In today’s ultra-competitive operating environment, businesses are finding it increasingly difficult to expand their customer bases. Despite these acquisition challenges, industry experts such as David Kurlan indicate that less than half of all salespeople work to seek out fresh prospects. Instead, these individuals seem more than happy to nurture the existing accounts provided to them on their CRM software, without any further investigation. This narrow focus can substantially limit your organization’s growth. By making use of tools such as the Salesforce data loader, sales teams of every size can source and qualify thousands of new prospects with ease.
Here’s how your frontend employees can make full use of these intuitive technologies to jumpstart their prospecting efforts.
Start by Locating a Reliable Source of Data
Any effective prospecting strategy is built on high-quality data and diligent research. If your sales team has to trawl through thousands of incomplete, inadequate or duplicate accounts just to generate a few leads then they’re not making the most of their time or resources.
A good data list should contain detailed information on a wide variety of potential clients within your niche. Your sales team should be able to access the prospect’s contact information, as well as background information on their company, the market they operate in, and their current financials. At Scott’s Directory, our Salesforce integrated B2B directory provides clean and up-to-date data on organizations at every scale across Canada.
You can import thousands of these profiles to your CRM instantly, using the Salesforce data loader. If you’re a relative novice to the platform then you can use the Salesforce Data Import Wizard to import Salesforce lightning contacts into your accounts list.
Build an Ideal Prospect Persona and Sell Accordingly
Once you have finished using the Salesforce data loader, you need to start building a profile of your ideal client. Use past Sales data, social media engagement metrics, and product usage information from your CRM to determine:
- The size of your ideal customer (small business or large company?).
- The industry that they are likely to operate in.
- The products that they make use of the most, and the features that they value most highly.
Based on these insights, you can begin to rank new accounts based on how closely they align with your existing audience. High priority accounts should be passed on to experienced salesmen that can employ a more personalized approach with these prospects. Lower priority accounts should be targeted with a mass marketing approach that focuses on quantity over quality.
Diligently Update Your Prospect Lists
Your imported Salesforce lightning contacts should serve as a base for further research. Every call, email, and web interaction initiated with a specific account should be updated on the relevant profile. These notations should mention whether the prospect was receptive to the sales pitch and any specific preferences that they stated during the interaction. This information will help to clarify where the bulk of your resources should be targeted, and which accounts should be discarded altogether.
