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:
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 signals to prioritise prospects that are in-market.
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:
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 Cognism's Sales Companion. 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 👇
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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:
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 👇
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.
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.
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:
When choosing a prospecting list provider, make sure you check the following:
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👇
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.
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.
Build the best sales prospecting list with Cognism and break performance records month-on-month!