Only 54.6% of sales professionals meet their sales quota. That's a pretty dismal number. Although there are many things that affect performance, B2B sales prospecting (or lack thereof) has a direct impact.
Stop Ignoring Your #1 Sales Prospecting Tool
Salespeople Hate Prospecting Like I Hate Treadmills
If you give a salesperson five tasks for the day, prospecting drops to the end of the list. Most salespeople would rather nurture quality opportunities than dig for new ones. This leads to fewer opportunities to quote because there's less effort put into hunting.
Salespeople tend to hate prospecting like I hate treadmills. But, much like treadmills are an important part of physical health, prospecting is an important part of B2B sales health.
What if I gave you a prospecting tool that scouted for opportunities 24/7?
Your 24/7 Prospecting Tool
If you have a website, you already have a prospecting tool working 24/7. If you use a platform like HubSpot, you can have a list of prospects that visited your website automatically emailed to your salespeople every morning.
If you don't use HubSpot, but have Google Analytics, you can still see prospect companies that are visiting your site. It's more work with Google Analytics, but it's possible.
HubSpot shows you which pages of your website they viewed, along with information about the prospect company such as
- the LinkedIn company page,
- a description of the company's product/service,
- companies related to this prospect, and
- how they found your website.
While these are not contact names, they're an excellent starting point to connect with a potential buyer.
Warm Prospecting Breaks Down "Sales Shields"
Armed with who visited your website AND what pages they viewed, a salesperson can customize their interaction with each prospect. The more relevant their communication, the more open the prospect will be to further communication.
This is called warm prospecting. Warm prospecting gives you insight into a prospect's needs. When you know what they're looking at on your website, you know what they're researching and interested in. Context and prep work make it easier for salespeople to build rapport from the get-go.
Put Your Prospector to Work
If you aren't regularly checking your website sales prospects, you need to check out HubSpot or dig into your Google Analytics. There's a wealth of excellent sales data at your disposal.
Your website is gathering info even while you read this article. What are you waiting for?
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