Prospecting has shifted from primarily physical to increasingly digital channels. While networking events and conferences remain relevant and yield results, the growing competition demands that salespeople expand their reach to connect with more potential customers. Digital methods offer an effective way to target a broader audience and create opportunities for engagement. In the industrial B2B sector, technical sales managers often prioritize product specifications over storytelling or compelling copywriting. This blog will explore key techniques for successful B2B prospecting in today’s digital landscape.
Leverage Physical advertisement
In the B2B industry, physical magazines and newsletters remain widely used. Many companies publish data in these print media. For B2B prospecting, data collection is crucial. Finding the right data within your niche is critical for B2B selling. Here are a few ways a salesperson can leverage the physical and published data that’s widely available:
Exhibition-based list
It’s crucial for sales professionals to study their customers’ areas of interest and identify whether they’re exhibiting at industry-related exhibitions. The exhibition organizing company typically publishes a booklet listing the exhibitors, which becomes your targeted niche. Once you have the company names, you can easily find the right person to contact through digital means.
Industry magazine database
Every industry has its own publications. Many companies feature in these magazines, so try to obtain copies where your customers are publishing.
Networking events and conferences
Attending high-quality networking events and conferences can help you find potential buyers who might be ready to purchase. They’re likely in the buying cycle if they’re investing time in industry conferences.
- Engage in conversation with them.
- Understand their challenges and offer solutions during the event.
Remember to be concise and unique in your communication, as you have to stand out from the crowd and build connections.
Explore the power of digital
LinkedIn-based or Apollo data search
Data searching tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator and Apollo help you find digitally active customers. These tools provide publicly available details about prospective customers, including name, company, designation, revenue, employee count, and industry. While these tools offer a wealth of information, it’s crucial to focus on connecting with the right prospects. They provide signals to identify active customers who might be interested in your product. For instance, Apollo offers a verified emails option, helping you validate customers and filter your list more effectively. In ZoomInfo, you have access to “Intent scores,” which provide insights into a customer’s intentions. These scores indicate:
- What type of keywords this customers is searching for?
- What are the topics that the customer is researching?
- What is The timeline?
This provides you an indication that your prospective customers are actively searching these products. This also allows the sales person to know where to channelise their efforts.
Use of Database companies (Zaubacorp, Dun & Bradstreet)
These companies remain popular within B2B sectors due to their extensive experience in data collection and sales. They possess a wide variety of data previously sold to customers, giving them insight into the right audience for you. To leverage this effectively, it’s crucial to understand your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). Provide your ICP details to these companies, and they’ll supply you with targeted data for your marketing efforts.
Create Google Alerts
This is an underutilized tool that is invaluable for staying ahead of the competition. Set up Google Alerts for topics relevant to your industry to receive timely, valuable information. For instance, a pharmaceutical equipment manufacturer might create alerts for their customers’ expansion plans. This proactive approach allows you to approach customers more efficiently and boosts your confidence during the prospecting process.
Content Creation
Building a personal brand is essential for sales professionals, and content creation is an excellent way to achieve this. Create educational videos on subjects that will benefit your prospective customers and publish them on social media platforms. Video marketing is currently the most effective form of content and is projected to remain so in the near future. Regularly share your thoughts on industry-related topics through video content on social media to establish your expertise and visibility.
Connecting with Prospects
Having covered data collection, let’s explore effective ways to engage with these potential customers.
Use of Personalised letters
An interesting way to connect with customers is through physical letters. Although digital communication is prevalent, this technique has proven effective, especially for me. Here’s a scenario: Suppose you’re tasked with appointing distributors in a particular territory. You’d start by examining industry magazines to find data like names, addresses, and areas of business. Then, you can print a distributor letter of interest, including a personal note expressing your interest in working together, signed by the company director. The customer might appreciate this genuine effort and time invested in writing a personal letter. This approach can build confidence in the distributor’s mind and convey that you’re serious about business.
Cold Emailing
Cold emailing remains a widely used channel for salespeople to connect with prospects. However, many technical sales professionals use it incorrectly. They often send lengthy introductory emails with no value for the customer, too many attachments, and unrealistic expectations of making a sale from a single email. There are several rules to follow for effective cold emailing. Below is the recommended format for writing an email:
- It should be Concise it should be to the point.
- It should have a good subject line, and a compelling body
- Call to action.
Followup at Scale
Sale Automation
Storytelling through sequence based emails allows the sales professionals to automate their process. Sales automation will also help the sales professionals to focus more on sales closure activies and other important sales tasks.
As a service professional, you need to reach a wider audience with limited resources. Scalability becomes crucial in the digital era, where AI-based marketing and sales can be easily automated. You can tell stories and promote your content at scale to the prospective audience list you’ve built. For example, suppose you’re selling pharmaceutical equipment to pharma companies. You can extract data from industry magazines or digital platforms like Apollo or Sales Navigator. Then, create a sequence of emails:
- An introductory email,
- Followed by one highlighting product features,
- Then an authority-based email,
- and finally, Case studies or product videos that might interest the customer.
This sequence can be built and automated using tools like Zapier. Simply create the sequence, add the emails, and you’ve automated your email list at scale.
The blog emphasizes the importance of combining traditional and digital prospecting methods in B2B Technical Sales. It highlights the need for salespeople to adapt to the digital landscape while still valuing personal connections. The key takeaway is that successful prospecting requires a multi-faceted approach, leveraging both physical and digital channels, and focusing on providing value to potential customers through targeted, personalized communication and content creation. By implementing these techniques, B2B sales professionals can expand their reach, identify the right prospects, and build meaningful relationships that lead to successful sales outcomes.
Hope it adds value to your sales prospective efforts. Happy Selling!
