How to Succeed in Enterprise Sales Prospecting

An average B2B prospect receives 120 plus emails every day. It takes about eighteen dials to connect with them and five follow-ups to make a sale. But when you are after a deal with a big fish such as large enterprises, be ready to multiply these numbers by two. Does it mean that enterprise prospecting is two times harder than usual sales prospecting? Not at all. It is just different, and requires an innovative approach, especially in times of a world pandemic, when traditional outreach channels like B2B forums and conferences remain unavailable. With these five most essential enterprise prospecting strategies from CIENCE, your lead generation outreach will get to a new level in 2022. Before getting directly to the first enterprise sales prospecting tip, let’s define what this concept stands for. What Is Enterprise Prospecting? Enterprise prospecting is the same as sales prospecting with SMB (small- and medium-sized business) but on a bigger scale. It means identifying potential clients with a large annual contract value (ACV) among all the leads in the pipeline and transferring them to the sales agents to close the big deals. Unlike in SMB, prospecting large enterprises has three main differences: 1. Sales cycles are longer. In SMB prospecting, the average sales cycle takes about three months. With large enterprises, this process takes at least six months, but very often even longer. Therefore, prospecting enterprises requires a lot of time and resources invested. However, once the deal is closed, the dividends earned make it totally worthwhile. 2. The number of decision-makers is larger. On average, B2B organizations have six to ten decision-makers involved in the buying process. In ordinary sales prospecting, to win a deal, it’s enough to get one “yes” from a single decision-maker. With enterprise prospecting, you’ll have to deal with many decision-makers at once. Pitching for an entire group of people can be very stressful and challenging. 3. More objections need to be addressed. The more decision