What are effective outbound B2B prospecting strategies that work well to target new customers? This post discusses these strategies.

12 Prospecting Strategies to Increase Outbound Sales

Lead Generation Tactics

Let us assume you have already narrowed your lead list based on your ICP (Ideal Client Profile). The importance of narrowing down such a list cannot be overstressed.

No business should waste resources on chasing prospects that have never shown any interest.

Moving on, what typically works for generating leads in B2B outbound sales and marketing is conducting research. With this, you find data of persons of authority from various organizations that fit your ICP.

Networking sites you can check for that purpose include:

• LinkedIn – focuses on career development and professional networking
• Meetup – a platform that allows professionals to search for local meet-ups
• Bark – connects local professionals with people who seek their services
• Opportunity – connects people based on their needs

These sites are an oasis of employee data (contact info, addresses, company position, etc.).

Other tactics you can try for generating leads include:

• Content marketing (blogging, SEO, guest blogging, email outreach, etc.)
• Event hosting
• Target base expansion via client networks

Outbound Marketing and Sales

Meanwhile, there are two main options for outbound sales prospecting: cold emails and cold calls. To be successful in both, you need to use a customized approach, and research plays a vital role on that aspect, too.

Working with outbound sales services can help you with all the complex steps of B2B cold calling, appointment setting, and B2B emailing.

12 Prospecting Strategies for Outbound Sales

Follows the steps below:

Create a Prospect Profile

As referred to above, creating an ideal customer profile is an important first step when building an effective B2B outbound sales strategy.

Be cognizant that not everyone will subscribe to your solution. If you sell something to someone who does not need it, do not expect to succeed at all. Creating that profile is a must for success.

Use Customer Referrals

Leveraging referrals is an effective, powerful technique that is often overlooked by the sales team. Leveraging referrals is akin to introductions where types of approaches are employed, such as:

• Invitations to webinars
• Sharing a relevant piece of research
• Offering discounts

Begin with one introduction per day. In time, you will gain positive results from this approach.

Personalize

Today, successful prospecting is all about being helpful. Make sure you are not focused too much on selling but on providing value as soon as you can do it.

If you do not do that right away, you have already put yourself at the losing end. Make sure your content provides benchmarks, learnings, and insights.

Also, start by referring to something personal to your audiences, like a mutual connection or a pain point. The goal is to make them see that you are not there only to sell. You want to make a connection and be helpful.

Replicate Buyer Experience

Develop a solid strategy by seeing through the eyes of existing customers. Talk to them about their buyer journey and what it was like when they weighed their options before purchasing. Ask them: Why did you choose us?

With the insights you have gleaned from this approach, you can strategically replicate the same experience with other similar leads.

Check Weekly Performance

Some strategists call weekly metric checks “weekly dials.” It allows regular checks that use a dashboard for everyone to see.

Viewing the weekly dials by leadership and peers is critical to marketing operations. Based on the insights provided, you can simplify or re-strategize to cause the dials to move.

Leverage Keyword Optimization

You can know crucial information about the perfect buyer for your business if you can track what they type on Google before buying. You can actually build 50% of your outbound marketing on this alone. Focus on specific phrases, problems, and persona.

This strategy applies not only to SEO. It is also applicable to advertising, messaging, and positioning.

Your Site as an Outbound Marketing Tool

Do you use your website as a marketing tool for outbound sales? That is a possible strategy you can use via the integration of a visitor identification tool. These tools allow the system to identify companies that access your site.

Some identification software can even provide details on the decision-makers of those companies. So, it is an easy way to obtain hard-to-get data, such as email addresses, phone numbers, job titles, and, of course, names.

With software like this one, you can always get the right person to target, which brings us to the next point.

Sometimes, the Executives Are Not the Best to Target

More often than not, the executives that you set your sights on are unlikely to engage when you connect with them. Perhaps, that is because they are not directly involved in the operational aspect of their business.

Who are you specifically targeting? Sales? Marketing? Or HR? Targeting the specific person who needs your B2B product or services can help generate better results for your campaign.

Use CTAs

Use CTAs (call-to-action strategies) in all your content. The technique is designed to call the attention of a potential customer to take action and for you to be able to move them through the sales funnel.

Use concrete CTAs that are not too difficult to do. Also, keep in mind that you are not looking into closing a deal right from the start but only trying to help or start a conversation.

Thus, your CTAs must be simple to do, can provide value, and do not cause your audience to waste their time.

Use Short but Informative Scripts

About scripts, one of the best recommendations is to strip them down to the leanest pitch possible. That applies most especially in cold-calling environments.

Do not get caught up in telling a great story or trying to relate with your target customer without paying attention to the mechanics of the call. Also, you may have included all information in a descriptive style, but the question is, “Is that what your customers want to hear?”

Follow-up

Data suggests that as the number of follow-ups on outbound sales leads increases, the probability of a successful sale also increases. According to experts, 3% of prospects sign up on the second contact and 5% on the third contact.

The number goes higher and higher. On the fifth down to the twelfth contact, success rates reach as high as 80%, suggesting follow-up strategies can go a long way for outbound marketing.

Devote Your Time

Prospecting is vital to promoting your B2B product and growing your business, so you should spend a good amount of your time on it. It can be a repetitive process and can bore you. But no matter how you feel about it, it remains a vital component of your business.

Conclusion

Successful marketers spend about 35% of their time prospecting, and that works for most of them. So, think about spending that much time as well.

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