Sales Prospecting
Sales prospecting is the work of finding potential buyers who fit a company's ideal customer profile, researching them and starting first conversations with them.
Also called: prospecting, outbound prospecting
Why it matters
Prospecting fills the top of the sales pipeline when inbound demand is not enough. It gives a sales team control over which accounts it pursues, instead of waiting for the right buyers to arrive on their own. The quality of prospecting sets the ceiling for everything after it: a weak list produces weak meetings no matter how good the pitch is.
Prospecting has two halves. Research builds the list: choosing accounts that fit, finding the right people and their contact details, and looking for reasons to reach out now. Outreach starts the conversation through channels such as cold email, cold calls and LinkedIn messages. Teams often use buying signals and trigger events to decide who to contact first.
Example
An SDR at a company selling recruiting software filters for companies with 200 to 1,000 employees that posted more than ten job openings this month. She finds the head of talent at each one, verifies their emails, notes one detail about their hiring, and starts a short sequence of emails and LinkedIn messages.
Questions people ask
Is prospecting and cold calling the same thing?
No. Prospecting is the whole job of finding, researching and contacting potential buyers. Cold calling is one way to make that contact, alongside cold email, LinkedIn messages and other channels.
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