What is sales prospecting? And are you doing it right in your SaaS? In today's ever-competitive SaaS industry you must perform sales prospecting correctly to realize maximum growth. In this episode, we host a self-declared "Natural Geek" Founder, Investor, and Late Night Innovator Rob Harlow.

Why you need to listen to Rob: He is a specialist in social Prospecting and has seen his company's Outbase grow tremendously year on year. Rob has access to a massive database of over 20 million prospects across 70 countries worldwide. As an industry leader in prospecting in the UK, their annual report, The State of Prospecting, is now a highly sought-after benchmark for Prospecting and optimization.

What is Prospecting: Rob defines Prospecting as finding the right person in the right organization to determine that your product or service offering perfectly fits. He argues that Prospecting is an everyday function that every salesperson in an organization has undertaken or has become versed with. Prospecting has grown more sophisticated in the digital space with the advancement in technology. As such, companies can leverage more significant amounts of data and utilize various automated processes. Rob identifies three aspects as the main areas of Prospecting: researching, identifying, and engaging.

Importance of Prospecting to SaaS Companies: In addition to product-led and sales-led growth, B2B SaaS companies require sales prospecting to match their ideal customer profile precisely. As an outbound strategy, Prospecting enables a B2B SaaS to scale its sales and marketing efforts. Our guest advises that a company should place prospecting at the center of the sales process, given today's digital capabilities.

Minimum requirements for prospecting at a company: Our guest expert says that a company needs to have a functional CRM in place before starting the prospecting function. The CRMs serve to manage incoming leads and customer conversations properly. In addition, having a well-documented sales process is crucial because it makes the prospecting campaign a success.

Common mistakes companies make in Prospecting: Rob points out that most companies need a sound technical setup to enable a successful prospecting effort. Given that emailing is also an integral part of Prospecting, the functionality of the messaging tools is crucial. An extensive target group also results in messaging that does not appeal to everyone, thus failing Prospecting. It is important to send emails to reach the right target accounts.

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