How to Find B2B Prospects
Finding prospects for your business.
Prospecting plays an essential first step in generating new customers that result in high revenue.
And to prospect correctly, it's important to know what your ideal customer looks like and where to find them. You want to make sure you're knocking on the right doors.
But before you even start knocking on doors, having a clear understanding of who is participating in this process and what terms like leads and prospects mean, is essential.
So let's start there!
And to prospect correctly, it's important to know what your ideal customer looks like and where to find them. You want to make sure you're knocking on the right doors.
But before you even start knocking on doors, having a clear understanding of who is participating in this process and what terms like leads and prospects mean, is essential.
So let's start there!
What is a B2B Prospect?
The type of company that would benefit the most from your product or service is defined as an ideal customer profile (ICP). Companies that fit your ICP are more likely to buy and keep using your product, making them vital for business growth.
And any person or organization who fits your ICP is considered a prospect.
Even if they have had little or no interaction with your company, a prospect (not a lead) can be classified as a potential customer.
Don't get confused with the word "lead".
A lead is someone you've had contact with and who has shown some interest in your product or service. However, it is unknown whether they fit the ideal customer profile.
Sales teams are typically in charge of prospecting and, during the lead qualification process, SDRs must determine if the lead is a potential customer for your company.
And any person or organization who fits your ICP is considered a prospect.
Even if they have had little or no interaction with your company, a prospect (not a lead) can be classified as a potential customer.
Don't get confused with the word "lead".
A lead is someone you've had contact with and who has shown some interest in your product or service. However, it is unknown whether they fit the ideal customer profile.
Sales teams are typically in charge of prospecting and, during the lead qualification process, SDRs must determine if the lead is a potential customer for your company.
How to Find Your Ideal B2B Prospects?
As mentioned earlier, your ideal B2B prospects are your ICP.
A very general characteristic of the ideal customer is that they will deliver high value while generating a lot of profit. But do you go about creating your ICP in the first place?
How do you define your ideal customer profile?
Defining your ICP is done by asking questions about your target group. Take a look at your most valuable customers so far and try to identify patterns that connect them.
You can start by asking questions such as…
And don't just answer the questions above internally, but also check in with your existing customers. Ask them about how your product helped them to solve their problems, who made the final decision to collaborate with you, or where did they first learn about your product or service.
This is invaluable advice directly from your target audience. And as they say, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
And remember, these types of questions help your customers just as much because it allows them to provide you feedback you can take and use to better their experience with your product or service.
Once you start receiving feedback and answers, make sure to collect all the information so that you can analyze and study it. It will help you find the patterns that define your IPC.
Who do you reach out to now?
You don't stop building a house once the foundations are done.
Similarly, you're not done just because you've defined and created your ICP.
The ICP is going to help to identify the right accounts like companies or organizations. But much information about who the decision-makers and buyer's persona are is still missing.
You can't get to know every single customer or prospect.
What you can do is create a customer persona to represent your buyers. Considering that there are different types of customers that may purchase your products for various reasons, you may need to create more than one buyer persona.
You will give this buyer persona a name, demographic information, interests, and behavioral characteristics. And you'll be aware of their objectives, pain points, and purchasing habits.
As part of their tasks, the sales team will research the accounts they are aiming for and identify the people who best match the buyer persona.
Researching prospects can take many forms, but one overarching feature is the need for the right tools.
Tools to get further information
First of all, working with a professional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is the key to collecting and analyzing data about your customers.
CRM refers to the technology and processes that are used to interact with customers in the sales, marketing, and customer service functions. They will support building, nurturing, and managing relationships with current and potential customers.
According to a recent report, approximately 82 percent of the companies surveyed use their CRM systems for sales reporting and process automation. And 72% say it gives them better access to customer data.
Looking at the benefits that a CRM can bring you in sales, it is very much worth considering investing in one to keep your prospecting organized. A CRM will allow you to manage your leads, accounts, and your pipeline in one system and will make a huge difference to boost your sales.
Social media is a huge database where you can find prospects
A great place to find prospects is online. Research on social media like LinkedIn to collect information about employees and companies.
You will find that LinkedIn in particular provides a lot of useful information about your target group. After all, 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn.
Things you can look for on LinkedIn:
LinkedIn itself has its own research platform called Sales Navigator. This platform allows you to take advantage of the social network's user base of over 830 million professionals with a variety of tools. These include creating lead and account lists, doing very specific searches, and saving these searches so they self-update.
Sales Navigator also gives you crucial updates about target accounts, such as job changes or press releases, which can be used when it's time to do outreach.
After researching your B2B prospects
Once you have identified your ICP and buyers persona. It's essential to collect all your information to create a list of prospects. This list will prove crucial and help you when it comes time to do your outreach.
All the prospects in your list should be buyers' persona or decision-makers.
A very general characteristic of the ideal customer is that they will deliver high value while generating a lot of profit. But do you go about creating your ICP in the first place?
How do you define your ideal customer profile?
Defining your ICP is done by asking questions about your target group. Take a look at your most valuable customers so far and try to identify patterns that connect them.
You can start by asking questions such as…
- What is the size of the company?
- How many employees does the company have?
- What is the average revenue of the company?
- What are the titles of all their employees?
- Where are they located?
- What kind of social media platforms do they make use of?
- What is the average deal size that you get from them?
- How did they know about your business? How did they become your customer?
- How long have they been in business?
- What is their industry?
And don't just answer the questions above internally, but also check in with your existing customers. Ask them about how your product helped them to solve their problems, who made the final decision to collaborate with you, or where did they first learn about your product or service.
This is invaluable advice directly from your target audience. And as they say, don't look a gift horse in the mouth.
And remember, these types of questions help your customers just as much because it allows them to provide you feedback you can take and use to better their experience with your product or service.
Once you start receiving feedback and answers, make sure to collect all the information so that you can analyze and study it. It will help you find the patterns that define your IPC.
Who do you reach out to now?
You don't stop building a house once the foundations are done.
Similarly, you're not done just because you've defined and created your ICP.
The ICP is going to help to identify the right accounts like companies or organizations. But much information about who the decision-makers and buyer's persona are is still missing.
You can't get to know every single customer or prospect.
What you can do is create a customer persona to represent your buyers. Considering that there are different types of customers that may purchase your products for various reasons, you may need to create more than one buyer persona.
You will give this buyer persona a name, demographic information, interests, and behavioral characteristics. And you'll be aware of their objectives, pain points, and purchasing habits.
As part of their tasks, the sales team will research the accounts they are aiming for and identify the people who best match the buyer persona.
Researching prospects can take many forms, but one overarching feature is the need for the right tools.
Tools to get further information
First of all, working with a professional Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is the key to collecting and analyzing data about your customers.
CRM refers to the technology and processes that are used to interact with customers in the sales, marketing, and customer service functions. They will support building, nurturing, and managing relationships with current and potential customers.
According to a recent report, approximately 82 percent of the companies surveyed use their CRM systems for sales reporting and process automation. And 72% say it gives them better access to customer data.
Looking at the benefits that a CRM can bring you in sales, it is very much worth considering investing in one to keep your prospecting organized. A CRM will allow you to manage your leads, accounts, and your pipeline in one system and will make a huge difference to boost your sales.
Social media is a huge database where you can find prospects
A great place to find prospects is online. Research on social media like LinkedIn to collect information about employees and companies.
You will find that LinkedIn in particular provides a lot of useful information about your target group. After all, 80% of B2B leads come from LinkedIn.
Things you can look for on LinkedIn:
- Language
- Company size
- Location and time zone
- Challenges
- Interests
- Who is the decision-maker
LinkedIn itself has its own research platform called Sales Navigator. This platform allows you to take advantage of the social network's user base of over 830 million professionals with a variety of tools. These include creating lead and account lists, doing very specific searches, and saving these searches so they self-update.
Sales Navigator also gives you crucial updates about target accounts, such as job changes or press releases, which can be used when it's time to do outreach.
After researching your B2B prospects
Once you have identified your ICP and buyers persona. It's essential to collect all your information to create a list of prospects. This list will prove crucial and help you when it comes time to do your outreach.
All the prospects in your list should be buyers' persona or decision-makers.
Outbound Prospecting to Find Your Ideal Customers
Once you've found your prospects, it's time to reach out to them.
Make sure that the SDRs know their prospects well enough and have all the details that they collected earlier during the target group research at their disposal.
The outbound itself can be done using several, well-executed tactics used in tandem with each other.
Personalization is key in outreach. Using all the information that the sales team collected earlier will facilitate this step - it's time for all that research to shine through!
Identifying the prospect's pain points and cleverly offering a solution is an essential first step in getting your prospect's interest. And how should your sales team go about contacting your prospects with this messaging?
It will vary depending on what works best per target group.
Once you have a qualified list, the sales team can start prospecting with a variety of methods including cold calling, cold emailing, LinkedIn profile visits, connection requests, direct messages or InMail, social selling, and video messaging, to name a few.
Cold emailing is our particular specialty here at SalesPipe, though we do also have SDRs practiced with all forms of outreach. But we focus on email because 80% of buyers choose to communicate by email.
Remember too that at this stage the main purpose of the outreach is to get your name out there. Let them know that you exist and are aware of their issues and that you have a potential solution.
More than 85% of buyers accept meetings with salespeople who reach out to them. Usually with a good follow-up strategy.
After all, at this early stage in the outreach process, they are just getting to know you and your company. Give them a few additional steps before they're ready for a meeting - pushing too much might turn them away instead.
Make sure that the SDRs know their prospects well enough and have all the details that they collected earlier during the target group research at their disposal.
The outbound itself can be done using several, well-executed tactics used in tandem with each other.
Personalization is key in outreach. Using all the information that the sales team collected earlier will facilitate this step - it's time for all that research to shine through!
Identifying the prospect's pain points and cleverly offering a solution is an essential first step in getting your prospect's interest. And how should your sales team go about contacting your prospects with this messaging?
It will vary depending on what works best per target group.
Once you have a qualified list, the sales team can start prospecting with a variety of methods including cold calling, cold emailing, LinkedIn profile visits, connection requests, direct messages or InMail, social selling, and video messaging, to name a few.
Cold emailing is our particular specialty here at SalesPipe, though we do also have SDRs practiced with all forms of outreach. But we focus on email because 80% of buyers choose to communicate by email.
Remember too that at this stage the main purpose of the outreach is to get your name out there. Let them know that you exist and are aware of their issues and that you have a potential solution.
More than 85% of buyers accept meetings with salespeople who reach out to them. Usually with a good follow-up strategy.
After all, at this early stage in the outreach process, they are just getting to know you and your company. Give them a few additional steps before they're ready for a meeting - pushing too much might turn them away instead.
Inbound Strategies to Find Prospects
Inbound lead generation does not mean you have a ready-to-go list of prospects.
Methods like content marketing, email marketing, social media strategies, and PPC, combined with a good SEO strategy will generate leads. By creating valuable content, leads will flock to your website and give you their information. It can also happen when people sign up for your newsletter, for free information or tools, download an eBook, or request a demo after watching a webinar.
This information exchange delivers valuable information about your audience if you ask for it in a form. You can get information such as their name, email address, phone number, company, location, and title, among other things.
Your aim has to be to gain trust and to start a conversation. Nurturing these leads by providing further information with an email newsletter, warm calling, giving them offers, and researching them is essential to maintain their interest.
And before you even do that, you want to make sure that they are worth it. These leads have shown interest but it's unclear whether they will be a match for your ideal customer profile. The lead qualification process will filter out those leads who match your ICP and buyer persona from those who don't.
All the information you get from your leads can be used to give them valuable resources to help them see how you can be the solution to their pain points.
Methods like content marketing, email marketing, social media strategies, and PPC, combined with a good SEO strategy will generate leads. By creating valuable content, leads will flock to your website and give you their information. It can also happen when people sign up for your newsletter, for free information or tools, download an eBook, or request a demo after watching a webinar.
This information exchange delivers valuable information about your audience if you ask for it in a form. You can get information such as their name, email address, phone number, company, location, and title, among other things.
Your aim has to be to gain trust and to start a conversation. Nurturing these leads by providing further information with an email newsletter, warm calling, giving them offers, and researching them is essential to maintain their interest.
And before you even do that, you want to make sure that they are worth it. These leads have shown interest but it's unclear whether they will be a match for your ideal customer profile. The lead qualification process will filter out those leads who match your ICP and buyer persona from those who don't.
All the information you get from your leads can be used to give them valuable resources to help them see how you can be the solution to their pain points.
Outsource B2B Prospecting to Save Yourself All the Hard Work
Doing research, putting together lists, committing to daily outreach, and qualifying leads is a time-consuming and complex part of the early sales process.
According to The 2021 Sales Enablement Report by HubSpot, 40% of salespeople said sales prospecting was the most challenging part of the sales process. It's followed by closing (36%) and qualifying by itself (22%). Having the expertise in your team is vital to reaching your quota.
Not to mention, finding and keeping SDRs and BDRs can be a huge challenge and will cost your company a lot of money when done wrong.
Instead, leave it to a pro and outsource.
Outsourcing early-stage sales gives you more time to focus on your business growth and solve problems in other departments that have been solved for a long time already. And your team does not feel like it is being tasked with multiple to-do lists daily.
Let the experts take care of everything instead, and you keep doing what you're best at: growing and bettering your business. External SDRs working for specialty companies will also have all the support of the company behind them as well, and their tool stack.
Outsourcing will also always be more cost-effective than having an in-house team that needs training, time, tools, software, and guidance.
Overall, it's a lot easier to outsource.
According to The 2021 Sales Enablement Report by HubSpot, 40% of salespeople said sales prospecting was the most challenging part of the sales process. It's followed by closing (36%) and qualifying by itself (22%). Having the expertise in your team is vital to reaching your quota.
Not to mention, finding and keeping SDRs and BDRs can be a huge challenge and will cost your company a lot of money when done wrong.
Instead, leave it to a pro and outsource.
Outsourcing early-stage sales gives you more time to focus on your business growth and solve problems in other departments that have been solved for a long time already. And your team does not feel like it is being tasked with multiple to-do lists daily.
Let the experts take care of everything instead, and you keep doing what you're best at: growing and bettering your business. External SDRs working for specialty companies will also have all the support of the company behind them as well, and their tool stack.
Outsourcing will also always be more cost-effective than having an in-house team that needs training, time, tools, software, and guidance.
Overall, it's a lot easier to outsource.
Conclusion
Defining your ICP and having a profile of your customer's buyer persona are two vital steps to finding B2B prospects and communicating properly with them.
But these processes take a lot of time and have to be done correctly for your outreach to be successful.
Working with an external partner like SalesPipe allows you to be sure that the prospecting is getting done by professional experts in the business. With our SDRs, we qualify your leads and find the right prospects to generate as many customers as possible for our clients.
Do you want to make use of our experts and boost your business to the next level?
Get in touch with us and we'll increase your revenue in no time.
But these processes take a lot of time and have to be done correctly for your outreach to be successful.
Working with an external partner like SalesPipe allows you to be sure that the prospecting is getting done by professional experts in the business. With our SDRs, we qualify your leads and find the right prospects to generate as many customers as possible for our clients.
Do you want to make use of our experts and boost your business to the next level?
Get in touch with us and we'll increase your revenue in no time.
Post by Mattes Wöstemeier.
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