B2B prospecting is reinventing itself: in the face of heightened competition, every interaction counts. Between refined targeting and advanced personalization, the challenge is clear: generate a solid pipeline while optimizing time and costs.
What is B2B prospecting?
👉 B2B prospecting involves identifying, contacting and qualifying professional prospects to generate sales appointments and nurture a solid pipeline.
Unlike inbound prospecting, where you wait for prospects to express themselves, B2B prospecting actively seeks them out. You target the right companies, adapt your message to their context and initiate a first exchange. This method guarantees a constant flow of leads, even when the market is quiet.
It's important to remember that B2B prospecting involves contacting people who don't know you. And you'll see later in the article that this aspect is central.
The difference between B2B prospecting and warm outreach
The main difference lies in the "temperature" of the contact:
- B2B (cold) prospecting: you start from scratch, with no prior exchanges.
- Warm outreach : you follow up with a prospect who already knows you (webinar, white paper, trade show).
💡In practice, B2B (cold) prospecting remains indispensable for expanding your market, while warm outreach maximizes the return on warm contacts. The ideal solution? Mix the two to constantly feed your pipeline and speed up appointment setting.
Defining the KPI: the non-negotiable first step
Prospecting becomes ineffective when you're talking to just anyone. The Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is used to identify the account most likely to conclude a purchase quickly and repeatedly. Without it, every campaign is irrelevant, and acquisition costs soar.
Why does ICP change everything? A well-defined KPI :
→ Direct marketing and sales efforts towards high-potential profiles
→ Personalize your message and increase response rates
→ Reduces the sales cycle by targeting mature prospects
Structuring and segmenting PKI profiles
Once you have the data, segment it along three key axes (or more, if necessary).
- Firmographic (size, sales, sector)
- Decision-making role (CEO, CMO, IT manager)
- Online behavior (downloads, recurring visits)
Is this prospect ready to invest in my offer?
Does my offer solve a problem he's experiencing?
If so, contact him!
Locate your prospects
B2B prospecting is all about direct action: you don't wait for them to come, you go and find them where they are. Trade inbound strategy for a structured outbound plan, based on coherent channels and a powerful message.
Where can you find information about your PKI?
1. LinkedIn and Linkedin Sales Navigator
- An essential tool for precisely targeting your KPIs. Thanks to advanced search, function, sector, location and purchase signal filters, every prospect selected corresponds to your ideal profile.
2. Professional databases
- Platforms such as ZoomInfo or Apollo offer qualified list exports, including verified e-mail addresses and telephone numbers. This saves considerable time.
3. References and recommendations
- Referrals from satisfied customers or partners generate a conversion rate up to 2× higher - an often underestimated lever.
4. Events and targeted networking
- Roundtables, breakfasts and specialized conferences provide an opportunity to make informal first contact and feed your CRM with hot leads.
A single channel quickly reaches its limits.
❌LinkedIn alone can saturate your InMail quotas
❌External bases sometimes lack qualitative context and regulatory framework
❌Referrals and events are slower to set up and cannot be sufficient on their own
By combining these sources, you multiply the points of entry without overloading a single lever. The coordination of these actions, driven by your CRM, guarantees complete coverage and an always-fed pipeline.
Once the profiles have been found, centralize them in a CRM, Notion or Sheets file.
Qualification and scoring: sorting for better conversion!
Qualifying a prospect means quickly filtering out those who match your KPI and focusing your efforts where the ROI is greatest. This step ensures that every reminder targets a mature contact, reduces wasted resources and speeds up the signing process.
Why qualify and score?
Without rigorous qualification, 70% of prospecting actions lead to no opportunities.
So why qualify and score leads?
✅ Prioritize hot leads rather than cold contacts
✅ Adapt the message to the prospect's maturity level
✅ Optimize sales teams' time and speed up the sales cycle
1. Define your scoring criteria
Start by listing 5 to 7 relevant criteria around your KPI and the question of how to find prospects ready to trade.
- Firmography (company size, sector)
- The role or position of the contact
- The company's budget (recent fund-raising? Hirings or redundancies?)
- Digital behavior (guide downloads, visits to pricing page, presence or absence on Linkedin)
- Engagement (email opens, clicks)
2. Apply the 5-step scoring methodology
- Assign a weight to each criterion (e.g. 1 to 5)
- Calculate an overall score: weighted sum of criteria
- Setting thresholds :
- Score ≥ 15: tier 1 - manual approach, free personalized lead magnet, etc.
- Score 10-14: tier 2 - customized sequence
- Score < 10 : tier 3 – qualifier plus tard, garder dans le CRM
- Automate data collection and calculation (via your CRM or an enrichment tool)
- Continuously refresh scores based on new interactions
Multi-channel prospecting
A multi-channel sequence optimizes your chances of response by multiplying contact points, while respecting the prospect's rhythm of engagement. Here's how to orchestrate a coherent, efficient flow that gets maximum response.
Defining the ideal sequence
Ready-to-use sequence template :
Why this pace?
- Initial e-mails establish contact without being intrusive. They feel 100% natural.
- LinkedIn reinforces the legitimacy of the message, visible on the profile.
- The telephone call humanizes the approach and enables us to qualify more finely.
💡 Important reminder: the objective of the first cold point of contact isn't to convert, but to get a response from your prospect.
Ultra-customized messages
Personalization is the fuel of B2B prospecting: a generic message is doomed to failure, while a tailor-made approach creates an immediate connection.
By putting the prospect at the heart of your message, you'll not only increase your open and response rates, you'll also mark your company out as legitimate and relevant.
Why customize?
✅ Immediate credibility
Mentioning something specific to the prospect (company news, role held, business challenge) shows you've done your homework.
✅ Increased response rate
Personalized cold campaigns get up to 25% more response than a standard mailing.
✅ Natural filtering
Only the recipients really concerned will react, so you avoid wasting time.
How to structure a personalized message
- Gathering insights: identify recent news, business pain and common ground. These elements are decisive. If you arrive at the right time, with the right solution: you're a winner!
- A striking object : short (4-10 words maximum), incorporating the company's name or a quantified benefit. It should attract attention at first glance.
- A teaser & CTA: immediate mention of the insight, followed by a proposal for a specific audit or niche.
- A concrete proposal : an open-ended question (mainly for the first contact), a meeting proposal, an offer, etc.
Examples of customization variables
These are the personalization variables most commonly used in B2B prospecting. Most automated prospecting tools also allow you to create custom variables.
Template for personalized prospecting message
Objet : {{companyName}} : réduire de {{benefitPercentage}} % votre time-to-market
Hello {{firstName}},
Congratulations on your recent {{fundingAmount}}. At Scalability, we help SaaS publishers solve the {{painPoint}} problem by automating their cold calling sequences.
Would you be available {{meetingDate1}} or {{meetingDate2}} for a free mini-audit of your current process?
Sincerely,
{{yourName}} {{yourPosition}}
Outsourced B2B prospecting: a better option?
Outsourced prospecting is increasingly becoming a strategic choice in today's saturated B2B marketing and sales environment.
Why outsource?
👉 A non-negligible time-saver: delegate research, qualification and contact-making to concentrate on conversion.
👉 Access to unparalleled expertise: benefit from proven protocols, optimized scripts and consultants trained in best outbound practices.
👉 Controlled increase in volume: quickly adjust the number of prospects according to seasonality or budget.
👉 Multi-channel coverage: combine e-mail, LinkedIn, telephone and SMS without investing in all the tools in-house.
👉 Continuous optimization: benefit from systematic feedback and A/B testing to improve response and appointment rates.
👉 AI skills: integrating automatic data enrichment and dynamic personalization via AI right from the launch.
What is Scalability?
Scalability is both an agency specializing in outbound prospecting and anAI-enhanced SaaS platform, supported by in-house Sales expertise and for a variety of sectors.
- A team of experts (sales consultants and data analysts) who design your scripts, segment your lists and optimize your sequences.
- An intuitive SaaS platform for deploying multi-channel campaigns (e-mail, LinkedIn, call, SMS) in just a few clicks; no development required.
- Integrated AI modules for real-time enrichment of prospect data (ZoomInfo, Clearbit), predictive scoring and dynamic generation of personalized messages.
- Native integration with major CRMs(HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive), guaranteeing bi-directional synchronization and automated status tracking.
- A unified dashboard that centralizes your KPIs (opening rate, response, appointment booking) and triggers alerts to continuously adjust your sequences.
"More than 3 years already and still as many leads. Increasingly profitable, unlike Ads where our budgets had exploded."
Chloé Bonnefous , Head of Sales @Ubiq
Bonus: Personal branding to support prospecting
Personal branding on LinkedIn reinforces the credibility of every contact and creates fertile ground for exchanges. When a prospect consults your profile after an initial message, they should immediately perceive your expertise and legitimacy.
- It builds confidence right from the first profile visit,
- and reinforces the impact of your InMails and e-mails.
1. Take care of your profile
- Take care with your photo and banner : professional portrait + visual mentioning your specialty, your slogan, your promise...
- Title: integrate your keywords ("Expert Prospection B2B | Multicanal, IA & Agency")
- Summary (About): 3 profit-oriented sentences (e.g. "+30% qualified appointments in 3 months") with a discreet link to your methodology
2. Launch your content strategy
Fuel your expertise with :
- Short publications (1×/week): statistics, practical tips, etc.
- Synthetic case studies (1×/month): quantified customer success stories
- Targeted, manual engagement: comment on and share your prospects' posts to stay visible. Don't use AIs that pollute Linkedin comment spaces and instantly discredit you!
Conclusion
In short, successful B2B prospecting combines precise KPI, coordinated multi-channel sequences and assertive personal branding.
Next steps :
- Finalize your ICP file and segment your contact lists.
- Set up your e-mail, LinkedIn and call sequences according to the recommended cadence.
- Optimize your messages with dynamic variables for maximum personalization.
- And why not delegate your B2B prospecting to get tangible results quickly and efficiently.
👉 Discover Scalability to automate and scale your B2B prospecting campaigns right now
