Smart B2B Prospecting
3 ways to dig up gold instead of mounds of dirt
Part I of II
by Andrew Paulsen
Business-to-business sales (B2B), or enterprise sales, is a financially rewarding field. But it has a more complex sales process, longer sales cycles and fierce competition. No matter how experienced you are in enterprise sales, finding qualified leads is difficult, and you can always improve your performance.
However, most how-to books and programs skip over the most difficult and most crucial aspect of the sales process, getting your foot into the door. They don't answer questions like: How do you find that new opportunity? How do you make that initial contact with your next big customer? How do you expand your network into new industries and vertical markets?
Meet "cold emailing." It sounds cold, but it helps potential customers warm up to you, and it's not related to email marketing. Cold emailing is a one-to-one communication similar to cold calling, unlike email marketing's one-to-many communication. Read on to learn how to adapt cold-calling and in-person sales skills to email.
Step one: Create a target list
Many people fall into the trap: "I made one hundred calls today! I am a sales warrior!"
You feel busy, you're pumped up on coffee, you're on the phone all day, and your boss is currently happy because your activity level is high. Unfortunately, making many phone calls doesn't equal productivity. Who's the smart salesperson here? The one who makes 10 cold calls in a week and sets up three appointments for the following week, or the one who makes 100 cold calls and sets up only one appointment? Results — not activity — matter.
Smart prospecting starts with creating a high-quality target list based on research and qualification. Making fewer calls to more qualified prospects is more effective than wearing a blindfold and shooting darts at the target.
Success in selling high-priced products and services resembles gold mining. You're discovering it wherever it's located, not creating it.
If you were to set up a gold mining operation, you’d take land surveys, study soil samples and review rock samples. Imagine if you start mining in your own backyard. What are the chances there's gold buried there?
Before getting out the shovel, you should discover the needs of the target companies and how they can benefit from your product or service.
Finding the perfect target
You may have a list of company names and people to contact within those companies. It could've come from marketing, your manager or elsewhere. These aren't likely "sales leads," rather a list of names. Turn this into a valuable list by vetting it, researching the companies and deciding which are worthy of your "target list." The target list consists of companies you're going after because they have the highest probability of recognizing the value of your product. Eventually, through interacting and qualifying the companies on the target list, a subset of these turns into "sales leads."
To create criteria for your screening process, look at your current clients and companies that have interest in your products and services. Evaluate these companies to find out what they have in common so you can create a list of similar characteristics that these companies share. With this list of characteristics, you can create a profile of the perfect prospective company. The perfect prospective company for an entry-level human resource software system might look like this.
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company with 30 to 100 employees
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company without any type of HR system
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in high-growth mode, hires new employees on a regular basis
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is in the biochemical or aerospace industry or is an IT vertical
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profitable or recently received venture capital
Once you have created the ideal profile, create a list of questions you can ask yourself while researching and creating your personal target list.
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Does the company have 30 to 100 employees?
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Does it have an HR software system?
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Is it in high-growth mode?
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Is it in biochemical, aerospace or an IT vertical?
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Is it profitable? Has it recently received new capital?
If you can identify companies that share some of the defining characteristics of your perfect target company, then you are on your way to building a powerful target list!
Where to look
You can purchase information from companies that compile, package and sell company lists for prospecting purposes such as Hoovers.com and ZapData. From there, complete more research to cut the list until you have your target companies. You can also build the list from scratch or use a combination of these two approaches. But where do you find these companies?
Competitors: Prospects can be found from not just your competition, but also from your clients’ competition. Competitors have similar characteristics that meet your profile of your perfect customer. Find out who these companies are and put them on your target list.
News: Companies follow trends, so you need to know what's going on and who the new companies are within the verticals you target. Set up news alerts with keywords for Web sites such as Google News, Yahoo and MSN.
Ads: Where do clients advertise? Find out, and you'll find other companies that meet your target profile.
Industry resources: Every vertical has industry organizations, trade shows, informational Web sites and so on. To find new companies, think and act like your prospective customers and discover what they read and to which organizations they belong.
The people to target
After you compile your company target list, the next step is to create a list of potential people to contact within the company. Who are the decision makers?
Focus on two categories of decision makers during the prospecting process.
User buyers: These people use and benefit from your product and service. User buyers are most interested in determining if your product(s) meet their requirements and how it makes their jobs easier.
Economic buyers: These people have the final say in approving the money spent on the product you're selling. Economic buyers usually get involved near the end of the sales cycle, when your product has already been vetted and approved by other individuals within the company. For a smaller company, an economic buyer might be the CEO or CFO, and for larger companies, it might be the manager of a particular division.
So whom do you contact first, an economic buyer or a user buyer? This is an important decision. In order to choose, understand your sales cycle and know where, how and what impact these individuals have on your sales process. Of course, you want to contact the person most open to speaking with you, but eventually, you'll notice a trend that works.
Generally, you probably want to contact the economic buyers first or get them involved early in the sales process. You don't want to spend hours meeting and speaking with a user buyer who desperately needs your product only to learn there's no budget after all is said and done. On the other hand, it might be better to start with the user buyer since the economic buyer might not appreciate what you have to offer. In either case, the higher up the ladder you start, the better.
Part II covers cold emailing and combining methods. In the meantime, start building your list so it's ready to go when you read next month's feature.
Editor's note: The two-part article is based on Andrew's white paper. If you can't wait until next month or want to read the detailed report, it's available from www.emailretriever.com.
About the author:
Andrew Paulsen is a technology licensing professional based in San Francisco with 10+ years of strategic selling expertise in creating and closing new business with both direct enterprise and OEM clients. He enjoys putting together multinational deals between U.S. companies and companies based in Asia. Andrew has used his prospecting skills to break into some of the largest software companies in the world such as Microsoft, HP, Symantec, Google, HP and Yahoo! His new startup, www.emailretriever.com, helps sales professionals get their foot in the door. He believes that with the right product or service and a well-thought-out strategy, a good sales professional can get a high-level meeting with any company in the world!
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