The old saying “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” often applies to prospecting. Some of the most effective strategies and methods have been around for decades. However, savvy companies also take advantage of new trends and industry focal points that drive the best prospecting practices.
The following is a look at key strategies and tips to help your company take advantage of these new best practices so you can stay ahead of the competition!
Dedicated Outbound Teams
A common challenge for sales organizations is dealing with reps, who like to work with clients on solving a problem and finding a solution, but hate to prospect. A contemporary approach used by top firms is a dedicated outbound lead generation position or team tasked with contacting prospects and landing appointments. This specialization ensures people with talent, training, and interest in prospecting are engaged in those roles. Thus, your account executives are freed up to nurture and close deals.
By having a dedicated outbound team, you reduce the steps in the selling process that each rep is responsible for completing. Concentrated activities lead to more repetition, more practice, more performance tracking and coaching, and, ultimately, better results.
Precise Personas Fueled by Sales Intelligence
Data and precision are keys to efficient and effective prospecting in the current era of marketing and sales. You can’t afford to waste time targeting general marketplaces or random contacts.
Buyer personas are semi-fictional character representations of your ideal targets for a given solution. A clearer focus on the targets helps reps build a deeper understanding of the target person, including their traits, interests, and needs. B2B companies are using sales intelligence to build powerful profiles based on demographic, geographic, and firmographic data.
Firmographic data includes factors such as company size, annual revenue, location, and industry. Analytics can identify the ideal prospects to target and evaluate the factors that should generate your highest-performing clients.
A Multi-Channel Message Arsenal
Businesses find that coordinated message strategies executed across multiple channels create a synergy that improves prospecting success. Over time, certain prospects pay more attention to certain types of messages delivered through particular channels.
Targeted sales calls, personalized events, email, social media, and direct mail are popular platforms for multi-channel campaigns. As prospects like to conduct research online before talking with a provider, you can present your messages in a cohesive way that appeals to the buyer’s journey. Social media is a great way to engage a prospect early. Direct mail and email often sustain the conversation and escalate the move from an interest to a decision. Personalized events and sales calls are used to turn an intrigued prospect into a qualified buyer ready for nurturing.
Conclusions
Utilizing prospecting best practices requires being aware of current trends in your industry, technology, and the marketplace. Specialized outbound reps who know how to prospect can efficiently get more and better appointments when armed with precise profile data and array of message strategies.
Salesgenie is an excellent partner for your pursuit of optimizing prospecting. Our company offers access to targeted prospects based on your ideal profile, along with a lot of high-quality marketing solutions that get your message across. Contact us to improve your prospecting performance!
