Does B2B Sales Prospecting Actually Work?
3 common misconceptions about B2B prospection :
9/12/20264 min read
It's incredible how many B2B founders don't believe in B2B prospecting at all.
That's why I've decided to launch a video series breaking down the economics of outbound prospecting across different industries: IT companies, agencies, SaaS, manufacturing, M&A, and more.
(Yes, apparently private equity firms also use outbound prospecting. I have to admit I wasn't aware of that before — I originally came from the SaaS world.)
I'll be analyzing companies that have built highly profitable outbound operations, looking at exactly what they do to make their strategies work.
Think of it as something similar to what Elric Legloire does with English-speaking SaaS companies, except I'll focus exclusively on French-speaking and Northern European businesses.
In this first episode, I'll cover the main reasons why so many people don't believe in B2B prospecting, as well as the situations where they're actually right not to use it in their business.
Finally, I'll explain the general principles behind making outbound work in a given market, whenever the fundamentals are there. In many cases, it comes down to having the right sales strategy and executing it properly.
1. When Outbound Prospecting Is Actually a Waste of Time
B2B prospecting can only work in the following situations:
If your product doesn't help customers save time, generate revenue, reduce costs, avoid a major risk, or achieve an important business objective, B2B prospecting probably won't be effective.
To get a meeting with a complete stranger and eventually turn that meeting into a paying customer, there needs to be a sufficiently important business need behind the purchase.
It doesn't necessarily have to be mission-critical, but it does have to matter.
Nice-to-have products are generally not a good fit for outbound, unless you can connect them to a sufficiently important business priority.
2. When Outsourcing Your Prospecting Doesn't Make Financial Sense
Even if your product or service addresses one of these important business needs, outsourcing your prospecting will rarely be profitable if your average deal value is below €1,500.
In that situation, prospect yourself, target a higher-value market segment, or increase your prices if you want to outsource the acquisition process.
Between €1,500 and €5,000, outsourced cold email or LinkedIn prospecting might be profitable, but outsourced cold calling rarely is.
Cold calling requires a lot of manual work and effort, which makes it more expensive. A qualified meeting generated through outsourced cold calling often costs between €250 and €400.
If you need seven meetings to close one customer (roughly the average B2B closing rate), the economics simply won't work.
However, you'll obviously be much more profitable if you do the cold calling yourself.
Alternatively, you can learn how to do it, then hire an apprentice or intern and train them to handle the process. Results may vary, depending on how well you recruit and train them.
Starting at €5,000 per deal, outsourced cold calling can become profitable.
Generally speaking, the higher the contract value and the more recurring the revenue, the better the economics.
One thing to keep in mind, though: the more expensive your offer, the harder it can be to close.
Common Misconception #1: "It's Impossible to Book Meetings Through Prospecting"
95% of people have never booked a meeting through cold calling or cold email prospecting. As a result, some don't even believe it's possible.
They might have tried making a few cold calls or launched automated email and LinkedIn sequences without getting any results.
In short, they underestimated both the technical complexity and the emotional difficulty of prospecting, which is why they failed.
Now they've reached their conclusion: "Outbound doesn't work."
Until they've booked a meeting themselves, or actually watched someone do it with their own eyes in their market, they simply won't believe it.
Common Misconception #2: "I'm in Such a Niche Market That Prospecting Isn't Suitable for Me..."
This can be true in certain situations. However, in my experience, when someone says this, it's usually because they don't have a clear understanding of the actual size of their market.
Quite often, when I take a closer look, I find several hundred or even several thousand potential target companies.
In these situations, it's worth estimating the actual size of your addressable market using tools such as Apollo.io. This will help you determine whether you're really operating in a niche market or not.
If there are fewer than 100 companies in your target market, then systematic cold calling probably doesn't make much sense.
That said, things can be very different if you're targeting large enterprises with five relevant decision-makers or stakeholders in each account.
Even with a small addressable market, there may still be meaningful opportunities.
At the very least, you can connect with these people on LinkedIn and run highly personalized email outreach campaigns.
Common Misconception #3: "The Meetings Never Convert Into Sales"
Just like with booking meetings, you'll probably never believe outbound actually works until you've closed a paying customer through prospecting yourself.
If you've already booked plenty of meetings but haven't managed to close any deals, here are the main reasons why:
1. You're only targeting companies that are already working with your competitors, without having a clear differentiating offer or leveraging a specific buying signal that gives them a reason to meet with you.
On this specific topic of sales strategy, I've created a fairly advanced ChatGPT prompt that helps you explore different outbound approaches for a particular market.
Simply send the prompt to ChatGPT, then provide the URL of your website and your LinkedIn company page. It will generate a comprehensive diagnosis of your business and potential outbound strategies.
Send me an email to get the prompt : louis@outbound-machine.com
2. Your offer isn't clear, isn't suitable for outbound (as explained in point 1), or you're failing to make prospects understand why they should take action.
This is where your closing skills come into play.
In that situation, either your offer isn't a good fit for outbound, or you need to improve your closing process: setting the right framework for the conversation, asking better discovery questions, and positioning a second sales meeting (R2).
Next week, I'll be breaking down the outbound playbook of an IT company that has built a highly effective outbound sales operation!