The success of your sales efforts depends largely on the quality of your sales prospect lists. You may be the best salesperson in your organization, but what if the prospects aren’t the best ones for your product?
Prospecting is not a one-time activity; it is a steady process. How consistent and learned you are in your approach determines how well you close your prospects.
Even though it is the first step in the sales funneling process, it is pretty challenging if approached without adequate data. Over 44% of sales representatives drop their efforts after only one round of follow-up after prospecting.
It is also true that roughly 50% of the prospects pursued by the sales teams are not ideal for the company. So how do you discover prospects that suit your frame of business?
The core idea of creating a high-converting prospect list is to create an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) based on elements such as Buyer persona, variety of offers, and more.
In this article, we’ll explore an elaborate process you can take advantage of when you’re prospecting again.
Step 1: What Can You Offer?
To be an exceptional sales rep, you need to know your offerings in detail. This means you must surpass the basics and dive deeper into specific use cases, features, and top success stories.
Once you know your product, you can easily identify who needs it right now. Not only this, but knowledge of your offering will also allow you to answer complicated questions, speak confidently, and put the best of your product forward.
Start by asking yourself the following questions:
- What problem does your product solve? How many issues can it address at once?
- What is the main advantage and disadvantage of your product? What causes your product to lose deals?
- What use cases or features of your product are most valuable to the customer?
- In how many ways is your product different from the competition?
If you cannot figure out these questions, seek the advice of your superiors or product experts. Once you know the product in its entirety, it’s time to figure out the buyer.
Step 2: Who is the Buyer?
Just as you know your product, you also need to figure out your buyers and the factors that drive them to make purchases. This information will help you narrow down your prospect pool even further.
One of the key reasons sales reps cannot identify good prospects is because they rely on old, outdated profile data that doesn’t change with time. Another major roadblock is too much reliance on manual analysis, which requires a large investment of time and money.
However, if you still want to conduct a manual data analysis, here’s how to do it.
Start by asking yourself the following questions until you arrive at a specific prospect pool.
- What is your target industry and its size?
- What is the size of the company you’re targeting?
- Are there specific decision-makers such as Managers or C-suite employees?
- What is the company’s total revenue, and how your existing customers are doing?
- What are their key challenges and pain points that you can solve?
- How do they measure success, and how can your product impact it?
- What technologies do they use, and to what extent and functions?
- What are their key motivations and buying triggers you can leverage?
- How do they prefer to be engaged? What channels of communication are best?
- Do they prefer technical communication or simpler, concise product understanding?
As you explore each question, you’ll unearth deeper questions that require answers as well. All of this can be very time-consuming, especially at a time when the market is moving quicker than ever imagined.
To avoid this, we suggest using an AI-Powered Sales Intelligence Tool like Draup to get a 360-degree understanding of your prospects as well as vital information on decision-makers who can influence your deal.
Step 3: Organize your Data
By now, you must have two lists; one of your product and the other of the buyer. It’s time to match these and identify your ideal prospects.
Start by identifying the business intentions of your prospects so far and filter out those that cannot be served by your product. Target only the companies that require your product to solve a certain problem they’re facing. This will ensure you’re pitching to the right firm.
After a while of doing this, you may have a dataset that looks like this:
- Target Companies
- Influencing Buyers
- Maximum/Minimum budgets
- Key Motivations and Triggers
Once you have a ready dataset like this, it’s time to reach out to your prospects with hyper-customized pitches that appeal to their business.
A sales intelligence platform like Draup leverages artificial intelligence and enables your sales team to segment accounts and stakeholders through comprehensive and real-time metrics.
Draup gathers data on accounts across industries and sectors so that you can create ICPs. Armed with data, your sales teams can approach leads with highly contextualized proposals that target specific pain points, grow existing accounts, and identify upselling opportunities.
