Sales prospecting helps you create a qualified database of prospects (or potential customers). Here is how the best techniques for sales prospecting can lead to higher conversions in 2023.
1. Focus on finding the right prospects
Many salespeople fall into the trap of:
Spending too much time chasing prospects who don’t match the target profile.
The key is spending time determining your target audience and then building a prospect profile. Use a checklist to pre-qualify your leads. For example:
- Industry/Vertical
- Number of employees
- Annual revenue
- The persona of the decision maker(s)
- Geography/Location
Your website is one of the quickest ways to qualify leads and push them along your sales cycle. Zoho SalesIQ‘s website visitor tracking dashboard gives you an insightful visitor list sorted by the criteria of your choice. You also get details like their location, actions, time spent, traffic source, and more. Configure Zoho SalesIQ to show each member of your sales team their target audience in the real-time website visitor tracking dashboard.
The quality of your prospect data is of the utmost importance for sales prospecting. Zoho CRM’s data enrichment capability helps your sales reps understand prospects in a better way. Zia, an intelligent sales assistant, in Zoho CRM crawls pages from across the Internet and retrieves additional information about prospects, such as company size, phone number, email address, and other details.
Once you have the lead information, do your homework to see if you can answer any of these questions before you reach out.
- Budget – The size of the business, annual turnover, or what your prospect is currently spending on your type of solution.
- Need – Is your prospect similar to any of your existing customers? What are their main goals and challenges?
- Timing – Do some research on the buying cycle and try to evaluate the urgency of the need.
2. Focus On Warm Calls
Warm calling targets prospects who previously showed interest in your products or services.
For example, they visited a web page on your site, browsed your resources, commented on your social media posts, attended your webinar, engaged with a paid ad, signed up for your newsletter, or maybe even your demos.
According to LinkedIn, cold calls have an average of 2% conversion rate, while warm calls can have 30% or more.
How to Make the Most of Warm Calls?
- Takes notes from your previous conversations or interactions so you can speak to the prospect in relevant and meaningful ways.
- Invest in a proper solution like RingCentral telephony solution and integrate it with Zoho CRM to streamline the process
3. Time management
Prospecting isn’t easy — more than 40% of salespeople say it’s the most challenging part of the sales process.
Set aside dedicated prospecting time on your calendar each day. By blocking off time to prospect, you’ll be better off in the long run because you’re actively filling your pipeline, which often results in more conversations and better win rates.
Having Zoho CRM by your side, your sales team can minimize time spent on unproductive tasks and focus on revenue-generating activities like calling prospects, answering queries, and closing more deals.
4. Send Engaging, Personalized Emails
The annual B2B survey by ChiefMarketer shows that email is the best channel to generate leads and also the best channel that produces the highest ROI leads.
Email Prospecting is the act of reaching out via email to potential customers (prospects) with the aim to make a connection and convert them into your customers. Here is how to do it right:
- Focus on value by sending blogs, downloadable guides, and useful advice
- Personalization is key
- Use an engaging subject line
- Keep it short
- Use visual CTAs
- Provide social proof
- Include a signature
- Be clear on your mail’s purpose
- Time it right
- Follow up effectively
With Zoho CRM or Zoho Campaigns, you can save a lot of time by automating the entire email marketing process. You can create responsive designs, customize messages, deliver emails to inboxes, trigger automated workflows, and connect with prospects. In short, you can send your prospects the right message at the right time.
5. Perfect Your Timing
Timing is everything. The data says:
- The best times to email prospects are 8 am and 5 pm, according to Get Response.
- Tuesday emails have the highest open rate compared to other weekdays, says Experian.
- If a salesperson sends an email Tuesday morning, the best days to call and follow up are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6:45 am – 9 am and 4 pm – 6 pm. The worst days to call are Mondays from 6 am to noon and Fridays in the afternoon, according to a study from RingLead.
You can schedule your emails that are sent from Zoho CRM by simply specifying when you want them to be sent and the system will take care of sending them at the right time. You can choose from the best time to email – as suggested by CRM, pre-defined options for scheduling (Today, Tomorrow), or custom schedule.
6. Take Advantage of Automation
Sales prospecting is a time-consuming process. Depending on your database size, your sales reps likely spend their whole day making calls, sending emails, or meeting with prospects.
You can automate or streamline all of the prospecting strategies with the Zoho CRM Plus bundle. Here’s how:
- Put all lead information in Zoho CRM. Score your leads and qualify them for further nurturing. Leverage email marketing, social media, live chat, and calls to nurture your leads from within Zoho CRM.
- Make use of Zoho Campaigns for email marketing. It is a complete email marketing toolkit to reach, engage, and grow your audience.
- Put CRM context in your mailbox. Once you started doing email marketing, you can use Zoho SalesInbox to prioritize your emails based on the CRM data and organize deals that matter most to your salespeople.
- Implement Zoho Social for social selling. Companies that use social selling practices regularly are 40% more likely to hit their revenue goals. Schedule, publish, and monitor posts to track social engagement for social selling.
- Make use of data analytics to increase conversion rates. With Zoho CRM Plus’s Analytics software, you can identify and predict sales trends and outcomes to achieve higher conversions.
7. Ask For Referrals and Recognize for Opportunity for Testimonials
Sales referrals are one of the most underrated sales prospecting methods out there. They can give a real boost to your overall revenue without requiring heavy investment.
According to a study, referred customers are 4 times more likely to convert. The idea is simple: you take your satisfied customers and ask them to refer someone they know who would also benefit from your product or service.
Client testimonials are the best ways to build trust among your prospects as they act as social proof testifying to the quality of your products and services. For instance, instead of sending testimonial requests, ask customers about their experience. If a client emails or texts you their feedback, use the positive remark as a testimonial. Be sure to ask for approval first. Similarly, recognize more opportunities for testimonials as prospects trust reviews as much as personal recommendations from family and peers.
Conclusion
Implement different sales prospecting techniques until you find the right mix of effective sales methods that support your marketing efforts and sales goals. This also makes the case for Zoho CRM. Organizations that embrace Zoho CRM will be able to make the most out of these sales prospecting techniques and close more deals.
If you want to know how Zoho CRM can help you boost your sales, please contact us here or call (845) 221-3800.