Sales is one of the toughest jobs in the world, to say the least. Customers are becoming more aware in this digital era and hence it is hard to convince them to buy a product or service. Sales Prospecting Techniques are used to find prospects for your business and generate new opportunities so that you never go out of business.
To keep a sales pipeline full, you have to constantly do sales prospecting and get customers interested in your business. Simply outreaching or cold calling is not an option anymore. We have to find new ways to convince and convert our customers.
What is Sales Prospecting?
Sales Prospecting is the first step of the sales process where you find clients, buyers, or customers that have the potential of getting converted into paying customers and communicate with them.
The main objective of Sales Prospecting is to keep the sales pipeline full so that you don’t have to go looking for clients when you need them. It is the process of moving a prospect from the top of the funnel to the bottom to the funnel and converting them into paying customers.
Prospecting is not just cold calling anymore. It is a whole process and formulations to get customers interested in your product or service. These customers will be the ones that will most likely buy from your business.
Modern customers are too hard to please as they do research before buying anything. To impress them and convert them into future customers, a lot of strategies are required than just a phone call or mail.
7 Sales Prospecting Techniques You Can Use in 2022
Sales Prospecting is one of the most time-consuming and difficult processes that sales teams have to go through. But, if done correctly, it can reap great rewards and help you to find perfect customers for your company. Here are the top techniques that will help you to nurture your clients and convert them in 2022:
#1 Create an Ideal Customer Profile/Buyer Persona
The first and foremost step of sales prospecting is to create a “Buyer Persona” or “Customer Profile”. Now, you may ask why is it necessary? Because you can’t just target people randomly based on your intuition. We don’t even have that much time.
How will you create a “Buyers Persona” or that “Ideal Customer Profile”?
You can perform the trial and error method by doing guesswork and experiments or you can be a little specific with the help of data. You can create an ideal prospect profile by looking at your previous customers' data and their journey. You can study their habits, interests, attributes, and their spending patterns and predict what your future prospects would be interested in.
You can find the most profitable and long-term customers that have bought from you multiple times by analyzing recent projects and CRM data, and creating a buyer persona around it.
To get the maximum output from your ideal prospects you should create around 3-4 personas together. Narrowing down on one persona reduces your chance to find the ideal prospect. You can create Technology Tom but can’t forget Trendy Tara. If you are unable to make a persona still, then you can make one with the help of these 15 templates and tools.
#2 Upsell the Paying Clients
Stop giving away those freebies to those who don’t give a dime and rather focus on the paying clients that are already buying your product and believe in your product. You can make more money by spending your time and money in upselling your products than in acquiring new prospects.
Upselling will help you to generate more revenue and save more. You can strengthen relationships with clients by giving them the best services and offers. Make them feel special and your job is half done.
#3 Create and Share Content Relentlessly
Content is the best way to build credibility with your customers. You can educate your prospects and gain their trust. Once you start creating and sharing content, you are looked upon as a subject matter expert and this thing helps you when they come to buy products from you.
Where to find the content creation ideas?
You can get the content creation ideas by looking at the problems that your clients faced, your CRM, and your buyer personas. After analyzing, you can start creating content on Linkedin, your own blog, company’s blog, and can also do guest posting to increase your product reach.
#4 Allocate Daily Time For Cold Emailing and Calling
You should allocate time in your schedule daily for reaching out to your customers. By consistently reaching out to them, you will make an impression on them and they will start recognizing you. You can choose cold calling or cold emailing or both to do this job. Start with the approach with whom you are comfortable with and then start incorporating another one.
Don’t Overdo It. Although we have to be in front of the prospect's sight, by overdoing this activity, there is a high chance that we may seem irritable to the client. So, how should we reach out to our future clients? By sending them personalized emails and by doing warm calls.
Send Personalized Emails
The best way of reaching out to your customers in business are emails. Be it an introductory offer or a major deal, every information is conveyed through the mail. But, how would you stand out from the crowd?
Personalize your emails. Don’t go with the generic Hello or Sir/Madam. Instead, address the person with their name. Make an email about them and build a connection with your prospects. This will give your connections a sense of entitlement. They will feel that they are being addressed and then you will get heard.
Tip: Address your prospect with their first name instead of their full name. This will make them more friendly and approachable.
Be a Little Warm With Your Calls
Most of the people spam their prospects with a lot of uninteresting, monotonous calls. These types of calls will not only irritate the user but also degrade the brand value of your product or service. So, how will you get your call through?
Making them feel valuable. You should make them comfortable by being warm on your phone instead of being blunt. Ask for permission to call them, have a genuine conversation before pitching them your offer and then thank them for their time. This simple etiquette will help you to get through.
Tip: Try to be more human with your prospects. They shouldn’t feel like they are talking to a robot!
#5 Educate Your Audience
The best way to market your audience without them knowing is by educating them and making them aware of things they don’t know. You should try and spread as much knowledge as possible regarding your field. A lot of clients will come to your site by looking for the answers that they were searching for.
Make your audience aware of the services that they are searching for. Educate them. Become a resource hub. Be so efficient that every time they search for a query regarding the service that they need, your site appears in front of them.
Tip: Use Quora and LinkedIn to educate the masses. Answer questions regarding your niche and become an expert in it.
#6 Stay Socially Active
Staying socially active will help you to fetch great leads and make your communities bigger. Start building your brand reputation by sharing your work on social media like what your company does, what are their targets, what are their objectives, and more. This kind of content helps you to establish yourself as an expert and will build your credibility.
Tip: Try different platforms and then double down on one that suits your audience
Social media is the biggest driver of behavioral change. By staying online you can persuade a lot of people without even getting in touch with everyone. A great social media presence will bring more than just leads. It will bring more website visitors, more trust, and also more awareness. I have seen a lot of brands getting most of the sales from social media itself.
#7 Ask For Referrals From Your Present Clients
Nothing can beat the word-of-mouth type of marketing. A recommendation from a close family member or friend will beat a top marketing agency any day. Most people ask for reviews from their friends or family before buying anything. You can capitalize on the same emotion with the help of a referral strategy.
You can ask your current customers to give your referral to their friends or family. The customers who are happy with you will promote your business by themselves. All you have to do is just ask. And you can start a referral program too by awarding a commission on sales made by their referral or you can give a flat fee too. These kinds of sales prospecting techniques will boost your business.
Bonus Tip - Channelize Your Focus On Lost Ones
The time that gets wasted in warming up the cold clients should be allotted in approaching the lost ones. Those clients that got lost because of any reason, can be approached again.
You can commit them to fulfill their demands and can regain their trust. Those clients have known you for too long and it is easier to get their attention than an unknown person.
Final Thoughts
You need to plan, create and balance multiple projects around these sales prospecting strategies to get your pipeline filled with a lot of clients. By connecting directly with each of the prospects, you can establish a great relationship and get amazing returns.
Author Bio:
Shyamal Parikh
Shyamal is the Founder of SmartTask, an online work management tool that's helping teams be more productive by having clarity on who's doing what by when. Has a penchant for researching and sharing strategies that could benefit a team's productivity.
Topic: Sales Intelligence
