Prospect and Lead Generation eBook by AeroLeads

The Beginner’s Guide to Prospect Generation

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

Prospect generation is an inevitable part of sales success regardless of the type

of business. Reaching your prospects about your new product or service is as

vital as planning it. A well crafted product or service is of no use if it is not able

to reach the right target market that is in need of this product or service.

Prospect Generation helps in hauling out the right prospects for your product

or service from the crowd.

This eBook takes you through the core concepts of Prospect Generation. Happy

reading!

Vineetha Shetty

Head - Sales and Marketing

Anurag Singh

Lead Designer


Table of Contents:

Part I: Introduction to Prospect Generation

1.1: What is Prospect Generation?

1.2: Why is Prospect Generation Important?

1.3: Defining a prospect

1.4: Prospect Development

Part II: Prospect Generation tactics

2.1: Prospect Generation Software

2.2: Webinar/Seminar

2.3: Referrals

2.4: Guest Blogging

2.5: Trade shows/conferences

2.6: eBooks

Part III: Optimize and measure Prospect Generation

3.1: Optimize

3.2: Measure

3.3: Quantity vs. Quality


Part I

Introduction to

Prospect Generation


1.1

What is Prospect Generation?

Prospect generation is a process of fetching the information ex. Phone number,

email id's of the prospects and nurturing them to become a lead through activities

like cold emailing, cold calling etc.

In today’s digital world, prospect generation is an imperative technique to be

incorporated in every marketing strategy as this is the pivotal step towards

building the awareness among potential customers about your product or

services. This helps the business acquaint product with the business hassle free

and make a buzz about it in the business sector. Prospect Generation helps the

business make and expand brand awareness, construct connections, produce

potential leads and ultimately close sales leads.

Through the Prospect Generation tactics mentioned in this guide, businesses can

find the contact information of the potential targets that matches their buyer

persona with a specific end goal to sustain them to end up clients. Prospect

Generation can be used by the sales department of all B2B businesses.


1.2

Why is Prospect Generation Important?

Prospect Generation helps to mine out the relevant leads from the crowd – and

on sustaining these leads will transform them into clients and thus expanding the

revenue.

With the abundance of information in the web, cold calling to the prospects

irrelevant to your business will shift the focus of sales team from closing leads to

pushing prospects much to their inconvenience, that are not interested in the

product or service you are offering.

As many consider marketing to generate leads to salespeople to avoid cold

calling and high cost per lead, in many cases the strategy doesn’t fit in right.

Marketing alone may not bring in right and enough leads. The right set of target

audience with a high lifetime value can be fetched through prospect generation

and it is profitable. To start the discussion about your product or service to the

target market, the decision makers of the firm ex: VP, CEO are the right choice as

they refer back to the best person in the organization to take the discussion

further. From the business perspective, it’s easy to qualify them as leads having a

productive business conversation. With the right prospects to target the sales

team can focus more on converting leads into customers thus increasing the

company’s credibility.


1.3

Defining a Prospect:

A prospect is the one who is qualified or determined by the company to fit into

their buyer persona and who have not expressed interest yet to buy their product

or service, but rather they plan to change over them to customers sometime in

the future.

We live in an era where buyers are educated enough by the abundant content on

the web making a buying decision all by themselves. To be heard in the noise,

compete with the industry giants the prospecting strategy has to be reinvented

very often. Ask these questions before prospecting

1. What is your target for a month/year?

2. Who is your target market?

3. How do you find prospects?

4. How would you approach the prospects to convert them to a lead?


1.4

Prospect Development:

What is Prospect Development?

Out of thousands of prospects generated utilizing prospecting software’s, trade

shows, seminars, blogs and so forth only a few are the real sales opportunities.

Prospect Development is all about refining the lists of prospect created to

recognize to convert in all likelihood. The actual sales performance can be

increased by identifying and nurturing the qualified prospects.

Prospect Development focuses on:

1. Qualified prospects 2. Generate qualified leads to bring in more sales leads 3. Increase ROI


Part 2:

Prospect generation

tactics


How do you bring in leads to then nurture them to become sales leads?

For any business to be introduced to a large audience irrespective of the business

being B2B or B2C needs a large, highly targeted and responsive email list without

following the odds of buying the list.

Email list can be built:

1. Prospect generation software

2. Webinars/seminars

3. Referrals

4. Guest Blogging

5. Trade Shows/Conferences

6. E-books


2.1

Prospect Generation Software:

To build an email list quicker prospect generation software is an ultimate choice.

Utilizing this software one can find prospects full name, business type, location,

contact email and phone number. AeroLeads is one such software. AeroLeads also

supports company search to find all the contact details of the company along with

the people working in that company. With the contact details, one can sell their

products and services to these potential prospects.

Chrome Extension:

On installing the AeroLeads chrome extension, it is easier to look for relevant

prospects by running the search directly from the browser. One can also search

for prospects through google.

Other software’s that are available are:

Salesloft

Sell Hack

InsideSales

Netprospex

Spiderbook

Findanyemail

Sales intelligence

Contact Capture

Sales Intelligence


2.2

Webinars/Seminars:

This is the second best option as the webinar or a seminar invitation keeps the

persuasive offer before the user that makes them believe that they are going to

lose out on something valuable for their business if they don’t sign up.

Webinars/Seminars have both time and quantity limit i.e it limits the amount of

people that can attend the webinar/Seminar.

Webinars/Seminars help in building responsive lists. You don’t just need an email

list, you need a responsive email list where people engage with it open, click links

and buy your product.

Webinars are perfect to add extra credibility to your brand with newly built email

lists.


2.3

Referrals:

Referral generation is a secret weapon for prospect generation. Referrals from

your existing customers can be a huge advantage in generating more prospects.

Three steps to guarantee you get great referrals from your customers:

1. Request clients to share their experience with the product:

Once your client is comfortable using your product and gives positive reviews,

request him politely for the referral.

2. Find out your clients connections:

Find the connections your client has and list out who they know and who you

want to be referred to.

3. Never force for a referral, ask for the Introduction:

Request for a direct introduction to someone you know would be a great prospect

for your business. Ex: you mentioned you worked with Tina for several years,

would you be comfortable introducing me to her.

When done right referral can be the foundation of prospect generation. Never let

your clients do referral as they are unaware of your core business purpose and

values. Create a referral for them.


2.4

Guest Blogging:

To make sales, the first step is to tell the world that your business exists and how

it can take care of the issues your target market is confronting. A quality post on

some of the top blogs will declare the presence of your image to the world and

influence the prospects to know more about you.

Advantages:

More qualified traffic Credibility for you business Improve you networking channels Brings in huge email lists Increase in social followers More guest post offers Building links

To make guest blogging count, set your objectives right for the business. Make a

list of the top blog sites and create quality blogs. Guest blogging is undoubtedly

an effective way to build a strong business and connect with your readers who

are your potential customers.


2.5

Trade shows/ Conferences:

Trade shows:

The largest expenditure of the B2B market goes into trade shows with an

expectation of turning prospects into leads and leads into sales. Trade shows can

be effective in both ways. Generating new prospects and leads and also closing

sales with the current leads. It helps to come across many industry leaders and

set a foot towards turning your target company to your potential customers.

To capitalize the show:

Create criticalness with the trade shows that the prospects respond to

the call.

Present an involvement with the show such that the prospects are glued

to your brand.

Follow up with the prospects, leads, potential buyer before the show

ends.

Pick the contact of the show attendees who did not turn up to your

booth to target these prospects the following day of the show.

Use promotion to encourage your prospects stop by your booth

Try to get the prospects phone number and email id in all of the

instances above.


Conferences:

Hosting in-person events like conferences can interest a lot of people in the B2B

market as they are always on their toes to learn and improve their skills. This in

turn results in a lot of registrations, ultimately building strong email lists.


2.6

eBooks:

No matter how many subscribe opportunities you lend to the user it’s unlikely

they would accept any and give away their email address if they don’t find it

valuable. Offering eBooks related to the business you are in and that which

contains information your target market is in need of is a huge bait to double the

subscribers.

To bring in more subscriptions with eBooks:

Publish more than one eBook to gain attention

Reach out to people through all mediums say the website, blogs, Facebook,

LinkedIn, Twitter and most importantly sites like IndieReader.

Target market interested in your product.


Part 3:

Optimize and measure

prospect generation


3.1

Optimize:

A definitive objective of B2B marketing is to bring more qualified prospects to

Sales to nurture them to become leads and at last customers. When searching for

prospects create a buyer persona and target just that portion of the business

sector. This helps the sales team to focus on more sales closure rather than

looking out for the right prospects.

Optimizing prospects:

The business needs to be clear over the definition of who is their target market,

their quality leads and the product or service they are putting forth is going to

take care of the issue the focused on targeted market is facing. Once the business

characterizes this right it’s easy to generate right prospects.


3.2

Measure:

Once the business goals are clear and optimized prospects generated, it’s

important to measure what matters. Bringing on board qualified prospects is the

sole objective of prospect generation.

What to measure:

How many prospects generated through prospect generation software

were converted to leads?

How many prospects targeted through webinar registrations were

converted to sales leads?

What happened when you doubled the referrals?

What is the impact of trade shows and how many prospects did that bring

on board?

Was your blog on the guest website effective enough that it brought a lot

of inquiries to your brand?

Did the eBook you offered in exchange for email ids of prospects serve the

purpose of educating the prospects?

Once the process of measuring is complete, determine which channel of prospect

generation has performed significantly well and draft the strategy on how to

improve the channels that underperformed.

Note: Measure the performance regularly


3.3

Quality vs. Quantity:

It's essential to note that to enhance the benefit of the organization, it's vital to

have 10 qualified leads where 5 converts to be customers rather than 1000

unqualified leads and none convert. Continuously stick to quality over quantity.


About the book

This publication was both created and composed by AeroLeads. Feel free to share

the book with anyone who is interested to know more about Prospect

Generation.

About AeroLeads

With an intention of making the sales process easier by bringing on board more

qualified prospects, our Founder and CEO Pushkar Gaikwad, backed by talented

developers Ankit and Anurag decided to come up with a Prospect Generation

Software, AeroLeads.

AeroLeads is powerful prospect generation software that finds the relevant

contact details of any company or person with their respective emails and phone

numbers.

For more information on prospect generation contact us on – (415) 830-6012 visit

us at AeroLeads.com or follow us on twitter @AeroLeads

https://aeroleads.com/

https://twitter.com/