About to launch a prospecting campaign to find potential customers for your business? Discover all our advice before, during and after the launch of your campaign to make it a success.
Determine the objectives of your prospecting campaign
The determination of commercial objectives is the preliminary step to any prospecting campaign. These not only serve to draw up a clear roadmap for the course of your campaign. They also serve above all to motivate your employees.
There are several methods to fix them. The SMART method is by far the most widely used. They must be :
- Specific and therefore precise
- Measurable so you can track your progress and assess the effectiveness of your actions
- Accepted or legitimized by your employees in order to obtain their support and their motivation for the task
- Realists. This is also one of the conditions for achieving the motivating effect on employees
- Temporal. Define clear and precise deadlines
Here are 3 more tips to help you set your business goals:
- Set cascading goals. This method consists of determining achievable goals at the start and gradually increasing them. This also allows your salespeople to better distribute their efforts. Not reaching them is bad for the morale of your sales reps. For example, instead of setting 100 sales to hit up front and risk not hitting them, you scale up to set more achievable thresholds (50, then 60, 70, etc.).
- Monitor the achievement of objectives. It’s not enough to set goals. You still have to follow the progress of your salespeople. For this, you can use the dashboard of your CRM software . If you don’t have one, you can ask your employees to create an Excel file of their weekly results.
- Prioritize your business goals. This is to define them in order of priority.
Create a database of prospects
While it is important to define your business objectives intelligently, building a base of prospects is the second key to a successful prospecting campaign. This is a database containing all useful information about your prospects.
The prospect database performs several functions. It is not only an important communication tool but it is also used to segment the market in order to optimize your prospecting actions.
Some companies choose to buy or rent lead files. This solution often has many drawbacks. The contacts collected in this type of file are often poorly qualified. Hence the importance of building up your prospecting file yourself.
Here is the information that should appear in your prospect database:
- Contact details (email address, telephone number, postal address, etc.)
- Information related to the prospect’s activity
- Civil status: surname, first name
- Legal information (if it is a B to B customer): NAF code, SIRET number, SIREN, etc.
To create your prospect file, you have the choice between 2 types of tools:
- A spreadsheet (Excel or Access)
- A database on a CRM (outsourced or internalized)
The latter option is more advantageous because of the many features available. It saves significant time by replacing manual actions.
Now, the question is how to concretely create your prospecting file?
You have several solutions for this:
- Use the SIRENE database (company data provided by INSEE) for BtoB prospecting
- Use social networks like LinkedIn . You can search for contacts that match your buyer persona. The platform will then automatically suggest profiles similar to your searches. You can then easily identify your targets
With the paid version, LinkedIn Sales Navigator , the task will be even easier because you will have access to numerous filters for an even better targeted search.
Theme groups on Facebook are also excellent resources for identifying prospects.
- Use tools like Dropcontact or Snov that allow you to find contact details on the Internet
- etc.
Choose the right prospecting tools
To prospect, you have 2 main choices: LinkedIn or emailing.
LinkedIn is an ideal tool for prospecting . However, you have to use the right strategies to make your project a success.
Here is how to do it:
Optimize your account. Creating an account is not enough to enjoy the benefits of LinkedIn. Your profile should reflect your expertise. For this, all the details count, including your profile photo and your cover photo. These are your first points of contact with your prospects.
Then, when the prospect needs to know more about you, he should be able to find everything by browsing your profile. Remember to complete all sections of the latter.
And finally, always with the aim of demonstrating your expertise, you must share content on your profile that brings added value to your prospects.
Click here to discover all our tips for optimizing your LinkedIn profile .
- Identify prospects who match your persona. When it comes to prospecting, quality prevails over quantity to avoid wasting your efforts unnecessarily.
- Get in touch with your prospects even before sending them a contact request . To do this, you can, for example, comment or share their publications. It is only once this first contact has been established that you should initiate the conversation.
- Integrate your contacts into your overall strategy by subscribing them, for example, to your email list.
Prospecting emailing
For many businesses, prospecting by phone is a thing of the past. So 85.5% of French people use the internet, emailing is the ideal tool for prospecting in order to better reach its commercial targets. Sending an email is fast and costs nothing. It is still necessary to build your prospecting email well.
This requires a well-structured and well-written text. For this, you must include some essential elements:
- A brief presentation of your company
- A unique object
- Arguments to capture the prospect’s attention
- personalized content
In addition, your email should provide value and should not be too long or too short. Your raises must also be sent strategically to avoid appearing too aggressive.
The choice of email provider is also important here. Indeed, for best results, it is better to opt for a paid platform like G-suite (or Gmail for business).
Finally, it is necessary to use the right prospecting software . He must :
- Be easy to use
- be reliable
- Deliver the emails you send
- Preheat your prospect list
Allow you to personalize your emails as much as possible.
Measure the results of your prospecting campaign
Measuring the results of your prospecting campaign is essential because it improves your strategy. You can do this on your prospecting platform by email or via Google Analytics.
To do this, you must analyze 6 main indicators in particular:
- The opening rate: the percentage of emails opened by its recipient
- The click rate: the percentage of people who clicked on the link placed in the email
- The rate of unsubscribing or unsubscribing from your contact list
- The deliverability rate. The percentage of emails that land in the inbox of its recipients
- The response rate
- The turnover generated by the emails sent
In conclusion, conducting a B2B prospecting campaign cannot be improvised. There are many tools to do this, but their effectiveness depends on a good strategy. With a good analysis, you will find improvement levers for your campaigns.
If you are still unsure about which tool to use, we recommend LeadIn: you will be able to make your emailing campaigns AND your Linkedin campaigns a success. Click here to request a product demo .
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