The Ultimate

PROSPECTING
TOOL KIT
Four worksheets from top salespeople for the
most ecient, eective sales prospecting.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Introduction
We ended the first quarter on a high note,
exceeding our quota and we spent time
prospecting to ensure future success. Things were
going well, until we began prospect outreach the
next day and realized we spent too much time
looking for a high volume of prospects and not
enough time ensuring quality. Dont get us wrong,
we think quantity is important, but 1,000 prospects
arent useful if they have zero interest in our
product. This one mistake set us back for the
entire quarter to follow.
Determined to never let this happen again, we
spoke to top sales leaders to find out their
prospecting techniques and created the Ultimate
Prospecting Tool Kit. This kit includes four
worksheets for every part of the prospects
journey. The tools can help with quality control,
saving time and closing more deals.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Whats Included?
1.

Prospect Fit Matrix

2.

Competitive Intelligence

3.

Sales Qualification Framework

4.

Time Management Calendar

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Prospect Fit Matrix

When we said the prospects were low quality, we
meant we never properly evaluated if they were a
fit for our product. We spent months trying to reach
out to the same, unresponsive prospects, when we
should have spent twenty minutes evaluating their
fit.
We created a prospect fit matrix, with three core
sections: business characteristics, contact
characteristics and prospect intelligence. Each
section helps us learn just how well of a fit our
prospect and their business is for our product.
Once we completed the matrix for a few prospects,
we focused our time on those who fell into more
high fit categories. Some of the questions we
asked ourselves and the answers we arrived at for
what a high fit prospect looks like for HubSpot are
included as examples. After completing this matrix
routinely, we became familiar with specific
parameters to determine which prospects were
worth spending extra time on.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Prospect Fit Matrix

Business Characteristics
Average sales price: Are you targeting enterprise customers or SMB? What is the average price of your customers
products and how does that align with your product?

Dedicated industry team: How many employees are needed to fully utilize your product and how many would be too
many people for your product?

Sales model: Does the companys sales model work well with your product?

Number of sales reps: Are there enough sales reps on the team to show the ROI of your product? Are there too
many?

Sales cycle: How long does it take for your product to show results? How long is the companys sales cycle? Make
sure their sales cycle is within this timeframe, if it is too long or too short then they wont see the value of your
product.

High

Medium

Business Characteristics
Average sales price

$500 - $50,000
Companies can see a
positive ROI here.

Dedicated team of
product users

1-6 Marketers
Enough dedicated team
members and dont require
sophisticated features.
Direct
Have the most control over
their success.

Sales model

Number of sales reps

Sales cycle

1-100
Companies are well
positioned to turn inbound
leads into sales.
1 week to 12 months
Inbound marketing shows
results over a few quarters.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Low

Prospect Fit Matrix

Contact Characteristics
Title: Is the person you are speaking with a decision maker or a gatekeeper to accessing a decision maker? It will vary
depending on each company, but typically you want to avoid people outside of the department you are targe;ng and get as
close to high-level decision makers like VPs C-Suite and Owners as possible.

Inclina,on to your industry: Is the prospect somewhat familiar with your industry? Typically the golden spot is that they have
a bit of knowledge or demonstrated interest in your industry. If they already are experts, then they likely wont need your
product, but If they are completely unaware/uninvolved with your industry then it will be a stretch to get them buy your
product.

Company History: What preexis;ng experience does the prospect have with your company? If they used to be customers and
had a good experience they will likely close at a high rate. Brand new prospect? They can be great too, if the company is going
through some form of internal change.

High

Medium

Contact Characteristics
Title

VP, CMO, Owners

Involved with the decision
making process.

Inclination to your
industry

Making Inbound Eort

Uses some marketing
automation and is
receptive to change.
Ex-User
Close at a high percentage
as long as they didnt have
a bad past experience.

History with your

company

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Low

Prospect Fit Matrix

Prospect Intelligence
Recent downloads: Have they downloaded a piece of your content directly related to youre product or subscribed to your
emails? Or, have they downloaded informa;on about the 5K your company is running? The closer the download is to your
product, the beLer t the prospect will likely be.

Found site via: Did they come through a referral links or organic search? Either is a great sign as they are ac;vely researching
your industry. If they came from paid eorts or other outbound marke;ng methods they can s;ll be a t, but they will likely
be tougher to close.

Website interac,on: Did they view your pricing page? Thats a great sign. If they only browsed your homepage, then they
may not be as great of a t, yet.

High

Medium

Prospect Intelligence
Recent downloads

Acquisition channel

Website interaction

Low

MQLs
Trial requests, demo
requests or Contact Sales
Leads have the highest
chance of closing.
Organic Search
This means that they are
researching inbound.
Events
The pricing page or other
key events indicate the
prospect is in a buyers
journey.

Click here to fill out your own Prospect Fit Matrix.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Tired of manually
searching for
information about
prospects?
HubSpots Prospecting
feature crawls the internet
for you. The HubSpot
Prospecting tool saves you
time with a database of
over 20 million companies.

CLICK TO ACCESS
OVER 20M
COMPANIES >>>

Competitive Intelligence
The first phone conversation with our prospect was
going great, until they asked an in-depth question
about a feature on our competitors product. We
completely froze. To truly succeed in this scenario
we should have known the ins and outs of not only
my company and product, but our competitions as
well. We should have had a grasp on the specific
advantages we have over the competition and
positioned my product as a better solution to my
prospects challenges.
The following matrix allows us to do just that. The
first row is filled out as an example. Once we
completed the whole matrix, our companys
relative strengths were obvious and we set
ourselves up for future success in these situations.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Competitive Intelligence
Competitor

Basic Information

Marketo
Product Focus:
www.marketo.com Marketing Automation,
Lead Management
Target Market: SMBs,
Enterprise
Tagline: Best-in-Class
Marketing Automation
Software

Why We Win
Inbound
Leadership
Easier Landing
Pages/ Email
Lead Gen
Integrated
analytics
All-in-on
Price

Why We Lose
Sophisticated
automation
Revenue
analytics
Salesforce
integration

More
Information
(relevant
additional
information)

Product Focus:
Target Market:
Tagline:

Product Focus:
Target Market:
Tagline:

Product Focus:
Target Market:
Tagline:

Access the competitive intelligence worksheet here.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Sales Qualification
Framework
There are plenty of sales frameworks, but most of
them are based around the salesperson. Today,
prospects are armed with information about their
specific needs and our product before even
thinking about talking with a salesperson.
Salespeople must earn trust and establish
themselves as an advisor.
HubSpot created a new qualification framework
called GPCTBA/C&I to do just that. Our sales reps
swear it is much easier than it sounds. GPCTBA/
C&I stands for goals, plans, challenges, timeline,
budget, authority, negative consequences and
positive implications. We use this when were on
exploratory calls with our prospects. We provide
sample questions that can be asked in each
category, but feel free to use your own questions
that make sense for your specific scenario.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Sales Qualification Framework

GOALS:

Determine prospects quantitative goals

Question

Answer

PLANS:

Find out what their plan of execution is

Question

What is your number one

goal for 2016?

What is your plan for

achieving your goals?

Do you have personal

goals that go along with
these?

Are you confident your

plan is going to achieve
the goals we just
discussed?

What are your revenue

goals for Q1? The rest of
the year?

Do you have the right

resources available to
implement this plan?

Do you have published

revenue goals for this
upcoming quarter?

Are there any other

company goals that are
important?

Do you anticipate
executing this plan will
go smoothly?
Would you like to hear
about how other people
Ive worked with have
implemented similar
plans?

www.hubspot.com/crm

Answer

Sales Qualification Framework

CHALLENGES:

Define the pain points

Question

Answer

TIMELINE:

Assess when the prospect will buy

Question

How are you addressing

your challenges in your
plan?

How quickly do these

results need to be
achieved?

Why do you think you

can overcome this
challenge now?

What else is a priority

now?

What happens if you

overcome challenge A
but it makes challenge B
worse?

Do you have bandwidth

and resources to
implement this plan now?

Do you think you have

the internal expertise to
deal with these
challenges?
If you realize early
enough in the year that
this plan isnt fixing this
challenge, how will you
shift gears?

What other
complimentary (or
competitive) solutions are
you evaluating?
Would you like help
thinking through the
steps involved in
executing this plan, so
you can figure out when
you should implement
each piece?

www.hubspot.com/crm

Answer

Sales Qualification Framework

BUDGET:

Do they have enough cash to close?

Question
Do we agree on the
potential ROI?

Answer

AUTHORITY:

Who has the power to close?

Question

Are the goals we

discussed important to
the decision maker?

Where else are you

allocating your budget
to?

What concerns might

they raise?

What is one thing you

wish you were getting
from your current
investment?

How will we respond to

concerns we haven't
discussed?

If need be do you believe

it makes sense to invest
more in us?

How should we go about

getting the decision
maker onboard with our
plan?

Do you envision any

hurtles investing in us?

Does it make sense for

us to have this call
together? What role do
you pay vs. what I play?

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Answer

Sales Qualification Framework

NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCES:

POSITIVE IMPLICATIONS:

What happens if our prospect fails?

What happens if our prospect succeeds?

Question
What happens if you
dont hit the goal?

Question

Answer

What happens when you

hit your goals?

Does this aect you on a

personal level?

Does this aect you on a

personal level?

Would you get fired,

demoted or lose
responsibility if this
challenge isnt solved?

Do you get bonusd or

promoted if you hit your
goals?

How would you move

forward if this doesnt
work out?

When you overcome this

challenge what will you
do next?

Do you think our product

can help you avoid these
negative consequences?

Do you think our product

can aid you in achieving
these positive
implications?

Click for the full framework template.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Answer

Time Management Calendar

Timing is everything, especially in sales. To a
prospect there isnt much of a dierence buying a
product on the last day of November or the first of
December, but for salespeople it can be
everything. It is not only important to make sales,
but to make them within a certain timeframe. We
were counting on that sale for November, and now
we missed our monthly goal. After missing our
quota we thought, if we managed our time in
advance we may have hit our goal.
After talking to top salespeople we learned about a
calendar they create each month to hit monthly
quotas. Now, each month we ask ourselves the
following five questions and create a monthly
schedule outlining our goals. Then, each day we
reference this schedule and ask ourselves two
questions. Using this time management calendar
we have shortened the prospect purchase time
and exceeded our monthly goals.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Time Management Calendar

Start of the month

1
3
5

What does my manager expect of

me?

How many selling days are there

in the month?

2
4

CHALLENGES
What do I want to do?

What do I need to do each day to

hit that goal?

Write down your goals.

Start of the day

Is my day structured to hit my

goal?

What do I need to do today to hit

my monthly goal?

Click here to setup your monthly time management calendar!

www.hubspot.com/crm

Conclusion
When we used these four worksheets in our
prospecting process, we saved time and closed
more deals. Prospecting is a necessary evil in
sales, but if it is done right it makes the rest of the
journey much smoother. We hope that you find
these tools as useful as we do.

www.hubspot.com/crm

Want more tools?

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tools does the work
for you. The HubSpot
Prospecting feature
contains information
on over 20 million
companies.

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FREE PROSPECTING
TOOL