Prospecting and cold calling

Method A: Prospecting Pipeline (recommended)

Create a new pipeline for prospecting. (You can create a new pipeline for each prospecting campaign you do if you'd like to keep track of multiple prospecting initiatives separately.)

Create your prospecting stages in the pipeline. We recommend the following stages:

• 1. New

  2. Research

  3. Dialogue

  4. Long term

Now each prospect / company you want to reach will be an opportunity in this pipeline, and you can easily manage your prospecting activities in this pipeline.

To import a list of companies as prospects, just import those as new opportunities into this pipeline's first stage. Use our Opportunity Import Template to import easily.

To add a new prospect manually (maybe one of your other prospects referred you to a new company etc.), just create a new opportunity in the first stage and work on it from there.

Note: An opportunity in FunnelBud needs to be associated to a contact. Therefore, you'll need to have a placeholder contact that you can add to new prospecting opportunities, for example [Name: Placeholder Contact, Email: placeholder@companydomain.com]

Tip: When working with cold calling, it is usually easier to use the “Opportunity Manager” view (list view). That way, you have a list that you can filter and sort in various ways when cold calling. Use saved filters to work on different stages.

Benefits

• Easily manage all your prospects in a drag-and-drop pipeline, add notes, contacts and details as you progress with each prospect.

• Ability to create multiple prospecting campaigns and track them separately.

• Ability to hire external prospecting companies and allow them to see only the prospecting campaign and contacts they're working on.

• Get conversion reports on how your prospecting steps are performing.

• Creating your prospecting pipeline.

• Ability to add number of emails / calls per day or week you should make to each prospect in each stage and let FunnelBud warn or remind you to follow up with prospects periodically in different stages.

FAQ

What deal values and close dates should I use?

Add close date end of the year (or any other date you agree) and a deal value of 1 (or any other value you decide to assign to new prospects).

Note: By using FunnelBud's reports later on, you can actually find out what the actual value of a new prospect is for you and assign this value. This will allow you to weigh the value of a prospecting campaign against the cost of doing it and calculate ROI.

Method B: Use a Cold Calling Sheet

Who is this for? This is for companies who prefer using Excel sheets for their prospecting needs for any reason. This is also good for companies who have a list of contacts to call rather than companies, and don't want to clutter their database by importing a list of unqualified contacts.

Sheets are wonderfully versatile tools, right? If only they were synced with FunnelBud...

Well, guess what - they can be!

Our Synced Prospecting Sheet methodology allows you to work on your contacts on a Google Sheet, and sync it with FunnelBud when they reach a certain stage.

Here's how it works:

• You will add and work on contacts in your sheet.

• You can add any columns etc. as you wish and work on it to your heart's delight.

• When the contact is qualified and you want to add it to FunnelBud and continue working on it from there, you simply select "Yes" in one of the columns, and voila - all the info is synced into FunnelBud (and it can even trigger automations such as notification to a lead owner you decide to assign it to, adding to the correct lists, or even an email / drip sequence with a custom message sent to the contact).

• All the info from your sheet, and additional meta-data such as sync date, who synced it, etc. will be automatically added to FunnelBud.

Benefits

• This method is great for companies who work on a lot of contacts that they want to call, but don't want to add them to FunnelBud until they're actually qualified.

• It also works great for companies who prefer to prospect in sheets, for any reason. We don't blame them - sheets are great, flexible, and simple to work with!

• If you have an external cold calling company and don't want to teach them a tool like FunnelBud, this is a great way to allow them to work on their contacts in a sheet, and send them into your FunnelBud instance (and notify you automatically, assign correct campaigns, add them to correct follow up lists, etc.) automatically with barely any training required!

Method C: Account tagging and account sharing

Who is this for? If you don't want to create a "prospecting opportunity" for some reason, but instead prefer to work on accounts.