What a prospecting methodology is
A prospecting methodology is the written playbook a sales team follows to take an unknown company to a qualified opportunity. It sets the order of the steps and the criteria for each: ideal customer profile, company list, decision-maker map, research, outreach, cadence and qualification.
BANT, SPIN and MEDDPICC cover only qualification and discovery, and outbound and inbound only say who makes the first move. Pick an AI prospecting tool later, based on the step that is stuck.
With a written playbook, the team can see at which step prospecting failed. The prospecting maturity assessment asks 18 questions, one per screen, and shows where your team stands. The difference between lead, prospect and account keeps you from calling a name on a list an opportunity.
The seven steps of the method
Each step delivers the raw material for the next
The step by step, with what to measure at each stage
The signs in the third column show up in weeks, well before revenue does.
| Step | What to do | How to know it works |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Ideal customer profile | Write the company criteria: segment, size, operation, timing and what disqualifies | Two people classify the same companies the same way |
| 2. Company list | Filter the registry database by the profile, at the size the team can research | Almost no company on the list falls out at the first check |
| 3. Decision-maker map | Identify who holds each buying role and how to reach them | Each company approached has at least the economic buyer and one user identified |
| 4. Company research | Find out what the company does, what it announced, what pains it declared and what systems it uses | The rep can say why that company, and why now |
| 5. Outreach | Write the first contact from a recent fact, aimed at the role the map pointed to | Replies comment on the fact cited, not just the product |
| 6. Cadence | Plan the sequence of contacts, the channels and the exit rule | No company is left without a next step or gets the same contact twice |
| 7. Qualification | Apply a known framework to decide who becomes an opportunity | Sales accepts the opportunities pre-sales hands over |
How to define the ideal customer profile and build the list
The ideal customer profile describes the company: segment, size, operating model, technology maturity and timing. Job titles come later, in the decision-maker map.
Use criteria you can check in public sources, such as revenue range, headcount and activity group, and write down what disqualifies.
The list comes from the registry database filtered by the profile, at the size the team can research. Building and filtering this list is the most mature stage of automated prospecting.
Before building the list
A vague profile turns into a big list and an unranked queue
How to identify decision makers in a buying committee
The most common mistake is looking for a single decision maker. In complex sales, a buying committee decides, the buying center, and the team has to find out who holds each role: economic decision maker, champion, influencer, entry point and user. The guide to the power map in sales shows how to rank these roles and which questions confirm each one.
The buying roles
The champion makes the case without you in the room
Research the company before writing the first message
Research answers five questions before the first contact: what the company does, what changed in the last few months, what pain is likely, what systems it uses and who decides. What changed needs a date, because an old trigger has usually turned into a decision already.
This is the step that takes the most hours. AI agents for prospecting do this reading for the whole portfolio. In GoSeek, each company becomes a dossier in 7 to 15 minutes, with who decides, recent triggers and priority pains. See what the team receives in each dossier.
The first contact cites the recent fact and presents the pain as a hypothesis.
From research to first touch
First the reason, then the message
Each contact in the cadence brings a new fact
A cadence is the planned sequence of contacts with a company, across different channels and over a set period.
Each contact adds something instead of repeating the ask: the recent fact, then the likely pain, a case from the same segment and another role at the company. The number of contacts depends on the cycle and the channel, but the exit rule always applies.
Anyone who asks to be removed from the list is removed at once, because professional role data is also protected by the LGPD, Brazil's data protection law. A company that did not reply goes back into the queue when a new trigger comes up.
A sample cadence
A contact that only repeats the ask burns the company
BANT, SPIN or MEDDPICC: how to choose the qualification framework
Each framework answers a different question, and the three can be combined. SPIN works best when research has already answered the situation questions, as the guide to preparing a sales meeting with AI shows. In MEDDPICC, the competition goes into a sales battlecard.
In GoSeek, the dossier brings MEDDPICC pre-filled with what public sources support, as a hypothesis to validate in the first meeting, with the questions the team still needs to ask.
| Framework | What it is for | When to use it | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fit, pain and timing | Rank companies before the first touch, based on what each company publishes | In the list and the weekly queue | Says whom to approach first, not whether the company will buy |
| BANT: budget, authority, need and timeline | Quickly confirm whether the conditions to buy exist | Short cycle, low ticket and few decision makers | Asking about budget early stalls the conversation, and not every purchase starts with approved funds |
| SPIN: situation, problem, implication and need-payoff | Run discovery with questions in sequence | First meeting in a consultative sale | Runs the conversation but does not qualify; situation questions without research waste the customer's time |
| MEDDPICC: metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria and process, paper process, pain, champion and competition | Show what the team knows and what is missing in a complex sale | Buying committee, long cycle and high ticket | Heavy for simple sales; a letter filled in with assumptions gives false confidence |
What people ask about prospecting methodology
What is the best B2B prospecting methodology?
There is no single one. The seven steps work for almost any B2B sale, and the qualification framework varies: BANT for short cycles, SPIN for the discovery conversation and MEDDPICC for complex sales with a buying committee.
What is the difference between BANT, SPIN and MEDDPICC?
BANT confirms budget, authority, need and timeline. SPIN orders the discovery questions. MEDDPICC uses eight letters to show what the team knows and what is missing in a complex sale.
Founder of GoSeek. Specialist in market intelligence and consultative B2B sales for the enterprise market.
Keep reading
Automated prospecting builds the queue, not the conversation
Automated prospecting means software builds the list, reads dated buying signals and prepares the first contact. See what to automate and what not to.
AI agents for prospecting that read the company before the first conversation
AI agents for prospecting read the company in public data and deliver a score, triggers and whom to approach. See what they do and what stays with the team.
Lead, prospect and account
Lead, prospect, account and opportunity are not synonyms in B2B. See the difference and why the company, not the contact, is the unit of sales work.