Prospecting Vs Lead Generation – Understanding the Difference

Sales Prospecting

Prospecting is a sales team focused approach. Prospecting involves reaching out prospective clients and generating interest in your business.

Sales prospecting is usually a short-term method, where you identify prospects and approach them to convert them into sales. The most commonly implemented B2B prospecting methods are – outbound email campaigns, cold calls and LinkedIn DM.

Lead Generation

Let’s look at the top benefits of each type of lead generation first.

Marketing teams, use lead generation more commonly as one of their methods to build awareness, push client engagement and improve brand exposure across a larger customer segment.

Leads are focused audiences, who are already identified on the basis of their interest and are currently engaging with your brand content.

Some of the common lead generation methods are – subscription forms, opt in landing pages and downloadable case studies, reports etc.

What To Choose?

As a B2B marketer, it is essential for you to understand which approach to take so that you are driving results and eventually sales based on your revenue targets.

Sales prospecting is a good choice if your sales pipeline is empty or sparse, prospecting is a more hands on approach so it will definitely help you in building your pipeline and strengthening your sales prospects. So, getting appointments to meet new clients and generating interest happens faster with prospecting. But, be prepared to handle rejection.

On the contrary, lead generation is a more time-consuming approach and a long-term activity. This approach gives you an opportunity to nurture better leads. With lead generation, you have more time to research your audience, build your customer’s profile and grow your marketing campaign based on their pain points and how your business can help them.

Lead generation activity helps in building your brand profile. One of the advantages of lead generation is that you have plenty of tools which you can incorporate in your approach.

Prospecting Vs Lead Generation

Are both of them the same? Of course not!

Prospecting is the first sales approach, and lead generation gives you sales at the end of the approach, in that merit they are both at the other ends of the spectrum.

Prosecting is based on – Bulk B2B email campaigns where you reach out to prospective buyers with a concise pitch, or calling prospective clients and talking to them and qualifying them as buyers based on their level of interest in what you have to offer, or social outreach selling, reaching out to B2B buyers via social media.

Lead generation examples are the common marketing strategies which we usually adhere to, such as content marketing where you are creating content to engage with prospective leads, or Account Based marketing, different personalized audience approach based on specific buyer interests.

What Should You Invest In?

Choose your strategy based on the following criteria;

• If you are in an industry which depends on a lot of one-on-one interaction

• If you are catering to a sector with a lot of decision makers and long sales cycles

• If your deals are high value and you are a small organization

If the answer to all of the above is a yes, then sales prospecting is a good fit for you and you should focus on this approach.

On the other hand –

• You have a broad audience landscape and your services or products are meant for a diverse consumer profile

• If your business is product focused and sales is directly dependent on the product performance

If these are your criteria then lead generation is a better fit for you and will help you in the long run.