The importance of prospecting in Inbound Marketing

It is known that Inbound Marketing seeks to reach customers in a way that they do not feel and do not know that they are being influenced to buy something. In this sense, the pillar of Inbound Marketing is prospecting.

Prospecting is the research that we carry out as the first step to track down our ideal customer or buyer persona. For this, we must define the buyer persona to know with certainty where to put our efforts.

There are countless ways and techniques to prospect, the best for each will depend on the information we seek to obtain.

But in any case, it is very useful to resort to a matrix of prospects, which we will fill in with the information that is important to know about our prospects to know whether or not they are a “good fit”. Thus, for example, if to consider customers as ideal, the size of the company is decisive, or what they bill per year, the area where they live, etc; we will include these points in the matrix, and as we investigate a possible prospect and as we fill it out, we will easily realize whether or not they are a good fit.

In this way, we will arrive at the first contact with our prospects with much more knowledge about them, which will considerably facilitate the first conversation.

Prospecting is a very important practice not only to know who is a good fit but also to allow us not to waste our time with prospects who are ultimately not going to prosper in a sale. Thus, we managed to focus primarily on those prospects that are a good fit.

But beware! This does not mean that we should discard those prospects who initially do not meet all the requirements to be a good fit, or who do not fit perfectly into our matrix. Therefore, it is crucial to determine:

• If prospects are a good fit and are interested in our product or service, in which case we must contact them as soon as possible;
• If they are a good fit but they have no interest in our product, we must educate them  to try to get them to be interested;
• If they are not a good fit but they're interested, we must evaluate it in each particular case but not discard them at first;
• And if they are not a good fit and are not interested, we should not waste time on them.

In conclusion, there are many advantages of prospecting before contacting our potential customers. Although we will lose a little time in the investigation, we will gain it in the sales cycle, because the finer our prospecting is, the more easily we reach the customers who are already looking for us, and who will ultimately acquire our product or service more quickly.