Last Updated on 16/05/2025
Business owners and salespeople should understand sales prospecting and how to use it effectively. Reaching out to just anyone isn’t cost-effective.
The idea of sales prospecting is simple. The confusion, though, lies in how to prospect. If you ask different salespeople, you’ll get dozens of answers, ranging from cold phone calls to LinkedIn messages.
Keep reading as we explore more information on sales prospecting, its benefits, methods, and crucial tips for boosting sales and growing your network.
What is Prospecting?
Prospecting is the first step in the sales process, where a salesperson reaches out to a potential and qualified prospect or customer. Prospecting is done in hopes of generating strong leads, but this doesn’t always happen.
Prospecting, though, isn’t about reaching out to just anyone. When it comes to prospecting, quality is more important than quality. Before reaching out to potential customers, you need to do your research.
So, what does prospecting look like?
Let’s say you are selling video editing services with an emphasis on law firms in the Orlando, Florida area. Instead of cold-messaging a burger place in Alabama, you’d want to reach out to law firms that are located in Orlando, like Norden Leacox Accident & Injury Law.
Since this law firm uses videos on its homepage, they might be looking for more, and they are within the area of your services.
The Benefits of Prospecting
Now that we’ve discussed prospecting in general a little more, we can explore its many benefits, which seem endless.
1. More Customers
The most obvious sales prospecting benefit is the increased number of customers. The more people you reach out to, the more likely you are to see a sale or repeated sales.
Increasing your leads also boosts your pool of buyers, even if they don’t buy something initially. This is an excellent benefit as it allows for some flexibility. It’s a lot scarier to lose one customer when you only have two, as opposed to losing one but having a pool of 20 prospects.
2. Increased Revenue
More customers equal more money. Piggybacking off the first benefit, the more customers you have, the more products and services you sell.
Even if the prospect doesn’t purchase something from you, they may know someone else looking for the same product. Prospecting is also relatively inexpensive, although we’ll dive into this later.
3. Data Gathering
Data gathering is one of the most interesting sales prospecting benefits to consider and arguably the most important. Even if your sale isn’t successful, you can still learn from the experience by gathering and reviewing data.
Reviewing this data can help you tweak your strategy for finding and qualifying potential leads. Not everyone is going to be a good fit for your product. Collecting data also keeps the prospect in your network for when you have different products and services available.
4. Networking/Referrals
As stated earlier, not every product is a good fit for every prospect. That doesn’t mean, though, that cold-contacting potential leads aren’t effective.
They can refer you to someone looking for a similar product or solution. Referrals are very trusted. People are more likely to buy something from a referral than a random salesperson cold messaging or calling since the trust is already there.
5. Cost-Effective
Another excellent benefit of this strategy is that it is cost-effective. It is one of the more inexpensive ways to find new clients/customers because it drives up revenue so much.
According to ZoomInfo, sales prospecting is the most effective way to increase sales and revenue for 70% of B2B businesses.
Prospecting Methods
Sales prospecting isn’t just cold calling, although this is a popular method. There are many ways to qualify potential leads and sell your product. Below are some of the more commonly used ones.
1. Email
One of the more common ways of sales prospecting is emailing. Cold emails are a great way to contact interested people.
The shorter the email, the better. Salespeople spend most of their time emailing with prospects (21%).
2. Call
Although not as popular as emailing, cold calling is another common method. Cold calling can be tough, as not many people answer their phones.
Actually, only about 2% of cold calls result in a meeting. Still, 2% is more than 0%.
When they do, it’s important to start by building rapport. It’s easier to talk to someone when they are friendly and likable. It’s not recommended to immediately dive into your product or service.
This can come across as rude or rash. No one wants to feel like they are being sold to.
3. Social Media
Social media is kind for a reason. It is one of the easiest ways to connect with people and gives you the best chances of reaching potential leads. You can send written messages, polls, surveys, and videos.
Remote sales are often more lucrative than those in-person.
According to HubSpot, 24% of salespeople prefer remote selling using social media. This is only slightly lower than those who prefer phone calls (27%).
4. LinkedIn
Technically, LinkedIn is a social media website, but it’s designed for businesses and employment seekers. It’s a very different platform from Instagram or Facebook, which is more social.
Selling on LinkedIn isn’t the easiest, but it is a popular method for salespeople with B2B products and services. It’s easier to directly communicate with companies using this platform.
LinkedIn also allows you to establish credibility by listing certifications, experience, and endorsements.
5. In-Person Events
Although we’ve mainly been covering remote options, another way to look for prospects and qualify them is live during in-person events. Networking business events are an excellent way to meet people.
Attending in-person events is becoming less popular, but it is still a reliable way to gauge interest in your product or service.
6. Mail
Physically sending mail can also potentially help you get leads, although it isn’t the most effective method. This method can become costly as you have to print and purchase mailing materials.
Still, for local sales prospecting, it is an option.
7. All of the Above
Who says you have to just choose one?
It’s important to use multiple methods of contacting prospects and leads. You never know what method they like to use best.
Just because someone is on social media doesn’t mean they are frequently on it. The same goes for email.
It’s also best to list out the best ways to contact you in a neat form. Allen Law does this perfectly.
On the ‘Contact Us‘ portion of the website, the law firm lists its addresses, phone numbers, and social media accounts.
You can also use community-building platforms, like Swarm, to interact with prospects and your current buyers. This way, you just use one integrated and interactive platform as opposed to a dozen.
6 Valuable Prospecting Tips to Increase Success
So, what are some prospecting marketing techniques that you can use to boost your revenue and sales?
Increasing success isn’t as tough as you’d think, but it does force you to look at more than just how you interact with a prospect.
1. Establish Credibility
Why should a prospect or lead trust you?
Before you even begin calling, emailing, or direct messaging a prospect, you should establish credibility on your social media and websites.
A quick Google search should show your prospects that you are someone with experience.
Alpert Schreyer Personal Injury Lawyers clearly does this on their website by highlighting their experience in an organized way.
2. Research and Create Your Ideal Prospect Profile
After establishing credibility, you’ll need to create and research your ideal prospect/lead.
Ask yourself questions like:
- What problem does your product/service solve?
- Who is your product/service for?
- What industry can use your product/service?
- What buyers do I already know?
- Who is the product not for?
Using these questions, build an ideal prospect profile. This profile can help guide you in the right direction of who to contact, lessening the time wasted on those who don’t qualify.
3. Dig Into Your Network
As a salesperson, you already have a large network of past buyers and those who weren’t interested yet. The keyword is – yet. Using the data you’ve already collected in the past, dig into your network.
Is your new product or service helpful to anyone on your list?
Do they know anyone in the industries you are targeting?
It doesn’t hurt to reach out and ask.
4. Highlight Testimonials and Reviews
Credibility isn’t just about highlighting your experience, but also emphasizing reviews and testimonials on products and services.
How can a new or past buyer trust the product if they don’t know anything about it?
It isn’t a bad idea to list testimonials along with names on your website or even directly in your emails/messages.
Baumgartner Law is a great example of a business selling a service that highlights its testimonials. You can clearly see and find them.
5. Personalize Messages
For new buyers you’ve never contacted, even something as tiny as including their names in your email can make them feel included and show you’ve done research.
According to Instapage, people are 26% more likely to open personalized emails than generic ones.
You can take it a step further for past buyers and those in your network. Personalize the messages by including details of past purchases and interactions.
6. Focus on Your Website and Socials
Sales prospecting isn’t as efficient if you don’t work on your website and socials. After a person finishes a call or email chat with you (sometimes even before), they will research you.
To make it easier for them to find you, link to your website and socials in your messages. Your website also needs to be easy to find, so you’ll need to focus on SEO strategies to rank for keywords. SEO is needed across all industries, including technology, law, entertainment, and food.
Blogs are also a great way to gain eyes and potential prospects. For a blog to rank high, you need a quality piece of writing, SEO expertise, and purposeful link building.
Although this may sound tedious, you aren’t alone. Marketinglad, a link building, and SEO agency, can help. They focus on high-authority link mentions for your website, growing domain ratings, and on-page optimization.
To get started, contact Marketinglad for a quote or demo.
Wrapping Up
Overall, sales prospecting is a marketing method and technique that is a great way to generate leads and increase revenue. It is cost-effective, and although tedious, worth a try to boost your sales and build client relationships.
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