Why invest in prospecting training?

As a marketing professional or sales leader, you are most likely to experience the pressure to hit several metrics or targets each quarter. If you have ever found yourself in this position, it is safe to say that most of your efforts coincide with lead generation. In most companies, the sales team is separate from the marketing team, which can pose several challenges, which will be discussed in much more detail in the following paragraphs.

Although most sales professionals think aligning marketing with sales is ideal, most companies struggle with both of these initiatives. So how would you approach this problem in a way that sales prospecting could indeed influence lead generation campaigns?

The answer doesn’t come easy, as organizations have trouble imagining sales and marketing working together. However, there are some tactics that you can use to make it easier. One such tactic is prospecting training. Bear with us, and we’ll walk you through what sales prospecting means, give you some insights that you might be familiar with, strategies that you can adopt, and conclude with the benefits of integrating this training into your overall sales strategy.

What is prospecting?

As defined by HubSpot, sales prospecting is the process of searching for potential customers, clients, or buyers to develop new business opportunities. The goal here is not to sell but to start a conversation with a potential customer to check whether they are the right fit for the company. Phone calls, emails, and general account management are all part of the process. However, in this case, the prospecting should be strategic.

Additionally, in sales prospecting, there is a difference between a lead and a prospect. While a prospect is a qualified potential customer that matches your buyer persona, a lead is a potential customer interested in your products or services. All you need to know at this point is that a qualified lead becomes a prospect.

Statistics about sales prospecting

As previously stated, many organizations still struggle with their sales prospecting and aligning their marketing and sales efforts. According to a report from Pipedrive, 59% of the respondents believe they had tremendous sales success in 2020 compared to 2019. Furthermore, 91% of respondents are proud to be working in sales and feel that their craft truly impacts the business.

In recent years, how companies prospect has changed. Face to face used to be the best way to connect with potential clients, but since the addition of email, texting, and digital channels, sales representatives have many more ways to find, vet, and reach prospects.

A report from HubSpot shows that 40% of salespeople identify prospecting as the most challenging part of the sales process, followed by closing(36%) and qualifying(22%). Furthermore, 8 in 10 prospects prefer communicating over email, which matches the percentage of sales reps (78%). More than 50% of candidates want to see how your product or service works during the first call.

The conclusion here is that prospecting is one of the most challenging tasks assigned to a sales representative. Even though today’s technology makes it easier to find and reach prospective customers, investing in a prospecting training program could go a long way in easing the lives of your sales reps. NNC Services, a HubSpot Platinum Partner, offers a training program called the B2B Prospecting Academy that allows companies and sales reps to get valuable insights into how to search, qualify, and close prospects. Find out more about the training program here.

Prospecting Strategies

Although prospecting is one of the most challenging and time-consuming tasks, there are some strategies that you can apply to make it easier to identify prospects.

Prospect Profile Creation

At some point, any organization struggled to build an ideal customer profile since there are different people and industries. The first and most crucial step here is to do your research. Know what are your business’s top customers, the most profitable ones, and the worst ones. They can help you determine whether they are a good fit for what you are trying to sell. Studies show that nearly 50% of your prospects don’t fit these criteria.

Ways to meet your prospects

With the COVID-19 pandemic still in force, meeting your prospects in real life is difficult, which is why knowing where your prospects live digitally can go a long way in getting to know them. Furthermore, it will also help you craft messages that resonate with their online activity and, in turn, can help you highlight your skills of meeting them halfway.

Call lists and emails

At this point, it’s very important that you don’t underestimate the power of a phone call or a well-crafted email. Research shows that 69% of buyers accepted a phone call from new salespeople, and 80% of buyers say they prefer to be contacted by sellers via email.

With both these tactics, the success rate depends on you touching base regularly with your prospects. Consistency is key to turning a prospect or lead into a paying customer.

Become an expert

It’s safe to say that knowing your business inside out, as well as the latest trends and best practices are going to help you with your prospects. Know who your potential customers are, the industry you are targeting, and your own product. Recent reports show that 54% of prospects want to find out how your product or service works during the first call. This is yet another reason why you need to become an expert in your field.

Benefits of Prospecting Training

Now that we have covered most of the prospecting strategies and have given you insights let’s look at some of the benefits of prospecting training.

Regardless of how well you think you know your customers, their behavior is constantly changing. Prospecting training helps you identify behavior patterns that will help you understand their needs faster. Additionally, you will obtain new customers and retain your existing ones with no real effort. Furthermore, prospecting training helps your company and sales reps offer improved service. By training your sales reps to deliver effective written, verbal, and non-verbal communication, they will be able to respond to customers effectively and decode what customers want.

A second selling point for a prospecting program is profits. By knowing everything within a specific industry and having all the right communication tools, you will use new sales techniques to achieve those monthly or quarterly sales targets. This results in increased profits for both you and your organization.

No matter how many benefits we enlist here, it’s all a matter of what is essential for you and your organization. The best way to find out is to enroll in prospecting training and see the results for yourself. 

Conclusion

Although companies struggle with prospecting, there are numerous ways to enjoy the benefits of prospecting training. As highlighted above, sales representatives are becoming more and more critical to the overall profitability of your business, so investing in their training is an excellent approach to assure business continuity. You can do that by reading our training manual and joining us in our B2B Prospecting Academy here.