Tips for Prioritizing Sales Prospects

Prioritizing leads is a big part of every salesperson’s day. Sitting down in the morning and trying to figure out who to call first, what email is the most important to respond to and more can set their day up for success or failure. On top of this, sellers aren’t basing these decisions based on a static list. Everyday there’s new prospects to reach out to, new inbound leads to follow up with and accounts to keep up with. While one seller may not be responsible for all these, it’s important to note how important prioritizing sales prospects is to help a seller organize their day.

Common Salesperson Dilemmas

We all know how busy a salesperson is on a daily basis. From hunting new prospects to trying to nurture large deals, there isn’t a day that goes by without something new going on. This is also without considering any emergencies that may arise. How many times have you been in a rhythm calling prospects or sending out emails when an emergency text comes through you have to address right away. Once everything has settled back down and fixed an hour later you have no idea where you left off on your list.

Managing these “fire drills” effectively can not only help a seller gain valuable time back in their day, but can also make them more confident in solely focusing on the emergency, rather than keeping one eye on what they were doing before so they don’t lose their spot. With all this being said, it’s important to not only know where in your list you left off, but make sure your list is set up in a way that prioritizes the best prospects first. So, if an emergency does arise, you know you’re not risking missing out on the best people.

How Do You Prioritize Sales Prospects?

Prioritizing sales prospects is a key part of many seller’s jobs. Everyone wants to reach customers who will buy their product or service. So, it’s crucial to put those most likely to first. The actual prioritization of these lists can happen in a variety of ways. 

For example, you can organize email lists with email scoring, which can rank prospects based on a number of factors: how often they open your emails, click on links, unsubscribe and more. 

You can also prioritize sales prospects by your ICP. Which ones are in similar roles or industries as current customers? Which are currently in a buy cycle?

There are many things that can help prioritize your sales prospects. So, it’s up to sales managers to figure out how they’re going to prioritize their prospects. Here’s another two examples of things a manager can put in place to help with the prioritization. First, they may create standard procedures that make account executives prioritize client communications over prospecting. Second, they may make sales reps that handle inbound leads prioritize inbound leads over prospecting, since these people are showing buying interest.

Sales Prospecting Techniques

This prioritization ties into sales prospecting techniques. Both need to go hand in hand and be considered together. For example, some common techniques include pursuing qualified leads, identifying former customers and creating effective scripts can all be tied into how you prioritize sales prospects. For more techniques, check out the rest here from Sendoso.

Sales Pipeline Stages

In terms of thinking about these ideas in the grand scheme of things, this usually falls early in the sales pipeline. While considering what prospects to reach out to first, this is obviously done during the prospecting stage. But, the rest of the process plays a factor as well. 

It’s important to always be wary of what’s going on further down the line to make sure you’re prospecting the best you can. Does a certain target persona close faster than others? Does another group upsell more than others? Seeing the success of different personas throughout the process can help you reprioritize during the prospecting stage.

Sales Pipeline Management Best Practices

Furthermore, it’s important to also follow some best practices for sales pipeline management. While prioritizing sales prospects is one best practice for sales pipeline management, we thought we’d share a few more too! 

Make sure you’re doing things such as only targeting leads that could lead to business, tracking the success of your sales pipeline through KPIs and other metrics and always reevaluating your process to ensure you’re following what’s working and leaving behind what’s not. So, for teams asking “How do you prioritize a sales pipeline,” the answer is simple. 

Start by prioritizing sales prospects effectively. Then, make sure you’re creating a system to allow you to effectively reach them. From here, always be looking for ways to improve this process, since you can always get better. 

How Do You Prioritize Leads in Salesforce?

Getting back to prioritizing leads, let’s look at how you can accomplish this in Salesforce. Many teams are using Salesforce as their CRM, so naturally there should be a tool to help you accomplish everything above within Salesforce. Salesvue is that tool. Salesvue, a Salesforce-native sales engagement platform, can help teams decide who to reach out to first. For example, with Salesvue’s lead scoring, you can ensure you’re always targeting the best prospects first. From here, the sales pipeline grows and Salesvue can also help manage every step along the process as well.

Conclusion

Every sales team needs to make sure they’re reaching the best prospects. Not only to help gain time back after emergencies arise, but also to make sure they’re putting the best prospects in the pipeline as fast as they can. By prioritizing sales prospects effectively, sellers can help ensure they’re reaching the right people, helping them close more deals in the future. For teams using Salesforce, check out Salesvue as a way to not only help prioritize these prospects, but to then help move them along the sales process as well.

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