Key Takeaways

• Sales prospecting is evolving: buyer expectations and technology are shifting the game
• Personalisation, buyer enablement, and digital tools are core to successful outreach
• Mutual Action Plans (MAPs), Pods, and async selling boost win rates significantly

What is Sales Prospecting?

Sales prospecting is the process of identifying and reaching out to potential buyers who may be a fit for your product or service. It marks the beginning of the sales cycle and helps build the initial pipeline of qualified leads.

• Think of it as scanning the market for ideal buyers
• It's about finding, contacting, and converting the right people
• Prospecting includes research, cold outreach, warm leads, referrals, and social engagement

How is Sales Prospecting Different from Lead Generation?

• Leads are unqualified contacts that may or may not fit your ICP
• Sales prospects are leads that have been vetted based on fit and intent
• Prospecting is more targeted and strategic compared to general lead gen

Navigating sales prospecting in 2024: 17 need to know techniques

Now that we've covered the basics of the sales prospecting galaxy let's zoom into the future and check out the top prospecting strategies that will take centre stage in 2024, from warming up with cold calls to digital sales rooms.

Remember, the future of sales prospecting is as vast and varied as the cosmos itself, so don't hesitate to experiment, adapt, and find what works best for you!

1. How do you build ideal customer personas?

• Research your best-fit customers based on existing data
• Create personas with demographics, pain points, motivations and goals
• Use these to inform outreach messaging and targeting

2. Why does deep lead research matter?

• Go beyond surface-level LinkedIn info
• Understand recent activity, tech stack, market fit and past buying behaviour
• Personalised outreach drives higher response rates

3. What is social selling and how do you start?

Social media is not just a platform for cat videos and memes; it's also a gold mine for sales prospecting.

Platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn provide unrivalled access to potential leads, making it easier to connect with them in a personal and engaging way.

Social selling is key in 2024. Daniel Disney, Founder of LinkedIn's most popular page for salespeople, The Daily Sales, explains on an episode of The Sales Soundcheck:

"Buyers are consuming content as part of the research process, but they're not just consuming content from the company. They’re consuming content from people. Personal branding is one of the biggest anchors that a salesperson can leverage and an absolute game changer."

• Social selling means using platforms like LinkedIn to build relationships
• Share relevant content, comment, engage, and message thoughtfully
• Daniel Disney says: "Buyers want content from people, not just companies"

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How to kick off your social selling journey? 

1. First stop, check out Daniel's episode on The Sales Soundcheck 'Why you should be social selling in 2024'. He's got some killer tips for kicking things off.

2. Dive into our Comprehensive Guide on Social Selling. To find out why it’s a big deal for sellers today.

3. Use LinkedIn’s scheduling tool to get things in order and prep a bunch of posts to go live without you having to lift a finger.

4. Tune into Linkedin’s sales influencers for trending topics and use tools like WriteSonic to sort out that caption for you.

4. What are warm calls and when should you use them?

• Reaching out to prospects who have engaged with your brand before
• Better success rates than cold calls
• Use insights from prior touchpoints to personalise

5. Are cold calls still relevant in 2024?

Yes, when used strategically:

• Combine cold calls with email and social for a multi-touch cadence
• Prep with research and use curiosity-based openers

6. How do Digital Sales Rooms help with prospecting?

Email remains a powerful tool in the sales prospecting toolkit. With today's sophisticated platforms, you can send highly personalised emails that effectively engage prospects.

If you want to take personalisation one step further, embed a digital sales room link preview into the email.

Instead of adding multiple links and attachments in long email threads, place all of that sales content in one centralised and trackable space. In trumpet, sales reps can:

• Pull prospect data (name, company name) into the Pod from the associated CRM deal to populate custom variables in one click.

• Use the prospect’s company URL to auto-brand the Pod with their logo and colours.

• Film personal video intros with our Loom-style video/screen recording tool.

• Track prospect engagement with the content in the Pod. What did they click on? How long did they look at it? Did they share the link or download any attachments? Get access to all of this and receive notifications via Slack, Teams, or email in real-time.

• Use ready-made templates to create outreach Pods, saving even more time.

Account Executives at Otta are using Pods to send hyper-personalised outreach, with open rates ranging from 64-84%. Their Sales Lead, Stephanie Guerin, explains:

"Pods have become our single source of truth when communicating with clients."

Delivering a fresh, new way to share information after discovery without long email chains.

trumpet has 9 different outreach templates to pick from to whip up a personalised digital sales room in seconds!

7. How should you reassess your outreach tone?

• Drop the overly formal templates
• Use clear, human, conversational language
• Write like you’d speak to someone over coffee

8. Should you still attend events in 2024?

Yes, in-person and virtual events are valuable for:

• Face-to-face trust-building
• Networking and building brand presence

9. Tapping into LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a treasure trove for B2B sales prospecting. It allows you to connect with leads, build relationships, and stay updated on industry trends.

Tools we recommend to kick off your LinkedIn journey:

• Apollo: Apollo’s living database of 275M+ contacts gives you access to rich buyer data, lead scoring and Use sequence to email, call and connect on LinkedIn.

• Linkedin Sales Navigator: By implementing LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can access the user’s LinkedIn profile from contact, account or opportunity pages in the CRM.

• Trumpet: Embed an auto-personalised digital sales room as a link preview in LinkedIn DM’s to prospects. Trumpet Pods have a 76% open rate and are sure to intrigue the prospect. The best bit? You’ll know if the Pod has been clicked on through buyer signals.

• Lavender: Write better outbound messages faster and get more replies in less time. They also analyse your messages and fix anything that hurts your chance of getting a reply, using generative AI.

10. Why does a multi-channel approach work?

• Meet buyers where they are: email, phone, LinkedIn, events
• Increase touchpoint coverage
• Reinforce your message across platforms

11. What buyer signals should you be tracking?

With trumpet’s analytics:

• Page views, click-throughs, downloads, shares
• Know what content resonates
• Follow up based on real engagement

Example:

"Hey Amy – noticed you watched my intro video and shared it with John. Let me know if you had any thoughts."

12. Should you ask for referrals?

Absolutely.

• Happy customers are often happy to refer
• Make it easy: send a shareable Pod or script

13. What is co-selling and how can it help?

• Partner with another business to access their customer base
• Joint value props and dual outreach

14. Why is planning your calls so important?

• Pre-call prep = more productive conversations
• Set an agenda, know your objectives, and research the buyer

15. What incentives can you offer prospects?

• Free trial, discounted month, exclusive content
• Incentives reduce friction and encourage first action

16. How do you build a repeatable process?

• Document your outreach templates, cadence, and handoff process
• Standardise Pod templates for speed and consistency

17. What does an effective follow-up process look like?

• Don’t just send an email with links and PDFs
• Use trumpet to build a follow-up Pod with:
  • Summary
  • Mutual Action Plan
  • Assets, case studies, pricing

Example: Lunio uses Pods to reduce back-and-forth and track all buyer signals post-demo. This helps AEs prioritise high-intent deals.

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Embed call recordings, add summaries, mutual action plans, PDF documents, pricing, case studies, and much more on one link - then track how the prospect engages with this content in real time.

Before using trumpet, Lunio used to send regular follow-ups to check if the prospect had reviewed the sales assets, links, and documentation after the initial post-demo follow-up.

Today, Lunio uses trumpet's sales intelligence and buyer signals to gather insights on Pod views, the length of time spent viewing content, and link clicks, among other metrics.

This allows them to remove lower-value emails from their sales cadence and enables their team to be more direct in their communication.

Choose from 8 different post-call follow-up ready-made templates to auto-personalise the follow-up process in a trumpet's digital sales room.

Final thoughts

That wraps up our journey through the 2024 sales prospecting universe.

By leveraging these techniques, your sales team can optimise their efforts and reach new heights in the coming year.

Remember, the future of sales prospecting is as vast and varied as the cosmos itself, so don't hesitate to experiment, adapt, and find what works best for you!

FAQs

What is the difference between a lead and a prospect?

Leads are raw contacts; prospects are vetted and qualified based on fit and intent.

How many touchpoints does it take to reach a buyer?

On average, 8 to 12. Using multi-channel cadences can accelerate this.

What are Digital Sales Rooms?

Digital Sales Rooms like trumpet centralise all buyer-facing content and allow you to personalise and track every engagement.

How can I personalise at scale?

• Use CRM variables
• Create Pod templates
• Automate but don’t lose the human touch

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