Given that only 1 to 2% of cold calls lead to a meeting, stop wasting your time calling prospects of no interest! To improve your B2B sales prospecting results, follow these 3 steps and make use of today’s sales intelligence tools.
Get to know your prospects
Like any sales team, you have to renew your prospect file regularly. And like everyone, you’re far less comfortable with people you don’t know at all. Who’s the best contact to call: the sales manager or the sales director? Which contacts will take part in the decision at this company? Is the company in a growth phase? Is it recruiting right now? Is this Dominique a man or a woman?
As with a job interview (yes, really!), it’s better to do your homework on the company you want to win over: does it export? Does it have a website in several languages? Is there a wave of recruitment going on there at the moment? Does the company use particular marketing or digital tools? If you already know a number of the answers, you’ll be all the more effective when you have your prospect on the line, and you’ll even impress them with your command of the subjects.
The little extra: learn to find the detail that will get the conversation going. The company is recruiting a new Marketing Director or a DPO right now? Its profit is growing fast? It has just closed a huge round of funding? These are excellent springboards for breaking the ice!
You can find all this information on the web. But if you use Mixdata, it will all be gathered in one place: a great way to save time!
Nurture the relationship
Your prospects aren’t all at the same stage of advancement in their decision process. To avoid arriving too early or too late, stay in touch with them and keep an eye on the alerts about their company. This is what we call weak signals, and it’s very useful for stepping in at the right moment.
First, use the alerting features to detect the events that bring business opportunities in your field.
Then, get into the habit of regularly taking a look at your LinkedIn feed: it’s up to you to keep an eye on your new connections’ posts.
Adopt good social selling practices by sending personalised information to your prospects from time to time, to keep the link alive. Send them an article relevant to their sector, congratulate them when their company wins an award… Few people have this reflex: take advantage of it to stand out!
Turn your prospects into customers
The idea is to engage your prospects and become one of their most active (and attentive) contacts: humanise your relationships, and above all offer your help regularly, with no strings attached. The day your prospect needs an expert in their field, you’re the one they’ll think of!
Of course, these practices are fairly time-consuming. But we can help you save time: contact us for a demo of our tool which will bring you this precious information on a plate and let you optimise your sales prospecting!
