When making sales in the B2B market, finding potential buyers can be difficult, as well as knowing the best techniques and methods you need to successfully nurture your prospects. Drip shares that 40% of salespeople believe that prospecting is the hardest part of the sales process. This statistic suggests that a lot of challenges occur during B2B prospecting, so knowing every tip possible is important to maximise your performance. This article will look into the different methods you should adopt to help your B2B prospecting reach the next level.
B2B prospecting is when a business looks for a customer (another business) to gain a potential buyer for their product or service. A business will look for this prospect in a number of different ways, such as with emails, cold calls, social media marketing and more. Once a potential buyer has been identified that shows interest in your product, they have now become a prospect to your business. B2B prospecting is very important to a sales team for a number of reasons such as:
Before we get into the different methods of B2B prospecting, it is important to identify what needs to be done beforehand to ensure that these methods work. The main most important task that needs to be carried out for successful B2B prospecting is customer research. The goal of customer research will be to better understand your customers before approaching them as a prospect. Working in collaboration with the marketing department to identify customer personas is a useful method for doing this.
The best way to better understand your prospects and customer personas is with research using these channels:
Researching using these channels will give your business a lot of benefits when trying to prospect for customers. These benefits for B2B prospecting are:
Provide a more personalised service – By researching your potential prospects, you will be able to give them a more personalised service, increasing the chances that you will be able to successfully obtain the prospect as a lead and move them through the sales funnel.
Create a better connection with your prospects – By knowing your prospects better with research, you will be able to create a better relationship with them. This is important, with Vishvesh B sharing that 19% of buyers want to connect with a sale representative when in the awareness stage of the sales funnel, with 60% of buyers wanting to connect during the consideration stage of the sales funnel. By establishing this connection early in the process, your business will increase its chances of winning more deals.
Save time and resources – By better understanding your customers, you are able to save time and resources by contacting the prospects that are more likely to be a fit for your product and service and spending less time getting to know them once you have begun communication with them.
B2B prospecting has a number of different methods that businesses use, all of which have their benefits. This section will look into the different methods that B2B businesses use for their prospecting, discussing their benefits and any challenges with them.
Cold calling is an effective prospecting method some B2B businesses use. This method involves calling a potential customer to share how your product will be able to help their problem. In your cold call, you should try to sound natural to your potential customer and create an atmosphere that you are there to help rather than sell them something. As well as this, you should show empathy to your prospect, and try to give them a personalised call. This will help you have a better chance of getting a prospect from a cold call.
Sending a potential prospect, a personalised email to gain a lead is a popular method of B2B prospecting. With the information on the customer gained from the research, it is not time to send a personalised email. This method of prospecting is very effective, as a personalised email is a non-invasive, engaging way to gain a prospect. Sending an email with some personalised details for the customer, like their name or business will help grab their attention and make them feel more intrigued to find out what the email is about. This will strengthen your relationship with the customer increasing the likelihood of a deal being won.
With B2B prospecting, social media channels such as LinkedIn can be an effective channel when communicating with prospects. You will be able to find out useful information on the customer here and communicate with them in a faster more streamlined way than email prospecting. This method can also work with other social media channels like Facebook or Instagram.
Attending events is a fantastic method for B2B prospecting. During events, you are likely to meet multiple potential customers for your business that will be suitable for your business. During an event, you will have the opportunity to create a good relationship with your prospects through in-person communication with them. This is a more personalised way of talking to your prospects meaning they are likely to have a lasting impression of your business. By building a bond with your prospects here and showing them how you are able to help, you are very likely to win a prospect for your business.
Businesses are very busy, meaning they may not have time to get back in contact with you after the first point of contact. This means that the business’s that follow up with them to try and help them solve their problem with being the most likely businesses to win the deal, and they will forget about businesses that don’t follow up with them. It is important to follow up and do it multiple times, with Dream Maker sharing that high-growth firms have an average of 16 touchpoints with each prospect within the first 2-4 weeks.
TEB is a sales automation CRM software that can help your business streamline its entire sales funnel while giving you very useful information on your prospects. TEB will help you discover your best-prospecting methods and help you maximise your revenue and profitability. The way TEB achieves this is with key features such as:
If you would like to know more about how TEB can help with your prospecting and streamline your entire sales funnel, get in contact with us to schedule a demo.
