Top Sales Prospecting Tips That Will Get You Hot Leads
A successful sale is but the last piece of the puzzle that is the sales process. To achieve this crucial goal, you need to ensure that the various steps leading up to it are completed in an efficient and effective manner. Sales prospecting is key among these steps and this article will tell you how you can nail it.
Sales prospecting is, quite simply, the process of searching for potential customers in order to grow your business. It has been found that more than 40% of sales professionals feel that it’s the most challenging part of the sales process. However, when done in a systematic manner, it can lead to high-quality leads. According to a study conducted by Ascend2, 58% of marketing influencers prioritize improving the quality of leads over quantity.
Let’s now dive into the tips for effective sales prospecting!
Share High-Value Content
People tend to trust entities they are familiar with. This is the cornerstone of all content marketing. And it holds true for sales prospecting as well. And how do you get found? By offering content that solves customer pain points. The more value you are able to deliver through your content, the higher the chances that readers will get converted to customers. Blogs, e-books, white papers, and case studies are just a few of the options to get you started on the path of successful content marketing.
Having a prospecting tool like Lead Liaison’s Sales Enablement, which supports inserting trackable content, can be a game-changer. Not only can you include any relevant resources, you can also track engagement with that resource (clickthroughs). This information can be critical in timing your next touchpoint.
Host a Webinar
Webinars are a great tool to put to work the knowledge base your company has built up through experience. A webinar, too, uses the power of content to build trust with and signal authority to prospects. Social media platforms, such as Quora and LinkedIn, can be excellent resources to find out what information your prospects are looking for. Match their queries on social platforms to your capabilities as a knowledge hub, and, voila! You have found the theme for your next webinar! You can use webinars to engage new prospects and existing clients as well. Use a video conferencing platform like GoToMeeting or ClickMeeting to host your webinar.
Prioritize Your Prospects
Segregate your pool of prospects into different buckets by their likelihood of purchasing your product or service. This can ensure that you maximize your returns by dedicating more time to prospects who are more likely to become customers. You could do this manually or use lead management software which can automate the task for you.
Enable Live Chat on Your Website
The age of demanding millennials with access to AI and chatbots is upon us and respond to these market conditions, you must! Also, with businesses across the board offering the live chat option to customers, it only makes good business sense to respond to such a market scenario with a live chat option all your own. What’s more, the leads and queries that come in through this channel will both prove to be invaluable as you set out on your sales prospecting journey.
Here’s essentially how live chat works. When a visitor lands on your website, a prompt – which is customizable – will appear, inviting them to chat. If the user uses the chat box to then convey any information, your team member will be notified and can begin chatting with the visitor. Such inbound prospecting knocks not one, but quite a few steps, off of your sales process!
Build Your Social Brand
Brand building isn’t just for companies. Neither is content marketing. Activities such as the following can make for great sales prospecting tools.
- Build your personal brand
- Showcase your subject matter expertise on social platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter, or other social media platforms that attract your prospects
- Join industry-specific social media groups and post relevant content
Such focused social media activity will help you connect and even start conversations – in other words, network – with your prospects. Moreover, the human touch you’ll achieve for your company will go a long way where trust building is concerned.
Track Your Website Visitors
Your website could be drawing in regular visitors who then leave without a trace. That is to say, unless you set up website visitor tracking, visitor information gets captured only upon the completion of conversion activity, such as downloading gated content, or through the chat messages they leave, etc. To ensure you don’t lose out on this critical information, set up visitor tracking and alerts for key pages, like your pricing page. Once you have this information, you can easily dive into that data to find the companies and people who would be a good fit for your product or service.
To begin visitor tracking, explore Lead Liaison’s ProspectVision™. The tool will help you automate your lead search by telling you:
- Who is visiting your site,
- How they found you, and
- What they’re interested in
What’s more, Lead Liaison’s ProspectVision™ will append Prospect Profiles with any available social data. You could use this information to send them a message via social media. When you do, it’s important to warm them up a bit by introducing yourself, describing what you do and why connecting with you would be mutually beneficial.
Focus on Solutions
Focus on providing solutions for your potential customers over trying to make a sale directly. The latter is a trope that has been overused to no end over the years. Your customers are, quite simply, tired of it. So, how does one go about this business of being a problem-solver for your prospects, you ask?
First things first, do your homework. Understand the prospect’s pain points and address them early in your communication with them. A thorough understanding of both your industry as well as your prospects can also prove to be invaluable. Finally, focus on ensuring that your prospect has a positive communication experience at every touchpoint with you.
Request for Referrals
Last but far from the least, don’t be shy to ask for referrals from existing customers. Now, how can you improve your chances of getting a referral? Customer delight is the surest route to a referral. And how is one to go about that, you ask? Simple – keep in touch.
The importance of maintaining relationships with your customers cannot be overemphasized. The value of your existing customers far exceeds the total value of their purchases. How you make them feel through the usage lifecycle of your product or service holds the power to impact your bottom line significantly.
Now, leverage this goodwill you have generated by going ahead and asking for those referrals.
Wrapping Up
The right prospecting techniques and processes can go a long way in ensuring you find your holy grail i.e., achieve your sales targets, and then some.
With these tried and tested techniques in hand, rest assured that you’re good to begin your sales prospecting journey.
While you go about implementing these sales prospecting tips, ensure that you customize the mix and frequency to suit the unique needs of your business.
Happy prospecting!
AUTHOR BIO
Koushik Marka is the founder and CEO of Studiotale, an explainer video production company. He is passionate about helping brands grow with video and has expertise in video marketing, 2D animation, and vector illustration. When he is not working, he loves playing video games and traveling.
