How to prospect well on the Internet… When your prospects are not connected?

[pramaniktonmoy]

The relevance of social networks in commercial prospecting is no longer in doubt: 78% of consumers say they are influenced by social networks in their purchasing decision and 55% of B2B buyers actually use social networks in their purchasing process.

This is naturally an opportunity to fully exploit in your commercial prospecting. As we regularly see here, it is vital for you to integrate the Internet and social networks into your prospecting strategy.

But how can you prospect effectively on the Internet when your prospects are not connected?

If we look at the statistics seen previously, 22% of buyers are not influenced by social networks and 45% of B2B buyers do not use social networks to make their purchasing decision.

So you might be tempted to say that it is not possible to prospect these buyers on the Internet?

Even if your prospects don't use social media, a study conducted by DemandGen poland email list reveals that a buyer consults on average 3 different pieces of content on the Internet before making a purchasing decision.

4 Steps to Prospecting Online When Your Prospects Aren't Connected


Step #1 – Set up monitoring around the target company
Even if your prospects are not connected, they are inevitably talked about on the Internet. Their company news is reported by specialized sites, their customers leave opinions and reviews on social networks or forums and other collaborators are active on the web.

So create alerts around the name of your target company – using a tool like Google Alerts for example – to receive in real time all the new content put online around it.

The idea is to collect key information that will allow you to get in touch with your prospect, more effectively than by making a cold call.



Step #2 – Create content
As we saw in the introduction, a buyer consults on average 3 different pieces of content before making a purchasing decision.

Whether connected to social networks or not, the buyer has now become accustomed to searching for information himself rather than having it imposed on him through unwanted communications.

If your prospect will not directly search for an offer on the internet, he will use Google and search engines to find solutions to the problem he is encountering.

To reach them, you must therefore create content regularly on your website, not to promote your products but to address the issues that your prospect encounters using the keywords that they use.

This will not only allow you to be visible on Google but also to position yourself as an expert in your field of activity.



Step #3 – Take an altruistic approach
This step will allow you to improve the response after your first contact. Did you know that only 1% of cold calls generate an appointment?

The idea here is to establish contact not to directly offer an appointment to your prospect but rather to provide added value based on the elements you will have acquired during the previous tips.

What we like to do for ourselves (and our clients!) is send an email to our prospect to offer them a download of a white paper that matches a need we identified in steps 1 and 2.

Remember, your prospect is not expecting you to give them a presentation of your product or service. They want to validate whether you are the right person to help them solve their problem or not.



Step #4 – Bring context to your prospecting actions
The goal of this 4-step prospecting method is to increase productivity by personalizing your approach as much as possible and establishing a close relationship between you and your prospects.

To do this, it is important to leverage all the elements you have gathered during the previous steps to demonstrate to your prospect that you are truly interested throughout the sales process.

In this process, it is important to contextualize each of your prospecting actions. Whether it is your calls or your emails.

Your prospect has raised funds? Congratulate him. He is looking to recruit a new sales resource? Send him a guide to recruiting well. He has visited your website several times? Remind him of it.

So you will have understood: to optimize the return on your prospecting actions, it is important to use all the information you have at your disposal.