Customer acquisition has changed a lot in France in the last few years, especially with the advent of B2B digital prospecting. Today’s salespeople are more than just salespeople, they need to establish themselves as experts in their field if they want to develop their sales. Effective leads require not only knowledge of truly effective sales techniques, but also knowledge of how to make the most of inbound marketing and new digital prospecting tools.
Field or digital exploration? Inbound or outbound marketing? Direct sales or social selling? CRM or sales intelligence software? Do you have a sales team or just prospects? Regardless of your industry or company size, successfully generating sales is critical to your company’s future survival. So I’ve been thinking about all these questions (and many more).
To help you, we’ve provided a comprehensive guide to everything you need to know about optimizing your B2B leads.
Overview:
- What is prospecting today?
- Outbound and Inbound Marketing: What you need to know
- Prospecting and Covid-19: What has changed? How do you adapt?
- Which lead generation techniques to use to find future customers
- How to become a business ace in B2B?
- Salesforce: How to build a great team to increase sales
- What B2B prospecting tools are available to you? Go further with business intelligence
1. What does prospecting mean today?
Although it has evolved in recent years, prospecting should achieve the same objective. It is about increasing sales. Between new digital tools and old commercial methods, here is an overview of the current challenges of modern prospecting. BtoB Development: A simple definition
Prospecting is the technology that inspires companies. B2B prospecting therefore refers to the search for potential customers. The term “B2B” means “business to business”, i.e. between two companies.
Prospecting is often done using a variety of business techniques in combination with the use of digital tools. These methods are constantly evolving as the behavior of prospects (potential customers who have not yet made a purchase) changes significantly. Modern prospects are often more difficult to convince if they are better informed about a company, its products, its values and its competitors.
Why should I look for clients (even if they don’t)?
Every business wants to acquire new customers on a regular basis. Your entire business model should not be based on your current customers (no matter how loyal they are). This is especially true if you work in a particularly competitive industry.
Prospecting prevents you from being caught off guard by losing a sudden or large number of customers. It also keeps your team (especially salespeople) in a proactive mood. Ultimately, finding new contacts can increase sales by reaching and acquiring more customers, even if you don’t lose your current customers. B2B prospecting: mastering the basics to generate more leads
There are many (many) techniques for generating leads in B2B, but most of them are based on the same basics.
Understand your ideal prospect: When looking for leads, you must first identify your target’s needs and frustrations.
Have highly personalized discussions: Your discussions must be knowledgeable about your prospect to accurately address their problem. Target the right people: You can have the best sales pitch if it’s not directed at the right people.
Beware of commercial pitches. The presentation needs to capture the attention of the caller very quickly, ideally in one minute.
Talk about benefits, not features: once you’ve captured the prospect’s attention, prioritize direct sentences, simple vocabulary and concrete examples (don’t dwell on the technical).
Recognize business opportunities: If you listen carefully, your current and potential customers are your best source of opportunities (opposition, connections, new needs, etc.).
Regarding the latter, existing customers can not only find new customers but also buy from you again through the cross-selling and up-selling you provide Click here for more information.
It is inconceivable to talk about prospecting without mentioning marketing (selling something to someone). Modern marketing is divided into two categories: outbound marketing and inbound marketing. To effectively generate leads, you need to master both.
2. Outbound and Inbound Marketing: What you need to know
Outbound marketing refers to the traditional approach to customer acquisition. Go out and find potential customers directly. However, the rise of the Internet calls for a new approach. It’s called inbound marketing. Attract potential customers naturally.
Digital Prospecting VS Reality: Challenges and Difficulties
Today, telephone and door-to-door (outbound) surveys are not the only survey options. You also need to use digital prospecting. With 80% of French people doing online research before buying, you need to focus on where your customers are: on the Internet.
You can do it the “old-fashioned way” on the Internet: search and contact people who interest you (outbound marketing), but it can also be used to find people who are interested in your company or your products. Give people the opportunity to be found directly. (Inbound marketing). marketing). it is interesting. These two approaches are different but totally complementary.
How to attract customers with inbound marketing?
Inbound marketing is about attracting potential customers to your brand. To do this, you need to set up “phishing” points (social networks, blogs, email) and offer value-added content (white papers, webinars, infographics) that responds to your target audience’s issues.
In this way, inbound marketing captures the attention of qualified prospects before gradually leading them into the conversion tunnel. This trading strategy relies mainly on the creation of marketing content and web-specific tactics (Google referrals, social selling). In 2020 and beyond, new factors must be taken into account when acquiring customers. Covid-19 crisis. The health crisis has irrevocably changed the rules of marketing research, making the use of digital media a must.
3. Prospecting and Covid-19: What has changed, how will you adapt?
Lockdowns, curfews, physical event cancellations… Since 2020, the practices of B2B prospects have been challenged by Covid-19. The specter of new health measures is far from distant, but vendors must learn from this crisis and adapt.
Covid and prospecting: the lessons of this crisis
The Covid-19 crisis has changed the game, whether by cancelling physical trade shows or freezing prospective budgets. Some sectors of the economy have been particularly affected by the health measures, such as tourism, gastronomy, hotels and automotive.
You need to reinvent the way you find your customers.
Since the health crisis, the number of physical meetings has decreased. This deprives sales people of a lot of information (behavior, gestures, rapport, etc.) typical of face-to-face meetings. In this context, the so-called “traditional” prospecting campaigns no longer seem sufficient. It is therefore necessary to build a new paradigm, largely based on digital levers.
Customer advertising is more digital than ever
Of course, the digitalization of behavior is not new, but the health crisis has greatly amplified this phenomenon. Modern prospects are no longer digital if they want to acquire and retain customers in the long term.
To move to Prospecting 2.0:
- Use lead nurturing: use a thoughtful content marketing policy (see inbound marketing) to support your prospects in the buying process. Invest in your e-mail campaigns: e-mail is a great tool when it works with the channels you use to generate leads and convert them into customers.
- Host webinars: Prevent cancellations of physical events by hosting on-screen events. You can also reach more prospects without distance constraints.
- Use sales intelligence tools: more on this later in this article.
- Now that the concept of prospecting is clear and the situation (post-corona) is in place, it is time to attack the heart of the matter.
- Let’s take a look at the different sales techniques that can help you keep your sales on track.
4. Which prospecting techniques to use to find future customers?
While there is no single answer to this question (otherwise everyone would use the same prospecting strategy), it is possible to identify key techniques that can be applied to any industry.
How do you choose a business development strategy to achieve your goals?
The first method is the precise selection of business strategies based on objectives, offerings and business areas. Ask yourself:
The objectives of prospecting are:
. Gaining market share?
. Vous souhaitez réactiver un prospect déjà contacté, vous souhaitez réaliser des ventes supplémentaires auprès d’un client existant ?
What are your B2B targets?
- CEO of a large company?
- Freelancer?
- Self-employed merchant?
- other ?
How to achieve these goals:
- At a trade show?
- In a well-referenced blog?
- At LinkedIn?
- other ?
At the same time, consider segmenting your targets (especially by job type, size or geography). Segmentation helps you find only those people who are likely to be interested in the services you offer. You can also tailor your sales pitch while reaching prospects on the channels most relevant to them.
5 steps to create personalized (and effective!) ads
Once you have defined your customer acquisition strategy, you need to focus on preparing your pitch. A pitch is a brief presentation of your business and how to meet the needs of your potential customers. After all, without a clear sales pitch, there is no effective sales practice.
A sales pitch is prepared and built in five steps:
. Find the right hook: Maximize the first few seconds of your conversation with key information that gives your interviewer immediate value.
. Produce an answer: Whether you use humor, surprising numbers or questions, the idea here is to use your emotional power to engage prospects. Introduce your offer: Once you have the interviewer’s attention, briefly introduce your company and services.
. Justify your claim: Detail your offer, focusing on benefits (not features) while overcoming the prospect’s objections.
“Closing”: End the conversation with a goal-based call to action, such as scheduling a face-to-face conversation, scheduling a demo, or signing an offer.
Techniques for successful email prospecting
You have defined your prospecting plan and your sales pitch, so let’s start with your mailings and repeat the techniques specific to each type of prospecting. Here are some good practices to execute effective e-mail campaigns:
Target as much as possible: To define a good target, you must segment your database beforehand.
Write attention-grabbing e-mails: The best way to do this is to exploit your emotional power (in content and form).
Write to one person: prospects need to think, “I’m here.
Be careful with calls to action: Just like an advertising pitch, your pitch should end with a specific action (learn more, make a purchase, provide a testimonial, etc.).
Test your email before sending it. Make sure everything works technically, visually and grammatically. Analyze prospecting campaigns. Evaluate, optimize and repeat the metrics you track (open rate, click-through rate, etc.).
If you want to learn more, we recommend you read our in-depth article on email prospecting. Techniques for successful physical and telephone prospecting
5. How to become an ace in BtoB business?
To stand out, you must understand that your prospect’s plan must fit perfectly into your customer’s buying cycle. This alone will make you a sales ace. B2B marketers: it’s time to move your market (and its players)!
To reach new heights in prospecting, you need to see the market in a global way. This means knowing four things:
- your ideal perspective;
- your current clients;
- competitors ;
- concurrents ;
- your company.
6. Sales force: how to build a strong team to increase sales?
Want to work with your sales team to search for customers in packages? Good idea! If you do it right. Different types of salespeople: which type are you? Which one should I adopt?
Sales teams are made up of salespeople with diverse and unique backgrounds, skills and personalities. Below are profiles of four merchants (click here to learn more about these merchant types)
- business analyst;
- commercial hunter;
- sensitive vendor.
- Social Affairs.
We encourage you to recruit different types of salespeople to complement the profiles of those already on your team. However, you may also want to attract customers with a group of like-minded salespeople to share a common working method.
7. What B2B prospecting tools are available?
Whether it is databases, CRM, social networks or other, there is no lack of tools to attract and retain customers. Discover the tools at your disposal. Some will surprise you!
Why Create a B2B Prospect File? A prospect file is a document that contains all the information related to a business activity. It takes the form of a complete database of contacts and customers (current and past).
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