Prospecting trends 2024

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As we approach 2025, we explore the trends that are redefining prospecting strategies.

The economy is volatile, and fears about inflation driving up costs are omnipresent. As a result, companies are having to cut back on spending, which is not good news for companies trying to sell their products and services to these businesses. So how can you optimize your prospecting strategy to stay competitive? We take a look at 5 trends that will help you improve your efficiency and productivity.

1 - Personalization: a growth driver for companies

Imagine you want to sell a car. You have the choice between a general e-mail presenting all your brand's cars, or an e-mail specifically designed for a family car, which corresponds to the needs of a family making many daily trips to work and for the children's activities. Which of these two e-mails do you think has the best chance of capturing attention and prompting action? Without a doubt the second, because in B2B as in B2C, consumers know what they're looking for and what meets their needs.

This type of high-impact message is made possible by personalization. Tailoring your sales pitch and your offer to your prospect's needs helps reinforce commitment. More than just a sales or marketing tool, personalization transforms the very nature of the relationship. More targeted and refined, the sales pitch becomes more relevant. To create a successful personalization strategy, it's essential to know who you're talking to. What are the needs, preferences, constraints, budget... that characterize your prospect? But you also need to know who your offer is aimed at. If you want to reach everyone, you'll miss your target. Stay focused. Selling your product or service to someone without it really meeting their needs is the best way to lose them. On the other hand, a satisfied customer will trust you and speak positively about your offer.

Hot tip: 80% of customers say that the experience provided by a company is as important as its products and services (Source: Salesforce).

2 - Centralize your data to transform your company's strategy and performance

Good personalization requires the collection of qualitative customer data. Collecting customer data will enable you to create a profile of your prospect(s). For B2B prospecting, in addition to basic data such as company name, business sector or services offered, you can add information such as team size, company organizational structure, tools already in use, sales trends, past purchasing behavior, previous interactions... All this information can be extremely useful. Without qualified, high-quality data, your efforts could fall flat.

With so much data needed to adapt your strategy, it's highly advisable to invest in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) system, which has become a must-have for sales teams. Without CRM, large-scale personalization will be much more complicated and time-consuming. By enabling you to centralize all your customer data in one place and analyze this information, CRM enables you to define the identity card of your buyer personas.

Hot tip: 92% of companies say that CRM software is crucial to their revenue targets (source: Webinarcare).

3 - Advanced follow-up: the common thread in customer relations

As well as enabling you to gather all the information you need to personalize your prospecting, CRM also lets you keep track of every interaction you have with your prospects. Phone calls, scheduled follow-ups, emailing sequences in progress, interactions on social networks, visits to your website, demos, physical appointments... Last but not least, in addition to enabling you to track your prospect's progress in your conversion or sales tunnel at any given moment, CRM also makes teamwork much smoother. As every interaction is logged, all team members have easy access to it. An invaluable detail, especially for large companies where thesales team is structured around the stages of the sales cycle. CRM will also enable CSMs to take over seamlessly.

For effective prospecting follow-up, monitoring KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) is essential not only to motivate your sales teams, but also to constantly improve your results.

Hot tip: 47% of companies claim that CRM increases customer loyalty (source: Martech).

4 - Optimize your workflows for efficient sales management

Generative AI has the potential to bring about significant change. Why? Today's generative AI models work with much higher volumes of information and larger data models than previous AI systems. So it's understandable that salespeople are trying to leverage generative AI to automate time-consuming, manual tasks. Prospecting by phone or e-mail, enriched by predictive analysis and behavioral data, then becomes more sophisticated. Mails and calls are now extremely personalized, based on in-depth knowledge of the prospect's needs and preferences. What's more, the tools can be used for many types of sales support, including web pages, customer emails, blog articles, white papers, sales brochures... What's more, AI speeds up the processing and approval of common documents. Sales contracts are automatically routed to the right people and signed electronically. Sales team members no longer need to chase down individuals to get the job done. Personal sales assistants are making their appearance and taking on a growing number of tasks too. They automatically record and transcribe sales calls. "A salesbot can digest a 10,000-word report and customize the output for specific members of the sales team," explains Abe Smith, head of global field operations at Freshworks.

Hot tip: On average, the use of AI saves professionals 3 hours and 10 minutes in the marketing content design process(hubspot).

5 - Intelligent automation to combine thought and action

To increase productivity, save money, improve traceability, boost the customer experience, or enable better decision-making, intelligent automation, a mix of AI and automation technologies, expands the possibilities and opportunities. How does it work? Intelligent automation (AI) uses the best of robotic process automation (RPA) with the integration of machine learning and intelligence technology. Intelligent automation enables companies to streamline and automate complex processes. Consulting firm McKinsey defines intelligent process automation (IPA) as "an emerging set of new technologies that combine fundamental process redesign with robotic process automation and machine learning. It is a set of business process improvements and next-generation tools that support knowledge workers by removing repetitive, repeatable and routine tasks. It can also radically improve the customer journey by simplifying interactions and accelerating processes." Intelligent automation applies to different levels of the organization, such as data collection, data flow management, communication creation and dispatch, data updating,sales tunnel analysis...

By imitating the tasks performed by humans, but also and above all by learning, thanks in particular to machine or Deep Learning technologies, intelligent automation makes it possible to combine reflection and action. The strength of intelligent automation tools is that they integrate a wide range of data, both semi-structured (purchase orders, invoices, etc.) and unstructured (voice messages, e-mails, etc.).

Here too, CRM is an essential ally. Innovative tools incorporating artificial intelligence, for example, facilitate the automation of operations, predictive analysis and the personalization of offers.

Hot tip: 45% of marketers use AI for data analysis and reporting. (HubSpot 2023) (Source: hubspot)

To find out more about commercial prospecting, we explain everything in our Practical Guide to Commercial Prospecting 2024. Teaser :