“The only way to win is to learn faster than anyone else.” – Jay Samit

As the world of sales is constantly changing, so does the need to continuously learn and develop new skills, especially when it comes to B2B client prospecting.

What is client prospecting? Why do you need to prospect for new clients? And what are the main techniques to do so?

In this complete guide, we’ll see how you can boost your performance in sales through good old-fashioned client prospecting!

From understanding the basics of client prospecting to applying strategies that are sure to deliver results, we’ll cover all the essential elements of a successful B2B client prospecting process.

What is client prospecting?

First off, let’s discuss the basics of client prospecting.

Client prospecting is the process of identifying and qualifying sales leads and turning them into clients. It’s a key sales activity that is part of any effective sales strategy.

Client prospecting includes several challenges you’ll have to deal with. These challenges are directly referring to the customer journer and involve many marketing actions as well as sales.

To help you with sales outreach, you can use a tool like LaGrowthMachine, which will help you reach out to many of your B2B leads automatically, via several sales channels!

We’ll explain how it works throughout this article. 🤝

Why do you need to prospect for new clients?

If you’re running a business, you already know that getting new clients is one of the main goals of your sales organization, and how much they matter for the future of your company.

But to make sure you’re getting the right clients, you need to have a clear and effective client prospecting process.

Since generating money is your ultimate objective, there are other stakes that you must consider before investing in sales processes:

  • You need to be less reliant on a few clients. Unfortunately, a client’s lifecycle is limited, so you need to continuously find new ones to maintain a healthy business.
  • Different clients have different expectations. New clients might help you understand and anticipate new needs and scale up your offer.
  • Even if you’re happy with your current clients, remember that they can leave you at any time. This is why it’s important to always prospect for new clients to limit the risks of losing important contracts.
  • Prospecting can help you stay competitive. The market is constantly evolving, and new clients can introduce you to innovative ideas and strategies that you may have never considered.
  • A larger client base can provide social proof: Having a large client base can be a powerful marketing tool. Prospective clients may be more likely to trust you if they see that you have a large and diverse clientele. 

An alternative approach consists in getting fewer clients, but bigger ones. At LaGrowthMachine, we can help you do both!

Take advantage of our cutting-edge tool to simultaneously launch multiple sales campaigns with an extensive selection of customizable templates, allowing you to target various audiences.

You’ll just need to adapt the copywriting of your messages, the channels that you want to focus on (LinkedIn, Email, etc.), and the order of each action in your sequence.

Let’s see how LaGrowthMachine can help you in more detail.

LaGrowthMachine: The best tool for your client prospecting

Now that you understand the basics of client prospecting, how can LaGrowthMachine help you get the most out of it?

LaGrowthMachine is a powerful multichannel tool meant to automate your sales that can help you in each step of your client prospecting process.

First, it allows you to import your list of leads from almost any source you can think of!

Don’t have a list already? No problem! Simply fire up LinkedIn via LaGrowthMachine’s interface (you should have already connected your account) and start looking for leads using their advanced search filters.

import leads from any source

Once you have your list of leads, it’s time to do some outreach! LaGrowthMachine comes with a host of customizable template sequences that you can send out to your leads. You only need to:

  • Choose one of the hundreds of templates based on your prospecting objectives and the channels you want to employ.
  • If you’re using all 3 channels (LinkedIn + Email + Twitter), make sure you plug in all your accounts to your identity.
  • Select and add your audience to the campaign.
  • Write your best copy for each outreach message.
  • Once you’re done with that, just hit send and let LaGrowthMachine do all the heavy lifting in the background!

One thing I haven’t mentioned in the steps outlined above is our tool’s outstanding lead enrichment capabilities.

Every time you create a new campaign or have one running, our system will automatically enrich your leads with the appropriate missing information such as their personal emails, company size, location, etc.

enrich your leads

Additionally, our tool will start tracking the engagement of your prospects in real time and provide you with a wealth of insightful data.

Speaking of which, if you’re using other tools (say, a CRM tool?) alongside LaGrowthMachine, you can link them up and get a holistic view of your campaigns in one place.

This way, you can make sure that your prospecting process is as efficient and effective as possible.

All in all, though it may seem like a complex tool – especially if you’re just starting out with sales prospecting, LaGrowthMachine is one of the most versatile and comprehensive sales automation tools available.

It’ll help you take your prospecting efforts to the next level, no matter your experience or the size of your team.

Get 3.5X more leads!

Do you want to improve the efficiency of your sales department? With La Growth Machine you can generate on average 3.5x more leads while saving an incredible amount of time on all your processes.

By signing up today, you’ll get a free 14-day trial to test our tool!

Try now for free!

5 Techniques to improve your client prospecting

If you’ve reached this point, you should have a good understanding of the basics of client prospecting.

Now comes the most interesting part of this post: How to do client prospecting.

There are a lot of sales strategies that exist to do so. As professionals in client prospecting, we at LaGrowthMachine have established a list of 5 tips that will help you boost your client prospecting.

Tip 1: Focus on the client, not only on the sale

The first thing to understand is that in order to succeed in client prospecting, you’ll need to focus on your potential client’s needs.

Salespeople tend to focus on making the sale without taking into account their client’s needs. A great salesperson understands that the customer should always be at the center of the process.

You don’t want to spend money, time, and energy on prospects who will never become clients; instead, focus on identifying their needs and building relationships with them.

To do so, you’ll have to understand their behaviors. There are many marketing approaches that will help you do that (including market studies, buyer personas, etc.).

Then, you’ll need to adapt your sales pitch according to what they’re expecting and what they’re looking for. This is why it is important to have a good understanding of your client’s persona before even starting the sales process!

Ultimately, the goal is to make sure that your potential client feels they’re being taken care of and, most importantly, that they feel heard.

Tip 2: Define what is a qualified lead

Part of understanding your leads is to define what a qualified lead looks like.

As we saw earlier in the sales funnel, salespeople will reach out to leads that have been vetted and qualified by marketing people.

But what are qualified leads? Frankly, there is no definitive answer to this question. It simply depends on your business objectives and criteria. The question should be: What do YOU consider a qualified lead?

Don’t be afraid to define your criteria as tightly as possible, because it will help you make sure you’re reaching out to prospects who are more likely to convert.

Trust us when we say that you will do yourself a favor in the long run by avoiding wasting time with leads who are not relevant to your business objectives.

What’s important here is to work with your marketing team to establish what are the characteristics that a lead must have for you to start a sales process with them.

Tip 3: Prepare your sales pitch in advance

The third tip is to prepare your pitch. This step is absolutely crucial if you want to close new deals and increase your client portfolio.

Indeed, if you’re not able to explain clearly and concisely what your offer is, how it works, why your prospect should buy it, etc. all in one short pitch, then you will have a hard time closing deals.

We already wrote a full guide about sales pitches that you can read to get a better picture of what it takes to prepare a successful pitch.

But long story short, here are the main tips you should keep in mind:

  • Start with a creative and catchy phrase to grab your prospect’s attention
  • Outline what you’re offering and explain why it is the best solution for their needs

OR

  • Finish strongly and include a call to action

Sales pitches should always be quick, and efficient, and respect the problem => solution paradigm.

If you can manage to do that, then you are well on your way to closing more deals!

Tip 4: Use the right sales tools

The fourth tip to improve your client prospecting is to use the right tools. Engaging in sales activities manually is simply not feasible anymore… You need to get with the times!

Indeed, if you want to be efficient in your sales activities, you’ll need to use CRM software, for instance, that will help you track your existing clients, your interactions with them, and the status of each ongoing sale.

But in addition to a CRM, especially if you’re working in B2B sales, we strongly advise you to choose a sales automation tool such as LaGrowthMachine.

We went at length about how to use our tool and the endless possibilities it offers earlier in this article, so I’ll let the video do the talking for me:

Long story short:

  • LaGrowthMachine helps you build targeted campaigns that will help you reach the right prospects
  • Track leads’ engagement and measure the success of your campaigns
  • You can also customize each of your messages to provide a personable experience for each prospect
  • Manage your leads from start to close with our filtering and segmentation features
  • Use the detailed analytics board to have a look at your campaign’s performance in a single glance
  • And so much more!

All you need are working email and LinkedIn accounts, and you’re ready to start outreaching!

The best part is that it’s free for a whole 2 weeks! No credit card is required or anything of the sort. Easily create an account and start using it right away!

Get 3.5X more leads!

Do you want to improve the efficiency of your sales department? With La Growth Machine you can generate on average 3.5x more leads while saving an incredible amount of time on all your processes.

By signing up today, you’ll get a free 14-day trial to test our tool!

Try now for free!

Tip 5: Structure your sales process

The fifth and last tip to improve your client prospecting is to structure your sales process.

As we said earlier, the sales process typically consists of seven steps:

Qualification => Meeting => Presentation => Negotiation => Closing => After-sales service => Upselling/Cross-selling.

But what is important here is not to blindly follow these steps but to adapt them to your own business model.

For example, if you’re selling a low-cost product, it might not be necessary to have a meeting with your prospect but rather do a quick call to close the deal.

On the contrary, if you’re selling a high-end product, it is probably necessary to have several meetings with your prospect before being able to close the deal.

The main thing to keep in mind is to remain flexible and adapt your sales process according to your offer, your target, and your business model.