Prospecting is everyone’s least favorite part of owning a business. But, no one can refute its effectiveness at bringing in new leads and continuing building a sales book.
Especially in B2B organizations, prospecting is crucial to keep the leads flowing and cash exchanging hands. How does this work?
We will explain all you need to know about the importance of prospecting in sales.
When We Say It Brings in More Leads We Mean a Lot More
In this new age of digital and inbound marketing, many people have forgotten the importance of seeking their customers as well.
If you’re simply creating content and sitting back on your laurels waiting for Google to gift you, new customers, you’re leaving a bunch of money on the table.
Adding prospecting into your marketing model is a proactive approach and gives you a better chance of closing business than waiting for customers to jump up and down that they want what you’re selling.
Organic cannot be your only source of lead generation. 72% of companies that failed to bring in 50 new leads per month didn’t achieve their sales goals. Adding prospecting into your current methodology allows you to add additional streams into the lead pool.
More methods equal more leads and more opportunity to close those deals. That adds money to the bottom line and keeps everyone happy.
Prospecting Gives You A Better Understanding of Your Customer
Sometimes the only way to understand the people who want your product is to understand the people who don’t.
Hear me out. This is the gift that cold calling and prospecting give you. By using analysis of the no’s you receive during the prospecting process you can hone in on your actual market demographic and ideal customer.
Instead of it being an idea of who your customer is, now you have actual data to confirm or deny your suspicions. Nothing is better than data to help target your marketing efforts and dial in campaigns across marketing strategies.
By asking the right questions you can learn a lot. Through these conversations, and the ensuing follow-up calls (it takes about 8 cold calls to get a yes), you can learn about your targets budgetary restraints, the hierarchy of their sales organization, and what initiatives their buyers focus on.
This helps you understand your market but also helps you build a reference library of information about everyone in the book. Because remember, a no today does not mean a no tomorrow.
Qualify Your Customers More Accurately With Prospecting
The more you do these calls the better and better you’ll become at asking the right questions and getting to the heart of the matter quickly.
By qualifying your potential customers in the beginning stages of your prospecting you save valuable time and resources by not focusing on the ones who’ll never close. Learning and understanding your ideal buyer becomes invaluable to the lead generation process.
Once you’ve come up with your qualifiers you’ll be able to shorten the close time and boost your ROI on the efforts. Isn’t that always the goal?
Beyond the Cold Call
Prospecting isn’t simply sitting behind a dialer anymore. Reaching out to potential clients a variety of different ways shows initiative and actual understanding of their brand.
By not only calling a company but reaching out on their website and also messaging them on LinkedIn you’re getting your name seen more often. There’s a higher likelihood of response from at least one of these methods.
Don’t limit yourself by only thinking old school.
Sales Prospecting is Very Important, Are You Doing Enough?
Initiating conversations is the most effective way to convert more people into customers. It’s not enough to sit back and wait for the leads to roll in.
No matter what stage the potential customer is in, awareness, consideration, decision making, it doesn’t matter. You always need to put a prospecting foot forward whenever you’re speaking with them.
Cultivating that relationship builds trust. Continuing to build on that trust forms bonds and then leads to closing more business.
By creating a proper prospecting procedure you’ll boost your qualified leads, have a higher ROI on marketing efforts, and build more trust with your future clients in the process.
Are you doing enough to help your brand grow? Get out there and start prospecting today.
Looking for more exposure and help with your digital marketing strategy? Contact Hooked Marketing today and let us help you.