The Top B2B Sales Prospecting Strategies. - Apprise Marketing Services - AMSB2B

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Prospecting is an important part of the B2B sales process, as it helps develop the pipeline of potential customers available for the business. Prospecting, if done right, not only creates a solid pipeline of potential customers but also helps to position you as a trusted adviser and further focusing on the right accounts.

Prospecting, especially in B2B is one of the most effective ways to ensure continuity of sales flow, grow your sales pipeline and increase your company’s revenue. It is considered as one of the first processes of the sales cycle and is the bread and butter of every organization. Because if you want your business to reach new heights, you need to capture more prospects and try to convert them into customers – every single day.

According to research, ‘On an average, a typical salesperson loses about 15 to 20 percent of his customer base each year due to gradual attrition.’ Without prospecting, it is impossible to bridge this gap and If you’re out of leads, you’re out of business!!

So prospecting helps to attract more potential customers to further convert into buyers. More customers increase your buyer pool and allow your salespeople to remain busier working with new and existing customers. Additionally, more buyers help to diversify the risks of lost sales. When you lose a customer or a lead, you have more options in waiting because you’ve been prospecting regularly.

Prospecting is a critical step of the lead generation process. So let’s discuss the top effective strategies that can be used for successful B2B Sales prospecting.

1. Video Marketing

Videos are no more only for entertainment. Videos are nowadays dominating all the social media channels that every brand uses to promote its business and attract the audience. The key to using video as a prospecting tool is to educate the buyers about the latest technology w.r.t their need in a specific product or service and engage them.

According to Wyzowl statistics, 63% of businesses have already started using video content marketing to attract the audience. So just figure out what the potential buyers are looking for in a product and create videos that’ll help these buyers to gain insight and capture their interest.

2. Events

Events are the second most influential marketing channel today. Events still provide valuable opportunities to showcase your brand, engage meaningfully with potential customers and connect with partners, thought leaders and industry leaders.

Hosting or attending events is one of the best strategies for lead generation and to increase your pool of prospects and potential buyers who can later turn into your potential customers. At events, you can get the needed information of your prospects at your booth and nurture these prospects to convert them into leads to build relationships which will lead to future sales.

If you aren’t hosting or attending any events in your industry, you could be missing out on benefits that events and in-person meets can provide.

3. Teleprospecting and Emails

Cold Calling is Not Dead!! It’s only about execution and utilization. Be advised that – Anything in excess is likely bad and will surely cause trouble.

Teleprospecting is an important part of business development that empowers both the sales and marketing departments. Teleprospecting is crucial in identifying/verifying leads and to determine if the prospect is a good fit for the product or service offered by asking direct questions on the call. Even email or direct mail is to-this-date regarded as the best method of communication by most of the top salespeople.

If your product or service is appealing to them, then your prospects, leads, or customers don’t give a damn about your methodology to reach them.

It’s time to move from Cold Calling to Smart Calling.

We at AMS have been delivering MQL’s and SQL’s globally through Telecalling and Email Marketing(asset distribution) Campaigns. Our team obtains the consent from the prospects to receive whitepaper/other piece of content in an email on behalf of clients or directly from the clients – thus adhering to the GDPR policy.
Also, before making any phone calls, we make sure that the contacts list is according to the set of targeting criteria and only pursue contacts who meet those requirements thus resulting in low lead rejection rate.

4. Social Media

Social media is now like ‘Oxygen’ for every business. More than 65% of the world’s total population has access to at least one social media channel. In order to remain in the competition and to succeed it is very important for a business to improve it’s online presence.

Social media must be an essential piece of your sales prospecting strategy. Social platforms help you connect with your customers, increase awareness about your brand, and boost your leads and sales. The power of Social Prospecting – (using social media and online networks to add more prospects, information, or sales opportunities to your pipeline.) has increased tremendously in the last 5 years.

According to the State of Inbound Marketing Report, “Companies that acquired customers from Facebook: B2C is 77% and B2B is 43%”.

5. Account-based Marketing

ABM is not a new concept anymore. As a B2B Marketer, we all are familiar with ABM and what ABM can achieve within a limited time and with limited resources. ABM helps to reduce customer response time by identifying activities that consume the most resources in value and time. ABM also helps in reducing customer response time by identifying and eliminating non-value added activities.

The global 2019 Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising Outlook report of B2B marketers and their agencies shows that 71% consider ABM important to their organization’s marketing efforts; 4 in 10 companies believe ABM to be at least “very important”. Currently, 37% of B2B marketers are already doing ABM in their company with a further 22% planning to next year.

In order for sales teams to benefit from effective ABM campaigns, they need to be actively prospecting so that marketing teams can help accelerate the buyer’s journey.

6. Content Marketing

Content Marketing has a very big role to play in B2B Marketing. A content marketing strategy helps in analyzing the different ways that content can be used across to map the buyer’s journey in the sales funnel, the customer life cycle and the different experiences customers gain in the buying and using process.

Content marketing attracts prospects and transforms prospects into customers by creating and sharing valuable free content. Content marketing helps companies create sustainable brand loyalty, provides valuable information to consumers, and creates a willingness to purchase products from the company in the future.

Marketo, an Adobe Company recently published some interesting stats on the popularity and success of B2B content marketing strategy:

71 percent of marketers use content marketing to generate leads.
93 percent of B2B companies say content marketing generates more leads than traditional strategies.
60 percent of B2B decision-makers say branded content helps them make smarter buying decisions

7. Referrals

Customer referrals are important to your company for many reasons and almost always have a positive effect on your bottom line. A constant and regular stream of quality referrals is the core of any business. Research shows that referrals are one of the most effective methods to prospect for new business because most people trust them more than any other marketing method.

Having a steady referral generating system will not only ensure that you are regularly introduced to new prospects but you are also introduced to the right prospects that fit your customer profile! Even if the only marketing you achieve is referral marketing, you’ll still be in a great position, as it is the best and cheapest marketing.

To Conclude..

It’s not about which strategy is best and which strategy is out-dated. Winning at sales prospecting is about learning to select the right strategy at the right time rather than opting to one strategy and trying to make it work thus wasting resources and time.

The success of any business depends on sales and sales growth completely depends on prospecting. So do not only focus on your current pool of prospects and customers, always keep hunting for new prospects and customers as a backup for your sales team to perform.

Master prospecting and you will be the master of your sales destiny. ~ Tibor Shanto

Challenges with B2B Prospecting

Lack of resources to run B2B prospecting programs is one of the major problems faced by many organizations. There are many agencies who charge minimal and provide only raw data which is of no use for businesses and have to engage resources to churn the data.

Our Solutions

AMS’ worldwide audience access allows you to get rich, flawless data for the best campaign results. We cater to almost all levels of prospects that your marketing campaign’s demand. We even help you rectify all irregularities in data, updating old and obsolete data, organizing mailing lists and create homogeneous pools of data to provide our clients with more effective data to devise better-targeted sales and direct marketing campaigns.

To know more about our B2B prospecting services, reach us at info@ams-in.com or visit us at www.ams-in.com.

Thank you!