The

Beginner’s
Guide to
Prospect
Generation
Prospect generation is an inevitable part of sales success regardless of the type
of business. Reaching your prospects about your new product or service is as
vital as planning it. A well crafted product or service is of no use if it is not able
to reach the right target market that is in need of this product or service.
Prospect Generation helps in hauling out the right prospects for your product
or service from the crowd.

This eBook takes you through the core concepts of Prospect Generation. Happy
reading!

Vineetha Shetty
Head - Sales and Marketing

Anurag Singh
Lead Designer

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

Table of Contents:
Part I: Introduction to Prospect Generation
1.1: What is Prospect Generation?
1.2: Why is Prospect Generation Important?
1.3: Defining a prospect
1.4: Prospect Development

Part II: Prospect Generation tactics

2.1: Prospect Generation Software
2.2: Webinar/Seminar
2.3: Referrals
2.4: Guest Blogging
2.5: Trade shows/conferences
2.6: eBooks

Part III: Optimize and measure Prospect Generation

3.1: Optimize
3.2: Measure
3.3: Quantity vs. Quality

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

Part I

Introduction to
Prospect Generation

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

1.1

What is Prospect Generation?

Prospect generation is a process of fetching the information ex. Phone number,
email id's of the prospects and nurturing them to become a lead through activities
like cold emailing, cold calling etc.

In today’s digital world, prospect generation is an imperative technique to be

incorporated in every marketing strategy as this is the pivotal step towards
building the awareness among potential customers about your product or
services. This helps the business acquaint product with the business hassle free
and make a buzz about it in the business sector. Prospect Generation helps the
business make and expand brand awareness, construct connections, produce
potential leads and ultimately close sales leads.

Through the Prospect Generation tactics mentioned in this guide, businesses can
find the contact information of the potential targets that matches their buyer
persona with a specific end goal to sustain them to end up clients. Prospect
Generation can be used by the sales department of all B2B businesses.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

1.2

Why is Prospect Generation Important?

Prospect Generation helps to mine out the relevant leads from the crowd – and
on sustaining these leads will transform them into clients and thus expanding the
revenue.

With the abundance of information in the web, cold calling to the prospects
irrelevant to your business will shift the focus of sales team from closing leads to
pushing prospects much to their inconvenience, that are not interested in the
product or service you are offering.

As many consider marketing to generate leads to salespeople to avoid cold

calling and high cost per lead, in many cases the strategy doesn’t fit in right.
Marketing alone may not bring in right and enough leads. The right set of target
audience with a high lifetime value can be fetched through prospect generation
and it is profitable. To start the discussion about your product or service to the
target market, the decision makers of the firm ex: VP, CEO are the right choice as
they refer back to the best person in the organization to take the discussion
further. From the business perspective, it’s easy to qualify them as leads having a
productive business conversation. With the right prospects to target the sales
team can focus more on converting leads into customers thus increasing the
company’s credibility.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

1.3
Defining a Prospect:
A prospect is the one who is qualified or determined by the company to fit into
their buyer persona and who have not expressed interest yet to buy their product
or service, but rather they plan to change over them to customers sometime in
the future.

We live in an era where buyers are educated enough by the abundant content on
the web making a buying decision all by themselves. To be heard in the noise,
compete with the industry giants the prospecting strategy has to be reinvented
very often. Ask these questions before prospecting
1. What is your target for a month/year?
2. Who is your target market?
3. How do you find prospects?
4. How would you approach the prospects to convert them to a lead?

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

1.4

Prospect Development:
What is Prospect Development?

Out of thousands of prospects generated utilizing prospecting software’s, trade

shows, seminars, blogs and so forth only a few are the real sales opportunities.
Prospect Development is all about refining the lists of prospect created to
recognize to convert in all likelihood. The actual sales performance can be
increased by identifying and nurturing the qualified prospects.

Prospect Development focuses on:

1. Qualified prospects
2. Generate qualified leads to bring in more sales leads
3. Increase ROI

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

Part 2:

Prospect generation
tactics

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

How do you bring in leads to then nurture them to become sales leads?

For any business to be introduced to a large audience irrespective of the business

being B2B or B2C needs a large, highly targeted and responsive email list without
following the odds of buying the list.

Email list can be built:

1. Prospect generation software

2. Webinars/seminars
3. Referrals
4. Guest Blogging
5. Trade Shows/Conferences
6. E-books

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

2.1

Prospect Generation Software:

To build an email list quicker prospect generation software is an ultimate choice.
Utilizing this software one can find prospects full name, business type, location,
contact email and phone number. AeroLeads is one such software. AeroLeads also
supports company search to find all the contact details of the company along with
the people working in that company. With the contact details, one can sell their
products and services to these potential prospects.

Chrome Extension:

On installing the AeroLeads chrome extension, it is easier to look for relevant

prospects by running the search directly from the browser. One can also search
for prospects through google.

Other software’s that are available are:

 Salesloft
 Sell Hack
 InsideSales
 Netprospex
 Spiderbook
 Findanyemail
 Sales intelligence
 Contact Capture
 Sales Intelligence

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

2.2

Webinars/Seminars:
This is the second best option as the webinar or a seminar invitation keeps the
persuasive offer before the user that makes them believe that they are going to
lose out on something valuable for their business if they don’t sign up.

Webinars/Seminars have both time and quantity limit i.e it limits the amount of
people that can attend the webinar/Seminar.

Webinars/Seminars help in building responsive lists. You don’t just need an email
list, you need a responsive email list where people engage with it open, click links
and buy your product.

Webinars are perfect to add extra credibility to your brand with newly built email
lists.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

2.3
Referrals:
Referral generation is a secret weapon for prospect generation. Referrals from
your existing customers can be a huge advantage in generating more prospects.

Three steps to guarantee you get great referrals from your customers:

1. Request clients to share their experience with the product:

Once your client is comfortable using your product and gives positive reviews,
request him politely for the referral.

2. Find out your clients connections:

Find the connections your client has and list out who they know and who you
want to be referred to.

3. Never force for a referral, ask for the Introduction:

Request for a direct introduction to someone you know would be a great prospect
for your business. Ex: you mentioned you worked with Tina for several years,
would you be comfortable introducing me to her.

When done right referral can be the foundation of prospect generation. Never let
your clients do referral as they are unaware of your core business purpose and
values. Create a referral for them.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

2.4

Guest Blogging:
To make sales, the first step is to tell the world that your business exists and how
it can take care of the issues your target market is confronting. A quality post on
some of the top blogs will declare the presence of your image to the world and
influence the prospects to know more about you.

Advantages:

 More qualified traffic

 Credibility for you business
 Improve you networking channels
 Brings in huge email lists
 Increase in social followers
 More guest post offers
 Building links

To make guest blogging count, set your objectives right for the business. Make a
list of the top blog sites and create quality blogs. Guest blogging is undoubtedly
an effective way to build a strong business and connect with your readers who
are your potential customers.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

2.5
Trade shows/ Conferences:
Trade shows:

The largest expenditure of the B2B market goes into trade shows with an
expectation of turning prospects into leads and leads into sales. Trade shows can
be effective in both ways. Generating new prospects and leads and also closing
sales with the current leads. It helps to come across many industry leaders and
set a foot towards turning your target company to your potential customers.

To capitalize the show:

 Create criticalness with the trade shows that the prospects respond to
the call.
 Present an involvement with the show such that the prospects are glued
to your brand.
 Follow up with the prospects, leads, potential buyer before the show
ends.
 Pick the contact of the show attendees who did not turn up to your
booth to target these prospects the following day of the show.
 Use promotion to encourage your prospects stop by your booth
 Try to get the prospects phone number and email id in all of the
instances above.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

Conferences:
Hosting in-person events like conferences can interest a lot of people in the B2B
market as they are always on their toes to learn and improve their skills. This in
turn results in a lot of registrations, ultimately building strong email lists.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

2.6
eBooks:
No matter how many subscribe opportunities you lend to the user it’s unlikely
they would accept any and give away their email address if they don’t find it
valuable. Offering eBooks related to the business you are in and that which
contains information your target market is in need of is a huge bait to double the
subscribers.

To bring in more subscriptions with eBooks:

 Publish more than one eBook to gain attention

 Reach out to people through all mediums say the website, blogs, Facebook,
LinkedIn, Twitter and most importantly sites like IndieReader.
 Target market interested in your product.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

Part 3:

Optimize and measure

prospect generation

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

3.1
Optimize:
A definitive objective of B2B marketing is to bring more qualified prospects to
Sales to nurture them to become leads and at last customers. When searching for
prospects create a buyer persona and target just that portion of the business
sector. This helps the sales team to focus on more sales closure rather than
looking out for the right prospects.

Optimizing prospects:

The business needs to be clear over the definition of who is their target market,
their quality leads and the product or service they are putting forth is going to
take care of the issue the focused on targeted market is facing. Once the business
characterizes this right it’s easy to generate right prospects.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

3.2
Measure:
Once the business goals are clear and optimized prospects generated, it’s
important to measure what matters. Bringing on board qualified prospects is the
sole objective of prospect generation.

What to measure:

 How many prospects generated through prospect generation software

were converted to leads?
 How many prospects targeted through webinar registrations were
converted to sales leads?
 What happened when you doubled the referrals?
 What is the impact of trade shows and how many prospects did that bring
on board?
 Was your blog on the guest website effective enough that it brought a lot
of inquiries to your brand?
 Did the eBook you offered in exchange for email ids of prospects serve the
purpose of educating the prospects?

Once the process of measuring is complete, determine which channel of prospect

generation has performed significantly well and draft the strategy on how to
improve the channels that underperformed.

Note: Measure the performance regularly

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

3.3
Quality vs. Quantity:
It's essential to note that to enhance the benefit of the organization, it's vital to
have 10 qualified leads where 5 converts to be customers rather than 1000
unqualified leads and none convert. Continuously stick to quality over quantity.

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.

About the book
This publication was both created and composed by AeroLeads. Feel free to share
the book with anyone who is interested to know more about Prospect
Generation.

About AeroLeads
With an intention of making the sales process easier by bringing on board more
qualified prospects, our Founder and CEO Pushkar Gaikwad, backed by talented
developers Ankit and Anurag decided to come up with a Prospect Generation
Software, AeroLeads.

AeroLeads is powerful prospect generation software that finds the relevant

contact details of any company or person with their respective emails and phone
numbers.

For more information on prospect generation contact us on – (415) 830-6012 visit

us at AeroLeads.com or follow us on twitter @AeroLeads

Success in sales is the result of discipline, dedication and sacrifice.