B2B targeting and prospecting

Establishing the right prospecting target is essential for a plethora of reasons, the first of which is that you don't want to spend your marketing and sales prospecting resources on prospects you'll never turn into customers. The wrong target is synonymous with a huge waste of energy and resources that would benefit greatly from being allocated differently.

In this article, we'll define what targeting is in B2B sales prospecting and how it can be applied to your sales strategy. We'll also give you a few tips on how to establish your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and other advice on the type of prospects to prioritize according to their maturity levels.

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Targeting refers to the selection of a specific group of prospects and/or entities on which to focus sales and marketing efforts. It's a strategy for identifying and reaching a relevant audience for a company's products, services or messages.

Such targeting will enable you to maximize the effectiveness of sales actions by directing resources to those most likely to be interested in what's on offer. By focusing on a specific group of prospects you've identified as the most interesting, it's possible to tailor messages and offers to meet the specific needs and preferences of this audience, improving the chances of successful campaigns.

Targeting is therefore directly linked to your ability to sell your products/services, and therefore directly linked to your sales. Precise targeting is as important to your sales strategy as it is to the way your product is designed.

In the next section, we'll look at a few examples of lead targeting.

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Demographic targeting

This type of targeting focuses on demographic characteristics such as industry, company size, geographic location, sales, number of employees, etc. Demographic targeting enables you to identify companies that match the specific criteria of your target market.

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Targeting by position

Here, we target specific positions within companies, such as general managers, purchasing managers, marketing managers, etc. By identifying the key functions within companies that are most likely to influence purchasing decisions, you can focus on the most relevant contacts.

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Behavioral targeting

Behavioral targeting involves focusing on the buying behaviors and actions of prospects. It can include criteria such as previous purchases, usage patterns, online interactions, social media engagements, etc. This type of targeting aims to identify prospects who have already shown an interest in similar products or services.

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Targeting by center of interest

It involves focusing on the specific interests, preferences and needs of prospects. It allows you to target companies who have a particular interest in areas or topics related to your offering. For example, if you sell project management software, you could target companies interested in agile methods or operational efficiency.

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Targeting by maturity level

This type of targeting takes into account the stage of maturity of companies in their purchasing journey. It can include criteria such as newly-established companies, companies in a growth phase or mature companies. By understanding a company's level of maturity, you can tailor your approach and offer to their specific needs at each stage.

These different types of targeting can be used individually or in combination to further refine your B2B sales prospecting. It's important to understand your target market and use the most relevant targeting criteria to maximize the effectiveness of your prospecting efforts.

In the next section, we'll look at how targeting and prospecting can be linked.

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Much higher conversion rates

Obviously, when prospect targeting is well done and consistent with the realities of the market concerned, sales objectives are achieved much more easily. When this is the case, your prospecting efforts are (almost) perfectly directed.

All you need is the right prospecting file (we'll address this part later in the article), the right message, and a sufficiently attractive offer, and sales and customers will flow in.

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Sales cycle reduction and segmentation

Proper targeting implies that, as explained above, segmentation has been carried out according to the maturity level of each prospect in the database. From then on, a sales strategy that has been fine-tuned to some extent means that greater focus will be placed on the hottest prospects.

You prioritize your sales efforts on those prospects who are most likely to become your customers on the basis of factual data. Sales cycles are logically shorter, so you have the opportunity to establish a greater number of quality commercial relationships with your customer/prospect base.

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It's not just about sales, it's also about your brand image.

Sales prospecting is not the activity that most benefits a company's brand image. Your prospects are often already solicited a lot, and sometimes perceive these practices as intrusions, a form of nuisance. Therefore, by only prospecting people for whom your offer is fully relevant, you can limit the potential "nuisance" perceived by customers.

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By only reaching people who are concerned by your products/services through their activity or professional news, you convey the image of a company that respects RGPD rules. You differentiate yourself from companies that engage in mass prospecting practices, generally perceived very negatively by the professionals affected, and you consolidate a reliable and solid brand image.

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Determining these targets and making sure that they are well established, i.e. that we have ascertained through market experience that our targets are indeed the right ones, is a highly important step. When it's done right, it's a big part of the job. However, in many situations, it's not enough, and then you still have to convince, and allocate commercial efforts in this direction. That's what your competitors are doing, and if you want your target audience to choose you and not the others, you have to do more and better.

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Targeting must also be considered in relation to your prospecting methods and practices. If your sales team practices multi-channel prospecting, and as such combines telephone prospecting with cold emailing, and/or prospecting on social networks (such as Linkedin), your prospecting file needs to be segmented to reflect and facilitate these methods.

In prospecting, depending on the type of targets you're addressing, one channel may take precedence over another. In fact, when it comes to converting hot prospects who fully correspond to your KPI, telephone prospecting can be very useful. If done properly, teleprospecting will enable you to establish direct, quality contact, so that with a single sales action you can convert a prospect into a customer.

When a prospect is a little less hot, and a little more distant from your KPI due to the characteristics of their position and the structure in which they operate, simply sending them personalized mailing sequences at first, or even maturing their desire through targeted advertising, makes more sense.

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Targeting in prospecting is all the more important in B2B, both for the success of sales campaigns and for the consolidation of a stable and correct brand image. So before launching any prospecting campaign, it's a good idea to take the time needed to ensure that your targeting and the prospecting file you've created are relevant.

To make sure you've got your targeting and KPI right, it's important to question them regularly, and check them just as frequently against market reality. It's important to sound out demand, and keep abreast of the latest news, to make sure you're staying true to your target and the messages you're sending out.

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