Ultimate Guide To Sales Prospecting
User Manual:
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Page Count: 60
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of
of
Inbound prospecting – p. 34
Prospecting platforms – p. 38
Prospecting KPIs – p. 46
Smartbound: How to combine outbound
and inbound sales prospecting – p. 51
Summary – p. 56
The History of B2B Sales Prospecting – p. 6
Ideal Customer Profile – p. 12
Firmographics – p. 18
Technographics – p. 21
Buying Signals – p. 25
Prospecting by using insights from
companies' websites – p. 30
4product.vainu.io
doesn’t cut it in today’s
competitive sales landscape. As
customers are getting smarter
and more selective, your sales
tactics have to become smarter
right along with them.
Sales prospecting is often named
one of the most challenging
tasks by salespeople. And the
same task is estimated to take
up to half of sales professionals
workday in a number of studies.
But with more data available for
salespeople than ever before,
sales prospecting doesn’t have
to be that hard nor that time
consuming. Around 2,5 exabyte
data is created every day, that’s
equivalent to 625 million DVDs
worth of information.
After reading this ebook you’ll
have a better understanding of
how you can streamline your
sales prospecting process to
find the right accounts for you
and the right time to reach out.
In depth, we walk you through
how you can define a detailed
Ideal Customer Profile with
insights from not-so-obvious
characteristics found through
insights from technographic data,
company’s social media presence
and website content and how
you find and track the right sales
signals for your organisation.
Going further, we list a number
of best practices for how you can
capitalize on the knowledge your
sales prospecting provides in your
sales pitch, enabling you to carry
out smarter conversations with
your prospects and increase not
only your call to meeting hit rate
but your hit rate between every
step in the sales process.
It used to mean sending a
payment to one of the many list
providers out there, asking for
X number of companies with
specific characteristics. Today
it’s a continuous work where you
can make detailed searches and
easily find the companies that
match your Ideal Customer Profile
to a T by capitalizing on the
power of open and public data.
Traditional static prospecting lists
based on only basic firmographic
ales prospecting
is often named
one of the most
challenging tasks
by salespeople.
S
S
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Finally, we will showcase how AI
and machine learning can help
you “grow your social antennas” in
sales context, as AI powered apps
can provide you with a carefully
calculated “fit score” for each
prosect thanks to today’s great
access of open and public data.
Going forward, we’ll go over why
this predictive fit score model
is likely to have to give place to
the more perspective models
not only provide “fit scores” but
also presents a suggested sales
action. After all, salespeople are
only so interested in knowing what
companies they should target,
what they really want is knowing
how to approach these accounts
with a successful result.
We hope that you enjoy the read
raditional static
prospecting
lists based
on only basic
firmographic
doesn’t cut
it in today’s
competitive sales
landscape.
T
T
!
!
7product.vainu.io
The first ocial Yellow Pages
directory was created.
Dale Carnegie’s bestseller How
to Win Friends & Influence
People was published.
A series of new sales
methodologies were introduced:
Pyramid Selling, Trust Based
Selling, Barrier Selling, AIDA
Selling, Strategic Selling and
Solutions Selling.
On top of the basic firmographic
data, salespeople can now
filter target accounts based on
technographics, sales triggers,
buying intent, web properties,
news coverage and social media
presence.
Database marketing was
pioneered by Robert and Kate
Kestnbaum.
- The term sales prospecting
gained mainstream popularity.
- Getting hold of people through
cold calls became more dicult
each year.
- ZoomInfo was launched in 2000,
Jigsaw (now Data.com) in 2003
and InsideView in 2005.
- ACT!, one of the first contact
management software was
released by Conductor Software.
- The rise of the World Wide Web
provided salespeople direct
access to millions of companies.
- A true CRM software category
was born. Oracle and SAP
brought their CRM solutions to
the market.
- Marc Benio and Salesforce.
com introduced the first cloud-
based CRM solution.
th centuryEarly
Inte the past years
Full history of B2B sales prospecting >>
8product.vainu.io
technology can recommend the
right companies for you to reach
out to, the right time to approach
these companies and the right
way to get in touch with them. In
this chapter we take a look in the
rear-view mirror and review the
history of B2B sales prospecting.
ALREADY AS EARLY AS 1886,
the first ocial Yellow Pages
directory was created. Telephone
directories that included some
company phone numbers had
already been in production for
a few years. When one of the
printers in 1883 ran out of white
paper, yellow paper was used
instead. And shortly after, the
expression Yellow Pages started
to gain popularity. Having an easy
access to a list of phone numbers
of people and companies was
beneficial for salespeople when
searching for new potential
prospects in their territory.
When you visit an airport
bookstore while waiting to
board your flight, odds are that
you can find a copy of Dale
Carnegie’s bestseller How to Win
Friends & Influence People that
first saw daylight in 1936. Many
salespeople over the years have
gleaned plenty of useful tips on
sales from the book, a publication
that could also be described as
one of the first self-help books
ever written.
DURING THE 20TH CENTURY,
several new sales methodologies
were introduced and some of
them are still well recognize
among the community of sales
professionals. Pyramid Selling,
Trust Based Selling, Barrier Selling,
For most companies, there
are millions of sales prospects
available. For decades,
salespeople have struggled to
prioritize certain prospects over
others.
Fortunately, modern technology
makes it easier than ever before
to master this challenge. Though
it’s taken a long time to reach
the point we’re at today, we are
now at a point where predictive
and prescriptive leads-scoring
odern
technology makes
it easier than ever
before to master
sales prospecting.
M
M
9product.vainu.io
companies and their web profiles.
At the same time, a true CRM
software category was born when
major software companies such
as Oracle and SAP brought their
CRM solutions to the market. At
the end of the decade, the first
cloud-based CRM solution was
introduced by Marc Benio and
Salesforce.com.
THE EARLY 2000's
Professional sales development,
which often refers to a process of
creating new sales opportunities,
is a fairly new framework.
However, when surfing the
web, we can find mentions that
some companies started doing
systematic sales development
work as early as the late 1980s.
But the term gained mainstream
popularity in the early 2000s.
Getting hold of people through
AIDA Selling, Strategic Selling and
Solutions Selling all defined sales
strategies and tactics but focused
mainly on the interaction with
the customer, not so much on the
topic of how to find new potential
customers.
IN THE 1990's
one hundred years after the
birth of the Yellow Pages, one of
the first contact management
software systems called ACT! was
released by Conductor Software.
Already in the 70s, database
marketing had been pioneered by
Robert and Kate Kestnbaum.
But it was really in the 90’s when
the sales prospecting revolution
really started, thanks to the rise
of the World Wide Web, which
provided salespeople all over the
world direct access to millions of
The History of B2B Sales Prospecting
The first
cloud-based
prospecting
platforms were
traditional
company
data-bases
that allowed
salespeople to
filter companies
based on
industry, location
and size.
10product.vainu.io
finding companies that were not
only a good fit as a prospect,
but that were also ready for
a salesperson’s product and
service oering. Timing became
increasingly important in sales.
The first cloud-based
prospecting platforms
were traditional
company databases
that allowed
salespeople to
filter companies
based on industry,
location and size.
The commercial
data provider
Dun & Bradstreet
invented their
Data Universal
Numbering System
(DUNS) already in
1963 but it was in 1996
when the company tri-vested,
creating three new companies
including D&B Companies. In
2003, they acquired Hoovers,
an American business research
company that was founded in
1990 and filed an IPO in 1999.
Similar company database
directories were built in other
parts of the world too.
IN THE EARLY 2000S,
more company database
directories were introduced.
ZoomInfo was launched in 2000,
Jigsaw (now Data.com) in 2003
and InsideView in 2005.
The rise of online web directories
gave salespeople instant access
to millions of companies but
the information was limited to
basic company information
(“firmographics”).
random cold calls became
more and more dicult each
year, which created a need for
The History of B2B Sales Prospecting
Salespeople can
now filter target
accounts based on
technographics, sales
triggers, buying intent,
web properties, news
coverage and social
media presence.
11product.vainu.io
triggers, buying intent, web
properties, news coverage and
social media presence. LinkedIn
provides detailed information
on decision makers’ job titles,
work experience and networks.
The number of digital sources
for prospecting has exploded
and in the following chapters, we
will cover most of these modern
sources, methodologies and
technologies that the world’s most
successful sales development
people use on a daily basis.
There are also thousands of
dierent type of company lists
available on the internet. Not too
long ago, salespeople collected
business cards from trade shows,
wrote down all the company
names from the business park
message boards and researched
membership lists from annual
reports of dierent type of
associations. Today, all these lists,
including top lists, award winners
and companies with funding
rounds, are readily available
online.
IN THE PAST FIVE YEARS,
a new generation of sales
prospecting solutions have
emerged. On top of the basic
firmographic data, salespeople
can now filter target accounts
based on technographics, sales
The History of B2B Sales Prospecting
13product.vainu.io
your marketing and the results of
your sales eorts. It also helps you
streamline your sales prospecting
process as you know what type of
companies to target.
First things first. What’s an Ideal
Customer Profile? Essentially,
it is a description of a fictitious
account which gets significant
value from your product or
service and provides significant
value to your company in return.
A company matching this
description should be a potential
customer that stays with you for
a long time and has a strong
lifetime value (LTV).
According to Hubspot, 40 percent
of all salespeople find prospecting
the most challenging part of
the sales process. No wonder
there are studies that say this
same activity takes up to half
of your work day. Yea, let that
sink in … with a clearly defined
Ideal Customer Profile, sales
prospecting gets easier and more
eective because you don’t have
to evaluate every company one by
one.
Rather, you simply know that a
company is a solid opportunity to
move forward with if it matches
your Ideal Customer Profile.
As a salesperson, your most
valuable asset is time. It’s better
to spend it on a few high-quality
prospects than spreading yourself
thin processing a large number of
poor opportunities.
Knowing that you’re focusing
sales and marketing resources
on the right companies isn’t all
that easy, but one thing is certain:
You can’t know if you haven’t
defined a detailed Ideal Customer
Profile(s). Doing so is among the
most important things you can
do to maximize the relevance of
t’s not just about
finding customers;
it’s about finding
the right ones.
I
I
40 percent of all
salespeople find
prospecting the
most challenging
part of the sales
process.
14product.vainu.io
having an Ideal Customer Profile
is a must for all successful sales
organizations and walk you
through how to create a top-
notch description of your dream
customer.
WHY YOU NEED AN IDEAL
CUSTOMER PROFILE
Building a successful sales
organization is not just about
having your new business team
close large deals. A detailed
Ideal Customer Profile will help
you maximize your sales and
get satisfied customers that will
stay with you for a long time,
increasing their lifetime value
(LTV). You can upsell and cross-
sell to them, and they can function
as enthusiastic champions of your
brand.
Don’t sell to someone who you
believe will not be successful when
using your product or service.
While it may sound obvious, too
often the immediate sell is just
so very tempting that this rule
of thumb is forgotten. A poorly
satisfied customer takes a lot of
time from your customer success
team and might end up costing
your company more than it pays.
Why you need to define your
Ideal Customer Profile >>
But as valuable as your Ideal
Customer Profile is in determining
the quality of a prospect, it’s not
rock-solid. Just because your Ideal
Customer Profile suggests that
a certain company is a great fit
doesn’t mean that the prospect
will agree. Creating an Ideal
Customer Profile helps you find
suitable prospects for you as a
salesperson to persuade, but it’s
not a 100 percent guarantee that
the companies matching it will
turn into customers and stay with
you forever and ever.
There are times when you
should trust your gut and there
are times when you would do
wise in trusting data instead.
Creating your Ideal Customer
Profile certainly falls under this
second category. In this chapter,
we’ll tell you more about why
Ideal Customer Profile
15product.vainu.io
Ideal Customer Profile
AN IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE HELPS YOU TO:
• Streamline your sales prospecting as you know
what companies to look for.
• Focus your sales and marketing eorts on the
companies that are most likely to buy from you now
• Sell to companies with the highest success
potential of using your product or service. A
customer that isn’t a good fit for your service drains
time from your customer success team and may end
up costing your company more than what could be
gained from the partnership.
• Create smart short-lists of companies to focus on,
track sales signals within these accounts, and act
fast when a window of opportunity presents itself to
you as a salesperson
• Tailor your sales pitch better as you’ll have more
information about why every company you reach
out to is a good fit for your organization
WHAT MAKES A TOPNOTCH
IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE
Basing your Ideal Customer Profile
o of a gut feeling leaves a lot
of room for error in judgement.
Using insights from open data
in understanding your Ideal
Customer Profile will minimize the
risk of missing many of the less
obvious indicators of accounts
that you and your team should
ideally target.
Start looking at your current
customers, specifically the most
satisfied ones, and find their
common characteristics and/or
find a pattern of events at these
companies that happened right
before they signed a deal with
you. By importing a list of your
best customers into our sales
intelligence platform Vainu, you
can find out what they have in
16product.vainu.io
Deciding which company features
are most important for you to
include in your Ideal Customer
Profile depends a lot on what
you're oering. For instance, if
you’re selling a technical solution,
a company’s tech stack could
reveal a lot about how ready a
company is to buy. Or if you’re
selling transportation services,
then you’d probably include sales
signals: a company having won a
large contract, for example.
FINALLY...
Once you’ve defined your Ideal
Customer Profile, you should start
looking at improving the way your
sales, marketing and development
teams process companies
matching this profile. Your Ideal
Customer Profile should dictate
how you improve the product or
service you oer, the wording your
common and, as an example,
see how many companies use
Hubspot, have increased their
revenue by more than 40 percent
previous year or are frequently
recruiting.
A blog post from McKinsey &
Company includes a textbook
example of why you shouldn’t only
trust your gut when defining your
Ideal Customer Profile. It tells the
story of an IT services company
that used big data analytics to
predict which leads were most
likely to close. The IT services firm
found that established companies
were better prospects than the
start-ups it had been focusing on
historically. Focusing its attention
on established companies, the
IT service company raised its
overall lead-conversion rate by 30
percent.
Ideal Customer Profile
sales and marketing teams use
towards prospects and customers
and how, when and where you try
to reach them.
Defining your Ideal Customer
Profile isn’t a one-time job.
There’s no universal definition of
an Ideal Customer Profile, not for
any company. Every six or nine
months, you should evaluate if the
company profile you’ve chosen as
ideal still looks the same, or if you
have to tweak the description.
Step by step -
define your Ideal
Customer Profile >>
17product.vainu.io
2. PRIORITIZE CUSTOMERS THAT
WILL STAY WITH YOU
An unsatisfied customer takes a
lot of time from your customer
success team and might end up
costing your company more than
it pays.
Find out what gives away a
customer with great estimated
lifetime value. Your customer
success management system
should have the data. What’s
significant for the companies that
you’ve been able to upsell and/or
cross-sell to?
3. FIND READY, WILLING AND
ABLE COMPANIES
It’s not all about the company’s
characteristics. Your ideal
prospect also has to be ready,
willing and able to put ink on
your contract. No matter how
1. LOOK AT YOUR HAPPIEST
EXISTING CUSTOMERS
What common attributes like
revenue, number of employees,
type of business, web technologies
in use, geography or sales signals
that occurred right before they
signed a deal with you do your
excising customers have? Vainu’s
Analyzer feature can quickly help
you find what characteristics your
customers share.
Use the data Vainu and your
other technical tools provide you
with and have your customer
success team conduct short
interviews with your most satisfied
customers. Ask them how they
found your business, what made
them choose to work with you and
why they continue to work with
your company.
great of a match your service is
for a specific company, these
two criteria have to be filled in
order for you to spend time on this
account now:
- An ideal customer should
be ready to buy what you sell;
the decision makers have to
understand that they have a
problem or an opportunity and
that you can help them solve it or
seize it.
- An ideal customer has to be
able to buy what you sell now.
They have to have the money and
support from the right decision
makers to give you a positive
answer.
How you create a top-notch Ideal Customer Profile
19product.vainu.io
information. All companies
need to register in the local
business registries and select
their industry and location of their
headquarters. Publicly traded
companies need to file their
detailed financial numbers several
times each year and in some
countries also private companies
need to share their key financial
figures each year.
There are several commonly used
industry classification systems
in the world. The Standard
Industrial Classification (SIC) was
established in the US in 1937 and
is also used in some other parts
of the world such as the U.K.
Another well-known classification
is NAICS (North American
Industry Classification System),
released in 1997. In Europe, a
similar classification system is
called the Statistical Classification
of Economic Activities in the
European Community, often
referred to as NACE.
The same way people can be
described and segmented based
on demographics, firms can be
analyzed by using firmographics.
Commonly used firmographics
use industry, location and
company size.
In most countries, most of the
firmographic data is public
n today’s
world, basic
firmographics
don’t often reflect
clear dierences
in needs, benefits
and product use.
I
I
FOR EXAMPLE, SALESFORCE.COM FIRMOGRAPHIC
DATA COULD LOOK LIKE THIS:
Salesforce.com
Industry: Enterprise Software, SaaS, Cloud
Location: California, United States
Company size: 10k+ employees, $8+ billion in revenue
20product.vainu.io
based segmenting allows people
to quickly find their own target
companies in these situations.
Sometimes, firmographics also
refers to other variables such
as performance (growth, credit
rating), status and structure
(legal status, a relation of one
organisation to another), age,
ownership and position (market
share, industry position).
In today’s world, basic
firmographics don’t often reflect
clear dierences in needs,
benefits and product use. That’s
the reason why salespeople are
increasingly relying on other
data points and trying to make
their prospecting approach more
pointed and timely. This is also
the reason why prospecting with
static prospecting lists from list-
providing vendors doesn’t cut it for
high-performance salespeople.
These lists are based almost
exclusively on company's annual
reports, consisting of firmographic
data, and are only updated
yearly.
In Chapter 8 you can read more
about the benefits of using a
modern prospecting database
that gives salespeople access to
up-to-date open and public data.
For salespeople, using a
combination of industry, company
size and location provides a
simple way to narrow down
their list of potential prospects.
Salespeople might prefer
companies nearby because of
easy access to face-to-face
meetings. Their oering might not
be relevant for small and medium
sized businesses, which makes it
critical to filter companies based
on their revenue. Many sales
organizations have also assigned
certain industries for certain
salespeople, and using industry-
Firmographics
Today, salespeople
are increasingly
relying on other data
points than static
firmographics.
22product.vainu.io
sing
technographic
data in prospecting
refers to sales-
people’s attempts to
better understand
their prospects
by analyzing their
technology stack.
U
Ufootprints that can help you as a
modern salesperson understand
their identity or future direction.
Using technographic data in
prospecting refers to salespeople’s
attempts to better understand
their prospects by analyzing their
technology stack. The decisions
companies make regarding
technology can reveal useful
insights on prospects’ intentions,
their priorities and the way they
want to run their operations.
Back in the day, several vendors
provided this type of information
about companies, but it was
dicult to do at scale because
the data collection process
was manual. Junior analysts
interviewed executives and tried
to collect as much information
as possible about the tools and
applications companies used.
Recently, several software
providers, including Vainu,
have started to collect this type
of information automatically
by systematically indexing the
company websites.
Technographic data includes
a number of categories such
as marketing automation,
e-commerce platforms, customer
feedback management,
application tracking systems, live
chats, event management and
many more. Take, for example,
California-based information
technology company Synopsys.
When they released a new
e-book, the campaign page
for that e-book provides a lot
of useful insights. Researching
that page, we can determine
Whether it’s to monitor marketing
or to keep track of customers,
technology in B2B these days
cannot be escaped.
The technologies that companies
use actually leave digital
23product.vainu.io
targeting their counterparts that
use platforms without integration
options. An agency providing
content marketing services most
likely wants to segment their
prospects based on how much
companies already invest in
content marketing today.
Sometimes technographic data
can act as important proxy
for things and needs that are
seemingly unrelated to the
technology. For example, here
at Vainu we systematically target
companies that use modern
marketing automation solutions
even though we are in a separate
vertical. We have recognized
that companies operating with
marketing automation platforms
tend to have a certain level of
technical sophistication and are
usually systematically trying to
improve their key performance
Synopsys does systematic large-
scale content marketing (they use
Eloqua), they try to systematically
improve conversion rates (they
use Crazy Egg for A/B testing)
and that they are also willing to
advertise their content (they use
Facebook Pixel). They also believe
in account-based marketing and
web personalization because they
use vendors from those categories
(Demandbase and Adobe Target).
WHY IS THIS DATA USEFUL FOR
PROSPECTING PURPOSES?
For some vendors, the value
is crystal clear without further
explanation. If software vendor
provides handy integrations
with other software platforms,
targeting companies that use
those other platforms often have
a higher conversion rate than
Technographics
Artificial intelligence can help
salespeople uncover correlations
that would be extremly dicult
to understand with human
brainpower alone.
24product.vainu.io
indicators both in marketing and
sales departments.
Artificial intelligence can also
help salespeople uncover
correlations that would be
very dicult to understand
with human brainpower alone.
Modern salespeople tailor their
sales pitches not only based
on firmographic data but also
based on a technographic profile
of the prospect. When it’s done
systematically, it leads to more
meaningful discussions with
prospects because part of the
discovery and needs analysis has
already been done automatically
before the first initial engagement
with the customer.
echnographic data
includes a number of
categories such as
marketing automation,
e-commerce platforms,
customer feedback
management,
application tracking
systems, live chats,
event management and
many more.
T
T
Technographics
26product.vainu.io
made quickly to result in closed
deals. This is the exception and
not the rule though, as it isn’t often
that the timeline you’re working
on matches up with the timeline of
your prospect.
In other words, it’s not enough
to rely solely on luck. The
best salespeople strategically
use buying signals, modern
technologies and data to increase
their chances of landing at the
right place at the right time.
Buying signals, also frequently
named prospecting signals,
sales triggers or, sales signals,
refer to events that indicate
an opportunity for you as a
salesperson to reach out to a
prospect. Buying signals help
you determine when a company
is likely to need your product or
service so that you can focus on
the accounts most likely to turn
into paying customers now.
Buying signals help
you determine when
a company is likely to
need your oer.
The reason why buying signals
should serve as your sixth sense
during sales prospecting is simply
that changes within a company
(recruiting, funding round,
expansion, new product release,
merger or acquisition) open up a
window of opportunity to do sales.
Look for companies matching
your Ideal Customer Profile that
recently sent out a buying signal
Nothing is harder to sell around
than a prospect unwilling or
unready to buy. A company that
checks every box in your Ideal
Customer Profile doesn’t hold
weight if the decision maker isn’t
in a position to sign a deal with
you now.
According to Hubspot, as many as
25 percent of the deals that are
marked closed-lost are because
of timing, or rather, the lack of it.
Yes, there are cases in which the
stars align and decisions are
othing is harder
to sell around than
a prospect unwilling
or unready to buy.
N
N
27product.vainu.io
on your company’s oer, what
companies you go after and your
method of doing sales. You’ll
have to do some legwork on your
end to understand what signs to
look for that would indicate an
uptick in buying probability.
A first step to determine what
sales triggers to keep an eye
out for is to look closer at your
existing customers — again, this
is the same way to approach
building an Ideal Customer
Profile. What happened in
their organizations before they
became customers? If you know
your customers well you might
already know the answer but,
even if that’s the case, make sure
to validate your gut feeling with
data-insights before you make
this hunch your truth.
OFFERING RECRUITMENT
SERVICES?
Look for companies that expand
and are about to open up an oce
in a new location, they will need to
increase their employee base.
WORKING IN THE TRANSPORT
INDUSTRY?
Look for companies initiating
a new construction project or
ones that are opening up a new
production facility.
SELLING THE REAL ESTATE
INDUSTRY?
Look for companies that have
recently hired many new
employees or, on the contrary,
recently were forced to do
significant downsizings. They might
need a new oce space suitable
for their current organization.
that indicates they have an
increased need for your product
or service now and see your hit-
rate in every step of the sales
process increase.
If you aren't yet convinced, read
through this chapter to find out
more about the instant benefits
we've witnessed when companies
follow trigger signals.
WHAT BUYING SIGNALS
INDICATE A GOOD SALES LEAD
FOR YOU?
Finding out what buying signals
you should look for works similar
to defining your Ideal Customer
Profile. In the same way there’s
no universal definition for an
Ideal Customer Profile, what
sales triggers indicate a solid
opportunity for you depends
Buying signals
28product.vainu.io
Many signals have a best-before
date. In Vainu you can do detailed
searches, filtering companies with
specific features and signals that
occurred in a specific time frame.
For instance, you can find all
companies that moved to a new
oce last week, or who recruited
a new Head of HR in January.
IDENTIFY WARM LEADS
THROUGH NEGATIVE SEARCH
Not all signals indicate a great
time to contact a company; some
signals will actually tell you the
opposite and when you should not
reach out. For example, if you’re
a real estate company, don’t
call prospects who just moved
to a new oce to oer them
assistance on finding a new one.
YOU CARRY OUT SMARTER
CONVERSATIONS
Customers are getting smarter
and more selective, meaning
your sales tactics need to also be
smarter right alongside them. Not
only do sales signals help you find
the right companies to contact
now, they also help you carry out
smarter conversations with those
companies. By knowing what’s
going on inside of an organization
you’re targeting, you can tailor
your pitch based on their current
situation. The prospect will feel
like you understand their business,
which is extremely valuable for
building trust.
Vainu extends far beyond helping
you just find accounts that recently
went through a specific change.
With the negative search function,
If you can identify an actionable
lead through one, or a series of
signals, using this data should
be the basis of your prospecting.
Once you find a correlation
between a happy new customer
and a buying signal, you'll find a
large number of warm, actionable
leads.
PRIORITIZE THE RIGHT
COMPANIES WITH THE HELP OF
TRIGGER SIGNALS
When you already have a long
list of leads, signals can help
you know what companies to
prioritize now. Start by looking at
your current customer base and
see what signals preceded them
signing a deal with you. You can
later use these signals as criteria
for filtering actionable leads out of
a longer list of leads.
Buying signals
29product.vainu.io
you can exclude companies that
recently went through one or a
series of events from your search
results. In other words, you can
search for companies matching
your Ideal Customer Profile and
also don’t have any recent trigger
signals indicating that now is not a
good time to reach out. This means
you no longer have to waste any
time on prospecting or processing
bad leads.
YOU’VE GOT A LEAD, NOW WHAT?
Lead generation is useless if you
don’t do anything with the leads.
Make sure you’ve got a solid
plan for how key trigger events
are followed by a sales action,
preferably within 24 hours from
when you receive a lead. Your
whole team should commit to this
sales process.
Buying signals
he best salespeople
strategically use
buying signals, modern
technologies and
data to increase their
chances of landing at
the right place at the
right time.
T
T
31product.vainu.io
ompanies’
websites are pure
treasure chests;
there are more
jewels to collect
than just the insights
from website
technologies.
C
CCompanies’ websites are pure
treasure chests; there are
more jewels to collect than
just the insights from website
technologies. Keywords used on a
company’s website will tell you a
lot about both the organization, its
daily business and its needs and
help you get more pointed in your
approach.
WHY PROSPECT WITH INSIGHTS
FROM COMPANIES’ WEBSITES?
Sales prospecting based on
a company’s tech stack may
be commonplace among IT
consultants and digital agencies,
but the data works just as well for
those less familiar with website
technologies. If you sell to a
vertical or function that can be
identified based on keywords
from a company website, you’ll
never again have a hard time
finding quality leads.
Whether you’re looking for
companies that run online demos,
companies that have multiple
language versions of their site,
companies that install commercial
LED lighting, or every company
that is HIPAA compliant, simple
keyword searches into the
websites of the companies will
provide you with exactly what
you’re looking for.
Since the launch of the website
keyword search feature in Vainu,
we have seen our customers
getting very creative with this
search. On the next page are
some less obvious but eective
examples, how to find your
prospect sweet spot in a few clicks.
In Chapter 4 we explained how
technologies used in a company's
websites leave digital footprints
that can tell you as a sales
professional a lot about that
company’s current needs and
help you determine whether it’s
worth it for you to spend your time
cultivating that lead or not.
32product.vainu.io
Website technologies
A software company that builds a UGC
(User Generated Content) platform
targets many industry verticals, but
the real low-hanging fruits for them
are the companies that have already
realized the power of using UGC in their marketing
mix. Searching all companies that have built a page
called “Social Wall” on their website allows them to
find hundreds of great prospects every single day.
A video production company that focuses
on recording customer referral stories for
companies with a large social following
prospect using keywords on the website
like this; They search for “Customer
Stories” and “Read what our customers
have to say” and combine that with social
media follower filters and segment the
results based on video adoption rate (tracked by
Vainu’s technology search). The end result is a list
of prospects that are typically more than happy to
engage in a discussion about how to create their
future customer stories in video format.
A consulting firm providing companies
guidance and coaching to become
GDPR (European Union General Data
Protection Regulation) compliant want
to talk only to prospects that collect
personal data from their web visitors. The solution
is a keyword search for “fill the form” or “sign up for
newsletter” or “customer login”. They also segment
the results based on firmographics and technology
usage. It’s no wonder why their consulting business
has been booming lately.
An employee benefits provider is
interested in all companies that
highlight their perks and company
culture and that also have increased
hiring volume. Modern talent
acquisition requires active content marketing
and more and more companies invest in building
professional career pages. With a smart keyword
search, their salespeople can easily list all
companies in a certain segment that have put the
employee experience and perks at the core of their
candidate marketing.
33product.vainu.io
If it’s not obvious to you what your
core search should be, visiting
some of your ideal customer’s
websites will often suce.
UNDERSTAND YOUR PROSPECTS’
BUSINESS AND PAIN POINTS
Yes, there’s a too much when it
comes to gathering knowledge
about a potential customer.
Knowing the color of the
wallpaper in the decision maker’s
oce is far from likely to help
you close business (that’s if you’re
not an interior designer). But,
there’s available knowledge about
prospects that’s worth the time
it takes to collect it. A well-read
salesperson who understands
her prospects’ business and pain
points will have better call-to-
meeting hit rates and, in the end,
close more business.
Website technologies
Website technologies
Keywords used on a
company’s website will
tell you a lot about both
the organization, its daily
business and its needs
and help you as a sales
professional get more
pointed in your approach.
35product.vainu.io
nbound sales
prospecting
is really all
about scrolling
through leads
that marketing
automation
workflow provides.
I
Ito it than that. It’s not enough for
successful inside sales reps to just
reach out to any company that the
marketing team has handed over
to them.
Leads come in to sales reps every
day through marketing eorts,
downloadable content, demo
requests and more. When inbound
marketing rose to fame towards
the end of the first decade of
the 21st century, first in the U.S.
and the in Europe, it more or
less meant an exclusive focus on
individuals’ behavioural data.
Today, as customers are getting
smarter and more selective by
the day, your sales tactics have to
become smarter right alongside
them. Understanding that if one
individual within a company is
interested in a piece of content on
your website it isn’t enough to call
the company a solid prospect is
one step in the right direction.
Prompt your reps to see
the value in researching
companies before
initiating contact with
them.
Instead of just being reactive to
that person who has expressed
interest in your company,
proactive sales reps should dig
deeper into the lead’s motivation
for doing so in order to make a
real connection.
Prompt your reps to see the value
in researching companies before
What’s inbound sales
prospecting? Inbound sales
prospecting is really all about
scrolling through leads that
marketing automation workflow
provides.
That’s putting it simply because in
reality there should be a bit more
36product.vainu.io
soon – especially if this individual
isn’t a decision maker with a
mandate to make or aect a
buying decision – there’s plenty
of company insights that help
salespeople qualify incoming
leads.
EXAMPLE:
You’re selling translation services
and the marketing director of
Company A downloads your
e-book. If you also know that this
company recently announced that
they will release two new product
categories in the Middle East, this
information helps you understand
that this prospect is not only a
good fit, but also has a window of
opportunity open.
Invest in a subscription for a
dynamic B2B company database
like Vainu to enable your sales
reps to easily access insights on
both a company’s basic and not-
so-obvious characteristics all in
one place.
The more information
about a prospect a
rep has, the better
equipped she is to
prioritize incoming
leads and handle
conversations with
the most promising
ones.
The more information
about a prospect a rep
has, the better equipped
she is to prioritize
initiating contact with them. It’s
not enough to know what content
piece they downloaded.
Many more valuable insights can
be found through your marketing
automation tool, where you should
be able to to find their visit history
on your site. If they have paid
repeated visits to your product
page and possibly also had a look
at your pricing page, this reveals
that the company is already in the
buyer's journey and the rep can
craft his or her message based on
this insight.
FOCUS ON ACCOUNTS NOT
INDIVIDUALS
While one individual's behaviours
doesn’t forecast how likely a
company is to end up a happy
and paying customer any time
Inbound prospecting
37product.vainu.io
incoming leads and handle
conversations with the most
promising ones.
BETTER KNOWLEDGE BETTER
CONTENT MARKETING
Successful inbound prospecting
requires sales and marketing
alignment. Defining your
company’s Ideal Customer Profile
will not only help sales reps tell
good and poor leads apart, it will
also allow marketing to create
targeted materials. They won’t
just publish blog posts, videos,
webinars and e-books and hope
for the best. With more data-
points on the companies in your
target audience, marketers can
create dierent types of short-
lists of companies they want to
engage with and create content
relevant for them.
Today, as customers
are getting smarter
and more selective
by the day, your
sales tactics have to
become smarter right
alongside them.
Inbound prospecting
39product.vainu.io
H
igh-performers
within sales use
dynamic data and
more data-points
provided in a
smart prospecting
platform when
sales prospecting.
Hwe all?). High-performers within
sales use dynamic data and
more data-points provided in
a smart prospecting platform
when looking for new accounts to
approach with their oer.
As a result of this, there are now
a lot of great software platforms
and applications that help
salespeople to discover potential
buyers. With a modern, dynamic
B2B sales database - like Vainu
- you can use endless criteria
to filter out the most promising
companies based on both their
static data and insights from
open data. For example, you
could search for IT companies
that are located in a chosen city
with over X in revenue that use
specific website technologies, that
have given a specific sales signal
recently or that’s expected to go
through a certain organizational
change soon.
There are a lot of great
softwares and applications
that help salespeople to
discover potential buyers.
The data that static lists are based
on usually comes from companies’
annual reports and therefore is
only updated once a year. Using
web indexing technology, B2B
sales lead platforms collect a
myriad of data about millions
of companies every day. Some
prospecting tools focus on
company-level information, some
provide mainly contact details for
decision makers and some tools
are mainly used to facilitate the
Prospecting used to mean
purchasing a static lists of
prospects from one of the many
vendors out there oering these.
In today’s hyper-competitive
sales landscape static lists based
only on basic firmographics don’t
cut it for salespeople who aim
for strong sales figures (don’t
40product.vainu.io
CRYSTAL
Crystal shows you the best way to
communicate with any prospect,
customer, or coworker based on
their unique personality. It helps
you to tailor your emails, meetings
and conversations based on the
DISC personality model.
https://www.crystalknows.com/
D&B HOOVERS:
One of the largest company
databases with more than 100
million people and 200 million
company profiles. The platform
has seen several updates
lately after Dun & Bradstreet
announced its acquisition of
Avention OneSource.
http://www.hoovers.com/
outreach process when trying to
get hold of a potential prospect.
Prospecting platforms are built on
data, which means that there are
more strong local vendors than in
most other software categories. A
great prospecting solution for the
Swedish market requires excellent
data on Swedish companies
and a great prospecting
solution for the German market
similarly requires excellent
data on German companies. At
the moment, there are only a
handful of global providers but
their oering is often typically
strong only in markets where they
focus the most. One exception is
LinkedIn, which is widely used in
many parts of the world, which
makes it appealing for companies
searching for global solutions for
finding the right decision makers.
Here are some of the most relevant
prospecting platforms available today:
Prospecting platforms
41product.vainu.io
addition to technographics, they
also provide predictive analytics
and data enrichment services.
https://www.datanyze.com/
DISCOVER.ORG:
A useful solution, especially
for sales teams targeting IT
departments. Their database
includes organizational charts and
information about new projects
and initiatives. Discover.org
collects a big portion of its data
by interviewing and researching
companies systematically a few
times each year.
https://discoverorg.com/
INFER
Infer develops a predictive sales
and marketing platform with a
strong focus on predictive lead
scoring. They have also released
solutions for account-based
marketing. Infer was acquired by
EWS capital in fall 2017.
https://www.infer.com/
INSIDEVIEW:
Launched in 2005, InsideView’s
aim is to position itself as a
modern company database
that integrates seamlessly
with Microsoft Dynamics CRM
specifically. In addition to basic
company and people data,
DATA.COM:
A company and contact
database developed by
Jigsaw that was acquired by
Salesforce.com in 2010. Data.
com works seamlessly within
Salesforce.com platform. What’s
unique in their data gathering
process is the crowdsourcing. All
the users can use and earn data
credit by updating the contact
information of their colleagues
and business connections.
https://www.data.com/
DATANYZE
Datanyze is one of the leading
provider of technographics. In
Prospecting platforms
42product.vainu.io
paid premium oering, Sales
Navigator. Sales Navigator makes
it easy to build prospect lists
based on decision makers’ job
titles and responsibilities. It also
allows users to monitor relevant
discussions, allowing salespeople
to find more meaningful ways to
engage with both existing and
new contacts they find on the
platform.
https://business.linkedin.com/
sales-solutions/sales-navigator
LUSHA
Lusha is a browser extension
that allows you to find email
addresses and phone numbers
from anywhere on the web with
just one click. They also provide a
Salesforce.com app and an API.
https://www.lusha.co/
OUTREACH
Outreach is a platform that
helps salespeople build sales
sequences. A sales sequence is
a multi-step process including
several dierent engagement
tactics such as phone calls,
voicemails, and emails. A typical
sequence includes 5-15 steps
that users can also A/B test in
real time. The goal is to create a
systematic and scalable process
to engage with prospects and
customers in a more eective
manner.
https://outreach.io/
InsideView also provides relevant
news mentions and social media
feeds of companies.
https://www.insideview.com/
LATTICE ENGINES
Lattice Engines is another
predictive lead scoring vendor.
Established in 2006, they provide
an application that predicts who
will buy, what they are likely to
buy and when.
https://www.lattice-engines.com/
LINKEDIN SALES NAVIGATOR:
Most salespeople use LinkedIn,
but only some utilize LinkedIn’s
Prospecting platforms
43product.vainu.io
into companies’ future projects and
investments they are planning.
https://www.rainkingonline.com/
SALESLOFT
Salesloft was originally a
prospecting platform, but this
Atlanta-based tech company
pivoted to make it an engagement
platform instead. The platform
works in a similar function to
Outreach, mentioned above.
https://salesloft.com/
VAINU.IO:
We believe that a modern
salesperson wants a better
RADIUS
Radius has branded their B2B
sales and marketing platform as
Revenue Platform that is powered
by their own “The Network of
Record™”. They don’t only rely on
public sources when building their
prospecting database but they
also encourage their customers
and community to contribute in
the process.
https://radius.com/
RAINKING:
A tool similar to Discover.org.
RainKing also employs several
researchers, who interview
companies and collect insights
Prospecting platforms
prospecting solution than
simply a company and contact
database. We at Vainu collect
more information and insights
about companies than any
other vendor. Our goal is to arm
salespeople with actionable
sales insights about their most
ideal and targeted accounts
through daily and weekly
notifications on important trigger
events and sales signals within
these companies.
https://vainu.io/
ZENPROSPECT
An outbound sale platform that
combines B2B prospecting data
with a sales communications
solution. The company is fairly
44product.vainu.io
young, founded in late 2015 and
is a Y Combinator startups.
https://www.zenprospect.com/
ZOOMINFO:
A comprehensive B2B database
with over 9 million companies
and over 200 million people
from 100 dierent countries.
It’s a popular solution among
salespeople, especially in the
United States, who need direct
phone numbers and email
addresses for their sales and
marketing campaigns. ZoomInfo
gathers contact information
mainly by utilizing the email
contacts of their free community
that currently has more than
500,000 members.
http://www.zoominfo.com/
Prospecting platforms
Other Solutions
The number of sales applications
each sales professional is
using increases steadily. Some
companies have established
a separate team for “inbound
prospecting” which means
searching through all new
contacts the marketing
department is generating. These
teams typically spend lot of time
each day using their marketing
automation platform such as
Hubspot, Marketo, Eloqua or
something similar.
People who mainly prospect
enterprise-level customers often
follow an account-based sales
playbook. There’s an increasing
number of software platforms
design for account-based sales.
Tools such as Terminus, Engagio
and Demandbase all provide not
only tools to engage with target
accounts but also features to find
new major opportunities that can
be added to their “most wanted
accounts” lists.
Before you sign up for
too many applications,
it’s smart to define
your key performance
metrics for your
prospecting eorts.
Most of the systematic sales
organizations have implemented
at least one or a few of these
prospecting tools. With lot
of dierent alternatives to
choose from, it’s easy to feel
45product.vainu.io
overwhelmed with all these
dierent options. Before you sign
up for too many applications,
it’s smart to define your key
performance metrics for your
prospecting eorts.
In Chapter 9, we will introduce
several interesting KPIs to guide
in the process of finding the
prospecting solution that fits your
needs.
MORE VALUABLE TOOLS AND
TECHNOLOGIES FOR SALES
PROFESSIONALS
As a sales professional I’m sure
that you know that there are
millions of tools out there that
promise to make you and your
sales team more ecient and
close more business. To make
it easier for you to navigate the
Prospecting platforms
sales technology jungle we’ve also
created an e-book where we list
53 sales tools all salespeople have
to know of. Download it here and
receive all information you need
to choose exactly the tools and
technologies that are right for your
sales team and organization.
In today’s
hyper-
competitive
sales landscape
static lists based
only on basic
firmographics
don’t cut it for
salespeople who
aim for strong
sales figures
(don’t we all?).
47product.vainu.io
T
he most
successful sales
organizations are
the ones working
systematically. And
to do that you have
to have clearly
defined goals.
There’s no one right answer to
the question of which prospecting
KPIs are the most important ones
to track. Sales development teams
work dierently and there are lot
of variables that have an impact
on an ideal KPI mix.
A good starting point for
prospecting KPIs is to look at
the sales velocity formula. Most
sales professionals are at least
somewhat familiar with this
equation.
While prospecting is often
associated very strongly with the
activity happening at the top of
the funnel (Number of leads /
opportunities) most companies
acknowledge that the quality of
each prospect has a significant
impact on hit rate, average deal
size and also sales cycle.
Typically, people who are
responsible for finding and creating
new opportunities are called sales
development representatives
The most successful sales
organizations are the ones
working systematically. And to
do that you have to have clearly
defined goals.
Therefore, high performance sales
development teams have well
thought out KPIs that are being
tracked daily, weekly and monthly.
T
Number of opportunities X Hit Rate X Average Deal Size
Average Sales Cycle
= Total Sales
Sales Velocity Formula
48product.vainu.io
ACTIVITY / TASK RELATED KPIS
• Number of dials per day
• Number of emails per day
• Number of conversations per day
• Number of new companies &
contacts added per day
These KPIs mainly focus on
how much prospectors have
accomplished in a given day.
Especially in the U.S., where
sales outreach platforms are
commonplace, these numbers
are being tracked automatically.
Most team leaders set a numeric
goal for dials, emails and
conversations. They also typically
want to analyze the numbers
and might track metrics such as
“time on the phone”, “bounce rate”,
“email open rate” etc.
PROSPECTING RESULT KPIs
• Number of meetings booked / held
• Number of new sales qualified
opportunities
These KPIs focus heavily on the
outcome of all the activities
salespeople are doing. Regardless
of the number of dials or emails,
typically sales leaders are more
keen on understanding how many
new discovery / sales meetings
have been booked and how
many of those booked meetings
materialize in held meetings. If
sales development people are also
responsible for qualifying each
opportunity by having a discovery
call with the prospect they typically
track the number of meetings that fit
the criteria of being sales qualified.
or business development
representatives. If companies
don’t separate dierent parts of
the sales process for dierent
people, then the responsibility
of finding new prospects and
creating new opportunities falls
into sales manager’s / account
manager’s hands.
A COMMON SET OF KPIS FOR
PEOPLE WHO PROSPECT MIGHT
LOOK AS FOLLOWS:
- Number of new companies
found
- Number of new contacts added
- Number of dials, emails,
conversations
- Number of booked & held
meetings
- Hit rate, ACV and sales cycle
- LTV, CAC, LVR
Prospecting KPIs
KPIs can be placed into dierent categories
49product.vainu.io
Prospecting KPIs
BUSINESS RELATED KPIS
• Client acquisition cost
• Customer lifetime value
• Revenue / lead
• Lead velocity rate
On a personal level, salespeople
are not measured by client
acquisition cost or customer
lifetime value. However, these
are very important metrics
for executive teams and sales
development directors to keep an
eye on, because they reveal lot of
insights on the scalability potential
of the business. All four factors of
the sales velocity formula play an
important role in all these metrics
and that’s why we feel they are
important to introduce when
talking about prospecting KPIs.
lient acquisition
cost (CAC) tells you
how much you need
to spend on sales
and marketing to acquire one
new customer. Lifetime value
indicates the value of that
customer over the entire period
that they remain a customer.
LTV of course needs to be higher
than CAC to run a sustainable
business and prospecting plays
a role in both metrics. The
more qualified opportunities
salespeople prospect and the
higher the volume of those
prospects, the lower your CAC. If
prospects fit the company’s Ideal
Customer Profile, odds are they
stay a customer longer than the
prospects that don’t fit into that
Ideal Customer Profile.
SALES RESULTS RELATED KPIS
• Hit rate
• Average deal size
• Average sales cycle
If salespeople are also responsible
for conducting the meetings they
book and closing the deals, then
their KPI stack also includes other
sales velocity metrics. Hit rate
measures the percentage of the
meetings that convert into closed
deals. Average deal size typically
reflects not only the sales skills but
also the quality of the prospect.
The length of the sales cycle
can be reduced if sales people
manage to prospect companies
where timing for the purchase
is right. There are lot of publicly
available sales signals that can
guide salespeople to identify those
opportunities.
CC
50product.vainu.io
We have also seen companies
measure revenue per lead and
the so-called Lead velocity rate,
which shows the monthly increase
in number of sales and qualified
leads the company is able to
generate.
When designing ideal KPIs for your
prospecting process, our tip is to
keep it simple. Pick the metrics
you feel are most important to
your business and make sure
people feel they can impact their
individual KPIs and metrics. On
a strategic level, it’s important to
measure the development of your
sales velocity and, if planning to
scale business rapidly, CAC and
LTV might be useful indicators to
start tracking systematically.
Prospecting KPIs
high performance
sales development
teams have well
thought out KPIs
that are being
tracked daily,
weekly and monthly.
52product.vainu.io
T
he fastest growing
companies in the
world are doing
both outbound and
inbound, the front
runners combining
these two
processes with a
strong data-driven
approach
TAs inbound grew stronger,
marketing departments did the
same and some companies came
to only trust inbound activities to
drive business to the company.
Today, the fastest growing
companies in the world are doing
both outbound and inbound, the
frontrunners combining these two
processes with a strong data-
driven approach. This is what
we at Vainu have chosen to call
smartbound sales. Hubspot,
Zenefit, Zendesk, Salesforce,
Box and Vainu are all examples
of companies leveraging this
strategy. By only doing outbound
or inbound, you are missing out on
growth opportunities.
In this chapter, we’ll define what
outbound and inbound sales
prospecting is really all about,
walk you through how your
organization can become a
more eective sales machine by
combining these two methods and
explain why a strong data-driven
approach is necessary for you to
maximize your results.
WHAT’S THE DIFFERENCE
BETWEEN OUTBOUND AND
INBOUND SALES PROSPECTING?
First things first, in Chapter 7 we
digged deep into the advantages
of inbound sales prospecting.
But what’s outbound sales
prospecting, and how does
it dier from inbound sales
prospecting?
The dierence between
inbound and outbound >>
During outbound’s period of
greatness, the sales department
at pretty much every company
outnumbered the marketing
department by far.
53product.vainu.io
Smartbound
OUTBOUND SALES
Traditionally outbound isn’t a very data-driven
method. Here, sales department’s lists of target
companies are often based on basic criteria such
as company size, location and industry. Outbound is
about direct sales, where you initiate the contact with
prospects, often cold ones at that.
INBOUND MARKETING
As you might remember from Chapter 7, inbound
marketing is all about content marketing, SEO and
conversion optimization. Here, content marketing
eorts are made with the intention of making potential
customers interested in your product or service so
much that they reach out to you when ready to buy.
Inbound focuses on behavioral data, and is thus data-
driven to some extent.
Simply put, outbound sales
prospecting is about reaching out
to mostly cold prospects based
on their basic characteristics.
Inbound sales prospecting is more
about scrolling through leads that
marketing automation workflow
provides.
By only doing outbound or
inbound, you are missing out on
growth opportunities
In outbound sales prospecting,
salespeople focus on (basic)
characteristics. Companies
becomes listed as solid prospects
simply by possessing a set of
characteristics. Inbound sales
prospecting, on the other hand,
focuses on behaviors. Here,
marketing labels a company as
a solid prospect or marketing
54product.vainu.io
marketing team to create shared
short-lists of companies they
want to engage with. Once these
companies are identified, both
sales and marketing teams can
work proactively to connect with
them, online or oine.
WHY DATA SHOULD BE A PART OF
THE EQUATION
Today’s technology and the ever
increasing amount of open and
public data allows sales and
marketing departments to access
more information on all the world's
companies than ever before.
A data-driven combination of
inbound and outbound sales
allows sales teams to create more
defined target groups thanks to
more data-points available and
smarter lead qualification.
A smart data-driven
approach provides
access to more
information about your
prospects.
With more carefully defined target
groups — Ideal Customer Profiles
— your sales team will benefit
from higher meeting conversion
rates.
Insights from open and public
data also enable sales teams to
improve proactive sales eorts
thanks to systematic tracking of
companies’ lifecycle events, or
sales triggers as we refer to these
events in Chapter 5, as they often
open up a window of opportunity
for product and service vendors.
qualified lead when one or many
individuals from that company
have shown interest in its content
marketing.
WHY YOU SHOULD COMBINE
OUTBOUND AND INBOUND
SALES PROSPECTING
Pure outbound is tough on
resources. Only working with
inbound, on the other hand,
means missing all potential
customers who have not
expressed an interest in your
content marketing eorts.
Successful organizations work
with a combination of outbound
and inbound to make sure to
process all potential customers on
your company’s short-list. Aligning
your outbound and inbound
eorts allows your sales and
Smartbound
55product.vainu.io
move their cases along the funnel
toward a sale.
Technology brings a lot more
insights to salespeople's fingertips,
and these insights can be used
to formulate relevant suggested
actions that are, based on
data, most likely to lead to the
best possible outcome. And this
can be scaled when machine
learning models are automatically
collecting feedback and adjusting
these suggestions accordingly.
For sales, a smart data-driven
approach provides access to more
information about the prospects
listed in the CRM system. With
more detailed information about
the not-so-obvious factors that
define a company, the sales team
can tailor their message for every
company they interact with.
MOVING FROM A PREDICTIVE TO
A PERSPECTIVE MODEL
Even though most companies are
still figuring out how to get their
predictive lead scoring models
in place, the frontrunners are
already moving from predictive
to prescriptive models. At the
end of the day, salespeople are
not that interested in all those
positive and negative attributes
in the predictive models. They just
want to know what to do next to
Smartbound
A data-driven
combination of
inbound and
outbound sales
allows sales teams
to create more
defined target
groups thanks
to more data-
points available
and smarter lead
qualification.
57product.vainu.io
S
alespeople want
to find prospects
that have a need
and are willing
and capable of
investing time and
money into what
they provide.
Scompetitors can be built around
many dierent things. Company’s
ability to build, manage and
develop a systematic and
eective prospecting process can
definitely be one of those things.
A well-oiled prospecting machine
feeds salespeople with increasing
number of opportunities that
convert with a nice hit rate. Those
customers that fit nicely into Ideal
Customer Profiles also tend to
stay with the vendor for a long
period of time. Companies that
know how to prospect see lower
customer acquisition cost and
higher customer lifetime value,
which helps them grow faster and
run a more profitable business.
B2B sales prospecting has its
roots in the late 19th century but
the basic principle has remained
the same. Salespeople want to
find prospects that have a need
and are willing and capable of
investing time and money into
solutions / products / services they
provide.
Sales trends come and
go, but technology is
getting better and better
every year.
Not too long ago, most of the
prospecting was done by calling
through a list of companies that
were segmented by industry,
location and company size. There
was very little intelligence built into
the process; it was basically based
on hard work and hustle.
All companies need sustainable
competitive advantages in
order to survive in today’s
hyper competitive business
environment.
These “X factors” that are
hard to copy and that provide
a sustainable edge over the
58product.vainu.io
companies with right timing is
easier than ever before. Sales
signals, website content, or
even buying intent picked up
from a social discussion all help
salespeople spend their time more
wisely.
Not too long ago, most
of the prospecting was
done by calling through
a list of companies that
were segmented by
industry, location and
company size.
The rise of artificial intelligence
is also impacting prospecting
but, at least for
the time being,
the best results
can be achieved when using a
combination of computing power
and human brain power. With
the help of AI, a salespeople can
"connect the dots" easier when
AI powered apps can calculate
the "fit score" for each prospect.
Plus, the algorithm gets better
every day because of more data
available to train the algorithm.
Use of predictive lead scoring
in prospecting is already
commonplace, especially in the
tech sector. We believe that soon
we will start seeing prescriptive
models that don't provide only
a fit score but also a suggested
action how and when to reach out
to that prospect.
Sales trends come and go, but
technology is getting better
every year. Some companies rely
on inbound prospecting, while
others believe in the power of
outbound prospecting. We like to
talk about smartbound, which is
a data-driven way to combine
the best parts of both inbound
and outbound prospecting.
Whatever sales tactics you decide
to implement, one thing is for
sure: there’s several powerful
technology platforms that you can
leverage.
TIMING IS EVERYTHING IN SALES
What might have been an
unqualified prospect yesterday
can very well be a great target
tomorrow. With ever increasing
amount of data available
to salespeople, identifying
Summary
59product.vainu.io
A
A
All this technological advancement
serves both the seller and the
buyer. It means more relevant
conversations for both parties.
Everybody wins.
We hope this e-book inspired
you to do a deep-dive into your
current prospecting processes.
When starting to design
improvements, we encourage
you to start with defining the right
metrics and KPIs for prospecting
and all individuals carrying those
tasks. Creating winning habits and
routines takes time, but we believe
they pay o in the long run with
an increased number of new and
happy customers.
Summary
well-oiled
prospecting
machine feeds
salespeople with
increasing number
of opportunities
that convert with a
nice hit rate.
60product.vainu.io
ABOUT VAINU
Vainu, founded in 2013, is a sales intelligence platform that
helps companies capitalize on data to ensure their sales
and marketing focuses on the accounts that convert. Over
1800 organizations in seven dierent countries use Vainu
to identify actionable account insights and timely leads
and, therefore, save time and sell more - with a better
hit rate. Vainu’s mission is to collect, read and understand
all the information ever written about every company in
the world, and then make this haphazard information
comprehensible for everyone.
