B2B Prospecting Guidelines: All About Your Prospect

In this era of traditional sales and marketing, we were taught and used to sell with passion. We were asked that if we spoke persuasively enough to our sales prospects, they’d sense our passion and realize they had to buy soon and immediately.

So we prepared our pitches, fine-tuned our demos, and reinforced our objection handling.

However, in the era of inbound sales and marketing, where the buyer has alternative options to learn about your product/service, such as researching it on your website or reading reviews in customer forums, they’re right to hit the mute button as soon as you start your assertive sales pitch.

A sign that you’re relying on your sales pitch to get you in the door is if the first five to 10 minutes of all of your sales interactions are about your features and benefits rather than the customer’s problems.

Record yourself and listen to it. Who does the majority of the talking in that time frame? If it is you, then you are probably giving answers when you should be asking questions.

With the extensive information on the web about any topic, what your prospect need most are consultants. They need someone who can ask them the right questions and have the right conversations to help them understand if they have a problem that they need to solve right now.

If you don’t want customers to be turned off by your sales pitch, then don’t give a sales pitch. However, if it’s too late for that, here’s how to recover.

Get back on the relationship-building track. Find a helpful industry- or job-related article, and send it to your buyer. Start the dialogue in the email, where the prospect has control. This will help them feel more comfortable with engaging with you again.

Mistakes are inevitably made. Get back on the education and relationship-building track and relearn what had happened. This will give you insight of what you should do best on the next stage of your sales interaction.

Traditional sales and marketing is at its dusk. This days of information power, the decision now lies in the hand of the customer and not just any sales personnel can change it.