What Is a Prospect? Turn Leads Into Opportunities

What is a Prospect in Sales?

A sales prospect is a potential customer who fits your business’s ideal customer profile (ICP) and shows signs of interest in your product or service. Identifying and engaging with the right prospects is crucial for building relationships and converting them into customers.

How Do I Identify Prospects?

Identifying prospects that are a good match for your product involves understanding your ICP and evaluating whether a potential customer meets specific criteria. Here are key questions and details to consider:

Need: Does the prospect have a need for your product or service? Assess their current challenges and how your offering can address them. Look for signs that they are seeking solutions similar to what you provide, such as engaging with related content or asking relevant questions.
Budget: Can they afford your offering? Determine if the prospect has the financial resources to invest in your product or service. This can often be inferred from the size of their organization, their market position, or their previous spending behavior.
Authority: Do they have the power to make purchasing decisions? Ensure that you are engaging with decision-makers or influencers within the organization who have the authority to approve the purchase. It’s important to identify and build relationships with these key stakeholders early on.
Interest: Have they shown interest in your product or service? Look for indications of engagement, such as attending webinars, downloading resources, interacting with your social media posts, or responding to initial outreach efforts. This interest can signal their readiness to learn more and potentially move forward in the buying process.
Pain Points: Do they have challenges that your product can solve? Understand their specific pain points and how your solution can alleviate these issues. Tailoring your messaging to address these pain points directly can significantly enhance your appeal to the prospect.

To maximize efficiency, focus on decision-makers who can authorize purchases, ensuring you spend time on prospects with the highest potential. This involves:

Research: Conduct thorough research on the organization and the individuals you’re targeting. Use tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to gather detailed information about their roles, responsibilities, and recent activities.
Prioritization: Prioritize prospects based on their alignment with your ICP and their demonstrated level of interest. Develop a scoring system to rank prospects and focus your efforts on those with the highest scores.
Personalization: Personalize your outreach efforts based on the prospect’s specific needs and interests. Tailored communication can significantly improve your chances of engaging the prospect and progressing the conversation.

What is the Difference Between a Sales Prospect and a Sales Lead?

A sales lead is a potential customer who has shown initial interest in your product or service, while a sales prospect is a qualified lead that fits your ideal customer profile (ICP) and is more likely to consider purchasing from your business.

Sales Lead: A sales lead is an individual or organization that has shown some level of interest in your product or service but has not yet been fully qualified. Leads are typically at the top of the sales funnel and may have come from various sources such as:

Marketing Campaigns: Responses to marketing efforts like email campaigns, advertisements, webinars, or social media posts.
Website Interactions: Visitors who have filled out contact forms, downloaded resources, or signed up for newsletters.
Referrals: Recommendations from existing customers, partners, or other contacts.
Purchased Lists: Contact information acquired from third-party vendors.

Leads are generally characterized by their initial engagement with your business, but at this stage, you have limited information about their fit with your ICP or their readiness to buy. The main objective with leads is to gather more information and qualify them to determine if they have the potential to become prospects.

Sales Prospect: A sales prospect, on the other hand, is a lead that has been further evaluated and qualifies as a potential customer based on specific criteria. Prospects fit your ICP and have shown signs of moving down the sales funnel. Key indicators that a lead has become a prospect include:

Qualification: The lead has been assessed against criteria such as need, budget, authority, interest, and pain points. This evaluation confirms that they are a good fit for your product or service.
Engagement: The lead has engaged with your business multiple times, showing a deeper interest in what you offer. This could include attending a demo, participating in a detailed discussion, or requesting a proposal.
Readiness to Buy: The prospect has indicated a readiness to move forward in the buying process, such as asking specific questions about pricing, implementation, or customization.

The transition from lead to prospect involves a qualification process where sales teams gather more detailed information through various methods:

Lead Scoring: Assigning scores to leads based on their engagement level, fit with ICP, and other factors. Higher scores indicate higher potential.
Discovery Calls: Conducting initial calls to understand the lead’s needs, challenges, and decision-making process.
Research: Using tools like LinkedIn, company websites, and industry reports to gather information about the lead’s organization and role.

Leads require nurturing and qualification, while prospects are ready for more direct sales activities aimed at converting them into customers.

When is the best time to engage a prospect?

When looking to engage a prospect, different stages of interest could help you decide the best time to approach. Remember, the difference between a lead and a prospect is that leads can be cold, but prospects have already shown at least some interest in your product. Here’s a few examples of different stages to engage with the prospect:

Stage A

A prospect at this stage would have shown an interest in your business but may/may not have a pain point that needs addressing or may not even be aware that they have one. When trying to sell at stage A, you can use the opportunity to discuss their pain points with them. To either educate them on these or use your product or service to be their solution. Your aim should be that by the time they reach stage B, your business is the solution to their pain points, and therefore should be the top contender.

Stage B

By stage B, your prospect should already understand their pain point and be looking for their solution. They may have already reached out to your business as a potential solution, but they might have also discovered their options through research, recommendations, and ads. You can use intent data you have gathered from places like website visits, downloads, mailing list sign-ups, or third-party websites to engage with prospects at this stage. As they are already aware of their pain points, using a clear call to action (CTA) can help influence their decision towards your business. CTAs such as “try now” or “book a demo” use persuasive and clear language to sell your solution.

Stage C

The prospect will be in an active conversation with at least 1 vendor by stage C. The vendors may be planning or have already completed POCs or pilot tests with the prospect to showcase their offering and sell their services to them. If you are part of the shortlist of vendors, use this time to answer any questions they have and fully explain the ins and outs of your services. This includes all of its features, what makes it valuable, as well as continuing to express how your business is their solution.

If you are only just reaching out to a prospect in stage C, this may be too late as they will have usually already compiled a shortlist of vendors to consider. If this is the case, it might be worth offering a discount to help drive the sale. However, if this is successful, it would mean your sale would be driven by price rather than value. This is something we would not recommend and can devalue your services.

Stage D

Stage D is the final part of the process. The prospect has chosen a solution to their pain point and proceeded with the purchase. If your services were not chosen, it might be worth adding them to your nurture program. By doing this, you will have a potential sales prospect for the future if their chosen solution does not work out.

Although thesee are 4 stages, this does not mean that they are all points to reach out. Your ideal position would be to engage at stages A to B, and C at the latest. It is crucial to capture a prospect from an early stage to follow them through their process of finding a solution, reaching a decision, and driving your selling points from the beginning.

Tracking your intent data regularly means you’re capturing them early in their search. It is essential to remember that although there are 4 stages, each prospect will complete each stage at a different pace. This could be something an individual or organization completes in a week or a year. This is why making contact promptly can be the difference between a sale and a loss.

Qualifying a prospect

You’ll need to qualify your sales prospects before proceeding to make connections. This is so you’re only dedicating time to those who are more likely to consider and purchase your services, to avoid resource and time wastage in your organization.

Qualifying a prospect is the process of determining if they have a need for your business, the authority to agree on the sale, and the budget available to purchase, all within a timeline that is suitable for the sales cycle.

Having a need for your business

Take a look at their current solutions if they have one in place and compare your product. Often you can find areas where your product can outperform their current process, leaving you an opportunity to sell. Use this advantage to tailor your pitch, highlighting your benefits and what the customer will gain. Taking examples from their current solutions and bringing to their attention the pain points they may not even know are there. This will give your business a step up on competing vendors.

Authority of sale

You will need to check early into the sales timeline that you are speaking with the decision maker to avoid any delays later down the line. When communicating with your contact, using intelligent questions can avoid a block in later stages.

Example Intelligent Questions

“Assuming this deal moves forward, who from your organization will need to be part of that decision”.
“To ensure all stakeholders are aware of what we offer, could you confirm who will be part of this decision process”.
“Who is the best contact to continue discussions with if this deal was to progress”.

These are all examples of a professional way to check these details early on without being direct.

Budget Alignment

Pitching to a prospect without the budget to purchase your services is a loss of time for not only your sales team but their organization as well. Understanding their budget and what they’re looking to get within that budget, will help you to gain insight on their expectations and if this is a qualifying prospect.

This can be done at stage C during conversations directly before trials and demonstrations, but also indirectly throughout stages A and B by reviewing the company’s size and spending behavior.

Sales Cycle

You may find that some customers have urgent timelines. Checking this from your initial conversations allows you to set realistic standards until completion. If your service involves the need for demonstrations and trials, it is important to make your customer aware of the process and timeline for getting these arranged.

You may also find that they are looking for a future solution, and not ready at this stage to complete a purchase. This could be due to budget or how necessary their need is for the service at this time.

Qualifying prospects with the BANT framework

BANT stands for Budget, Authority, Need, and Time. This is a widely used framework for qualifying prospects. This is a useful framework to check if they meet the criteria.

Budget

Does the prospect have the budget to afford your product?

Authority

Does the contact you have from the organization have the decision-making power, or can they lead you to the person who does? This is where you can use intelligent questions to confirm.

Need

Does the prospect have a business need that your product can solve? Find the opportunity in their organization to sell your solution.

Timeline

Is there an urgency or a specific timeline within which they plan to purchase a solution?

What are the best tools for prospecting?

Precise and easy-to-use tools for prospecting:

Connecting your CRM to LinkedIn: Add any LinkedIn contacts to your CRM in just one click. Including name, position, company, and more.
Integrating your CRM with LinkedIn Sales Navigator: This tool allows you to integrate with LinkedIn Sales Navigator and use its advanced search filters to create a list of decision makers that you can align with your ICP and export into your CRM.
Surfe’s Intelligent Email Finder: Add a LinkedIn contact to your CRM and Surfe will run the contact through the intelligent enrichment cascade and automatically add their email to your CRM. It’s that easy!