High-performance salespeople are used to actively prospecting. However, calling leads who don’t yet know your company can be a difficult task for less experienced salespeople.
That's why prospecting within your lead base is an excellent alternative for:
Qualify more leads for sales
Generate quick results, as leads already know you
Don't leave money on the table, after all you've already invested in attracting these leads
This is what Lead Fishing is all about: fishing for opportunities within your own contact base.
What is the difference between passive, active prospecting and fishing?
Active prospecting , passive prospecting, inbound, outbound, B2B sales … Yes, these are terms that confuse even the most experienced professionals.
Passive or inbound prospecting involves attracting leads uk email address list to your company. Leads come to sales as “warm” leads, meaning they already know your company and a little about your offering. Inbound marketing is currently the best-known passive lead generation strategy and consists of attraction actions with content, SEO, landing pages and emails, among others.
Active or outbound prospecting is based on “hunting” cold leads, that is, leads that don’t yet know your company. This requires extra effort to “warm them up” and convert them into sales opportunities. On the other hand, you can pre-select leads that are a good fit for your business and reach a larger number of leads that inbound wouldn’t reach.
Lead fishing is the union of these two worlds: actively prospecting leads generated passively (inbound).
The first step before lead fishing
Before you start prospecting, it is very important that you have a clear idea of your ideal customer profile (ICP ) . This is a necessary exercise for your prospecting to be assertive and generate results.
Based on your ICP, you will be able to segment your lead base with greater precision and optimize the time of your salespeople, who will need to make fewer contacts to identify leads that have a high fit with your business.
Types of prospecting: email or phone?
The initial approach can be either by phone or email. Although email usually allows for greater productivity, especially as an initial step, in many cases the most practical and assertive way may be to pick up the phone and call. This will vary from market to market.
Who will be responsible for prospecting?
A second important decision is who will be responsible for prospecting. Your salespeople can do this themselves, especially when there is a lack of leads. However, it is recommended to create a pre-sales or SDR (sales development representative) role specifically for prospecting inbound leads.
In this case, the SDR's role is to develop the lead's interest and confirm whether it is indeed a good fit, and then pass it on to the salesperson or sales executive.
Specializing your sales team by assigning someone specifically to the SDR role can be a huge game-changer for your lead generation.
How to put together a prospecting script
Regardless of who is responsible for this function, preparing the approach script is a very important part of prospecting. In general, the approach follows this line:
pre-qualify the lead: identify if it is a fit
stimulate your interest: identify pains and demonstrate results
call him to action: invite him to a meeting with the sales executive
Additionally, this Complete Cold Calling Guide goes even deeper into how to craft prospecting approaches.
Cold Calling Guide
Technologies for prospecting inbound leads
Lead fishing can be done using different support tools as listed below
Spreadsheet : This is the simplest and most widely used way for small businesses to record the leads that will be contacted. Typically, additional columns are created to record each contact and a summary of the conversation.
CRM system : this is the main tool for a sales team and is usually the recommended option for a professional sales department. CRM helps you to effectively manage the prospecting process and your team to be more productive. Learn about some CRM systems here .
Marketing automation system : increasingly used, marketing automation systems concentrate all your leads in one place and allow you to segment your leads based on their profile and reaction to marketing campaigns. Examples: RD Station , Pipz , Hubspot and LeadLovers .
Pre-sales system: or pre-CRM, the emergence of specific systems for the prospecting stage is a recent trend. They are like a CRM, but with a strong focus on productivity and metrics . Examples : ExactSales , Meetime , Ramper and Rev.
How to speed up inbound lead fishing
There are different ways you can speed up your prospecting, to save time and get more results.
Outsourcing : You can hire companies to outsource your prospecting, as explained in this article
Lead scoring : a feature present mainly in marketing automation software, it is recommended precisely to automate the research and selection of the leads that you are most interested in prospecting.
Automated emails and cadence flows : These are features available in marketing automation systems and some CRMs and pre-CRMs, allowing you to automate part of the email prospecting process.
Lead enrichment: using, for example, the integration of RD Station with Econodata , allows you to complete your leads' registrations, which facilitates segmentation, scoring and prospecting as a whole.
How to generate even more leads for your fishing
If your prospecting is limited by the amount of leads you currently have, try using outbound prospecting to increase your lead generation and win more business.
Among other advantages, outbound prospecting allows you to reach almost your entire market and usually generates sales that are 3 to 9 times higher.
This article details how outbound can help you: Outbound Marketing – Why You Need to Start
There is no magic solution to generate more leads and sell more. Combining different approaches, as suggested in this article, can be an excellent way to increase results with the same level of investment.
Additionally, by encouraging active prospecting , it is one of the best ways to develop the most important component of your process: your salespeople.
Want to go further? This market calculator shows you the total market size you could be reaching with active prospecting.