Are you looking for the best prospecting tips that will help you build stronger relationships with your customers and generate new leads in 2022? Building and maintaining B2B relationships can be challenging. And that’s where B2B prospecting comes in.

In fact, recent research shows that about 40% of all companies consider sales prospecting be the most difficult part of B2B sales.

And that’s reasonable. The term itself can encompass numerous aspects of your business and can be chaotic at times for salespeople. For that reason, we will first explore what B2B sales prospecting is and how important it can be when it comes to making more sales.

By the end of this read, you’ll also know the eight most effective prospecting tips and ideas you can use to generate new leads and build strong B2B relationships in 2022 and beyond.

What is B2B Prospecting and Its Importance

In a few words, B2B prospecting is a process that a business can follow to identify, attract, and convert potential buyers. In other words, prospecting is a series of steps that include email marketing and cold calling, content marketing, and pretty much any digital marketing approach you can think of.

So it becomes clear that B2B prospecting is all about increasing your leads and, in turn, your sales. But how does this approach differ from other traditional methods? Well, to find out the differences, let us look at the key benefits of prospecting.

With B2B prospecting, you can: 

1. Explore new, improved leads 
2. Be more effective when it comes to customer engagement
3. Personalize and target your content 
4. Qualify (or disqualify) prospects 
5. Create comprehensive marketing strategies
6. Attract valuable customers and boost sales 

To do this, all you need to do is follow the basic steps of the entire B2B prospecting process. As with all B2B sales approaches, prospecting is nothing more than the interaction of innovative marketing strategies. Before long, you can start identifying new prospects and collecting data about them.

Then, you can contact these prospects using methods such as email marketing and cold calling. The final step of the B2B prospecting process is to enrich your strategies with follow-ups and other methods such as referral networks.

8 B2B Prospecting Tips That Will Increase Your Revenue in 2022

Now that we have established what B2B prospecting is and how it can help you increase sales let’s have a look at the eight best prospecting tips you can follow in 2022. Even though there are more approaches that companies opt for, the following ones prove to be the most effective when it comes to B2B sales. Without further ado, let’s explore them one by one:

1. Identify the Ideal Customer Profile

As mentioned earlier, for a successful B2B prospecting strategy, you first need to identify potential buyers. In digital marketing, this is also called “personas.”

Of course, not all of your leads will have exactly the same values and characteristics. However, it is very important that you know what kind of customers you are looking for. This is exactly what will help you attract high-quality leads and increase your chances of converting prospects into loyal customers.

The first step to this is to study your existing customers to create your ideal customer profile. Recently, it has been proven that most companies use customer data to make key marketing decisions and develop strategies. This can be achieved through interviews, surveys, or any other type of contact. Start collecting data that will help you create the lead profile you want.

But what kind of information should you ask for, and how should you evaluate the data you collect? Let us take a closer look at this question.

2. Gather Prospect Information & Rate your Prospects

To answer this critical question, we can safely say that the information you will gather will be valuable if it answers the following questions: 

• What are your prospects’ main beliefs and attitudes?
• What do your prospects need? Can your products or services cover their needs? 
• What are the emotions and feelings of your prospects?

Answering these questions will not only help you create an ideal customer profile but also set up a multi-step sales process. At the same time, customer data will save you time and money. The reason is simple: collecting data will also help you identify and disqualify “bad” customers.

To be precise, there will always be a segment of businesses that simply do not need your company’s products/services. Investing time in building a B2B prospecting strategy for these customers will likely increase your company’s operating costs without generating valuable leads.

Now that you have done your customer research, it’s time to move into the outreach phase of B2B prospecting. And the best way to do that is by building an email list. 

3. Building an Email List | The Power of Email Marketing

Email marketing is nothing more than a process that allows you to harness the power of email to generate new leads and thus increase your sales. With one of the highest ROIs among all marketing approaches, email marketing is both budget-friendly and effective when it comes to increasing sales.  

Building a comprehensive email list is not as hard as it may sound. In fact, there are numerous tactics you can use to collect emails from potential buyers: 

1. Create CTAs on your website
2. Create pop-up messages and slide-ins on your blog posts
3. Create surveys
4. Promote your newsletter on your social media accounts and website 
5. Build landing pages for your website 
6. Share your business email on all marketing channels (website, social media accounts, etc.) 

After you have collected the customer emails, all you need to do is verify the information. You can use a free online email verifier to do this. This is an important step because it will save you time in targeting potential customers with personalized emails. Or, you can utilize email marketing software, like Benchmark Email, that will verify your list for you. 

4. Improving Content | The Power of Content Marketing

Email marketing is not the only effective tactic for lead generation. To be precise, content marketing proves to be just as effective when it comes to B2B customer acquisition. Remember, creating valuable content around your products and services will help your customers find your business online.

At the same time, introducing your brand through top-notch content is a smart way to outshine the competition and convince potential buyers to trust your brand. When it comes to the type of content you should produce, there are several channels you can focus on.

Try to be consistent when creating content for your social media accounts (LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc.) and website blog. However, no matter how valuable your content is, it’s not the only thing you should focus on.

In fact, content is not enough to gradually build a deep relationship with your prospects. In B2B prospecting, customer engagement and customer retention should always be a priority.

5. Aim to Build a Relationship with Targeted Prospects

Once you have built your list of potential customers and created the content for your products/services, it is time to contact them. This can be done in a number of ways. For example, you can start answering questions on your blog and social media posts.

You can also build your brand’s authority by interacting with your prospects in their social media groups and in blog posts on your website. By interacting with targeted prospects, you can ultimately increase the chances of converting some of those buyers into customers.

Since you have already built an email list, you can also start interacting with your customers through personalized emails.

6. Create Personalized Email Sequence

Aside from reaching out to your prospects through social media and websites, you can use the data you have collected to contact them. Although cold calling via email is becoming increasingly difficult, there are a few things you can do to ensure your follow-up strategy becomes as effective as possible.

First of all, email personalization proves to be the best way to improve your email marketing ROI. In fact, the more personalized your emails are, the greater the chances of converting potential buyers into customers. Creating follow-up email templates is a smart way to save time when it comes to creating personalized follow-up emails.

7. Handle Sales Objections Effectively

Of course, no matter how hard you try, it will always happen that you receive a negative response from a prospect. This should neither surprise nor discourage you. In this case, the point is to work through these objections. Try to understand why your potential buyer did not choose your services and work out valuable answers.

For example, if a company mentions that your services exceed their budget, you should draft a response explaining how you offer a solution that will actually pay off for the customer in the long run.

8. Build a Referral Network

Last but not least, positive word of mouth and referral systems are especially effective when it comes to B2B prospecting. Referral systems help you build a strong network that supports your services.

By collecting customer referrals or creating a reward program, you can easily build deeper relationships with your existing customers. And this is also a great way to attract new leads and increase sales in 2022.

Bottom Line

It becomes clear that B2B prospecting is nothing more than a series of straightforward steps you can follow to increase your sales. Building strong relationships with your prospects and using approaches like email and content marketing can help you do just that.

At the same time, you can opt for various prospecting tools that will save you time and money. All you need to do beforehand is conduct research and collect customer data. And that’s pretty much it.

About The Author

Irina Maltseva is a Head of Marketing at Hunter. I enjoy working on inbound and product marketing strategies. In my spare time, I entertain my cat Persie and collect airline miles.