Outbound Sales is a sales strategy where salespeople make the first contact with prospects, rather than attracting leads with content, paid advertising, or other inbound strategies. Cold calling is a classic example of an Outbound Sales strategy, but modern sales teams also use email and other communication methods. The key characteristic is that outbound salespeople contact leads first.
It’s no secret that Outbound Sales strategies take time, effort, and a lot of planning. This is especially true for new businesses. However, there are steps you can take, whether you’re just starting out or are an experienced professional looking to improve.
Outbound leads are often less qualified and can require more effort from your sales teams. During your outbound sales process, you don’t want to forget to use your company’s website. A website isn’t just a place where a potential customer can find information about your products and services. Your website can be one of your most useful lead generation tools. By implementing pop-up contact forms, auto-generated data sheets, downloadable white papers, and sign-up incentives, you can generate contact information from potential customers.
1. Developing a Customer Profile for Outbound Sales
Create your Ideal Customer Profile so you can better understand who to focus your time on. Just because a customer doesn’t exactly fit this profile doesn’t mean you should ignore them; this process helps you focus your time on those who are a better fit.
Make sure that the customer profile you develop is as specific as possible. This will help you understand exactly which employee, title, industry, use case, etc. uses your product. As you develop your ideal customer profile, you may find that you whatsapp number database have more than one. This is completely normal, as different customers use your product in different ways. Knowing this will help you understand how to tailor your sales tactics and conversations to that specific customer profile.
2. Develop an outreach plan
When using outbound sales strategies, it is important to make sure that you have a well-detailed plan. Whatever strategy you choose, make sure that the message is tailored to that specific (potential) customer. Whether that is a personal email or phone call, or creating marketing automation to nurture that lead.
If you choose to make that cold call, make sure you have a script or talking points in place and trust your sales team. Research the company before you make the call so you can map out their current challenges in the conversation and anticipate how you can help them. Plan out the call with the prospect or customer at the beginning and ask them if they have anything prepared to help them quickly and let them lead and direct some of the conversation.
3. Building accounts
As we all know, people don’t just buy based on specs or features. They buy based on emotions, specifically based on trust. When you generate a lead and treat it as such, there is a missing connection in that interaction. This is where that customer profile comes in, by using this profile you understand your customers better and can keys to sales analysis and how to interpret its results develop a relationship with them to serve them better.
By building an account instead of a lead, you are building that relationship through the company. If the decision maker you have built the relationship with takes your product or service further up the ladder, you are more likely to close the deal.
4. Collect lead data to use for outbound sales
Not all Outbound Sales leads need to be cold-called. You can generate “soft” leads that your outbound team can then follow up on. There are many ways to do this. We find Leadinfo ’s business identification software works best for us and allows us to identify the warmest leads possible, which are generated through Inbound Marketing adb directory activities. By focusing your team on leads that are more likely to convert, you save a lot of time and money. It also increases team morale, as you close more deals more often.
Not to think about that next lead and convert that lead into a customer or inquiry, but to develop relationships and grow them into long-term partnerships. You may not convert every lead that comes your way, but by building relationships with all of your accounts, there may be something you can work on together later or another avenue that can come from that relationship. It’s about creating meaningful conversations and relationships to help grow not only your business, but the businesses you interact with.
