By Digital Marketing, LinkedIn, Business Growth, b2b prospecting, sales prospecting
According to recent reports, 8 in 10 prospects will rather talk to representatives over email, which matches up with the percentage of reps (78%) who use it.
But to get to the point where you can contact your prospects and sell your services or products, a natural step of the marketing and selling processes is to find and list the right target. Here are 4 steps that you can follow when building a B2B prospecting list, and add value to your business growth journey.
1. Create your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
Before starting the contact list building, you will first need to understand who your target audience is and create a detailed prospect profile.
To optimize your B2B prospecting efforts, you need to focus on those prospects suitable for your business who have the highest chances to convert into clients.
The main aspects you will have to look into are:
- the company’s size and the location you are targeting;
- the industries that will benefit from your services and products;
- the job titles will be more likely to respond to your prospecting campaign, and that will help you in the research process.
After you have defined these details, you can apply an extensive search on the challenges faced by your ideal prospect, the goals he/she is looking to achieve, and other particularities such as the prospect’s background and his/her payment routine. The last one is a necessary detail for setting up particular budget goals for your business on a determined period.
Once you are set with that, you will be ready to start looking for the right B2B prospecting list building tools.
2. Use LinkedIn when building a Targeted Prospect List
Using LinkedIn can be very useful for this step since you will quickly reach decision-makers who will become part of your prospecting list. With LinkedIn, you can conduct easy searches within your B2B campaigns, by using essential tools within the platform. If you are looking for advanced research, you can run a more in-depth search using advanced filters, to make sure your prospecting campaigns are efficient.
LinkedIn Helper is one of the most used automated tools within this platform since you can easily search for prospects and monitor your prospecting campaigns, once you get to master this tool.
If you’re interested in learning more about how to make the best out of LinkedIn Helper and master this tool, we are organizing the 6 months b2b prospecting academy, where we will discuss everything about prospecting, including how to build a contact list with the help of automated tools.
3. Feed your campaign with networking sessions
Once you know who you are trying to reach, the next step is to make connections and network with the decision-makers you previously decided upon contacting. Using social platforms, such as LinkedIn, will help you reach a higher number of those prospects.
When approaching your prospects, consider those pinpoints from the first step, where you define your ICP. By presenting them with a solution that answers their challenges, they will be more likely to give you a quick response to whether they are interested in further conversation with you.
This step is vital since you can narrow down your prospecting list, considering the replies you have from the initial contacts. A great way to monitor and report the status of your B2B prospecting list is to have a very well-organized system, or a spreadsheet if you are using a manual database.
Remember that growing your business by maintaining a healthy prospecting list requires consistency. You should not be concerned if the first try did not bring you any success, especially if you didn’t have much time resources to invest in that prospecting campaign.
Nonetheless, you can team up with a digital marketing team that will help you with the entire prospecting process. If you are looking to drive more leads through LinkedIn, you can have a look at one of our previous articles, where we offer a few best practices on how to engage with your prospects on this platform and drive more traffic to your website.
4. Get organized with a suitable marketing tool
Social platforms aren’t the only way to get in touch with your prospects. By finding the right email tool that suits your business’ needs, you can increase the chances of reaching out to your prospects and even monitor the emailing activity.
Many automated marketing tools can help you be efficient with this activity since they can transfer your existing prospect list, and send multiple personalized emails at once. Some of those tools that use innovative technologies can even create extensive research on each prospect’s profile so that you can better understand his/her needs and what content you should send to the prospect to close the deal faster.
When we discussed sales enablement tools that can help your business grow, we mentioned a few of these innovative systems that will become your best assets, if you use them at their highest capacity.
Final thoughts
Reports showed that, on average, 40% of salespeople agree on prospecting as the most challenging part of the sales process. Therefore, building a highly targeted B2B prospecting list can sometimes require investing most of your time resources. Still, if you have a reliable prospecting strategy roadmap, all the activities will be easier to follow. From researching to analyzing, a team of specialists can help you build an entire strategy that will ease your B2B marketing efforts.
Want to discuss where to start your B2B prospecting journey? Get in touch with one of our representatives, or register to our B2B Prospecting Academy for a full understanding of how to do that.
