You may have the world’s best sales team at your disposal.
You may even have an incredible service ready to provide your future clients with unbeatable value.
But it all matters for nothing if you can’t consistently find prospects online and set up qualified sales meetings.
At Excelerate360, we have personally seen how B2B prospecting has changed over the course of the last three decades.
With a plethora of digital channels now available to us (Social Media, LinkedIn, Text, Email), there are multiple ways for you to qualify prospective customers.
B2B buyers are now more informed and have more access to your content and all aspects of your sales funnel than ever before.
This means you must realign your prospecting strategy to suit their needs, or your company will be in danger of being left behind.
Today, we want to share with you the best prospecting strategies you can use to attract your ideal customers and grow your business.
1) Ask for Referrals
Before you try and find brand new potential customers, have you considered speaking with your existing ones?
This is a great way to quickly reach your target market and creates an easier conversation for your sales staff as all the leads will be warm.
This is because, according to research conducted by Referral Candy, word-of-mouth promotion is the most trusted form of all marketing.
The research found that 86% of potential customers trust recommendations.
Most of the time you will find your existing clients are more than happy to recommend you, but to kickstart this process, it may be beneficial to give them an incentive.
This can be a commission-based incentive such as a ‘finder’s fee’, or could even serve as a way to cross sell another one of your services at a discounted rate.
2) Email Marketing
With impactful messaging, alluring personalisation and a killer call to action, a well constructed email can be the best weapon in your prospecting arsenal.
According to McKinsey, email is 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook or Twitter.
It’s also the quickest and cheapest way to convey your marketing messages, giving you a high return on investment.
Not only that, but almost everybody in the B2B space uses email as one of the primary forms of communicating.
In fact, according to a Hubspot survey, email accounts for the most prominent form of communication for 73% of businesses.
When sending out a cold email to find new prospects online, it’s important to conduct best practices with your messaging.
Try using these seven simple steps for better email marketing campaigns:
Best practices for email marketing
1) Create a catchy hook or generate intrigue in the subject heading, in order to improve your email open rate.
2) Keep your sentences short. Keep them sharp. This will make it easier for the reader to stay interested.
3) Use eye-catching imagery. Don’t give your reader a chance to switch off.
4) Experiment with pre-recorded video. This can be an excellent way to increase engagement and further establish trust.
5) Offer value. Don’t make your email all about you. Make it about the prospect’s pain points and how you plan to solve them.
6) Include a call to action. Don’t forget to point your prospect in the right direction and ask them to do something.
7) Craft different messages for different people. Segmenting your audience can increase your revenue by 760%! (Campaign Monitor, 2022).
3) LinkedIn
If you were at a networking event, it wouldn’t be seen as the best etiquette to jump straight in and try and sell to everybody.
On LinkedIn, you should follow the same procedure, by attempting to start conversations and provide value.
This soft approach can lead to finding warm, qualified leads, which makes LinkedIn a great online platform for building valuable connections.
The beauty of LinkedIn is it allows you to really personalise your approach.
You can find people by their job title and the company they work for and use a premium subscription to message them directly without even connecting first.
Much like email marketing, sending InMails can be hugely effective for contacting your prospects online.
However, you should tweak your messaging to make it different from your email campaigns.
Here’s 5 steps how you should do it:
5 Tips for Using LinkedIn InMail to Find Prospects Online
1) Just like with email, create a catchy subject line. People are busy and may receive lots of InMails every day, so make yours STAND OUT.
2) Make it personal. The more personal, the better. Mention a blog they have written, speak about a connection you have in common, or ask for insight about their job role.
3) Keep it short. Aim for around the 100 word mark for a better response rate.
4) Follow this template: I know who you are, I know your problem, I have the solution. These three steps are a great way of showcasing your knowledge and offering your value.
5) It’s not a sales pitch, so don’t ask to give a demo. Remember, you are networking, NOT selling (yet!).
LinkedIn is all about building real connections. Networking is not a quick-fix scheme, but a process which reaps rewards in the long run.
4) Content Marketing
The behaviours of B2B buyers are constantly changing.
One of the biggest changes since the introduction of Social Media is that people mostly conduct personal research online before making a purchase.
Because of this, content marketing is more important than ever before.
It provides you with the chance to adjust your market ‘positioning’.
By this, I mean you should shape your content to provide value to your target audience, showcase your expertise and exude confidence in your field.
The best way to do this is to build an audience by offering real value.
You can provide this value in many forms, such as a carousel post, a YouTube video, or even a blog (do you see what I’m doing here?).
The aim is to give without condition or expectation of anything in response.
Do this effectively and you will build trust with your audience.
If any of your followers ever need your service, you will be in the forefront of their mind as an expert in your field.
Not sure if your content marketing strategy needs tweaking? Ask yourself this:
If somebody was researching your company right now, what impression would your social media profiles give them about your business?
5) Phone Calls
There’s no escaping it, phone calls are still a fundamental tool to bringing in new business.
According to research by RAIN Group, 82% of buyers accept meetings with sellers who proactively reach out.
You will inevitably face a lot of rejection using this method, so bear this stat in mind during the low moments and focus on securing a quality lead over quantity.
Just like with your email and InMail outreach, phone calls require research and effective messaging.
Scout out your potential prospect before the call.
Is there any information on their website or socials to suggest they may be facing a problem your company can solve?
Remember, at this stage you aren’t trying to close the sale, you are trying to qualify it for your sales team.
So, don’t worry about making the sale, or you will put the potential prospect off.
Instead, focus on how you can help them. Ask questions to get to know where they currently are and where they would like to be.
Then you can gently ease them into how you can help get them there.
Without sounding robotic over the phone, I would recommend using a sales script.
This way, you can steer the conversation back the way you want it with intelligent questioning.
It also means you can engage in active listening with the script as a fall back if you get lost in real conversation.
Start Finding More Prospects Online
“Consistent action creates consistent results.” – Christine Kane
The key to finding prospects online is consistency.
Unfortunately, there is no scheme or get-rich-quick secret to success when it comes to finding prospects online.
In fact, a Hubspot study reveals more than 40% of salespeople claim finding prospects online to be the hardest part of the job.
However, if you implement these five methods into your B2B prospecting strategy, and deliver them consistently, you will turn many potential clients into long-term customers.
If you need help with your prospecting strategy, or just want to outsource sales completely, our sales professionals are here to help.
Just like they have done for so many of our clients.
Get in touch today to learn how we can help you grow your business.
