Digging for Precious Metals - Creating a Sales Prospecting Plan

By: Michael Layton , Business Development Associate

What is sales prospecting? The term dates back at least to the days of the Wild West, where tools such as picks, shovels, and pans were used to search for precious metals. In an inside sales setting, the meaning is similar: digging up that golden direct line or other contact to schedule a meeting.

When creating a prospecting plan, it is important to keep your numbers consistently strong. After having a killer month, you still have to keep the top of the funnel filled and moving to prevent a blank calendar. Moreover, not all contacts are created equal. If you need to talk to online media VPs, then meeting with R&D managers doesn’t do you much good; instead, focus on finding the right people.

Some B2B sales professionals see prospecting as grunt work that gets in the way of their one goal - to close. But prospecting doesn’t have to be a chore. At Vorsight we look at finding prospects as a sort of game or puzzle. Whether you use fun or competition (or a healthy mix of both), the key is to maintain a useful perspective about the first half of the sales cycle. You can’t make the sale unless you get the meeting first!

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