There’s no shortcut to scaling a B2B business.
However, you can use methods to support the process, like creating a prospecting list.
Think about this:
If you don’t have customers, you won’t have revenue.
Building a list of names, contact details, and other vital information is essential in generating and growing a successful B2B business.
This article will deliver a crash course in building a sales prospecting list.
But first:
What is a prospect list in sales?
Prospecting lists are datasheets filled with potential customers’ names and contact details. They can be mobile contact lists or email lists. B2B sales teams use these lists to contact customers they know will fit their ICP.
Since these lists contain information on pre-qualified and highly targeted leads, sales reps are more likely to convert and maintain positive relationships with customers, as opposed to cold calling random numbers at will.
For B2B prospecting lists to be successful, you’ll need quality, compliant, valid, and up-to-date data. This ensures your sales team has all the information they need to succeed.
Additionally, you can enrich your prospecting list with intent data and sales triggers to prioritise prospects that are in-market.
💡 Have a look at Cognism’s pricing to get started building your perfect list of prospects.
How do you build a prospecting list?
There’s much more to a professional prospecting list than just figuring out who your SDRs should connect with. For the best success, your list needs to be accurate, relevant, and compliant.
An up-to-date B2B prospecting list is going to save your team time, lower your cost of customer acquisition (CAC) and assist in building better client relationships for improved customer lifetime value (CLTV) and reduced churn.
Nowadays, companies use sales prospecting tools to generate B2B prospecting lists on demand. This allows sales and marketing teams to grow a qualified customer base and increase revenue quickly.
How quickly?
Here’s an example from SparkForce:
Growth Lead @SparkForce
With a B2B contact database like Cognism, you can quickly start building a targeted sales prospecting list in your ICP.
The best way to get sales contact lists is to run company and contact searches within the Cognism platform. Depending on your ICP, you can narrow down the results to specific contact-level criteria (e.g., include or exclude job titles, seniority, departments, and other user details).
Why don’t you take a self-guided tour of the platform to see for yourself?👇
Alternatively, if you’re prospecting on LinkedIn, you can get prospect lists using the Cognism browser extension. The plugin works over LinkedIn and Sales Navigator lists and LinkedIn profiles and enriches them with fresh and reliable contact data.
Even better, sales prospecting lists you generate with Cognism are easy to export to your integrated CRM or sales tool (Salesforce, Outreach, etc.).
However, if you want to build a list manually, you can follow these six steps 👇
6 steps for creating a successful sales prospecting list
Keep in mind that developing a sales contact list shouldn’t be slap-and-dash. Rather stick to the following steps to support any prospecting plan:
1. Learn your product backwards
Coming up with a good sales prospecting plan all depends on understanding what you’re selling. You need to know how your product can help a customer solve pain points, which will inform you of your ideal customer profile (ICP).
Start by taking a look at your most valuable customers:
👉 Who are they, and why do they enjoy your product?
If you’re a new SDR, then you’ll need to surpass the basics when it comes to understanding the product you’re selling. Study use cases, watch Gong calls and do a deep dive into success stories.
A better understanding of your product will not only improve your selling but also help you understand what factors drive buyers to make purchases.
2. Build a buyer persona
Calculating your Total Addressable Market (TAM) and establishing sales goals before you start list building will ensure your team creates a hyper-targeted list of only the most qualified prospects.
Once you understand what you’re selling, you’ll need to establish which prospects are best to target. This will also help you define your sales prospecting list format.
Take everything you’ve learned about your product and define your ideal customer - our TAM calculator can help.
After this, start researching:
- Who are these prospects?
- Where do they work?
- What roles will be best to reach out to etc.?
Then, create a buyer persona to use when outreaching these sales lead prospects.
A well-defined buyer persona not only improves the success of your sales process but also helps you get into the minds and hearts of your customers to understand their needs better.
3. Invest in a CRM
There’s no formatting rule when building a prospecting list. Anything goes, from VCF and CSV files to Excel and Google Sheets. However, having a contact list spreadsheet, while cost-effective, can be time-consuming and result in errors.
Investing in sales automation, such as a CRM, can help you avoid human error, save time, and easily update and clean your data.
Salesforce, Pipedrive and Zoho are some popular CRM software examples.
That said:
Is creating prospecting lists in Excel worth it?
Using Excel prospecting lists works fine if you need to make a list of names and phone numbers. It’s easy to set up, edit, and access, but it’s difficult to keep it updated.
Sales prospecting tools that integrate with popular CRMs are the best alternative for Excel spreadsheets. They allow you to automate outreach, keep the prospecting list fresh and remove the need for manual data entry.
4. Collect and enrich contact data
Now, it’s time to populate your prospecting list for sales development. Start by cleaning your existing B2B contact database by removing any out-of-date phone numbers and emails.
You can use data enrichment solutions like Cognism or ZoomInfo to fill in missing data and update stale records.
If you’re looking for quality data, then Cognism should be your first choice 👇
Head of Marketing Strategy and Operations @Darwinbox
5. Create lead generation campaigns
Other than investing in a data provider, your prospecting list strategy should include collecting new contacts via B2B marketing campaigns, website forms, webinars, organic SEO, and newsletter sign-ups.
Lead generation campaigns run through paid advertising via lead sources like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google can help you generate the most new contacts.
Be sure to include a CTA that encourages data sharing, such as providing contact details to download a free eBook, guide, or template.
6. Implement lead scoring
Once you’ve collected enough marketing data through your prospecting activities, analyse and categorise the leads you’ve collected. Then, add the most relevant leads to your sales follow-up prospecting list.
Using lead scoring, you can categorise your sales leads on any factors you think are relevant, such as the level of their intention to buy, the size of the company, the value the account will bring to your business, etc.
What should a prospect list include?
Your prospect list should combine different information depending on how targeted your approach is. The bare minimum is a combination of contact and account data.
But to prioritise prospects and generate revenue more efficiently, add chronographic and intent data.
That said, your prospect list should include the following:
- Company name
- Industry
- Prospect’s name
- Job title
- Email address
- Phone number
- Buyer intent data
- Selling triggers
- Technographics
💡You can make list building even easier with Cognism’s AI Search.
With Text-to-command search, all you need to do is:
- Think of your ideal target list.
- Type that ideal target list into the AI Search bar.
- Watch Cognism’s quality data roll in and action faster than ever - it’s that simple!
Prospecting list checklist
When choosing a prospecting list provider, make sure you check the following:
- Are they compliant with privacy laws (i.e., GDPR and CCPA)?
- Do they verify B2B data (especially contact data)?
- Do they restrict access to their database (geographically, with credits, or otherwise), and how much do they charge for extra data points?
- What types of data points are available (intent data, sales events triggers, technographics, firmographics)?
- Are there integrations with leading SDR tools available?
- Is the setup easy to flatten the learning curve?
- Is post-purchase support available?
Free SDR prospecting list templates
The best way to create a prospecting list is to use a template. We’ve created two versions to help you get started.
Right-click and save these sample prospecting lists for when you create your own👇
1. Target prospects list
2. Target companies list
To build or buy, that is the question
When it comes to B2B sales prospecting lists, many business owners think buying leads is easier than creating a data list of their own.
But this isn’t the case when you have a quality data provider to help ensure your prospect information is up to date, GDPR compliant and accurate.
In fact, buying phone number lists or email lists from unreliable sources can be more trouble than they’re worth.
Inaccurate prospecting lists waste sales reps’ time and lead to missed opportunities. They can even result in hefty fines and penalties if the prospect list contains incompliant data, e.g., the person you’re contacting is on a do-not-call list.
Buying cheap lists for prospecting instead of investing in a prospecting tool might be tempting for businesses with tight budgets.
💡Read more about whether buying email lists is worth it.
Why do companies choose prospect lists from Cognism?
- Phone-verified cell phone numbers to help you connect with 87% of your list.
- Exclusive on-demand verified cell phone and email data set Diamond Data®.
- Unrestricted access to person and company-level data*.
- Instant and scheduled CRM enrichment and on-demand CSV enrichment.
- Intent data by Bombora.
- International coverage: EMEA, NAM, APAC.
- Easy platform setup.
- Integrations with CRMs and sales engagement tools.
- Focus on quality GDPR and CCPA-compliant data.
- Database checked and cleaned against global DNC lists.
- Find prospects using ChatGPT-style textual or voice prompts with Cognism AI Search.
- Fast and friendly support team.
Prospecting lists and compliance
When it comes to B2B sales prospecting lists, many business owners buy leads instead of creating a data list of their own.
Lead data providers scrape the web to extract contact data for resale and process the large datasets to make them usable. However, some of those vendors provide less reliable prospect data that may contain outdated or personal phone numbers and emails.
If the provider fails to process the collected data in compliance with regulations like GDPR or CCPA, your organisation may be at legal risk.
In fact, buying cold call lists or email lists from unreliable sources can be more trouble than they’re worth. For example, two companies were issued fines totalling £180,000 for using incompliant prospecting data to make 48,000 marketing calls.
What’s more, inaccurate prospecting lists waste sales reps’ time and lead to missed opportunities.
Buying cheap lists for prospecting instead of investing in a prospecting tool might be tempting for businesses with tight budgets.
Fortunately, Cognism provides quality data to create up-to-date, CCPA- and GDPR-compliant prospect lists. Cognism licences are seat-based and suitable for enterprises with 20+ SDRs.
Cognism pricing allows for:
- Individual prospecting (with unrestricted viewing and page-level exporting of global data within generous fair use policy).
- Building and exporting bulk prospect lists with credits for teams with operational workflows.
Start building your winning prospecting list
Build the best sales prospecting list with Cognism and break performance records month-on-month!
Ready to start connecting with your perfect customers? Click 👇 to book your demo.
