Is your pipeline feeling stopped up, and you’re in sore need of some wins? It might feel hard to keep trudging forward when your leads are drying up. But there’s a potential gold mine you might be ignoring if you only look for completely new prospects. Instead of only trying to forge a new path […]
Is your pipeline feeling stopped up, and you’re in sore need of some wins?
It might feel hard to keep trudging forward when your leads are drying up. But there’s a potential gold mine you might be ignoring if you only look for completely new prospects. Instead of only trying to forge a new path with fresh prospects, try retracing your steps and exploring some of your lost opportunities.
Trying to revive lost opportunities might sound like a bad idea – they said no already, so why bother asking them again?
Well, if you arm yourself with the right strategies and choose the right closed-lost opportunities, it’s actually a great, cost-effective strategy for quick wins. Sometimes a “no” is really just a “not right now,” and there’s a few ways to figure out when that’s the case.
Why reactivating lost opportunities is the path to quick wins
Did you know that revived opportunities have a higher chance of closing than brand new ones? There are a few reasons for that.
- They’re already qualified. They’ve made it pretty far down the sales funnel before, so you know there’s a potential for a good fit without having to do all the legwork.
- They’re already familiar with you. You’re not starting the relationship from scratch – these prospects have talked to your reps before, and they have familiarity with your company and solution.
Sounds pretty good, right?
Not all lost opportunities are created equal
Of course, some opportunities are better left in the rear-view mirror. Many were lost for a good reason – they don’t fit your target market, or they’re not likely to convert.
The trick to winning back old opportunities is to pick the right ones to pursue again.
How do you know which ones are worth a second chance? Look for opportunities that have qualities like:
- Fit your ICP
- Have had recent changes – more funding, new technologies, shifts in leadership
- Wanted a solution you didn’t have before, but now offer
Some of these are a little tricker to figure out than others, but don’t worry – we’ve got some ideas for you.
How to find opportunities to revive
So you know that reviving lost opportunities is a good way to boost revenue, and you know there are certain kinds of opps you want to revisit. Great!…so now how do you figure out who fits the criteria?
We’ve got a few out-of-the-box strategies you can use to pinpoint the right kind of leads for reactivation.
1. Seek out funding data.
Maybe your opportunity fell through because of a lack of budget. If your prospect has an influx of money, it’s worth reopening that conversation.
One way to find out if old opportunities have new money to spend is to check whether they’ve recently received funding. You could set up Google Alerts for prospect companies to see if anything about funding pops up, but that’s not a very direct method (and not every round of funding is going to show up on Google news).
The easiest way to do it is with Lusha. Our Warm Outbound suite includes a funding filter that helps you identify whether a company has recently raised capital. You’ll get insights into the funding data, stage, type, and amount.
Look up some of your best lost opportunities in Lusha to see whether they’ve got new money burning a hole in their pocket and get your conversation restarted.
2. Set up job change alerts.
Companies with new leadership often reexamine their budgets and vendors. According to recent research, new decision-makers know how they plan to spend up to 70% of their budget within just their first 100 days. Plus, the new person who’s taken over the role might not have the same objections as their predecessor.
Set up job change alerts for your lost opportunities to receive intel when decision-makers change at those companies. Then you can get in front of people who are looking at the company’s problems with fresh eyes and see if there’s a possibility for reengaging the opportunity.
Setting up job change alerts is something you can do real easily with Lusha, and you can also filter a more direct search based on how recently someone has entered a role.
3. Use a technology filter.
Another change that can trigger a reason to revisit a lost opportunity is the adoption of new technology at a target company.
Maybe your product didn’t integrate with their CRM, or you sell a solution specific to a certain type of tech. But if they start using a new software that works better with what you’re selling? Boom– you have a reason to revisit the conversation.
The easiest way to see if your former prospects have swapped out their tech stack is to search in Lusha using our technology filter. You’ll be able to get insight into “behind-the-firewall” technologies like CRM, cloud hosting, and productivity tools.
Armed with this information, you can identify previously lost opportunities that might now be a better fit for your solution. Then you can go ahead and open up a conversation about their evolving needs and whether your solution can help.
4. Check on their buying signals using Intent.
Did you lose an opportunity to a competitor? Well, keep those prospects on your radar in case they end up dissatisfied with their choice.
Using Lusha’s Intent, you can see whether a target company is showing strong buying signals for a topic that’s relevant to what you offer. This is based on search activity, bidstream data, and other breadcrumbs that lead to the conclusion that their interest is spiking.
Take a look at your lost opportunities from a little less than a year ago – long enough ago that they might be reconsidering the contracts they signed before auto-renewal kicks in. Do they have a high intent score for a topic surrounding the problem you solve? That’s a good indication that the solution they chose might not be fixing all their pain points – they might be reconsidering.
Using intent scores to gauge interest, you can pop back in to open a discussion with your lost opportunities and see if they’re willing to explore your solution again.
5. Enrich your data.
A lot of the tactics we mentioned above might be easier as one-offs. It’s worth taking the time to search up information on individual companies if they were your white whales – the ones that got away.
But for something more scalable, look into how you can get updates on your lost opportunities en masse. One easy solution? Data enrichment.
Here’s how you can do it: run a list of your ICP closed/lost opportunities through Lusha’s CSV enrichment. You’ll be able to get updated information on both contacts and company details. Look for the companies that have had significant changes since you last spoke. Maybe the headcount has increased, or the HQ location changed. Both of those are changes that might warrant starting a conversation.
And with recent updates to our CSV enrichment, you can also get insight into some of those other potential conversation triggers we mentioned like job change updates, intent data, and company funding data.
Take that list of all your lost opportunities that have experienced changes or show intent, and there you go: you’ve got a whole bunch of pre-warmed leads who have the potential to become quick wins.
Key Takeaways
- Reviving lost opportunities is a cost-effective way to drum up some quick wins.
- Lost opportunities with companies that fit your ICP and have recently experienced some change are the most likely to convert.
- Lusha has a whole host of tools that can help you figure out if some of your former prospects have new funding, leadership changes, tech stack updates, or buying signals so you can identify your best opportunities.
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