As a sales leader, you know filling the top of the sales funnel is as important as closing deals. Without new opportunities, your sales team will never make quota. Success depends on effective prospecting.
Your job is to help your team develop a sales prospecting plan. Here are eight tips for coaching your sales professionals to fill their pipelines with qualified prospects that lead to sales.
1. Define Your Ideal Prospect
Every prospecting plan for sales should start with your ICP (ideal customer profile). It’s not enough to have a target list of companies your sales professionals should go after. They need to have a clear picture of who within each organization is the right contact, in the right role. They also must be able to determine whether they’re a good candidate for your products and services.
TIP: Arm your sales team with clear, up-to-date customer profiles and qualification checklists. For more help on this step, see the 5 characteristics of qualified prospects.
2. Set Intelligent Goals
The next element of each sales professional’s prospecting plan is how many new contacts they should make each week based on the average conversion rate from prospect to opportunity, and how many qualified opportunities they must add to their pipeline.
TIP: Set goals based on the number of prospects you need at the top of the funnel to achieve bottom-of-the-funnel objectives. Keep in mind what each team member can achieve based on time commitments, seniority, and skill level.
3. Establish a Consistent Sales Process
A sales process is an organization’s approach to closing deals. It’s a series of repeatable steps that move a prospect from the early stage of awareness to a sale.
The most effective sales processes include straightforward steps that are easy to follow. They pay as much attention to the initial stages of the pipeline—prospecting and questioning—as they do to negotiating terms and closing.
Adherence to a consistent sales process is critical to a well-functioning sales team in general—including effective sales prospecting.
TIP: Coach your team to follow your sales process for consistent productivity.
4. Identify the Most Effective Prospecting Techniques
Besides cold calling and referrals, sales professionals have many ways to contact new prospects: email, social media, speaking engagements, and networking events are just a few examples.
TIP: Be sure you know which tactics are most effective for your industry and buyer, and train your sellers how to use each so they can incorporate them into their prospecting process. For more information, find out How to Improve Sales Prospecting Emails.
5. Clarify Messaging
Prospecting with a clear, on-brand message helps ensure your sales professionals attract and retain good quality prospects. Make sure your sales team understands your overall company messaging as well as the specific positioning of each product and service line. Your sellers should also be able to use the correct messaging at each point in the sales process.
TIP: Coach your team to ask probing questions to identify which elements of your messaging resonate with each type of prospect, and to stay on message in response to the prospect’s needs.
6. Adapt to Customer Communication Styles
Everyone has a preferred communication style that feels like “home” to them. When your sales professionals choose to communicate in a prospect’s preferred style, it creates a bond and helps them navigate the relationship.
There are four main personality types (or buyer behavior styles) based on the DISC personality assessment. Understanding each style is key to understanding the decision-making behavior of a prospect.
TIP: With the right coaching and a personality assessment like DISC, your sales professionals can become experts at understanding their own behavior style and present information in a way the customer is most receptive to.
7. Use Scripts and Templates
Every professional on your team should be prepared to use open-ended sales questions to identify prospect needs, wants, issues, and priorities. It can be helpful—especially when onboarding new sellers—to provide scripts for reaching out to potential buyers.
TIP: Email and phone scripts and templates will save your team time, help them stay on message, and yield stronger results, especially when combined with training that gives them the confidence to think on their feet.
8. Measure Outcomes and Refine the Process
When everyone on your team follows the same prospecting process and records prospecting data in your CRM, you can analyze outcomes and determine what is working well and what isn’t.
You can use the data you collect, as well as general win/loss analysis, to continually refine and improve your sales prospecting process.
TIP: Invite your sales team members to share what’s been successful for them, especially if it’s an “outside the box” type of tactic.
Developing a Sales Prospecting Plan
Sales professionals are generally fast-paced and enjoy selling activities more than planning, which can make prospecting a challenge. Coach your team to commit several hours a week to focus solely on prospecting.
Give your sales professionals a plan to fill their pipeline and hit their target. The Brooks Group Sales Territory Planning training program teaches sales professionals the best strategies for developing sales plans they can implement, track, and measure for success.
Your sales professionals will come away from the program with solid, actionable prospecting checklists and a concrete plan for hitting their numbers next quarter and beyond.
