The All-Important Balance Between Quality and Quantity of Sales Prospecting

Some of the Sales executives I have had the privilege of relating on best practices of prospecting share the notion of the more the merrier. The more being referred to as the prospect. In other words, the more prospects you email/call, the greater the chances of landing a meeting or closing a deal. In fact, landing a meeting may not translate to closing a deal.

Quantity can be considered important in the retail business but not so in the Internet business. It's vital to be more targeted and truly value-adding to convince a prospect to do business with you.

One of the major tactics is to target prospects through LinkedIn.

Hubspot's Leslie Ye recently shared some thoughtful hints on sales prospecting and the LinkedIn tactic stood out in 2 points.

1) Research Your Prospect

LinkedIn

You really do not need to know someone's entire history before emailing or picking up the phone to call the person. But since this is business-related and there's a unique social media platform for business relationships, then a little digging will do. LinkedIn is the go-to social media platform for such activities. This is important to check this person's qualification for your pitch and possibly have an insight into his role in the decision-making process of closing the deal. 
You can check their recent activity on the platform, job history and also view any mutual connections you have and related skills. I've personally found Google and LinkedIn of great advantage in researching my prospects.

2) One for Many 
Using LinkedIn can greatly improve access to similar prospects. There are 2 features which are very helpful: "People Also Viewed" and "People Similar To". This makes it easier to know, research, qualify and contact related prospects that are relevant to your business. You can build your leads from these options and thus build a quality list of prospects to sell your pitch.

This qualitative approach will increase the chances of a meeting as well as increase the quantity of prospects. And by the way, you don't have to be on the phone all day. Schedule a Skype meeting and close the deal in less time.

Thanks for reading!