--- title: Enable Sales Teams For Better Prospecting description: Earlier this year, I wrote a post titled There Is No More Inside Sales to highlight that outside sales teams need to develop or strengthen their inside selling skills to succeed in virtual selling.  The dramatic shift to virtual selling is here to stay, and organizations need to enable sales teams to master prospecting skills. If your […] --- # Sales Outcomes Open main menu Close main menu [Sales Solutions](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/tag/sales-solutions) [Sales Enablement](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/tag/sales-enablement) # Enable Sales Teams For Better Prospecting [Hernan Vera](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/author/hernan-vera) [Share this blog post on Twitter](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=I+found+this+interesting+blog+post&url=https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/enable-sales-teams-for-better-prospecting) [Share this blog post on Facebook](http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/enable-sales-teams-for-better-prospecting) [Share this blog post on LinkedIn](http://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/enable-sales-teams-for-better-prospecting) Earlier this year, I wrote a post titled [There Is No More Inside Sales](https://salesoutcomes.com/how-to-strengthen-remote-selling-abilities/) to highlight that outside sales teams need to develop or strengthen their inside selling skills to succeed in virtual selling.  *The dramatic shift to virtual selling is here to stay, and organizations need to enable sales teams to master prospecting skills.* If your organization identifies prospecting skills gaps within the sales team, consider the five steps to Prospecting Mastery to diagnose where to start.   ## ***Prospecting Mastery*** *has five essential elements:* **1. Targeting: **The process of building and maintaining target lists and executing the sale motions to work the target list effectively **2. Research: **Leveraging the cornucopia of internal and external resources to get smarter about the target company, target better, and engage faster. **3. Tools:** The use and adoption of sales and marketing technology (e.g., CRM) to shorten the prospecting process timeline and improve prospecting effectiveness. **4. Outreach:** The options to engage with a prospect and get the first appointment. **5. Integration: **Sales motion best practices, tracking, and measurement to know if we are making progress. *The five Prospecting Mastery elements are linear and integrated. No aspect can stand on its own, and a missing part can scuttle the entire process.* ***The foundation for Prospecting Mastery is your company’s CRM.*** If your CRM is “not well,” salespeople are left to their methods, making tracking prospecting effectiveness practically impossible. ***Here’s what’s needed in the CRM to help your sales teams down the Prospecting Mastery journey:*** **1. Target Segmentation: **Without proper target account segmentation, you’ll only have random acts of targeting. Annual revenue range, employee range, number of locations, annual spend, and industry are essential segmentation criteria applied by most B2B firms. Whatever the ideal target account criteria that your organization adopts, you need to track it in the CRM. **2. Target Prioritization:** We believe in an A, B, C, or similar prospect prioritization approach. There may be 100 “A” prospects, 200 “Bs,” and 500 “Cs,” for example. The precise number in each priority level is up to you, but salespeople tend to be more effective in prospecting if you give them fewer target prospects to pursue. **3. Prospecting Stages:** Most processes have defined steps from beginning to end. Each of the prospecting process steps is similar to an Opportunity stage. You might start with *Target Identified* as prospecting step one. Then move on to *Research* as step two. *Attempting to Contact *as step three, and so on. **4. Activity Management:** Tracking the prospecting sales motions helps salespeople and the organization understand what is working well and what areas of the prospecting process need attention. Many companies focus on tracking the number of call attempts and emails sent to gauge prospecting progress. It can be helpful to track the number of calls and emails, but not as beneficial as understanding whom salespeople are trying to contact and how are they doing it? Calling the CEO 50 times won’t mean much if the salesperson doesn’t have anything meaningful to offer the CEO in exchange for her time. Tracking meaningful interactions with relevant contacts is a better indicator of prospecting success than the number of calls made. The virtual selling phenomenon is here to stay, which means a blend of virtual and in-person selling skills is needed for sales teams to accelerate growth.    The elements of* Prospecting Mastery *above provide a roadmap to enable sales teams for prospecting success. The company’s CRM delivers the foundation for the *Prospecting Mastery* journey. **A final word; Prospecting without the right sales enablement is hard to do, measure, and succeed.** If you have questions about your company’s Prospecting Mastery journey, click [here](https://calendly.com/hernanvera/30min) to schedule time with me. For more Tips on Enabling Sales Teams, [Click Here to Subscribe to Two-Bullet-Tuesday](https://salesoutcomes.us19.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=bd9e3fde30500bfb3b09549c6&id=25f5207c75) ### Leave a Comment ## Related Articles [2021 Top 10](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/tag/2021-top-10) [Sales Solutions](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/tag/sales-solutions) [Sales Enablement](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/tag/sales-enablement) ### [Tools & Best Practices For Sales Coaching In Virtual Selling Environments](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/tools-and-best-practices-for-sales-coaching-in-virtual-selling-environments) ## **Essential Tools for Sales Coaching in Virtual Selling Environments** 1. [**Collaboration software**](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/enable-sales-teams-for-better-prospecting#collaboration) 2. **[An artificial intelligence (AI) notetaker application ](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/enable-sales-teams-for-better-prospecting#collaboration)** ## **Best Practices...** [Hernan Vera](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/author/hernan-vera) [Read More](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/tools-and-best-practices-for-sales-coaching-in-virtual-selling-environments) [Sales Solutions](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/tag/sales-solutions) [Sales Enablement](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/tag/sales-enablement) ### [Look Beyond Sales Results](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/look-beyond-sales-results) ## **How sales leaders can look beyond the results to position their teams for success:** 1. 1. [**Examine Current Customer Growth**](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/enable-sales-teams-for-better-prospecting#CurrentCustomerGrowth) 2. [**Look Into CRM Adoption & Usage**](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/enable-sales-teams-for-better-prospecting#CRMAdoption) 3. [**Inspect Sales...**](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/enable-sales-teams-for-better-prospecting#SalesProcessAdherence) [Hernan Vera](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/author/hernan-vera) [Read More](https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/look-beyond-sales-results) #### About - Menu Item One - Menu Item Two - Menu Item Three #### Services - Menu Item One - Menu Item Two - Menu Item Three #### News - Menu Item One - Menu Item Two - Menu Item Three Follow us on Facebook Follow us on LinkedIn Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram ```json { "@context" : "https://schema.org", "@type" : "BlogPosting", "author" : { "@type" : "Person", "name" : "Hernan Vera", "url" : "https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/author/hernan-vera" }, "dateModified" : "2022-10-26T20:43:47.536Z", "datePublished" : "2021-09-06T21:22:00.000Z", "headline" : "Enable Sales Teams For Better Prospecting", "mainEntityOfPage" : { "@id" : "https://www2.salesoutcomes.com/sales-outcomes-b2b-sales-marketing-insights/enable-sales-teams-for-better-prospecting", "@type" : "WebPage" }, "publisher" : { "@type" : "Organization", "logo" : { "@type" : "ImageObject" }, "name" : "Sales Outcomes" } } ```