Prospecting List: Your Complete Guide to Finding More Leads

Sales prospecting lists are a list of quality leads who are likely to buy from your brand. These prospect lists help your sales team reach their target audience, who are more likely to convert. If you want to fulfill your sales goals, you can't forget about building a prospect list. A good prospecting list not only includes basic information on ideal prospects but also helps the marketing & sales reps to connect with the quality leads with the right information in the right way. 

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You may be wondering about the most profitable ways to prospect and how you can start finding prospects for your business. This article will look into the best practices for building a prospecting list for successful sales. We will explore the different ways of prospecting and the best sales prospecting tools to help build your list quickly. By the end of this blog post, you will know the best strategies & techniques for developing your own sales prospecting list. Let's dive right in.

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What Is a Prospecting List?

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Prospecting lists are a list of qualified prospects, containing information about potential prospects. A prospecting list is typically used to identify and qualify prospective buyers. It contains basic data such as contact information, industry, job title, organization, email address, phone number, and geographic location.

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With the help of these prospect lists, sales reps can build a professional relationship with potential customers by sharing values. Lead nurturing will likely convert these solid client base lists into loyal customers.  

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You can generate more sales by finding leads and maintaining good prospecting lists. The prospecting list needs to contain valid and upto the date of prospects so that the sales team can prioritize those leads to active sales.

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Why is the prospect list important?

Here are 4 primary reasons why a business needs an effective prospect list for their sales outreach 

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• It enables the sales team to reach the right people who are likely to convert.
• Enable your business to perfectly position your product/services based on the prospect's needs. 
• The prospect list will contain the high-priority leads where the sales & marketing team can reach out and sell more products/services. 

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How to Build a B2B Sales Prospecting List

Here is the simple step-by-step process guide to building your prospect list for your sales cold email outreach. 

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Step 1: Identify your Targeted Audience 

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Before you build a list for your cold email marketing, you need to determine who your prospects are. You need to choose your buyer persona to begin your sales cycle. With your marketing strategy, you can determine your company's preferred client. 

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You can identify your prospective customers, their interest, and pain points using the existing information of the target profile. And you can increase sales by identifying the right prospect and target market. 

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Step 2: Utilize Your Current Customer

If you're starting your lead generation process, start with the existing inactive customer base. Since the current customers have already benefited through your business solution, there are more chances of making another purchase with your brand. 

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Retargeting your inactive customer's list with your email marketing campaign will generate more sales. These good-fit customers are more likely to purchase more products because they already benefit from what you're selling. It will help your business to increase your response rate and grow revenue. 

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Similarly, a referral program is a great customer acquisition strategy with the existing customer helps the business to grow new customers. Referral marketing is a great opportunity to generate quality leads through happy customers, and this customer referral marketing has a lower CPA (Cost per acquisition).  The best example for referral marketing is Dropbox. The brand has gained 4 million users and 35% of signups through the referral program alone. 

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Step 3: Identify the decision-makers

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Suppose you are performing a b2b sales cold email outreach. In that case, once you have identified the right targeting company, it is more important to find the right decision maker within the business for the campaign list. 

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You can find potential decision-makers through Linkedin profiles and company websites. Finding the right decision makers is made simple with the Smartwriter b2b sales prospecting software chrome extension. Using this chrome extension, you can scrap 1000s of Qualified leads from the Linkedin sales navigator for free. Download Smartwriter LinkedIn Lead Gen chrome extension and build your prospect list with quality leads. 

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Through the Chrome extensions, you can discover the prospect's data and can easily add those new leads to your prospecting list automatically. Similarly, another most effective way to generate quality leads is through the lead generation platform. The lead generation software helps the salesperson to generate quality leads with accurate contact detail. 

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Step 4: Qualifying & Prioritize your prospects

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Once you've created your prospect list, you can begin researching and qualifying your leads. These qualified leads have a high potential to purchase your product and meet your requirements.

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It's always not easy to make sales as not all prospects on your list will likely buy your product. After prospecting, it is important to have a lead qualifying process to identify a prospect's buying intention early on and prioritize the people who are more likely to purchase.

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The first stage in the lead qualification process is initiating contact with the potential customer. You do this by emailing them, making a phone call, or arranging a meeting. Qualify the lead by contacting them and asking about their needs, interests, timeline, decision-making process, and budgetary constraints.

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Prioritize quality leads on the list through proven lead qualifying questions. Qualifying leads will help to speed up the sales pipeline, close more sales and grow the business. This will help the sales team to focus on the people interested in your offerings instead of concentrating on the less committed leads to your product /service.

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Read more about the effective ways of sales prospecting to improve your sales efforts and grow your business. 

What Are the Best Prospecting List Building Methods?
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1. Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator

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Using LinkedIn, you can build a highly targeted B2B prospect list. According to the survey, top sellers use LinkedIn 3x more than the others to attain a highly targeted sales prospect list.

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LinkedIn lets you quickly build a detailed b2b prospect list of prospects likely to purchase your product. To find prospects with Linkedin, first and foremost, you want to search for your targeted customer by clicking on the Filter people option. Plenty of filters can narrow the search, like the region or industry they work in. Check out this article on LinkedIn's Email Finder and find anyone's email address.

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It is a great platform to connect with other professional prospects. As LinkedIn remains the world's largest professional network, it is not surprising that practically all business professionals have an account.

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LinkedIn groups are another source for building a B2B prospect list. These groups allow brands to establish a presence in their industry. LinkedIn groups increase brand visibility, enable the business to reach more prospects, and improve brand awareness. 

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Find groups related to your niche to interact with the community. One way to do this is by adding your insight and answering people's questions. Questions are one way of contributing to communities.

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LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a free add-on that makes it easier for sales professionals to find qualified contacts on the site. You can use LinkedIn’s search tools to find people based on industry, job function,  company size, company location, and many other criteria. Once you’ve found people, you can see their full profile, including education history, career path, skills, and recommendations. If you want to connect them directly, you can send a personalized email via InMail.

The app is designed to help salespeople generate more business, but anyone can use it. After signing up, you’ll receive a link to download the app on iOS and Android devices. To access Sales Navigator, go to the “More Options” section of your LinkedIn account settings. Then select “Sales Navigator.” From there, you can choose whether to make the app visible to everyone or just to yourself.

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2. Employ Email Marketing Tool

Various email marketing tools make prospect building easier. The sales automation tool enables the marketer to gather prospect data more easily and help validate and ensure the email addresses' accuracy before your outreach. 

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Transferring data using email marketing tools is not a difficult thing. These sales outreach tools help to gather all the details about your prospects, and then your sales reps can transfer them to various existing databases.

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Many email marketing tools in the market allow you to transfer the list of prospect contacts and their contact information onto other database platforms.

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3. Cold Sales Calling

82% of buyers will accept meeting requests when they are called by a sales professional. Cold calling is still effective because it puts you face-to-face with a potential buyer. You can build rapport quickly and establish trust.

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However, cold calling requires a lot of work. You must find prospects, research their companies, and identify the people responsible for buying decisions. This is where lead generation/email lookup tools and data enrichment come into play.

They enable you to target the right audience and reach the right decision makers. Once you've identified the best leads, you'll want to ensure that you're speaking with the right person. Develop a good and flexible calling script that outlines how to discuss your product or service. Use multi-touch channels, including phone, email, and social media, to qualify the leads and understand their interests, requirements, challenges, etc.

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When you call, avoid being too pushy and ask open questions about what the prospect does, why they need to buy, and what problems need to be solved. Listening carefully is essential to understand what they need, and salespeople can suggest the solution based on their wants for better sales closer.

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4. Referral Programs 

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Referrals are another great source for getting new leads to the business. Whenever your customers refer someone to you from within the same company or industry, they're opening the sale for you. Then all you must do is contact the person and seal the deal.

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Asking your existing customers for referrals is a good place to start. Focus on your most satisfied customers. Once you've asked them, they will refer their friends & family or colleagues who might be interested in your solutions. The sales team follows up and converts them into buyers with their contact details.

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If your solution needs a wider reach, you can develop a more profitable strategy referral system. You can reward or pay your existing customers for every lead they generate that ends up converting.

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5. Strategic Partnerships

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Strategic partnerships are a great way for sales professionals to grow their customer list. They provide valuable information and data. Build partnerships or networking with larger companies to reach your targeted niche audience. Building connections with other businesses can lead not just to sales but also partnerships to find companies that share similar customer bases. 

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Find the right partnership and reach out directly via email or phone call. Showing them work together will benefit both the business in reaching more audiences & sales through simple guest posting, co-hosting a large event, etc. It will create an opportunity for generating new leads and improve your brand visibility among your targeted audience. 

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6. Utilize Website

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Offer free reports, newsletter subscriptions, Free Ebooks, etc., to promote on their website in exchange for ideal customer contact information.

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In your landing page, contact us page, or best-performing blog page, create an Opt-in to convert your website visitor into a subscriber to receive the latest update and news about your brand and build your warm lead list. 

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Set up a subscribe form where they can enter their email address, and we'll send them updates whenever there's new content available. This collected information of the website visitors is transferred into the client management system or CRM.

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The sales prospecting techniques we’ve outlined are tried and true methods for finding and connecting with potential customers. By using a combination of online resources, personal networking, and outbound prospecting strategies, you can better find buyers for your product or service. 

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How To Use Smartwriter To Build Your Prospect List

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Using  Smartwriter, the Personalised LinkedIn Lead Gen feature, your business can start scraping thousands for quality leads from LinkedIn Sales Navigator just by adding the chrome extension. You can create a prospect list, personalize your email copy and schedule them in no time.

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It is a great way to find the valid email of potential clients from a LinkedIn sales navigator.  This is how the Linkedin email scraper chrome extension works to start building your prospect leads list after downloading the chrome extension. 

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• Create a sales navigator account for your business where you can scrap quality leads from millions of valid ideal customer profiles. 
• You need to enter their job role, such as "HR Directors," and click "search". 
• It will give immediate results of prospects with educational details, job titles, business domain names, and other information such as company names and locations or contact information. 
• We can even sort the contact details by industry if required. We can find the contact details for a person in your industry, so you don't have to worry about missing anyone.
• You can start scraping your search leads automatically from the lead result page by adding the start and end page on the Smartwriter chrome extension. 
• Here you can enable the scrap email on the application to scrap the prospect's email addresses, as shown below.

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• The tool will start scraping the prospect leads automatically, as shown below. 

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• The prospect leads are collected on your Smartwriter account in the lead list section. You can generate personalized email copy for your outreach and immediately automate your campaign from the software. 

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The Smartwiter chrome extension tool is the perfect solution for sales lead prospecting. It automatically starts scraping the prospect's, saving the time and energy of your sales team. Additionally, it's a great way to build your email list and increase your chances of making a sale. This tool is worth checking out if you're seeking an easy way to find potential customers. Here is the functional video on this b2b sales prospecting tool. 

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Conclusion 

A prospecting list is a compilation of potential customers your business could reach to sell its products or services. It's important to have an effective strategy for building your prospecting list, as the quality and accuracy of this data will determine how successful your sales efforts are. In this blog post, we've outlined several methods for building a high-quality contact list. We also introduced Smartwriter, a tool that can help you build an accurate prospect list and beyond. 

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