The 10 Most Important Prospecting Tips You Need to Know

If you don't have a strong prospecting strategy, you are wasting time. We're sharing the 10 most important prospecting tips you need to know here.

What's the key to boosting your bottom line? It's all about prospecting, whether it's for customers, independent sales, or business partners.

If you don't already have a strategy in place to gauge prospects, then you're falling behind your competition. This is incremental to increasing your sales and your revenue, so it's definitely worth your attention.

In this guide, we will cover how you can develop a strategy that actually works.

Now, let's get into the top 10 prospecting tips you can start using today.

1. Research, Research, Research

Surely, you knew this was going to be on the list somewhere. And when you're in the marketing and sales department, there's no way around it - research.

It makes it to number one on the list because of the priority it holds. If you're not qualifying prospects beforehand, then you're likely going to waste valuable time and money reaching out to them.

So in this stage, you want to identify data that tells you everything you need to know about your target customer. For instance, their age range, professions, geo-location and other demographics.

Next, you have to begin eliminating prospects that don't meet the criteria. Other questions you want to answer include: Are they within your territory and whether you have a product in their industry.

For example, if your target market is mid-sized businesses with 100 to 1,000 employees then anyone that's outside of this criteria gets wiped off the list.

2. Prioritize Your List Before Prospecting

Now, before you begin initiating your strategy, you have to prioritize your list of prospects. This will further save you time and effort.

There are different levels of prioritization to focus on. So you want to create different buckets to fit your prospects into based on the criteria above.

These buckets will determine their importance based on percentage. The higher the percentage, the higher the priority to reach out to them first.

For instance, size of opportunity may be a high priority and would receive a 70% for anyone falling within that bucket. Then the timing in terms of closing deals, which is less important, receives a 5%.

3. Get Ready for Outreach

Once you have your priorities in order, it's time to prepare for the outreach. What makes this particularly important is the fact your outreach must be personalized. So hopefully, your research is very detailed.

Customer personas are a must to help identify what pain points to address and which products or services to touch on.

Then you can conduct more research by looking for prospect blogs, social media profiles and "about us" pages.

These can be very telling and will help personalize the approach you take when you reach out to them.

4. Reaching Out to Prospects for the First Time

There are various ways you can reach out to prospects the first go around. For instance, you can call, email or connect on social media.

However you decide to reach out, make sure to:

  • Personalize your message

  • Stay relevant and timely

  • Be human

  • Offer to help, not sell

  • Stay casual

You'll find that emails and calls come with their pros and cons. For instance, emails are visual and give the prospect time to consider your offer. Yet, it's not as personal as a phone call. However, phone calls can be overwhelming.

So you'll have to play your cards right based on the prospect and their preferences.

5. Take Lots and Lots of Notes

Whatever you didn't learn from your data and research, you will learn it here. Once you speak with prospects, you can ask questions and learn more about their concerns and needs.

This way, you can determine the value you can bring to their lives. Some of the things you want to do include:

  • Uncover their challenges

  • Create a list of defined goals

  • Confirm available budget

  • Determine consequences of inaction

  • Identify potential success results

  • Understand the decision-making process

With this data, you can greatly improve your future calls or emails with the prospect.

6. Create a Script

This sounds very awkward, but it's not like you think. You're not sitting there reading the script word-for-word, and how could you?

You never really know where the phone call may take you. However, you can use the script as a roadmap to identify key points to touch on or questions to ask when the conversation takes that turn.

Having a script can be very helpful in making the call useful for both you and the prospect. So definitely consider adding scripts to your prospecting strategy.

7. Aim to Educate, Not Sell

This goes for all of your marketing and sales. The key is to educate your prospects, so they can make the sell for you. If you can convince them they need your product or service, then the rest is a piece of cake.

But the key is to inform, not sell. Let's take for example a car salesman. If he isn't listening to what you're saying and insists on you purchasing a car that will help his bottom line, then you're going to walk away.

However, a salesman that pays attention and presents a vehicle that meets your needs exactly, then you're more likely to buy. And the same goes for you.

You have to listen to what your prospects need, then offer them a solution. As they say, sell the sizzle, not the steak. In other words, show them the benefits, not the features.

8. Never Procrastinate

Time is of the essence, so you need to act quickly if you want to seal the deal. Once you identify a high-priority prospect, you have to reach out right away.

This way, you can catch them in their time of need and offer a solution. Then at the end of the day, you make your sale and you become their superhero.

9. Put Social Media to Use

Social media is a great tool for first touch points and subsequent interactions. It's the perfect setting to warm them up to the sell. At this point, you're building a relationship and trust.

Then once you do this, you can make the sales call.

10. Get Used to Hearing No

It's impossible to get every prospect to say yes, so hearing no is inevitable. Get used to it quickly and learn to accept it and move on.

Mulling over your failures will only prevent you from reaching out to the prospect who will say yes.

Learn More About Generating Solid Leads

Business profits revolve around getting hot leads. And what better way to do that than with prospecting? You can use this and other methods to generate more leads and improve your bottom line.

At Megaleads, you can find tips and tricks for doing just that. If you're looking for information on how to enhance your sales techniques, then this is the blog for you.

Stop by today to see what you can learn to make your sales strategy better.