A FREE GUIDE

A guide to sales prospecting

Finding, qualifying and approaching buyers and decision-makers in European B2B markets.

 Free · A 37-page PDF, sent to your inbox

What happened to the 2020 version?

WhiteBridge published a guide to prospecting in 2020, which after recently reviewing, I realised needed an update, as there were statistics listed in it that could no longer be traced. Every trail ended in a blog post citing another blog post.

Those references have been removed and the guide was rebuilt. Appendix A in the guide lists all sources with a note on how far each one reaches. One of the references is intentionally marked as being weaker than the rest, as every figure taken from it comes from a press release about a report behind a paywall. 

Validation creates trust. Although it can be slower, I believe it is worth it. 

What is in it

Prospecting in 7 steps: define the target, collect signals, prioritise, prepare the approach, make first contact, sequence & review. 

Steps 1 to 4 happen before the account knows you exist, which is where most of the value sits and most of the time does not get spent.

Around that, 4 new sections that did not exist in the previous version of this guide: 

  • Prospecting within European rules. What Norwegian law requires before you email a named person at work, how narrow the existing-customer exception really is, and why the telephone runs the other way. It is not legal advice. It will tell you what to ask a lawyer.

  • Deliverability. The authentication required since February 2024, and what silently happens to mail sent without it.
  • AI in prospecting. Where it does the work, and where it produces confident nonsense.
  • A 30-day start, for anyone who would rather begin than finish reading.

Who is it for

Three readers with the same problem and different constraints.

  • The employed seller with a territory, a quota and a CRM. 

  • The solopreneur who is the whole commercial function and whose scarcest resource is hours. 

  • The founder selling because nobody else can yet, trying to work out what a repeatable process looks like before hiring for it.