The Pain Points of Sales Prospecting
Sales prospecting is hard work, plain and simple. In fact, research conducted by HubSpot revealed that 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the most challenging aspect of the whole sales process.
It quickly becomes frustrating when prospects refuse to talk, make excuses, or worse: when they go completely dark on you.
The most dreaded scenario in sales is when those prospects stop responding altogether. This can be discouraging, causing some salespeople to give up on the opportunity.
The good news? There is an easy way to keep track of and help you devise a plan to penetrate those accounts that go dark: geoanalytics.
There are many ways you can lean on geoanalytics software like Geopointe to reach difficult prospects, so let’s walk through a few.
1. Visualize your data
A great start in figuring out how to reach difficult sales prospects is by visualizing your data on a map with Geopointe. Using geoanalytics to display your CRM data helps to make your data more digestible than it would be on a spreadsheet or in a report.
You can map any of your Salesforce data, such as last activity, and search the map for prospects with no activity in specific regions over a period of time.
The map adds extra dimensions that a list view or report cannot: a geographic understanding of where your records are and how they relate to each other in proximity.
This gives you a clear picture of the areas you need to spend more time in during your prospecting outreach.
2. Plan trips around prospects you haven’t interacted with recently
Various search types and filtering options put you in the driver’s seat of where the data takes you. After putting your data on the map, use it to plan a trip around areas of inactivity.
Locate nearby accounts, opportunities, or leads to make your trip as productive and efficient as possible. Mapping out areas of inactivity ensures that you aren’t giving up on difficult sales prospects simply by making it easy to locate and plan trips around them.
As shown in sales enablement statistics, sales reps are giving up far too fast on potential clients. The majority of successful sales require time and continuous communication with the customer.
3. Collaborate to build marketing and sales alignment
Taking it a step further, geoanalytics can also help get the right message to your prospects at the right time. Up to 65% of sales reps aren’t sure what type of content they should be sending, and this is where marketing can help.
From the mapped inactive prospects, your marketing team can create messaging for as finite or large of a group as you wish to target. Messaging should be tailored by level of inactivity, title, company size, etc.
Tools like Salesforce Engage allow reps to build their own campaigns, as well. They can use approved marketing content and simply click send when the time is right.
The Bottom Line: Don’t Give Up
You are the first to know that prospects can be difficult, but you can’t give up. Research completed by RAIN Group states that it takes an average of eight touches to get an initial meeting (or comparable conversion) with a new prospect.
Geoanalytics software like Geopointe provides you with better ways to figure out what could be going wrong and what your plan of attack should look like, even with the hardest prospects to crack.
