Stop Chasing RFPs: How to Create Opportunities Before Buyers Raise Their Hands

Your buyers are more informed than ever. Yes, we’ve been hearing this since the early days of the internet. But with ChatGPT’s arrival, search is on steroids.

Research suggests that buyers complete the majority of their evaluation process before they ever speak with a salesperson.

With Gemini, Claude, Perplexity (and ChatGPT) in the mix, many prospects make up their minds about your company, your competitors, and your solutions long before your sales team has a chance to engage.

For sales leaders, this reality presents a new challenge: How do you position your team to influence buying decisions before buyers make their shortlist?

The answer lies in shifting from traditional tactics to a more strategic prospecting approach that focuses on getting ahead of the buyer’s journey.

The Problem with Traditional Prospecting

Many sales organizations still operate under the assumption that more activity equals better results. More calls. More emails. More meetings. More deals.

But activity alone doesn’t drive outcomes. Sales leaders need to differentiate between efficiency and effectiveness.

A seller can make dozens of calls a day and still fail to create meaningful opportunities. On the other hand, a smaller number of higher-value touchpoints can have a much greater impact on pipeline quality and win rates.

The goal isn’t simply to increase activity. The goal is to increase influence.

Understanding the Buyer’s Decision Spectrum

Luckily and somewhat ironically, sellers can use the same tools buyers are using to research customers. While your buyers are comparing vendors, researching pricing, and evaluating competitors, your sales team can dig into a prospect’s situation, market, and challenges.

A helpful framework for this is the decision spectrum. This is the journey buyers move through from recognizing a need to making a purchasing decision.

At the center of this journey is the trigger point: the moment a buyer realizes they have a problem or opportunity that requires action. The further a prospect progresses beyond that trigger point, the harder it becomes to influence their thinking.

By the time a prospect issues an RFP or requests a proposal, they’ve often established buying criteria and researched solutions. At that stage, salespeople are frequently too late to influence a decision that’s close to being made.

If they aren’t establishing relationships and building trust with prospects ahead of the trigger point, your seller may be out of the game. Relationship-building is no longer just a sales skill—it’s a competitive advantage against AI-driven buying behavior.

Leadership Takeaway: Coach your team to focus not just on opportunities that exist today, but on relationships that will influence future opportunities. Success is often determined before the formal buying process begins.

Download 5 Strategies to Qualify Customers Profitably for straightforward steps to improve sales prospecting.

4 Strategies for Creating Opportunities

Strategy #1: Be Present Before the Need Exists

Many salespeople wait for buying signals. Top performers position themselves before those signals appear. Challenge each seller to identify one “whale account”—a high-value target they are not currently doing business with.

Instead of focusing solely on outreach campaigns, have them think about how else they can connect with those accounts. What causes does this organization support? What community initiatives are they involved in? What industry events matter to them?

Encourage your team to participate in those events or causes—not to pitch, but to build familiarity and trust. Then, when competitors are fighting for meetings, your sellers will already be inside the gate.

Strategy #2: Solve Problems Outside Your Product

Your best prospecting initiative may not involve selling at all. Another way to get ahead of the trigger point is to problem-solve for your prospects.

Instead of pushing demos and product conversations, identify more urgent challenges. Then educate, inform, and advise to help them solve that issue, partnering with an outside expert if necessary.

At your next sales meeting, ask:

• What are our customers worried about right now?
• What challenges are affecting their businesses?
• Who could we partner with to provide value around those challenges?

Trust is built when you help people—even when their problems have nothing to do with your product.

Strategy #3: Look for Early Trigger Signals

Most organizations wait until a buying process is visible. Effective prospectors identify signals that indicate a buying process is about to begin. These signals often emerge months before formal buying activity starts.

Depending on your industry, trigger signals can include municipal permit filings, construction approvals, zoning applications, expansion announcements, new executive hires, funding announcements, and competitor contract renewals.

Work with your team to identify:

1. The most common trigger events in your industry.
2. Where those signals can be found.
3. A process for monitoring them consistently.

The earlier your team identifies a trigger, the greater their opportunity to shape the buying conversation.

Strategy #4: Stay Close to Lost Opportunities

Most salespeople move on immediately after losing a deal. That creates an opportunity. After a competitor wins business, everyone else disappears. But that may be the perfect time to continue building the relationship.

Many buying decisions that seem permanent are actually temporary. Vendors underperform. Priorities change. Contracts expire. When those moments occur, buyers often return to the people they remember.

Create a post-loss engagement plan. Your team’s next opportunity may come from a deal they lost years ago. Schedule regular check-ins and continue providing value for every significant lost opportunity.

Building Long-Term Relationships in the AI Era

The future of prospecting isn’t about increasing volume. It’s about increasing relevance. Sales teams that consistently win are not necessarily the ones making the most calls. They’re the ones building trust before buyers begin searching, creating value before opportunities exist, and positioning themselves as trusted resources long before a purchase decision is made.

Michelle Richardson is the vice president of Sales Performance Research at The Brooks Group, where she spearheads industry research and ROI initiatives.