In today’s market, prospecting must happen daily.
A ubiquitous phrase in the sales and marketing world is ‘prospect planning.’ It’s the process of planning out which target accounts or prospects to tackle and prioritize for the year. In a way, this process feels antiquated. That is, it assumes buyers don’t change their priorities throughout the year. In reality, what might be a priority account for vendors in January, may no longer be the case come October. It also assumes that vendors are picking targets based on what’s best for them, instead of the buyer’s needs in the market.
One thing that is for certain – buyers’ needs change throughout the year. Therefore, they are never guaranteed to align with a vendor’s planning calendar. These changes can be attributed to:
– Market shifts
– Contract expirations
– Software stack shifts
– Internal priorities
– Competitive needs
A guide to successfully prospecting enterprise companies
Consider a situation in which a buyer is planning to migrate to a new website platform. In a majority of cases, especially during the initial assessment of the new website platform, a buyer will typically not review any other technologies. Once a winner is selected, a re-evaluation of supporting software systems ensues. In this case, they’ll be looking for software that easily integrates into that platform. Without a doubt, moments like this prove that buyers aren’t always open for business.
On the other hand, an advancement in a vendor’s capabilities may also influence or pique the interest of a buyer. In fact, these advancements may even have the power to change their perceived viewpoint and needs. For example, if a vendor develops a new partner integration (e.g. cartridge or API), it unlocks a new capability without technological disruption for a buyer already using that system. In this case, the vendor is driving the need, instead of falling by the wayside.
So, what does this mean? Prospecting is important, but it’s an action that happens daily based on both buyer market changes and vendor updates. Therefore, prospecting should be driven by buyer intelligence, in real-time, instead of every few months.
How can you build buyer intelligence into your prospecting?
1. Start with alerts that matter
The only way to change from prospecting enterprise companies annually or occasionally to consistently is to make sure you’re aware of the changes in the market. Since your potential customers are almost never going to call you to let you know of a change in their business, you need to find a way to stay in the loop. To that end, find third-party organizations that can alert you, instantly, when market conditions become favorable to making a sale.
2. Understand the buyer’s needs and how to optimize communication
Alerts are only as useful as the information you request. So, what information should you search for? As mentioned above, there are three critical alerts to be aware of that can provide the right market conditions for you to reach out with your best pitch:
– When a prospect’s software stack has changed
– When a prospect’s vendor usage has changed
– When a prospect’s employee/executive team has changed
These shifts signify new paradigms in a prospect’s structure and operations. In other words, these are the bellwethers that show that a window of opportunity may be cracking open.
3. Use your company announcements as opportunities to identify prospects
Fortunately, you can also create conditions for successfully prospecting enterprise companies by making company announcements. In fact, publicizing customer wins, product releases, and customer success stories is one of the best ways to identify new prospects that have needs you can solve.
To that end, once you have insight into which prospects have new software stacks, new vendors, or new employees, you can tailor your announcements to their exact situation. Knowing when and how to communicate your company’s updates effectively, and to whom, are essential components for generating promising leads.
Start prospecting enterprise companies better, today
If you’re ready to revolutionize the way you prospect, we can help. Reachify has a suite of tools available to alert and inform you about the market, optimal prospecting, and more, so you can sell smarter and win more.
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