Ultimate Prospecting Guide for B2B Lead Generation

Prospecting is a critical aspect of lead generation for nearly all businesses, yet most marketers and sales teams find it complicated and time-consuming. 

In fact, according to Hubspot, more than 40% of marketers say sales prospecting is the toughest part of their job. Naturally, some would choose to rush the prospecting process and quickly move on to the next stage sales. It only makes sense, right?

WRONG!

Rushing through the prospecting process can cause your business dearly. When you fail to prospect, you can also expect to fail to reach your sales targets, amigo.

Problem is, it’s not easy to prospect intelligently unless you have the right “blueprint” to follow.

Luckily, if you’re ready to start prospecting more effectively and more time closing leads, keep reading.

Because in this guide, I’ll tell you everything you need to know about prospecting. I’ll show you and your sales team how to start prospecting smarter so you can save valuable time that would otherwise be wasted on unqualified leads that fall outside of your ideal customer profile.

How?

Start Your Prospecting Process With Data

First, we will build a list of “Look-A-Like Prospects” based on real customer data.

Sounds complicated, but it’s not. I’ll show you how to do this in 3 easy steps. `

1. List your paying customers.
2. Analyze the data
3. Find similar prospects that likely NEED what you sell.

Warning: Ignoring this “Data-First” approach will cause you to have longer sales cycles, lower response rate for your outbound sales messages (both on LinkedIn and Cold Email), and lower value per deal.

Step 1) List your paying customers

To kick off your prospecting process, you need a list of ALL your customers. You can either get this by downloading the customers on your CRM.

Check out these links on how to do this export via Hubspot and Pipedrive.

Or…

Open a blank google sheet and add the customers manually. You just need to input your customer’s business name, company URL and job title to get started.

If you’re just starting out and have fewer than 20 customers on your list, you can ‘steal’ a few clients (data) from your competitors. It’s very simple. You just need to;

1. List your current competitors or you can find more competitors using SimilarWeb.com, Alexa.com, or SpyFu.com
2. Check your competitors website
3. Find testimonials and logos from their customers (For example, Salesbread testimonials page)
4. Add them to your spreadsheet

Once you have a list of your paying customers, you’re ready to analyze your current customers.

Step 2) Analyze current customers

If you already have a CRM with your current customers, then this step should only take about 10 minutes. If not, then you’ll need to build a list of your current paying customers manually. 

To start, launch your go-to B2B prospecting tool like ZoomInfo, ClearBit, Crunchbase, Apollo.io, or Sales Navigator.

IMPORTANT: You must use the same database that you plan on using for prospecting to get an apples to apples comparison. Why? No 2 databases are the same. You’ll need to find out what labels your current tool is using to describe your perfect customers.

Next, type in your customers one at a time into the spreadsheet.

Gather the data for Basic and Advanced attributes to get a clear ‘picture’ of your current paying customers.

Then go back to the spreadsheet and add columns for these data

• Basic Attributes

1. Size
2. Industry
3. Location
4. Employee Title

You must input the size, industry, location, and employee title for each customer. 

Here’s how I did it:

1. Go to google and search for “Company AND inurl:linkedin.com/company”
2. Look for the company’s LinkedIn page in the search results page and click it
3. Copy and paste the employee count, industry and location found on the LinkedIn page 
4. Look for the company on CrunchBase and take note of the funding amount if there’s any

Sales Hack: Use clearBit batch (for free) to get an analysis of your current customers in minimal time. 

If you stop there, you’ll be able to target prospects using data like:  

A list of construction companies {industry} with 11-50 employees {size} in California {location} with Office Managers or IT managers {employee title}.

That alone is probably more targeted than what your competitors are using.

Why?

The answer is SIMPLE.

Because it’s backed by data and it’s highly targeted.

Now that you know how to build a targeted list using basic data points, it is time to crank it up a notch and only reach out to “Hot B2B prospects.” Try adding one or three columns for these advanced attribute data.

• Advanced Attributes

1. Technology
2. Hiring
3. Traffic
4. Advertising
5. Fundraising
6. Date
7. Amount

And if you’re already an expert in prospecting, consider adding columns and data for the list below:

• Technologies used (Via Builtwith.com)
• Currently hiring (Via Indeed.com)
• Ad spend (Via Spyfu.com)
• Revenue (Via Crunchbase.com)
• Events/Trade Shows attended (Via Crunchbase.com)

Step 3) Find similar prospects that likely NEED what you sell.

Now is the time to find “Look-a-like” Accounts based on the patterns below.

For example, let’s say you analyzed your list and found these patterns:

The data tells you:

1. 60% of your customers ARE funded
   
2. 40% of your customers are in Computer Software or IT
   
3. 70% of your prospects are in the U.S.
   
4. 65% of your customers have 11-50 employees
   

Watch the walkthrough video below to learn how to prospect with data:

Try to do this and you can have hard-core data that tells you:

The prospects that most likely need my product/service are… 

Marketing Directors and Vice Presidents at IT, Internet or Software companies with 51-500 employees in the U.S. that have raised at least $20,000.

You can now go after them with confidence.

Conclusion

Prospecting might sound like a back-breaking process but unless you start doing it, you’ll fail to strike the gold. 

So start prospecting effectively using data of the hottest prospects in your market because better prospecting means more high-quality leads and better results for your outbound sales campaign.

Yes, it takes leg work, but today you can’t afford NOT to use data in your prospecting. Of course, you could always outsource this to the experts at Salesbread.com

Schedule a free 15 minute brainstorm session today to find out if this can boost your sales numbers.