The health of your business' sales pipeline is everything.

From moving deals along smoothly to picking out dead leads, managing every single opportunity that goes through your sales process is a big job, accompanied with plenty of potential issues. However, the real problem arises when sales reps don't have enough qualified opportunities to work with.

The only way to avoid this productivity killer is by implementing a sales prospecting strategy.

Sales prospecting is the first step in the sales process in which reps use outreach methods to identify potential customers. These prospects are people that fit your ideal customer profile and are likely to buy your solution.

The purpose of prospecting is to fuel your sales pipeline and provide reps with valuable opportunities to help them close deals. Once your company's conversion rate is taken into account, the initial number of prospects that enter the pipeline will diminish, so it's important to identify as many potential customers as possible.

However, you don't want to fill your pipeline with just anybody. One of the most crucial parts of sales prospecting is knowing who to reach out to.

To equip your sales reps with actual opportunities, you need to start by targeting the right buyers. It's a lot more beneficial for businesses to have a short list of qualified potential buyers than a long list of people who have no need for their solution.