Do you think those prospective customers would contact your company? And imagine the improvement in closing rates and sold margins with 50 or more reviews. The more reviews, the more leads. If you notice a company is hiring a security director, or loss prevention officer, or even a new manager, this may be a good organization to reach out to.

New jobs often trigger events to buy new products or services. Look for newly hired decision-makers and make your case. Do you have favorite spots to find new prospects quickly? Then share them with us. This website requires certain cookies to work and uses other cookies to help you have the best experience. By visiting this website, certain cookies have already been set, which you may delete and block.

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Written by Cambria Davies. Discover the templates, techniques, and tools you need to make your sales prospecting strategies as effective as possible. An easy-to-use resource guide full of templates, best practices, and strategies for sales people and managers. Imagine the following: You're talking to a random stranger, but they keep looking at their watch.

They're clearly not listening, and when the conversation is finished, you feel like you've effectively wasted your time. Prospecting ensures that every lead you talk to is genuinely a good fit for your product — or has the potential to be a good fit.

While you won't know for sure until you carry out the lead qualification process , you can save a significant amount of time by researching potential buyers before writing a single email line or making a single phone call.

The truth is, sales is changing — quickly. As sales conversations grow even more buyer-focused, sales reps have begun developing hacks, techniques, and processes for prospecting. Prospecting is the process of initiating and developing new business by searching for potential customers, clients, or buyers for your products or services. The goal is to move these prospects through the flywheel until they convert to revenue-generating customers.

Prospecting allows you to identify good-fit customers for your business. This means finding leads who truly need your product or service to solve their challenges and pain points.

It's extremely effective, too. More than 7 in 10 buyers actually want to hear from salespeople early on in the buying process, making it more likely that they'll respond.

Image Source. Salespeople who are top performers in the act of prospecting generate nearly 3X more sales meetings than those who are "low" performers — or those who don't prospect at all. Once you finish prospecting, you'll have meetings with leads who are a much better fit for the product.

Good-fit customers provide long-term business and value versus leads who churn after closing a deal. You can identify good-fit customers while prospecting by asking the right sales qualification questions to all of your leads and prospects. Speaking of leads and prospects, it's important to note the differences between these two types of people. You and the rest of your sales team will be communicating with them during prospecting — and knowing who's who will affect how you approach them. Leads are potential customers who've expressed interest in your company through behaviors like visiting a website, subscribing to a blog, or signing up for a free trial.

Prospects are leads that are qualified and, therefore, align with your target audience and buyer personas. Depending on their qualifications and fit, a prospect not a lead can be classified as a potential customer even if they have had limited or no interaction with your company. It's also important to remember that although leads and prospects differ by definition, your goals with both are the same: Nurture leads and prospects until they buy your product or service.

This nurturing process begins the moment you start prospecting and up until the time you close the deal. But how do you even begin prospecting? Below, we've put together a simple guide for getting started. We'll then cover some proven tips for finding good-fit prospects who will be more likely to close. Unproductive prospecting is a huge time-waster. But with a twist. We understand that everyone has their approach. Pick and experiment with whatever works best for your own sales hustle.

Levels of prioritization will vary between each type of sales organization and each salesperson, but the main idea is to create a few buckets of prospects based on their likelihood to buy and focus on one bucket at a time. Now we can assign a value between 1 and to these dimensions for each prospect in our list. Add up these dimension scores until each prospect has a total score. And now our entire list is prioritized. Note : Lead management software does this automatically.

So first, we must determine what our prospects care about. Do we have mutual connections? Has there been a trigger event? Have they recently visited our website? If so, which search terms drove them to our site? Which pages did they look at? If we want to get more high-level with our prep, we can create a decision map to outline our prospect's options and end-goals.

This will help us better handle any objections and personalize a pitch that resonates with their primary objectives. We could also conduct a competitive analysis to determine how we can better position our company's service or product within the industry and how we can combat prospects' objections. Keep these general tips in mind when contacting a prospect, whether on the phone or through email:.

Keep notes throughout this process to assess what activities generated value for the prospecting process and which wasted time. This self-reflection will help us improve our sales prospecting techniques in the future. This can further inform us of their key goals or challenges. There are a "bajillion" sales qualification frameworks.

Here is the basic breakdown and some examples of questions asked when connecting with potential customers to follow the framework:. Now we can focus on creating a highly targeted, relevant list. Based on our research, we should have a fine-tuned profile of our target customer, and every company or individual on our prospect list should meet those criteria. Qualitatively classify prospects by rating them on a spectrum from high, medium, and low suitability.

Kyle Van Pelt, Executive Vice President of Sales at Skience, reads 30 articles in 30 minutes every day and uses the content in his email outreach in a tailored, relevant way. Create a list of top priority prospects on Twitter to more easily track trigger events and streamline the research process.

Watch as this feed populates with prospect activity. We can check this every morning and afternoon to see if any trigger events have occurred that would provide a valuable opportunity for us to connect. Batch prospecting sessions for 2 to 3 hours at a time and take a quick five-minute break between each hour. Get an egg timer, and set the timer on a countdown for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, or 45 minutes, depending on how much time we scheduled for the call.

In terms of establishing contact, we must decide between email or phone communication. Some of us will initially jump on the cold email approach while others will dive into the cold call. This strategy will vary based on what each salesperson feels most comfortable with. Successful first touch strategies often incorporate both approaches to take advantage of the pros and minimize the cons.

Jeff Hoffman pioneered the BASHO sequence, which advocates a combination of voicemail and email messages to gain leverage with prospects. Alternating between voicemail and email, with unique messaging each time, this technique allows prospects to consider our offer, conduct their own research, and respond at a time convenient for them.

But how do we leave a voicemail or send an email that prospects want to respond to? Try sending a calendar invite, instead of an email, to get straight to the point. In the description section, we can type up a personalized message like this:. Jill Konrath also suggests scheduling a short 5-minute meeting to get our foot in the door with prospects whose calendars are particularly swamped. If we decide to call a prospect, whether in conjunction with an email or not, we can follow this basic structure for the call:.

Bryan Kreuzberger, founder of Breakthrough Email , sends a follow-up email if prospects respond with a rejection. The purpose of this email is simple: Learning. We can use this rejection as an opportunity to better understand how we can improve our sales techniques by sending this template:.

Thanks for your email. I just closed your file. I have a quick question as a final follow up. Was it something I did? One of HubSpot's sales managers uses Gmail labels to visualize his prospects as they move through the flywheel. For example, after an initial discovery call, he sends a follow-up to his prospects and labels their response according to the action required.

This allows him to easily shift gears when contacting cold prospects versus re-engaging old prospects or moving warm prospects further down the funnel. With all of the steps and tricks involved in the prospecting process, we can often find ourselves spending too much time on menial tasks. Luckily, we can use sales prospecting tools to boost productivity and automate tasks.

You can select specific tools from this list to use independently or in tandem with each other. Some people might be asking questions. Others might be complaining about how difficult something may be. In any case, you can jump in and add value to the conversation -- and potentially pick up some prospects along the way. Once you have a few leads in mind, use private Twitter lists to keep an eye on them, as well as other relevant people. Local business journals cover news on big events happening at companies in the area, whether that be a lawsuit, a new location, or additional funding.

By keeping an eye on these events, you can find out about businesses you might not have heard of and discover relevant trigger events on which to base your outreach. These trigger events can be used as a point of reference when you send your first email or make the first call to your new prospect. I also subscribe to newsletters of entrepreneurs in the software industry.

These newsletters keep me up to date about new companies and often contain case studies of businesses that are doing well.

If you don't find a new prospect directly through blogs and forums, the knowledge you gain will help point you in the direction of leads. For instance, you might discover that everyone in your target industry is struggling to deal with a certain new compliance law.

You can then search for the name of this law on Google or LinkedIn, and surface active conversations prospects are having. Join the debate, and pick up some valuable leads. In addition to the job listings, LinkedIn groups are full of people looking for help.

You can head to the " Discover " section of your groups homepage to source new industry related groups to join. Join relevant groups, add to the conversation, and help the community. If you know your ideal buyer persona, you can easily find people who match that criteria with the help of advanced search.

Whether you search by location, the company they work at, their industry, or language they speak, it's easy to find specific communities of people. And if you've already found a company you want to get in touch with, you can search for people at that business to contact.

Once you find companies that you'd like to pursue, follow the organization's profile for updates and trigger events that will help you customize and personalize your messaging. For more on LinkedIn prospecting, check out this article on LinkedIn Sales Navigator secrets , and this one on little-known ways to find new prospects on LinkedIn , and this one all about how to send a LinkedIn message to absolutely anyone.

CrunchBase provides information on funding, company exits, and tech events. Note: This only applies to public companies, so if you sell to private organizations, this site won't be of much help to you outside of gathering competitive intel. Find out which companies recently got funding and then research whether or not any of these organizations would be a good fit for your product or services.

We can also use the advanced search feature to narrow search results down to companies within our territory or category. While it might not be the most enjoyable website to peruse and the listings may not be totally comprehensive, your local Chamber of Commerce website offers a directory of local businesses. The Boston Chamber of Commerce business directory organizes businesses by industry.

This is perfect if you know your ideal customer persona. Wouldn't it be great if you could source new prospects directly from your CRM? HubSpot's free CRM tool offers just this capability.