1 December 2021
Did you know that 71% of buyers want to hear from sellers early on in the buying process?
This is great news if you’re a B2B company looking to reach out to potential buyers.
However, before you can do this, you need to build a sales prospecting list.
Without a well-vetted sales prospecting list, you’ll be wasting time reaching out to prospects who aren’t likely to convert. This squanders time, resources, and can impact revenue significantly.
If you’re ready to build a sales prospecting list that converts, keep reading. Because we’re about to share with you some of the best strategies for SME sales funnels and prospect list building.
Manually research prospects
One of the primary ways you can build a sales prospecting list is through manual research.
This is one of the more time-intensive sales prospecting strategies. However, it can generate some decent results.
Before you begin manually gathering potential leads for your sales funnel, you should nail down your target customer. Once that is done, you can start to research prospects for your list.
You can search for companies in your target industries online. You can also leverage directory sites, and trawl trade magazines.
Platforms like LinkedIn can be a great place to find contact details for specific decision-makers within target businesses. You can also scour press releases, interviews, and media statements for contact info.
The key to manually researching prospects is to evaluate how much to invest into the process.
Typically, B2B companies tend to have fewer clients and larger orders. This means that manual prospect research can still be worthwhile for generating leads and sales.
Are leads likely to place larger orders with you, take out a contract, or become regular customers? If so, then manually researching prospects is often lucrative.
On the other hand, does your B2B business model have larger sales volumes and small order totals? In this case, you might want to focus more on some of the other sales prospecting strategies we have listed below.
Harvest prospect info from your site
Another great place to gather contact info for sales prospecting is from your own site.
Make sure you have a prominent sign-up form or button on display where visitors can sign up for your newsletters and special offers. You can also “gate” some of your content and resources with a signup form.
This way, you will effectively be using certain content types as lead magnets to grow your prospecting list. For instance, have you published a checklist, a whitepaper, or an ebook? If so, you can ask visitors to provide you with their email list in exchange for the content.
Don’t forget about inbound marketing
Inbound marketing is an integral part of most modern sales funnels. Besides organically generating leads, it can also boost your sales prospecting list-building efforts.
If you want to harvest prospects’ info from your site, you need to draw in visitors. The main way to achieve this is through strategies like content marketing and SEO.
According to statistics, 90% of customers begin their B2B buying journey with a search online.
In many cases, buyers aren’t searching for an individual product or service. Generally, buyers start their journey by researching different options. If you can create optimized content that answers buyers’ questions and addresses their pain points, you can position yourself as one of the first places they visit in their journey.
In some cases, prospects might organically engage with you after finding your offering via inbound channels.
However, if you can gather contact details for prospects when they visit your site, you can also reach out to them to stimulate conversions.
Leverage social media
Social media is another avenue you can leverage when engaging in sales prospecting and list building.
We already mentioned LinkedIn, as it is one of the top platforms where you can research prospects as a B2B company. However, this doesn’t mean that it’s the only platform you should try.
Depending on your target customer, you might find that they have an active presence on platforms like Instagram. Engaging with prospects on their platforms of choice can be a great way to get further contact details and begin relationship building.
Run a lead generation ad campaign
Another effective sales prospecting strategy is to run a lead generation ad campaign. The goal behind a lead generation ad campaign is to get prospects to supply you with their contact details.
To achieve this, you should include a response mechanism, such as “call this number,” “email this address,” “sign up for our newsletter”, etc.
To increase ad conversions, you can also incentivize prospects by offering them something in return, such as a discount on future purchases or a free report.
Lastly, when running these types of ad campaigns, make sure that you target them correctly. Otherwise, you might end up with a prospect list that yields a very poor conversion rate.
Purchase a tailored prospect list
Although the above sales prospecting and list building methods do work—they are relatively time-consuming. You might also have to implement a certain amount of trial and error before seeing the results you want.
In contrast, purchasing a tailored list offers you a way to access many prospects instantly.
For example, with Kompass EasyList, we give you on-demand access to a downloadable list of prospects, which you can finely tailor to match your target customer profile.
As a global B2B matchmaker, we leverage our extensive network to connect you with the prospects that need and want your solutions. With 13 search parameters, you can effectively filter our B2B database of 59 million businesses to refine your results and generate a high-converting prospect list.
What’s more, all of our prospect information is up-to-date, correct, and GDPR compliant.
Do you need to improve your sales prospecting results?
Are your sales prospecting strategies taking too long or generating low conversation rates?
If you want to change this fast, we recommend you take advantage of EasyList. EasyList provides you with a lightning-fast way to create highly targeted prospect lists. Not only can you easily hone in on results that match your target customer profile, but you can even refine them based on target decision-makers.
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