The act of finding new potential customers and reaching out to them.
Prospecting is the top of the outbound funnel: researching accounts, finding contacts, crafting personalized outreach, sending cold emails or making cold calls. It's the 'manufacturing' of pipeline when you don't have enough inbound yet. Prospecting is a numbers game AND a craft; doing it well means high response rates AND high volume.
When you need pipeline now, prospecting is the faucet. Content marketing and SEO are slow; prospecting is fast. Most successful B2B companies run both, but early-stage companies lean heavily on prospecting while brand builds.