Starting From Zero
Every B2B pipeline starts with the same problem: you have a product and a target market, but no names, no warm intros, and no budget for enterprise data.
This guide covers the prospecting stack that works at every stage — from pre-seed founder doing founder-led sales to a scaled SDR team hitting 200 touches per day.
Define Before You Prospect
Before you find any names, answer three questions:
1. Who is the ideal buyer? (Role, seniority, company type — see ICP guide)
2. What specific pain do they have that you solve?
3. What triggers cause someone to start looking for solutions like yours?
The trigger question is the most valuable and most skipped. Common triggers: company just raised funding, just hired a new VP in the relevant department, just posted a job that signals the pain, just had a news event that creates urgency. Prospect into triggers and your response rates double.
Free Prospecting Sources
LinkedIn (manual)
Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator's lead filters: industry, seniority, company size, geography, posted in last 30 days. Filter further by job change in past 90 days (people settling into new roles often want quick wins). Export or manually log contact info.
Job postings as signals
A company hiring "Revenue Operations Manager" is almost certainly in pain with its sales stack. "Head of Content" means they're scaling marketing. Monitoring job postings for intent signals is a high-signal prospecting approach. Tools like BuiltWith, SignalHire, and LinkedIn alert notifications help.
Company news and funding alerts
Set Google Alerts for your target industries + "raises", "announces", "launches". TechCrunch, Crunchbase, and industry trade press are gold for trigger-based prospecting.
G2, Capterra, and review sites
Companies reviewing alternatives to your competitors are actively in-market. G2 Buyer Intent data (expensive) surfaces this directly. Poor-man's version: monitor competitor review pages for reviewers who left recent reviews and seem dissatisfied.
Paid Prospecting Tools
Once you have a repeatable motion and need to scale:
- Apollo ($49+/month): Best for building lists from 265M+ verified contacts with sequence integration
- Clay ($149+/month): Best for AI-enriched research at scale
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator ($79+/month): Best for account-based prospecting and job-change triggers
- ZoomInfo (enterprise pricing): Best database coverage for US mid-market and enterprise
For most sub-20-person sales teams, Apollo or Clay + a good sequencer is sufficient.
The First Outreach Decision
Once you have a prospect list, you face a choice: phone, email, LinkedIn, or combination.
Cold email outperforms cold calling for most B2B SaaS and services businesses. Higher scalability, measurable, doesn't interrupt.
LinkedIn connection requests work as a warm-up channel before email — a soft touch that increases email open rates by 15–25% when done first.
Cold calling still works for specific industries (financial services, insurance, some regional B2B) and for higher-velocity deals where speed matters.
Combination cadences — LinkedIn → email → phone — outperform any single channel.
Qualification Framework (BANT Evolved)
The classic BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeline) has been updated for modern B2B:
MEDDIC is more predictive:
- Metrics: Can they quantify the problem we solve?
- Economic Buyer: Do I have access to the person who signs the check?
- Decision Criteria: Do I know how they'll evaluate solutions?
- Decision Process: Do I know their internal steps from interest to contract?
- Identify Pain: Is the pain acknowledged and urgent?
- Champion: Is there someone inside who wants this to happen?
Prospects who score high on MEDDIC close significantly faster. Qualify early and ruthlessly.
Building Repeatability
Prospecting is a system, not a one-off effort. Define:
- Weekly targets: X accounts researched, Y contacts enrolled, Z replies sought
- Review cadence: Weekly review of sequence performance, monthly ICP refresh
- Template library: 3–5 winning email frameworks, maintained and updated quarterly
The reps (or founders) who build a repeatable system outperform high-effort randomness every time.