Prospecting: The Non-Negotiable Skill That Sets Sales Talent Apart.

At meritt. we have always been GTM professionals first. I spent years focused on sales and sales development, having founded the UK’s first SDR bootcamp, and even now I still coach SDRs and serve as an ambassador at SDR Leaders of EMEA.

In 2025, prospecting for account executive and sales roles is non-negotiable. Too often we see candidates, particularly AEs, who simply do not have that muscle. They may be strong closers or effective relationship builders, but without the ability to create pipeline they become dependent on others to hand them opportunities.

That background shapes how we interview candidates today. We can always tell who has prospecting skills. The ones who prospect can talk about it with real confidence. They have examples. They know their numbers. They see prospecting as a habit, not a task.

There are no shortcuts. Get prospecting.

Relationships Matter

Prospecting is not just about filling the top of your funnel. At its best, it is the start of a relationship. Every cold call, every first email, every LinkedIn touchpoint is an opportunity to build credibility and trust.

The salespeople who excel are not those who treat prospecting as transactional. They see it as the first step in building a long-term connection. A prospect who does not buy today may buy in six months. A polite, curious, value-driven prospector creates goodwill that compounds over time.

This is why hiring managers care about prospecting. It shows that you can build relationships from scratch and turn strangers into future customers.

Why Hiring Managers Care

In 2025, marketing budgets are tighter, inbound leads are fewer, and competition is sharper. Even when those channels work, they are unpredictable. What consistently delivers is prospecting, built on the staples of outbound research, quality emails, and well-prepared phone calls.

Time and time again, prospecting has proven to be the differentiator. An account executive who cannot prospect is a liability. An account executive who can prospect is an asset because they bring resilience, adaptability, and growth potential.

That is why at meritt. we place so much weight on a candidate’s ability to demonstrate prospecting. It proves curiosity, grit, and independence, the qualities that drive sales teams forward.

How to Prepare for Prospecting Questions in an Interview

If you are interviewing for a sales role in 2025, you should assume you will be asked about prospecting. Here is how to be ready:

Know your numbers

Be prepared to talk about how many outbound touches you made each day or week, your conversion rates, and how much pipeline you personally generated.

Bring specific examples

Share a story about a deal you sourced from cold outreach and how you moved it through the funnel.

Explain your process

Walk through how you build a prospecting list, research accounts, and personalise outreach.

Show consistency

Talk about your daily or weekly rhythm. Hiring managers want to hear that prospecting is a habit, not something you do when things are quiet.

Demonstrate curiosity

Highlight the types of discovery questions you ask early on and how you tailor them to each prospect.

When you can answer these questions clearly, you separate yourself from the crowd. You are not just saying you can sell, you are proving that you can create opportunities from scratch.

The Bottom Line

Prospecting sets you apart. It helps you succeed in your current role by driving more revenue, which is why you are in sales in the first place. And if you are looking for a new role, it helps you stand out from the crowd in the interview process.

Prospecting is the constant that never fails, no matter how the market shifts. Build the muscle. Use it daily. Let it define you.

Your future, on meritt.

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How to use AI to prospect smarter, not just harder

Good prospecting is research plus relevance, and that is exactly the slow part. AI can do the legwork so your outreach lands on something real.

Before you reach out, paste this into Claude or ChatGPT:

You are an SDR research assistant. Here is my target account: [company + the person's role]. Find three likely business priorities or recent triggers (funding, hiring, a launch, a leadership change, a public comment), and for each draft a one-line opener that connects the trigger to a problem we might solve. Keep each under 25 words and specific.

Then verify what it found before you send - AI can guess. To go further, connect it to a data source or your CRM through an MCP so it pulls live signals (intent, hiring, news) rather than working from memory. Multichannel, trigger-led outreach consistently beats spray-and-pray - which is the whole point. Curiosity is the behaviour that makes a prospector, and it is one of the four meritt assesses for. If cold calls are the part that scares you, start with building cold-calling confidence.