How to run a successful prospecting campaign? Plan and steps

Setting up a prospecting campaign can be a frustrating process, because there are so many parameters to consider. You need to establish your persona, choose your distribution channel, define your strategy, prepare your sales pitch…

Today, we’re going to make your task easier by talking to you about this last point. Onwards and upwards! 🏎️

What is a prospecting campaign?

A prospecting campaign is a set of actions and strategies implemented by a company (or professional) to identify, contact and convert new potential customers (prospects) into active customers. 🔥

The objective? Broaden the customer base by reaching 🎯 people or companies who might be interested in your products or services.

This can be done through a variety of channels using different prospecting techniques, such as: 👇🏼

• Content marketing to attract and engage qualified prospects (via articles, white papers or webinars).
• Prospecting on social networks (LinkedIn, Instagram, etc.).
• Sending targeted emails (cold emailing or email marketing).
• Cold calling.
• Online advertising (Google ads).
• Networking events.

To carry out a prospecting campaign, you’re going to need (as with any project) a plan! Don’t worry, we’ll help you draw up your prospecting plan. 😇

What is a prospecting plan?

Before we develop your plan, let’s understand what it is. 🤔
The prospecting plan will enable you to determine the structure of your business:

• How will you reach your target?
• How profitable will you be? 💰
• How will you grow your revenues?

With a prospecting plan as an example, you’ll have vision 👀 about your business and also enable your teams to understand which direction to head in.

Roughly speaking, the prospecting plan is the set of actions you’re going to put in place to attract your prospects and reach your objectives so that they succeed at the end of your funnel.

Your prospecting plan will comprise è key stages: 🗝️

• 1️⃣ Define your objectives.
• 2️⃣ Define your target.
• 3️⃣ Segment your targets.
• 4️⃣ Choose your prospecting and distribution channel.
• 5️⃣ Prepare your prospecting campaigns.
• 6️⃣ Measure your KPIs and monitor your actions.
• 7️⃣ Convert and build loyalty.

Where will you find your prospects? How can you both personalize and automate your approach to reach high volumes?

We explain it all now! ⬇️

7 steps to a prospecting plan

The B2b prospecting plan will facilitate your sales 🤩, that’s undeniable. By doing so, you’ll eliminate a good number of obstacles and make your decision-making easier.

Let’s take a detailed look at how to make a prospecting plan. 🤔

1) Define your objectives

It sounds obvious, but it’s a crucial step. To know where you need to go, you need to define your goals. You may have: 👇🏼

• Acquisition objectives: for example, you need to have X number of users of your product over an announced period.
• Traffic objectives: you want to reach 100,000 visitors to your site per month for year X.
• Sales objectives: you want to reach X € for year or month X.

By defining your objectives, you give yourself a direction, and if you work as a team, you give your team a direction ️.

Why is this so important? 🤔

Well, it’s so you can understand the issues facing your target audience. Your team (or just you, of course) will be able to find solutions and hit the mark. ⛵️

Speaking of targets, now’s the time to talk about them too. 🗣️

2) Define your target

For us, there’s no arguing with the fact that knowing your target 🎯 precisely, means knowing their needs, their pain points, their frustrations, why they buy from you and not from a competitor.

Drawing up a portrait of your ideal customer is part of your approach. 😇

This is also the time to think about customer loyalty. Knowing your target is a major asset in your strategy. And, of course, we haven’t forgotten about targeting. 🎯

Yes, you can have a main target, but you can also have an audience from elsewhere who will come and buy from you.

You can use all kinds of cool tools (some of them free) to create a portrait of your ideal lead.

These include: 👇🏼

• Userforge.
• Xtensio.
• Uxpressia.
• Illustrator (check out ❤️ for its total freedom of persona creation).

There are, of course, others you can use, so it’s up to you to explore.

Next, you need to bring up: ⬇️

• First and last name.
• Age or age range.
• Place of residence or geographical area.
• Gender.
• Marital status 💒.
• His/her title and position in the company.
• His/her needs.
• Her pain points or frustrations.
• How will your solution meet her needs?
• Why would she go to the competition rather than you?

There’s of course other relevant information you can put in (by the way, feel free to put in a photo so you have a visual representation of it). In that sense, feel free to add anything that echoes your solution. 👀

3) Segment your targets

You may have a buyer persona related to a theme (like marketing, for example) and think 🧠 about its title (director, assistant, manager…). As you may have noticed, there are several branches within the same theme.

To explain, your new customers will have different tastes, the same desires and the same behaviors. Yet they’ll still be interested in your product or service.

You can therefore separate them on the basis of socio-demographic criteria 👨‍👩‍👦 according to :

• 🔵 Their social status.
• 🟣 Age.
• 🔵 Their profession.
• 🟣 Their income.
• 🔵 Their activities.
• 🟣 Their opinions.
• 🔵 Their lifestyle.
• 🟣 Their purchasing behavior 💰.
• 🔵 Loyalty (are your targets loyal to certain brands?).
• 🟣 Their purchase frequency.

You can, of course, segment them according to your own criteria. 😇

Next, you’ll need to start making contact, a step in the various prospecting actions.

4) Choosing your prospecting and distribution channel

Okay, you’ve got your objectives and your personas, but which platform are you going to use to communicate?

As mentioned earlier, you have a choice of prospecting channels. One of our favorites is LinkedIn!

Why? 🤔

Because, with now over a billion members, you’re more than spoiled for choice. 😇

But, doing business prospecting by hand 🤚 takes so much time… And as they say, time is money.

So you need to think about the relevance of a free tool:

• How is it going to help you?
• What’s the budget 🤑 you’re willing to invest?

There are, of course, free or Freemium tools that will get you started with your prospecting.

We’ve got one in mind for you: Waalaxy. 👽

We’ll come back to it a little later in this article to introduce you to its various features. 👀

You can also pay platforms (like Google Ads) to try and sell your products (you’ll need to activate your ⚙️ settings for targeting, habits, etc.). But, you’ll have defined these criteria in your persona definition).

5) Prepare your prospecting campaigns

Now that you’ve put in place what we’ve seen above, you’ll need to think 🧠 about your prospecting conditions, which implies:

• 1️⃣ The message you’re going to send to your prospects.
• 2️⃣ The date on which you will send your message.
• 3️⃣ The tasks you need to complete.
• 4️⃣ The person in charge of a task.

In fact, you’ll simply create a document in which you’ll note down all the above points as well as the LinkedIn message you’re going to send to your leads.

6) Measure your KPIs and track your actions

Most people don’t like data. Yet, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty so you can know if you’re still heading in the right direction. 🧭

So you’re going to have to analyze the various campaigns you’ve launched. There’s no point in analyzing your results the day after you’ve launched a campaign, it’s absolutely useless. Measuring your performance 📏 lets you know whether your objectives were correctly defined and whether you’re on the right track to achieve them.

If you’ve exceeded your expected results, you can set yourself new ones, or continue to gain in growth and sales. 📈

Here’s our list of KPIs to track: 👇🏼

• 🟣 Sales.
• 🔵 Number of new leads.
• 🟣 Prospects who have become customers.
• 🔵 Traffic to your website (if you have one).
• 🟣 Level of influence.

Again, you can define your own KPIs.

7) Convert and build loyalty

Once you’ve got your prospects, you need to make sure they convert. So don’t neglect your prospecting funnel.

In your sales funnel, you’re going to try to send the right message at the right time to the prospect who’s in one of the parts of this funnel.

The digital prospecting funnel allows you to transform the simple visitor into « promoter ».

It’s a marketing automation tool that will enable you to (almost) automatically manage your various prospecting campaigns.

If someone buys from you, but then your customer goes straight to the competition, you have to ask yourself questions. It’s imperative that you think about customer retention so that your customers continue to buy from you and talk about you to others.

What is a prospecting file?

Obviously, we can’t talk about a prospecting campaign without mentioning the famous btob prospecting file. What is a prospecting file? 🤔

Basically, it’s simply your document containing a list of your prospects (we can also call it a prospect database). So you’re going to have information about your potential customers. The information you’ll find can be :

• First and last name.
• E-mail address.
• Socio-professional category.
• Telephone number.
• How he heard about your solution.
• The company they work for.
• Their sector of activity.

This sales prospecting file will enable you to approach these people with the aim of getting them to convert 🤑 with you and represent your customer portfolio.

Don’t know what this looks like? Come on, just for your own good 👀 eyes, we’ll show you.

B2b leads file: example

To give you a clear idea, let’s say we want to create a B2b prospect file. We’ll enter the following information. 👇🏼

Categories	Examples
Company name	ABC Industrie
Type of company	Limited liability company (SARL)
Sector	Manufacturing
Company address and postal code	123 Rue des Entrepreneurs, 75008
City	Paris
Phone number	01 23 45 67 89
Website	www.abcindustrie.fr
Person in charge of decisions (or decision-maker)	Jean Dupont
Position held	Purchasing Manager
E-mail	jean.dupont@abcindustrie.fr
Company sales	2 500 000 €
Workforce	50-100
Manager	Marie Martin
Prospect’s interest	Need for an innovative production solution
How did they find out about the solution?	Through a recommendation from a partner
Customer barriers	Limited budget
How to satisfy the customer?	Propose a solution adapted to the budget with a personalized offer
Notes	Positive first contact, follow up in 2 weeks

Now you can copy it and use it as you wish!

Well, to be totally transparent with you, creating prospect files by hand is extremely time-consuming and not really scalable… 👋🏽

If you use automation software, it can dramatically improve your prospecting speed! 🚀

Okay, but how does it work? 🤔

Well, we’ll explain it right away! 👇🏼

Why and how to use a tool for prospecting?

These days, there’s a multitude of automation software packages, each with its own particularity, but our favorite remains Waalaxy, for its intuitive interface, ease of use and many features. ✨

To give you a quick introduction, Waalaxy is a Chrome extension that will get your active prospecting in the space off the ground if you have the right practices in place.

It will enable you to : ⬇️

• Visit profiles on LinkedIn.
• Send invitations.
• Create personalized messages with Waami, the new AI assistant.
• Find and retrieve your prospects’ e-mail.
• Synchronize your data with a CRM.
• Perform auto-imports.
• Chat with the cat (we’re not talking about the pet 🐈 ) if you have a problem.
• Take advantage of a comprehensive dashboard to keep an eye on your actions.
• Chat via Inbox (LinkedIn messaging, but better).
• Launch e-mailing campaigns.

Well, okay, but how do you launch a prospecting campaign? Well, like this. ⬇️

1) Target your prospects

First step: LinkedIn:

• Type in keywords related to the prospects you’re targeting (today, we’re targeting professional development coaches, hence the importance of targeting).

• Click on the Waalaxy icon to import the list of prospects, give your list a name and select « Validate » for import.
• Open Waalaxy and go to « Prospects ».

• You will find your list in the « Prospects section ».

2) Generate leads automatically

If the prospects you’ve targeted aren’t right for you, you can use the “AI Prospect Finder” feature to add other relevant prospects. 👀

To do this, nothing could be simpler. In your prospect list, click on “AI Prospect Finder” and define the number of prospects you’d like to add. ✨

Hop, your new prospects are automatically added to your list, incredible, isn’t it? 🪄

3) Launch your campaign

You can now start your sales actions.

All you have to do is go to “start a campaign”, and you’ll have a whole host of possibilities! 😇

4) Personalize your prospecting message

Another Waalaxy feature that can save you time is its Waami copywriting assistant.

By mentioning the following elements, it will be able to write your prospecting message for you:

• 🔵 Target.
• 🔵 Value proposition.
• 🔵 Differentiating element.
• 🔵 Call to action.

If you’re running out of ideas or just want to save time, this feature comes in handy! 😇

If you’d like to find out more about this tool, click on the button! 👀

How about a recap?

As you can see, setting up a prospecting campaign and a prospecting plan are an integral part of your sales strategy. This action plan will enable you to identify the strengths and weaknesses of your marketing strategy.

That’s why it’s essential to draw it up! 💪

So in this article, we’ve seen the definition of a prospecting plan, which is simply a document 📄 to structure your strategy.

Frequently asked questions

Psshiiit, I hear in the earpiece that we have a few more resources to share with you. 😇

How to make a prospecting strategy?

For your business development, you need a prospecting plan that gives you a vision of all your actions and helps you structure them.

But it’s not just for you. If you’re working with a sales team, your action plan will also help them to know where they’re going. 😇

What are prospecting methods?

Inbound marketing, which, by the way, means « inbound marketing », is a method of getting the customer to come to you. 🧲 Instead of soliciting them, you’re going to arouse their curiosity through various levers such as :

• White papers.
• Newsletters.
• Advertising.
• Social networks.
• Content strategy.

This last point is particularly interesting: content strategy. If you take a look ⛵ at the professional social network LinkedIn, you’ll see that there are lots of people writing posts on a wide variety of subjects.

In fact, by doing so, they’re writing ✒️ on a subject in which they’re an expert. So they’re going to arouse the curiosity of people perhaps working in the same sector. They’ll create a community. Once their « » authority is established in their sector, customers will naturally gravitate towards them since they seem to know their subject.

This is exactly what you need to do for an inbound marketing strategy.

You’ll gain confidence with each post, and your copywriting will improve dramatically! 🧑‍🚀

How to run a successful prospecting campaign?

If you’re wondering what prospecting is, we’ll give you the answers in this section. 👉 Quite simply, prospecting is looking for potential customers who might be interested in your solution. It’s an integral part of your sales approach.

There are, of course, several stages to this process: 👇🏼

• Finding customers.
• Creating a customer database with all their information.
• Finding marketing actions to reach your customers.
• Set up your sales pitch.
• Build customer loyalty and continue to develop your customer portfolio.
• Analyze your various actions.

What’s the best way to prospect effectively on LinkedIn?

Over the past few years, social networks have become a sensation among Internet users. One in particular stands out as a professional network. We’re talking, of course, about LinkedIn. 🗣️

Initially designed to put professionals in a given sector in touch with each other, it is becoming increasingly popular for finding customers.

You can target job titles, prospect companies. 🔍 All this, just by typing in keywords related to your sales field.

Of course, you’ll need to develop trust with your customers, since LinkedIn is a platform based on trust.

The more complete your LinkedIn profile, the more topics that demonstrate your skills 🛠️ and the more discussions you have with members of this social network, the more likely you are to convert.

All that’s left is to get started and put everything you know about prospecting campaign. 🐉