Sales prospecting is now a core competency of salesforce.com. I haven’t yet come across a company that has a more effective system, and I’ve looked hard, since I am always looking for better, more productive methods.
If prospecting is important to your team, and especially if you have people dedicated to it, it’s worth taking a look at a couple of presentations salesforce.com has posted from past Dreamforces:
Dreamforce 2005 Prospecting Session
I’d focus on the last 2/3 of this one. The Breeze version has audio, and you can easily skip around topics (I’m the second speaker).
Dreamforce 2006 “Top 10 Prospecting Tools” Session
Especially take a look at the first section by Ryan Martin, of salesforce.com.
These presentations don’t share all the secrets, but do have a variety of useful insights and metrics.
Two Insights
If I can share just two insights into making outbound sales or marketing work, it would be these two:
1) Focus: the more specific and smarter you are about who your target industries and customers are, the more effective your outbound efforts will be.
2) Process: prospecting (or any kind of outbound lead generation) will only be effective if it is process-driven. Prospecting is not about cold calls and quick hits – it’s about patiently persistent, consistent follow through.
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