Sometimes it feels like you’ve already contacted everyone.

You’ve worked through your existing prospect list. You’ve followed up with previous contacts. Your sales team knows the local market. Your marketing campaigns are reaching the same familiar audience.
So where do you go next?

When a market starts to feel saturated, it may be time to look at your prospecting strategy from a different angle.

You don’t necessarily need to completely change your ideal customer. Instead, look for new ways to identify businesses that fit the profile you are already trying to reach.

Look Beyond Your Existing Customer List

Your current customers can tell you a lot about where to find new prospects.

Look for common characteristics among your best customers.

Do they tend to be in the same industry? Are they similar in size? Are they concentrated in particular geographic areas?

Once you identify those patterns, you can look for other businesses that share those characteristics.
Your customer list can become more than a record of who has already purchased from you. It can also provide clues about where to look for your next audience.

Explore Adjacent Industries

Your primary market may not be the only market that needs your product or service.

Consider businesses in industries that have similar challenges or use similar products.

For example, a company primarily serving restaurants might also find opportunities among hotels, catering companies, cafeterias or other food-service businesses.

The key is to look for a logical connection rather than simply expanding your audience as broadly as possible.

Expand Into New Geographic Markets

If your current market has become highly competitive, geography may provide another opportunity.

Consider nearby cities or states. If your business already serves customers successfully in one region, ask whether the same customer profile exists elsewhere.

Geographic expansion can be approached gradually. You might test one new market before expanding further.
This can give your team an opportunity to learn about the new audience without committing resources to a nationwide campaign.

Look for New Contacts at Existing Companies

Sometimes you don’t need a new company—you need a new contact.

Companies can have multiple people involved in purchasing decisions. A business that wasn’t interested in your service when you spoke with one person may have another department or decision-maker who has a different need.

Consider whether your prospecting strategy should include multiple relevant job titles or departments.

Business data that includes executive names, titles and contact information can make it easier to identify additional contacts within your target companies.

Refresh Older Prospect Lists

An older prospect list isn’t necessarily useless, but it may need to be reviewed.

Businesses change. Contacts change positions. Companies move. Some businesses close while others open.

Refreshing an older list can help you identify which records are still useful and which information needs to be updated.

Data cleansing and enhancement can also be useful when you want to work with information you already have rather than starting completely from scratch.

Refresh Older Prospect Lists

Look at Your Market From a Different Perspective

• Are we targeting the right industries?
• Are we focusing on the right company sizes?
• Are there nearby markets we haven’t explored?
• Are there additional decision-makers we should reach?
• Are our existing lists current?
• Are we relying too heavily on one source of prospects?

The answers may reveal opportunities you haven’t considered.

Build a Prospecting Strategy That Can Grow

A strong prospecting strategy shouldn’t depend on finding one perfect list and using it forever.

Markets change, businesses change and your own company changes.

Instead, think of prospecting as an ongoing process of identifying the right audiences, testing new markets, refreshing your data and learning from your results.

DatabaseUSA provides business data that can be customized around criteria such as industry, geography, employee size, sales volume and executive information. Its data services can also help businesses cleanse and enhance existing files.

If your market feels saturated, don’t automatically assume you’ve run out of prospects.

You may simply need to look at your market from a different angle.

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