Weekly Sales Prospecting Checklist

This weekly sales prospecting checklist is a process used to generate business as the first step in an outbound sales approach. Prospecting involves finding potential customers and classifying their quality before reaching out to them via the broader sales team. 

After you have completed this checklist you may want to try our Cold-Calling Checklist which lets you reach out to your leads generated in this template.

We're focussing on the research element of sales prospecting within this checklist to help you build a library of potential business leads. As you go through the checklist, record information in the form fields provided. 

Analyze the previous week's performance from the data collected in the CRM and discuss it in a short beginning of week retrospective/stand-up meeting. 

This should be a short meeting to review the past week and to ensure the whole team are clear on their responsibilities.

You can find a range of articles discussing how to hold an effective retrospective here.

Use the form field below to record any notes from the meeting.

After the team review, spend a few minutes analyzing your own progress from the previous week. Investigate which channels have been the most successful and which have proved to yield fewer results.

Use this analysis to inform your priorities for the week.

What are you going to focus on, what are you going to place as secondary?

Goal:

Gather 50 leads.

Record your leads in your CRM, and record the keywords you have searched in the form field below.

Twitter is one of the largest social networks on the internet and the vast majority is publicly viewable. Many companies and individuals use Twitter regularly and will likely reveal their needs through the language they use. Searching on Twitter for your keywords could bring a large number of results, and new results every day. 

This article from Entrepreneur documents an 8 step guide to using Twitter for prospecting. It also recommends using companies like TweetBeep and Twilert to help you monitor your keywords on Twitter.

Even a simple search which a software development studio might make pops up some results.

Or maybe you know your key demographic is SaaS companies? Particularly new companies who have money but not established internal systems. You can use Twitter's Advanced Search to identify potential leads.

Goal:

Gather 50 leads.

Record your leads in your CRM, and record your search terms in the form field below.

Linkedin is the world's largest professional social network and an ideal place to find contacts and leads if used well. 

Linkedin can be used in many ways, from Advanced Search to combing through industry groups, to tracking down the right contact at a company by finding their profile on the platform. This guide from Salesforce leads you through the traditional approaches to prospecting on Linkedin.

We're going to focus on generating leads with Linkedin's premium tool Sales Navigator. This option allows you to see private profiles and message anyone directly. This guide from PersistIQ demonstrates the value of using Sales Navigator. It allows you to do Boolean searches within Linkedin's native search system. 

Choose the position in a company you're looking to reach and your keywords, and begin searching. 

Example: "VP of*" Sales OR Marketing - will show you only people who have a VP position but will include both VP of Sales and VP of Marketing. 

Check out this video below for a walk-through:

Goal:

Select 5 publications. Post your listing of availability on each, and try to generate 20 leads across them all.

Record your leads in your CRM and list the publications you searched and posted on below.

Often different publications which are industry specific will have areas dedicated to the community. This could be an area to post your services, to post your needs, or an area to list available job openings. 

Find 5 publications relevant to your specific industry and browse through what they offer for the community. For software development, you could try Crunchbase or Smashing magazine. You can use aggregators like AllTop to help you find publications.

Goal:

Gather 50 leads and document the volume from each platform in the form fields below.

Depending on your industry, online marketplaces could generate a considerable amount of leads. For software development or SEO services, platforms like Upwork - the largest skills marketplace - and Crew.co have new listings every day. For Upwork they have new listings every few minutes. 

However, you need to know your market. Upwork generally has a larger amount of lower paid projects open, but success in the marketplace opens up access to UpworkPro - the premium curated version. Crew.co is mid-level pricing primarily catering to a US audience.

You can find a more extensive list of marketplaces here.

For designers, for instance, you can find specialist platforms like Fiverr or 99designs or could search through niche social networks like Behance or Dribbble.

If your line of work isn't catered to by the marketplaces mentioned above, you can try Angel List or F6S. Here you can find companies large and small with a focus on startups. Their databases are searchable and they have job listings available to search through also. There's a short guide to this approach here.

Analyze the prospects you have generated and attempt to gather the most valuable contact details for each one. 

Are you looking for the CEO or CTO? Or do you need to contact the Hiring Manager or the Head of Marketing? Identify your optimum point of contact and locate their details.

For this, you can use Linkedin, the company website, or a specialist tool. Often certain CRMs will provide you with further details of individuals when you input their information.

Record your findings in your CRM and document your successful process below.

Different sales prospects will have different potential value. Categorize your leads by cadence so your sales team can know who to target first.

For example:

A. High Value
B. Mid-Range Client
C. Entry-level Prospect

This will help your sales team prioritize their efforts.

You can read more about using cadence in sales processes here.

Using either of the form fields below, either provide instructions on how to access the lead list, or list them in this task.

Using the Members form field below, assign the individual who will approve the weekly sales prospects.

Send your sales team the annotated list of potential new clients. 

Your sales team can then run our Cold Calling Checklist to help them maximize their success when reaching out to new clients.

Send your sales team an email to alert them to the new sales prospects using the widget below: 

SalesLoft - Sales Prospecting Checklist
SalesLoft - Ultimate Sales Prospecting Guide
A Sales Guy - The Importance of a Sales Cadence and the 5 Critical Elements it Must Cover
John Doerr - 6 Keys to Prospecting Success
HubSpot - Sales Prospecting
Matthew Cook - HubSpot - 5 Effective Sales Prospecting Techniques You Should Be Using
Emma Brudner - 25 Sales Prospecting Techniques to Crush Your Next Call

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