The most common mistakes companies make in the prospecting phase

Sometimes, after investing great efforts in developing an in-house prospecting team, investing huge amounts of time and money trying to generate leads, qualify them, create opportunities and aspire to a sale, we find that we do not obtain the expected results. It is true that there is no magic formula to achieve B2B sales, in fact, the first thing we have to understand is that in the B2B world, each sale is different, each client is different, the process is usually more complex, starting with the process prospecting. Reaching decision makers is not a matter of snapping your fingers and that’s it, and once we reach them, arousing their interest is not that easy.

Today we are going to tell you about the mistakes that we have identified that companies often make when prospecting:

They want results now! Prospecting is a continuous learning process. Things do not happen immediately, there may be iterations along the way, it may take several weeks until the appropriate decision maker of the target company is contacted and convinced to give a few minutes to further explore possible synergies.
Writing infinite e-mails, which do not follow a logical structure, suffer from being tremendously commercial and showing a desperate desire to sell.
Bad automation. Automation makes prospecting faster, but it certainly doesn’t mean forgetting to take care of the details. Too many emails are received in which the fields to be personalized are not personalized and you find that they greet you by saying Hello “name”, I am writing to you since your work as a “position” makes us believe that “company name” can benefit a lot from our services. This is bad, very bad!
Shoot in the dark by targeting many companies that are not a good target for the company. Properly segmenting the market, identifying the parameters that define the company’s ICP, not only saves time and energy, but also increases the efficiency of prospecting efforts.
Lack of preparation. Prospecting without information that allows you to personalize messages or qualify a target as much as possible is to burn cartridges unnecessarily. If you want to get it right, get it right from the start.
Do not use references or success stories that add value to the message presented, giving credibility to the solutions/products that are presented. People always trust what others say about you more than what you say about yourself.
Losing faith and throwing in the towel too soon with a target. Persist and you will win!
Not documenting the prospecting process well. “CRM is a brick, it takes up a lot of my time!” If you don’t know where you are with each prospect, how are you going to design a good strategy to convince them to listen to you, receive you or buy from you?
Not directly measuring performance or using the wrong metrics. Data always tells a story, defining KPIs and metrics that help continuously analyze the results of the prospecting process, helps a lot to apply necessary corrections on time and to capitalize on those actions that are bringing good results.