B2B commercial prospecting is a real necessity for companies and essential if they wish to remain competitive. Indeed, B2B prospecting allows companies to :

• Study your market: carrying out a prospecting campaign on a given sample allows you to evaluate the receptivity of this segment towards your offers.
• Increase your company's visibility to your audience.
• Secure your sales pipeline.
• Conquering new markets.
• Test a new offer quickly.

So there are many advantages and this list is not exhaustive. There is a real interest for any company to master this art.
If you want to go to the next level in this regard, we invite you to discover Michel ;).

However, many companies still struggle to carry out effective and efficient B2B business development due to the existence of certain difficulties:

1) Know who to contact: decision maker or end user?

One of the first difficulties for a company is to target our prospects. The first thing to do is to define relevant segmentation criteria according to our activity and identify the most profitable prospect segments for your company.

Within a company, there are 5 types of interlocutors:

• The initiator
• The prescriber
• The decision maker
• The payer
• The user

Today we will focus on the decision maker, " the one who makes the decision to buy the good or service and thus initiates the purchasing process in the company" and on the user, "the one who consumes the good or service purchased".

Although it is important to easily identify the decision makers of a company (executives, buyer, marketing director, information systems director...) since they will be at the origin of the final decision and the launching of the purchasing process, it is important not to neglect the power of intermediaries.

Indeed, the company must imperatively identify the needs expressed upstream by the user in order to provide the appropriate solution.

2) Pass the filters when contacting decision making profiles:

After having identified the right contact, it often happens that you have to go through a third party (secretary, assistant) before being able to reach him directly.

It is then :

• Convince the person of the value of your call by making that person an ally.

• Establish a good reason for our appeal to appear relevant.

• Manage the usual rejections, more commonly known as contradictions, by anticipating the rejections you may face and proposing concrete answers.

• Use the principle of authority by expressing your expertise (gain confidence, give legitimacy to your brand, have a tested and approved product or service etc).

3) Find the direct contact information of the decision-makers (direct phone line and professional email):

The email or mailing is always an important tool for prospecting. It allows you to contact people who don't have time for a call or who don't answer the phone, and also to initiate a first approach and consolidate the prospecting by phone that will follow.

Similarly, telephone prospecting is a powerful business lever offering three advantages: direct contact, the speed of the campaign and the possibility of tracking the return on investment.

Thus, the direct contact information of decision-makers is a real gold mine for companies that struggle to find them easily for their commercial prospecting.

The difficulties mentioned above can therefore lead to a failed and costly business prospecting for the company whether it is :  

• A waste of time and money ( ¾ of sales teams collect information manually from social networks)

• De-motivation of your teams.

• The lengthening of your sales cycle.

You will therefore understand the importance of effective B2B sales prospecting.

We have established for you three areas of improvement in your B2B sales prospecting strategy:

1) Contact all stakeholders interacting with its solution:

As seen previously, the perceived value brought by the good or service as well as the implementation process can vary according to the individuals. Thus, the purchase may not concern a single person within the company, but a group of people.

Thus it is of course important to contact the decision maker but also to be able to adapt the speech to convince each of the stakeholders such as the payer and the user.

2) Find a sponsor within the prospecting company:

Indeed, for a successful prospecting, the ideal is to reach the last step, if not the most important one, that of the retention.

Before being able to retain your customers, your company will gain advantages by seducing one of your interlocutors present in the company you are prospecting because to sell a solution you must know how to seduce the one who has the purchasing power!

3) Use dedicated and RGPD compliant sourcing solutions such as Nomination :

Currently, 85% of sales teams spend more time generating their prospecting data than in the pre-digital era.

Thus, dedicated and RGPD sourcing solutions have become indispensable for any company for which commercial prospecting is essential to its activity.

Nomination is today the reference solution in B2B prospecting allowing you to :

• Access high-potential contacts through their database of companies representing 85% of GDP and their decision-makers.

• Easily contact decision-makers with complete contact information and biographies.

• Identify new business opportunities (projects, news, appointments).
  

DISCOVER OUR TOOLVIEW ON NOMINATION

GET A 10% DISCOUNT ON THE TOOL!

‍