A prospecting tool for effective outreach

Prospecting Tool For Sales

If you’re in sales, you know that your day to day schedule is a grind. You’re frequently communicating with customers and potential prospects, helping guide them through the sales process and sharing insights to your product or service. Sales teams are an essential component to scaling your business, and it all starts in the prospecting phase. This article will focus on various aspects of sales outreach, prospecting tools that transform your strategy, and some helpful tips and best practices for best success. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is prospecting in sales?
• How to prospect
• Sales prospecting methods
• Sales prospecting tools
• A sales prospecting plan for success

What is sales prospecting?

First it’s important to address, what is prospecting? Prospecting is typically the first step in a sales process and involves sales reps identifying potential customers and reaching out via email, phone, in-person meetings, etc. The goal of prospecting is to communicate with your prospect list and guide them through the funnel with the hopes they convert and become a paying customer.

However, one of the most critical components of prospecting is targeting the right individuals. When prospecting, you want to make sure that you have a target audience in mind. Your target audience is the one that is most likely to benefit from what you have to offer. When you find qualified leads, you are more likely to close the deal and shorten the sales cycle. You want to find qualified prospects who are the best fit for your product or service, or else your prospecting efforts will be a waste of time. Many sales reps use prospecting tools and sales software in order to streamline this process, save time, and increase effectiveness.

How to use prospecting tools for sales

There are a variety of sales prospecting tools to use depending on the size of your team, company, and industry. Typically, the most successful prospecting plans incorporate multiple different prospecting methods into their outreach. This gives your prospecting strategy some variety and increases your chances of connecting with a potential prospect. For example, email may be the most effective way to reach one prospect, but a phone call might work better for another. That’s it’s best to try out different tactics and weave a few into your outbound prospecting. This way, you don’t have to send 10 straight emails that go unanswered. Let’s review a few of our favorite and most common b2b prospecting methods:

• Cold emailing

  Email prospecting is a helpful strategy to generate leads and secure an initial meeting or phone call. The beauty of email prospecting is you can send out a mass number of messages in just one click. However, these email campaigns are typically less personalized and more general, making them blend in with others.

• Video prospecting

  Record and send a personalized video message via email or text to your prospects. These videos are embedded into the body of your email, helping you stand out in a busy inbox. Even better, with personalized video, you put a face to a name, which humanizes the sales process and builds connections faster. Even better, video email improves open rates and response rates, making them an effective business prospecting strategy.

• Cold calling

  Cold calling is a classic, prospecting strategy dreaded by most sales reps. It involves reaching out to potential prospects who have had no, or very little interaction with your brand. Typically for cold calls, a sales rep is making a quick pitch to the prospect with some sort of goal in place (schedule a meeting, give a donation, etc.).

• Social selling

  Social selling is using social media to attract potential buyers through different networks online. With this strategy, sales professionals rely heavily on posting content that attracts engagement, such as shares and comments. Using social media can help sales professionals connect and get involved with people already seeking their service or product, making it an organic sales prospecting strategy.

• Asking for referrals

  Gathering referrals is one of the most valuable forms of prospecting strategies, and sales teams need to actively seek them from their current customers. Reach out to some of your most loyal and long term customers and ask if they know anyone they could refer you to. Hearing directly from satisfied customers is one of the most effective sales and marketing tactics.

Prospecting tools to succeed

While all of these prospecting methods are achievable with your everyday tools like Gmail, your work or cell phone, and social platforms – using a sales platform makes the process more efficient and effective. Nowadays, you can find solutions to just about anything sales related – there are sales enablement tools, strategic sales tools, even a follow up tool. While of each of these has its own individual benefits – what if we told you there was an innovative sales tool that was a combination of all of these solutions? Enter Covideo.

Covideo is a video platform designed specifically for sales professional for lead prospecting, follow ups, and more. Adding personalized videos to your sales outreach is the best way to increase engagement, stand out in an inbox and capture your audience’s attention, and it humanizes the sales process. Putting a face to a name is an effective sales strategy because it shows you’re human too, and when you record a personalized video specifically for a lead, they will see the effort put in and increases the chances you get a response.

With Covideo you can record, send, and track personalized video emails. Your videos send in the body of the email, and you can receive instant notifications when your video is viewed. This way, you can connect with your recipient when your message is top of mind. When sending sales videos you increase response rates, keep prospects engaged, shorten the sales cycle, and send clear and concise follow ups. Let’s dive into some prospecting tips to ensure your sales videos are successful.

Prospecting strategies

Using Covideo’s sales engagement software is one of the most effective ways to ensure your messages stands out and gets responses. However, there are a few tips to cover before getting started with prospecting tools. Here are a few of our best sales prospecting techniques when using video.

• Keep sales prospecting videos short
  

  Keep prospecting videos these videos short and sweet. Be sure to introduce yourself, explain why you’re reaching out, and give a quick pitch of your product/service. We encourage our users to limit prospecting videos to around 30 seconds. This keeps your viewer engaged and ensures they will watch your full video.

• Personalize your message
  

  On the long list of best practices for sales prospecting, we put personalization at the very top! Add a touch of personalization to your message and show that you are putting in time and effort, rather than sending a generic, mass email. This helps you stand out in the inbox and increase open, click-through, and response rates. We recommend using a whiteboard or piece of paper, write your recipient’s name on it and hold it up at the start of your video. Everyone loves seeing their name – think coca cola’s name campaign – and will be intrigued to watch your video.

• Always include a call-to-action in a sales video
  

  When video prospecting, always end your video with a strong Call-To-Action so your audience knows what to do next. If you’re using b2b prospecting tools like Covideo, you can include a clickable and customizable CTA button that shows up next to your video.

• Add some text, but not too much in video emails

  When video prospecting, you’ll still want to add some text to the body of the email. Introduce yourself, let your prospect know that you recorded a video specifically for them, and encourage them to click and watch. However, don’t give away too much information in the text – you still want your prospect to view your video!

• Strategize your subject line
  

  Your subject line is the first indicator of whether a not a prospect will open your email. When sending video email, always be sure to include the word “video” in the subject line. This increases open rates by 19%. We also like to include our prospect’s first name in the subject line for an extra touch of personalization. For prospecting videos, a few subject lines we frequently use are:

• • Video for Kate at Company
  • John, here’s a video for you
  • Video for Sam – Thank You!
  • Video for Jane: Virtual Introduction

Transform your outreach with a prospecting tool, today.

While sales prospecting tools aren’t necessary to get your job done, they truly do make things so much easier. Most sales reps believe that prospecting is one of the most difficult aspects of their role, specifically getting responses from individuals. A prospecting tool like Covideo makes your lives much easier. Not only can you send effective video messages that get responses, but you can track and see who watched your video, how much of it was watched and when. This gives you better insight into their interest level and is great information to have next time you follow up.

Are you ready to try out the best sales software? 2020 taught us the need to stay connected and the power of video to do so – we believe that video messages are here and here to stay. You still get the benefits of sharing your message how you would in person, however you don’t need to schedule a live zoom meeting to do so. Video messages will stand out in your prospects inbox and leave a lasting impression – making it truly a must-have in your sales prospecting strategy. Start sending sales videos today with a  Start a free trial of our prospecting tool, no credit card required.