I admit it: if I had to think about prospecting, I probably wouldn’t do it. I can find any excuse not to prospect, kind of like I can find any excuse not to work out or eat healthy. However, if I don’t prospect consistently, I end up with no pipeline—which makse every other aspect of the sales process exponentially more difficult. The problem is that effective, high-quality prospecting that actually produces results takes time. The way to solve this is to set up your systems to have the information come to you so you can build it into your daily routine. 

The first step is to identify your target ‘A’ level prospects (I suggest 25). Then we need to figure out a way to get information about them to come to us. I use InsideView, GageIn, and Google Alerts to track key events (product launch, litigation, M&A, etc.) involving my target accounts; tools like salesforce.com's Radian6 further enrich that view by providing insights through "social listening," or monitoring these accounts' social media activity.

You'll also need to identify which events are most relevant to you and your solutions so you can develop consistent and repeatable messaging and not have to reinvent the wheel every time.  I tend to choose 4-5 different events that I can make a connection to and develop messaging for each of them so every time I see a certain event (eg. new office) I can say the same thing.

From there, I develop messaging about the value I bring to each of those events and develop e-mail and phone templates for each. Keep in mind, these are not templates or scripts that are meant to be blasted out to 1,000 people.  These are templates to be used for efficiency purposes but still sent to individuals one at a time with slight customization. 

Once I have my events and my messaging I now need to find a way to distribute and track them. Products like Salesforce ExactTarget, Pardot, and ToutApp allow you to develop templates, track who opens your e-mails and run split testing to determine conversion ratios.

By identifying a target list of accounts, tracking them so information comes to you, developing messaging based on certain events that you can put into e-mail and phone templates and using tools to track the response rates you now have an engine that produces high quality prospecting without having to try too hard. Good luck and happy selling!

About the Author:

John Barrows has held every position in sales including inside, field, channel, executive management and ownership. He continues to sell every day using the techniques he trains to some of the world’s leading tech companies, including LinkedIn, Marketo, HP and most notably salesforce.com. He has worked with salesforce.com for over 5 years and trained over 3000 SRs, EBRs and AEs on techniques that have driven millions of dollars into the pipeline. Follow him on Twitter: @JohnMBarrows

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