4 Tips for Better Sales Prospecting

2020 sees us moving into a new era in sales prospecting. Gone are the days of cold calling, flyer advertising, and even business cards – soon to be on the way out for environmental reasons. Sales prospects are now more likely to be found on the other side of the screen.

In a digital world, how do we go about finding new sales? How to we generate leads of our own, sell through digital mediums, and still keep our business heads above water? We here at Cincopa don’t have all of the answers; but they don’t call us industry experts for nothing… So we put together some of our top tips for finding better sales prospects in 2020 – just for you.

 

man on phone


The Problem with Traditional Sales Prospecting…

There are a lot of problems that come with relying on old-school marketing methods to generate and qualify sales. The younger generations will not tolerate being called during dinner hours because most of them only own a cell phone. They don’t read newspapers; they don’t sponsor firms that they deem to have questionable morality. This could mean that your lack of recycled paper use sees you slated. It also means cold calling has gotten a whole lot more expensive.

The larger the firm, the larger this problem seems to be. A single-person company has only one person generating leads, answering the phones, and doing all the work. A large firm depends on their marketing department to worry about sales. This is a toxic relationship that can quickly turn nasty for the firm.

Can you imagine, for example, a firm selling cigarettes in this day and age? The product department creates a new type of cigarette and expect the marketing department to put enough spin on it that it will sell. The marketing department have an exceptionally difficult job while the production department goes full steam ahead… They end up with a million cigarettes and nobody to sell them to.

This is what happens when you try to apply traditional marketing techniques to modern sales prospecting. If you don’t change with the times you are going to get stuck in the past, alongside the non-recyclables and the cigarette manufacturers. Times are changing, they are becoming digital. So is sales prospecting.

With all of this in mind, let’s talk about how our sales departments can adapt – particularly in B2B companies, where advertising has always been on a different level entirely.

 

man phone

Our Top Tips for Better Sales Prospecting in 2020

So what are the best things your business can be doing to create better sales prospecting in the coming year? Here are our top tips from industry leading professional:

 

1. Harness the Power of Social Media

Business forecasters have been banging this drum for quite some time now, so it isn’t a new concept… What does constantly change are the social media sites you need to be on to capture sales. As of the start of 2020, that means LinkedIn for B2B companies. If you are B2C then you also need to be on Tik Tok but that is a different blog post…

LinkedIn is the new work site of the future. As well as being a good place to find new jobs, it also offers the opportunity for you to sell to your clients in a very targeted way. Since almost all digital businesses exist somewhere in the virtual space of LinkedIn, you can appeal to their members through online ads – without them even realising that’s what they are…

Remember the old marketing rule of 7? That didn’t go anywhere. It’s just that now it is much easier to reach someone 7 times so that they recognise your brand… provided you are using digital marketing, of course.

 

typing

 

2. Email Still Works

Email marketing is not the newest concept either – but email marketing still has significant impact. Reports suggest that it has much better ROI on your time than a phone call, especially to those who are personable.

Reaching out via email is more likely to work because the mail will be passed to the relevant department. People answer back in their own time – and you aren’t interrupting anything. Take the time to read up on the firm and get to know who you are reaching out to for maximum impact. There is no point spending months cultivating a connection in a firm only to find out that your contact is in HR and nothing to do with sales…

 

3. Use Your Voice

Getting digital is one thing – but you can find sales leads in person, too. Entrepreneur advises that you reach out to firms to offer your services as a public speaker. This is a great way to get in the door of a firm, while it simultaneously boosts your confidence. If your public speech skills are on point, so is your sales chat.

The added bonus of public speaking is that you will find people come up to you at the end to talk about your company’s products or services. Ditch the bulky stack of business cards! Instead, consider using a digital business card. you smooth talk a buyer there, and before you know it you have generated advertising simply by giving ca talk on what you know about. If you don’t mind public speaking this is a must for out-of-the-box sales prospects in 2020.

looking at phone

 

4. Personalized Video Messages

In an age where people spend between 80 and 100 minutes a day watching online videos, you really can’t afford to be missing out on that traffic. We mentioned as our first point that we ought to be harnessing the power of social media sites like LinkedIn if we want better sales prospects. Personalized video content can be targeted in a way that is synonymous with social media advertising.

Consider Shazoom; the video content creation tool that allows you to put a face to your brand. A CEO reaching out through this kind of video advertising, inclusive of personalised messages in bite-sized content streams – has far more resonance than a mass marketed email. Arguably, video is the one way we still have to present marketing that strikes an ‘out of the box’ chord… you don’t even need social media to use it. You can just pop it straight onto your website and start getting prospects.

 

Rounding Up

Marketing, sales prospecting, and digital media are set to go hand-in-hand throughout 2020. One thing that is on the rise is the use of video to generate sales leads. Take advantage of this information, get yourself on LinkedIn, and start making those videos. Otherwise, you could be left in the dust, back in the days of cold-calling.

 

Originally published on March 3rd, 2020, updated on March 28th, 2024
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4 Tips for Better Sales Prospecting

by Oren Shmulevich time to read: 4 min
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