospects countering their objections and hesitations while highlighting your USP.
- Leads Nurturing
Nurture your leads by delivering quality content or information at right time to the right prospects and for that, you need to make follow up, keep eye on the customers’ behavior during the whole sales process and even after that to make them your loyal customers and they can also use as advocates for your new customers.
Different Methods of B2B Prospecting
- Sales – Outbound Prospecting
Prospecting is carried out through a B2B process called Outbound prospecting. This process follows-
- Cold Calling – Introducing your products or service, sharing its benefits to the prospects via telephone, and qualifying the prospects for future engagement come under cold calling.
- Outbound Email – Connecting with B2B prospects via emails for striking a conversation.
- Social Selling- Engaging prospects through social media developing relationships and engagement with relevant content.
- Sales Cadences – Combining all the connecting techniques such as emails, social media, calls is known as cadences. Doing so increases the probability of a B2B prospect responding.
- Sales demos – Give a live demonstration to your prospects about your service or products.
- Marketing – Inbound Marketing
B2B prospecting managed through a process is called inbound marketing. The main channels for inbound are-
- Paid– PPC, is an online advertising strategy used by companies by paying for their ads whenever prospects clicked on them. This drives traffic to the websites/ content increasing conversions.
- Content Marketing- It is a publishing strategy by the marketers to present relevant, valuable content and promote it to the target audience. Webinars, blogs, videos, etc come under this marketing strategy.
- Email Marketing- It is managed by campaign marketers involving planning and execution and email delivery to the prospects. It aims to the prospects into buyers.
The Bottom Line…
B2B prospecting has become the necessary effort that B2B marketers must take to keep their campaign end with achieving the objectives with successful buyers and maximum ROI. Whether it’s inbound or outbound, both channels are important for a successful B2B campaign.
