5 Essential tips for building a prospects list for your new business
Ever wondered how big firms build their prospects list? If you are, like most people, on the verge of venturing into a new business or taking up a new sales role, you are probably having a hard time figuring out how to start. The uncertainty lying ahead is often a valid cause for concern. But it shouldn’t be.
In this article, we will be offering you guidance through the front door of the sales cycle. Below we have highlighted seven essential tips for building a prospect database for your new business. The art of creating this database of potential customers is referred to as ‘prospecting.’
Understanding prospecting
Every successful sales process is executed around the simple principle of “making the right product available at the right price, to the right people.” This means bringing your solution to the point of your customer’s need. The act of finding cohesion between all these conditions is the bane of every business. Prospecting is the first step in this process. Because it answers the questions “who needs our product?” and “Where can we find them?”
When prospecting, you leverage the predefined user persona and other data points to accumulate potential buyers for your products into a list. This list is one of your most valuable assets as a business. Think of it as the ore from which gold is mined.
How you can build your prospect list
Your prospect list is only as effective as the care and attention you put into its curation. By narrowing its parameters to be as close as possible to your ideal customer. Your ist is effective if it gives a high rate of sales conversion. There are several methods for building an effective prospects list for your new business, as we will discuss below.
Before venturing out to start working on your list, note that it is vital to avoid the temptation to adopt a random list. List buying or adoption with the hope of mining customers from it might do more harm than good for your business in the long run. This is because the people’s motivation on the list is unknown to you, the same way your business is also strange to them.
Building your prospect list
So how do you build your prospect list? Here are some methods you can adopt:
Set up a form on your website encouraging visitors to sign up:
Online users stop by your platform for different reasons. It is in your best interest to know them and understand their needs.
Adding a well-structured form to your website is a common way to achieve this. It allows you to capture information about them and their intentions. Making a form available on your website gives them a place to share this information with you. The form can either be built into your product or be set up with third-party applications like Popup Maker, Poptin, Hello Bar, and a host of others.
You can use this information to follow up and close the sale or remarket to them in the future. This information makes up an excellent prospects list for your new business.
Set up tracking technology on your website to capture visitor’s information:
Let’s face it, not everyone who visits your platform will be disposed to filling out your form at the time. So how can you get to know they came by?
Besides the option of using a form, there are several other ways to track your website visitors. One of the famous ones is with web cookies -this is a small piece of data stored on the user’s computer by the web browser while using the internet.
Cookies were designed to be a reliable mechanism for websites to remember information, remember the user’s browsing activities, or other details they entered on your website. – Wikipedia. This can be used by your technical team to research more information about the visitor and to retarget them for future marketing and sales.
Platforms like Facebook and Google install snippets of codes (cookies) into your website. These codes track your visitor’s activities and help you grow a list of your prospects to carry out future marketing.
Grow your network within customer clusters:
Because people are naturally social, we often aggregate into clusters based on similarities in our interests. These clusters favour marketing and sales efforts.
After identifying the unique characteristics of your potential customers, you can hack the growth of your database by connecting with places, networks, groups, or communities where their members are driven by those characteristics that are favourable to your business. Your goal is to connect to as many of these clusters as possible to extend your potential reach. As they grow, your prospect list grows.
Grow your connection with prospects across social platforms:
There are several communities across the different social channels that can be leveraged to further your cause. Growing your network goes beyond finding and plugging into these platforms. It also involves active participation to build the required level of publicity and trust.
This is an essential tip for building a prospects list for your new business. Why? The more recognizable your brand is to your prospects, the more likely they are to pay attention to your message and eventually make a purchase.
Different social media platforms offer unique styles to access communities. Like Facebook and LinkedIn groups, Clubhouse spaces, etc. The goal is to find the one that works for you and leverage your engagement to grow your prospects.
Run promotions:
Nothing gets customers’ attention as well as a good deal. When you offer a good deal, you also get some level of control over the activities engaged in by those looking to be a part of your offerings. In order words, you set the rules of engagement, including collecting valuable information which can be used to refine your prospect list.
Conclusion
Using these essential tips for building your prospect list will give you the edge you need to explore new business opportunities in any market you choose to venture into. Have you tried any? Share your experiences and outcomes in the comments below.
