If you have a business, you know the importance of building your sales prospect list. The sales prospect list is the backbone of any good sales organization. It’s what separates the winners from the losers.
Without a solid, complete, and growing sales prospect list, you will be a very poor performer in every area of your business. You can have all the best products and services in the world, but if no one knows about them or has an opportunity to buy them, they won’t sell at all!
What is a prospect list?
A prospect list is a collection of people interested in buying your product or service.
The reason you’re building a prospect list is to build your sales pipeline. A sales pipeline is the collection of all your potential clients – from cold prospects to warm prospects and even “qualified” leads (i.e., those with enough interest for you to follow up on).
In other words: it’s the first step in any business relationship between two parties (the buyer and seller) which can result in either a sale or no sale.
A Sales Prospect List Is More Than Just Your Mailing List! Building a sales prospect list may sound easy, but there are many different types of lists out there, and the way you build it will differ depending on your business.
There are many different ways to compile a sales prospect list, and the best way for your specific business depends on what you’re selling and how you’re marketing it. You can use various cold emailing techniques to collect contact information from prospects that may be interested in buying from you (email autoresponder series with prospect information, contact form on your website).
How to build your prospect list?
1. Identify your ideal customer
The first step in building a prospect list is identifying your ideal customer. This might seem easy, but it’s crucial to understand who you’re selling to before getting started – otherwise, you’ll end up emailing or calling people who are irrelevant to your business.
Consider researching what type of buyer represents the best opportunity for you and crafting an email campaign specifically targeting those customers (for example, tech-savvy homeowners). Once you have this information, marketing automation can help keep contact with these buyers organized and efficient.
Persona designates how an individual can behave. It is how a person acts, thinks, and feels about themselves, other people, or situations. Personas are used to better understand your customers so you can build relationships with them from the start of your sales cycle to keep those top-performing customers happy throughout their process as they become advocates for your company’s products/services.
Building your ideal customer profile or persona will help you better understand your ideal customer and what they are looking for. You need to know how your product can help a customer solve pain points, and in turn, this will inform you of who the ideal customer profile (ICP) is, who they are, and why they enjoy your product. Using an effective salesperson finder tool such as those provided by LucidCRM allows you to identify possible prospects with similar needs that may
2. Understand Your Product
Once you know your ideal customer, it’s essential to understand what you’re selling. What do they need and want? Can you provide it? Do they have a specific pain point you can address with a solution?
When determining what needs to be included on your prospect list, remember: if the buyer doesn’t see value in what YOU offer, there’s little chance of a purchase happening! Include information about your product (describe benefits), how it works (video or written instructions), pricing information, and contact info for sales/support.
3. Generate a List
Depending on your sales process, you’ll need to generate a list of qualified prospects. This could include cold emailing customers who have interacted with you in the past (if they’re not already on your email list), contacting company referrals, or creating targeted ads that target potential buyers’ audiences.
You can also create an online form that allows potential buyers to sign up for an email newsletter about your company or a product that you’re selling. This will allow you to send out updates when new features are added, new products are released, or discounts are offered. You may also want to provide free reports or other free content to provide value while staying within your customer’s budget.
4. Prioritize your prospects
Once your list is generated, it’s important to prioritize it and contact the most qualified. Try to contact customers who share similar interests or challenges (based on what you know about them) and customers who have shown an interest in what you offer in the past.
Building and maintaining a best prospects list is important for effective sales and marketing. First, you should identify the best prospects before making any decisions or actions. Next, your emerging leads must be qualified because if they aren’t, you will be hiring some bad apples in no time!
5. Add additional details to your list and refine it
Once you have contact information for your top prospects, it’s time to add additional details such as company size, industry, and the number of employees. This will help you track who is interested in what you do and when best to reach out.
It also helps to refine the list by emailing customers not on your original marketing list but sharing similar interests or challenges with those already on the list. Doing this can increase customer engagement rates significantly!
The phone number is a strong feature for attracting interested buyers. It can save a lot of time and effort that you use in another way such as website, social media marketing, etc. Selling more with less effort just by focusing on the phone numbers will be able to enlarge your business enjoying ever-growing success!
Trigger events can trigger sales and the most important trigger event is when a customer makes a large purchase. Get familiar with your customers’ trigger events by asking them questions like “How did you first hear about us?” or “What was the last buying experience that led to this purchase?”. Other relevant questions include how they got involved in your industry, what led up to their purchases, who introduced them to you etc… Some of these events are big purchasing decisions, but there will be many more small ones.
6. Invest in a CRM and Marketing Automation Tool
Creating customer contact data and prospecting information is one thing, but it’s even more valuable to have a tool that can help you automate sales pipeline activity. A CRM or marketing automation tool will allow you to automatically email customers who match certain criteria, create custom content for social media, track buyer journeys and identify potential leads through email contact forms, etc.
The benefits of using such tools are clear – less time spent on administrative tasks means more time focused on growing your business! Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Pipedrive, and Zoho are some of the popular CRM solutions currently available in the market.
7. Create lead generation campaigns
Now it’s time to put your list to use by planning lead generation campaigns. This could involve emailing customers, creating digital ads and social media posts, or hosting webinars for potential buyers.
Campaigns should be planned strategically based on customer engagement rates (CER) – the higher the CER, the more actionable information you can get from a campaign! By using data-driven marketing techniques and contact list management tips like those listed above, you can easily increase sales without breaking the bank!
Sales automation software like CRM and automation tools can help you automate your sales process. The right combination of these tools will make the work faster, more accurate, and more efficient.
8. Automate follow-ups and notifications
Once you’ve done all the hard work to create a personalized outreach sequence, you can use it as a foundation for automated follow-ups and notifications. Follow-up emails should be customized based on your prospect list segmentation. For example, if you have multiple salespeople in different territories, set up separate follow-up sequences that are tailored to each territory’s needs.
Then, automate emailing these sequences when your prospects have been inactive for more than a certain amount of time. By using daily sales reports to identify top performers, use their open rates as benchmarks, and compare them against current activity levels. If activity is low and they haven’t received any emails within X days or weeks, then send them an automated reminder.
By automating your follow-up process and using prospect list management tips, you can increase sales without breaking the bank!
9. Implement lead scoring
The final step is to implement lead scoring. This will help you assign a priority score to each lead and track the results of your campaigns. You can also use lead scoring to determine when and how to contact potential buyers.
Lead scoring can help you eliminate low-scoring leads, contact potential buyers sooner, and close more sales. By implementing lead scoring and using prospect list management tips, you can easily increase sales without breaking the bank!
How to find sales prospects?
Build a Prospect List By Prospecting on Linkedin
The number one thing you need to know about Linkedin is that you can’t build a sales prospecting list on Linkedin.
If you’re using a Linkedin account for prospecting, it will most likely be your personal profile. And because it’s your personal profile, all of your contacts are also in your personal network. So what you have is a full contact list and a private network of people who want to know more about you personally.
You may build your prospects on LinkedIn by going through each of your contact list’s individuals one by one. Send an email or call each of the people listed above, and ask whether they would like to hear more about it.
Additionally, you can also subscribe to LinkedIn Sales Navigator It’s a subscription-based service that gives sales professionals access to powerful sales tools, including contact management and lead scoring. With Sales Navigator, you can easily find qualified prospects and track the progress of your campaigns.
Build a Prospect List with a Sales Intelligence Tool
You can also build your prospect list using sales intelligence tools like Lusha, Apollo, ZoomInfo, etc. These tools offer a wealth of information on your target market, including contact data, social media profiles, and company information.
Additionally, these tools also offer lead enrichment, outreach automation, and intent data to help you target your prospects more effectively. Most of these tools have pretty extensive data that they have carefully curated over the years. If your building your prospect list to target organizations in India, you can leverage platforms like Fundoodata, Rocketreach, and Easyleadz.
Build a Prospect List Browsing the Web
You can also build your prospect list by browsing through directories of organizations like LinkedIn, Chambers of Commerce, and Yellow Pages. This approach is especially helpful if you don’t have contact information for the potential customers that you want to target.
Search for the industry that your target market operates in, and then browse through relevant directories until you find a list of companies. Once you have compiled this list, you can email or phone each company listed to ask whether they would be interested in learning more about your product or service.
Begin Sales Prospecting
In conclusion, building a prospect list is an essential step in any successful sales or marketing strategy. By focusing on identifying and targeting your ideal customer, using various tools and resources to gather contact information, and regularly maintaining and updating your list, you can create a powerful tool for driving leads and increasing conversions.
Remember to always be compliant with data protection laws and regulations, and to treat the data with respect and sensitivity. With a well-constructed prospect list in hand, you’ll be well on your way to achieving your sales and marketing goals.
