How to Succeed in Enterprise Sales Prospecting
Enterprise Sales Prospecting is similar to sales prospecting with SMBs (small- and mid-sized businesses), but on a larger scale. Every sales rep dreams to play in the Major League of marketing business. To achieve that goal, it’s crucial to find and secure business leads from truly “big players” on the market. The question is how you can do this quickly and effectively. Let’s see how this problem might be solved.
Let’s consider some statistics first. An average B2B prospect receives 120 plus emails every day. To make a sale or establish a business lead, it takes eighteen calls and five follow-ups. If you want to make a deal with large companies, it is important that you multiply these numbers by 2.
Is this to say that enterprise prospecting can be twice as difficult as normal sales prospecting? Not at all. It’s just different and requires an innovative approach, especially during times of global pandemics when traditional outreach channels such as B2B forums or conferences are not available. In this case, it might be useful to search for help from the outside, for instance, hiring a B2B lead generation service or launching an aggressive marketing campaign.
Thus, it is important to know essential strategies for enterprise prospecting from Belkins that will take your b2b lead generation outreach to a whole new level in 2022. Let’s first define the concept of enterprise sales prospecting before we get to the tip.
What is Enterprise Prospecting?
Enterprise prospecting is similar to sales prospecting with SMBs (small- and mid-sized businesses), but on a larger scale. This involves identifying potential clients who have a high annual contract value (ACV) and then transferring them to sales agents to close big deals. Prospecting large companies is different from prospecting SMB. There are three key differences in getting new business leads for SMB and enterprise prospecting
1. Sales cycles take longer
The average SMB prospecting sales cycle takes around three months. This process can take up to six months for large companies, and sometimes even more. Prospecting businesses takes a lot of effort and time. Once the deal is done, however, it’s well worth the dividends.
2. There are more decision-makers
B2B companies have six- to ten decision-makers who are involved in the buying process. For ordinary sales prospecting to win a deal, it is enough to get one “yes” from one decision-maker. Enterprise prospecting will require you to interact with multiple decision-makers simultaneously. It can be stressful and difficult to pitch for a whole group of people. Another matter to deal with is the appointment setting. Getting in contact with lots of executives can be frustrating and tiresome. Thus, you should always try to optimize the way meetings and negotiations are organized.
3. There are more objections that need to be addressed
There will be more objections if there are more decision-makers. Each decision-maker usually has four to five pieces of information about your company that they can use to support their objections. You will need to overcome 50 objections after answering five questions during the discovery phone call. The more prepared you are for the meeting the better the outcome. Also, don’t be afraid to get a refusal. It’s not something that ends your business cycle, and even a top b2b lead generation company might get a firm “no” from a prospect. Just overcome it and keep moving forward.
4. Sales Enablement Content Is Super Important
When enterprise sales prospecting, sales prospects are bombarded daily from all corners of the internet: contact forms, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc
The quickest way to stand out from the pack of the hundreds of people emailing them monthly is to have well-designed, strategic, sales enablement content. Take a look at your sales enablement content and be honest – would you be impressed if someone was pitching you? Are you including the essential types of sales enablement content?
As the famous saying goes “you must go slow to go fast”, spending the time to work on your sales content will help your enterprise sales prospecting because an impressive deck full of useful information backed by stats, problems, and clear solutions with really good case studies will take you farther than emailing another 1,000 prospects. Check out this sales enablement platform for help in achieving better results (https://www.allego.com/blog/what-is-sales-enablement/).
5 Tips to Ensure a Successful Enterprise Sales Prospecting
Now that you are clear about the differences between enterprise prospecting and regular sales prospecting it is time to ask how to make this process work for your team in 2022. These are the five most important rules to remember:
1. You need to find a balance between tech and human approaches.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2019, marketing automation tools have become the most important tool for lead generation optimization. Hubspot found that 68% of businesses have used automation at least once. To be successful in enterprise prospecting, it is important to strike the right balance between technology and human touch. This will allow you to increase both the quality and quantity of your outreach.
Your business may be outdated if you only send one email per sales rep. You’re obsolete if you only dial one number at a given time. Your team will be much more efficient if you automate these two aspects with parallel dialing or email automation tools. Speaking of which, don’t forget to monitor your email deliverability rates. There are several tools for this purpose on the market these days. However, Folderly proved to be the most convenient and reliable so far. The in-built spam – checker and flexible tools for monitoring e-mail deliverability won’t leave you cold.
SDRs don’t have to pay for them to dial a number or send email templates. Selling is only possible when there is a value-added conversation with potential clients. Secure your email delivery and ensure that your phone calls are returned. This will increase your chances of a successful prospecting experience with new technologies.
2. You should be focusing on context and not content.
This context can be built by using visual elements in your email messages. Text conversations can be emotionally filled with images, emojis, and gifs. These strategies can be used to elicit emotions in your prospect’s mind. Don’t forget to create context with personalization methods.
3. Do your research, analyze, adapt, and then repeat.
Sales skills are essential for enterprise sales prospecting. It’s one thing to identify the decision-makers, but it’s quite another to identify their pain points. Research, research, and more research is the only strategy that works.
Spend twenty minutes looking through all information on the account before you call the prospect. It doesn’t suffice to pick one trigger and bring that up in a conversation. You need to identify your prospect properly and then address them all intelligently. Such a smart approach will work as your best lead generator.
4. Do not focus on closing deals, but build relationships.
There is a danger of falling into the selfish trap when using the outbound channel to prospect for enterprise sales. This is a very awkward situation. Instead of engaging prospects in conversation, the salesperson just pitches their product until momentum for making a great first impression.
You’re creating long-term possibilities with enterprises. It’s not your goal to close the deal in the first contact (that’s not possible for enterprises), but to build a relationship with prospects and make them want more conversations with you. This is best achieved by having a conversation about the client and the prospect.
5. Try to rely on the past experience
When we speak about successful sales, your words are as good as your actions. Figures and promises might sound convincing, but it’s better to keep your word even when it comes to a minute action. Remember that your results are not just based on previous clients. Remember that enterprises gain serious advantages working with a smaller company like you.
Focus on benefits such as faster deployment, access to your top-level execs, and more personalized customer service. This also works for b2b online lead generation mechanisms.
Final Thoughts
Every marketing action has consequences in terms of your online presence and credibility.
The key things here are prioritization, individual engagement, and creating lasting results you can leverage for later. Simply put, do the right work, with the right people, consistently and you won’t regret it. Treat every prospect as an individual and make them feel like the only one.
