20 Outbound Ideas that Enhance Your Sales Sequences
Outbound sales sequences are a systematic series of touchpoints that help you engage leads and prospects with hope that they'll eventually become customers. Sequences are often spread across multiple channels with a goal of building a relationship, earning someone's trust, and moving them through the sales funnel.
But using the same strategies again and again can lead to stale campaigns or even hinder future growth. As the world changes at a rapid pace, so do the needs and wants of consumers. Experimenting with new ideas and creativity is essential for supercharging your sales sequences. Here are 20 outbound ideas that will inspire your sales team to think outside the box.
Email is a great tool for sales sequences because it's scalable and easy to personalize, even when you're trying to reach a large audience. It's also inexpensive and easy to track, so you can keep up with your metrics. But your leads probably receive hundreds of emails each week, so it's important to make yours stand out.
Want to create a relationship with your leads from the very start? Try adding a personalized video to your emails. It's a great way to introduce yourself and show them that you've reached out to them specifically and aren't just sending out emails in bulk. It's also a great way to help set you apart from the competition. So, how do you start?
Address the recipient by name, but don't stop there. Find other ways to incorporate information, like the lead's geographic location, pain points, or recent achievements. But make sure whatever you do adds value and helps you get your point across in a clear and concise manner. The average person will stop watching a video after about 2 minutes, so keep it brief. Incorporate visuals when possible. When sending the video via email, make sure you indicate what's inside the link and use an eye-catching thumbnail.
A lead may be hesitant to trust you in the beginning, and that's understandable. But they may not be quite as hesitant to trust your current and previous customers. Including testimonials is a great way to prove your credibility and garner interest. When leads see the names of real humans and companies, they're more likely to believe you can solve their similar pain points. It's more likely to appeal to their emotions as well. If you really want to go the extra mile, this can be another place where you can leverage video if you have customers who are willing to talk about your offerings on camera.
Purchasing a product or service can be a huge commitment, so offering free trials and demos not only helps generate leads, but it can also help ease a prospect's fear of making a purchase and learning the product isn't right for them after all. Adding these offers to your emails can help increase engagement rates. It can also help take the pressure off your sales reps. It's much easier to sell a free trial than it is a product. The trial or demo itself often sells itself, proving your product to be beneficial and a solution to your leads' pain points.
During the trial period itself, you can supplement the experience with emails containing personalized tips, content, and anything else that might be of value. And even if you don't close every deal after a free trial, the ones you lose will provide insights into your target audience's preferences and the effectiveness of your campaigns.
Billions of people around the world are on social media. Each day, the average adult spends about two and a half hours on their favorite platforms. Incorporating it into your sales sequences is a no-brainer for reaching a wider audience. Just remember that no matter what platform you use, you must first optimize your own profile and establish yourself as a credible source.
LinkedIn was once just a platform for networking and finding jobs, but today, it's an incredible sales tool. By using advanced filtering features, you can use it to target the right leads, especially for B2B sales. You can post valuable content, comment on your prospects' content, and engage with leads and prospects organically. You can also use the site's direct messaging tool to connect and build relationships.
X (formerly Twitter) is also a great platform for engagement on a micro level. You can use it to share your content and grow your audience. Just make sure you engage. If someone responds to something you post, reply back. If one of your leads or prospects posts something, comment on it. The beauty of this platform is that it's very informal and fast — you can form quick and easy connections with practically anyone who is using it.
If you have a visually appealing product or a team that enjoys making eye-catching visual content, Instagram can be a great tool for forming connections and nurturing them as well. Creating reels or posting stories can help you gain new followers and cultivate interest in your business. When someone leaves a comment, continue the conversation in their DMs. The key is to show that there's a real human behind the account. Tell them you enjoyed one of their posts. Offer discounts or free trials. Send exclusive content. Whatever you decide to do, keep it authentic.
Outbound phone calls aren't always a favorite among sales teams, but they're essential for a successful sales sequence. Their benefits range from increasing engagement to helping you overcome objections. These ideas can help make outbound calls a little less daunting.
Preparing a powerful sales script takes some of the stress out of outbound calls, particularly cold calls. It can help sales reps focus and stay on track and keep the conversation concise and consistent. Before you get started, research your leads and prospects. Find ways to personalize your script. Make sure it includes questions for the person on the other end of the call. The more your lead talks, the more likely you are to build a lasting relationship. Be confident yet friendly. You want the script to sound conversational rather than like a sales pitch.
It can take up to nine touchpoints for sales calls to reach peak effectiveness. Unfortunately, many sales reps don't follow up or only follow up one or twice if at all. And many don't realize that there are good and bad ways to do it.
Timing is everything. You don't want to harass a lead, but you don't want them to forget about you. Your specific timing can vary based on the type of follow-up call you're making, your industry, and other factors, but typically, 48 hours is a good window. It's also important to add value with each of your follow-up calls. Don't just call to "say hello" or "check in." Arm yourself with additional information, like case studies and customer testimonials, that might persuade your lead to book a meeting.
Direct mail won't fit into everyone's sales sequences, but it can be an invaluable tool for nurturing leads or making special offers. It's also a great way to follow up without being overly intrusive.
A handwritten note helps you personalize your direct mail outreach, but it also makes you stand out among your competition. After all, when was the last time you received a handwritten note in the mail from a company, or from anyone for that matter? It also shows that you're committed to helping your leads with their challenges and have a brand that they can trust.
If you have the budget and creativity skills and really want to capture a lead's attention, take your direct mail game to the next level with a package of items related to your brand. It could include free samples, discount coupons, or branded merchandise. You may also offer small gifts that are symbolic of your offer or your relationship with the lead. Use high-quality or custom packaging to make your mail stand out even further. Consider partnering with your marketing team to make this work.
Want to grow your brand's reputation, generate new leads, and build more relationships? Leverage referrals, networks, and partnerships.
When you're happy with a company and its products, you're more likely to recommend them to the people you know. You'll often find that your satisfied customers are willing to do the same. Never shy away from asking them for referrals.
However, timing is everything. You want to reach out to them right after they've expressed how satisfied they are with your business. It's also important to add a personal touch. Rather than sending a generic email, make a quick phone call or tailor a message aimed specifically at that person. No matter their response, always show your appreciation.
It seems like everything is virtual these days, but in-person human interaction still offers something that you can't get through a screen. Encourage your sales reps to participate in networking events where they can form strong connections with potential leads.
Another outside-the-box way to generate new leads is to collaborate and partner with businesses that compliment your products and services. For example, a company that sells condos may partner with a company that sells furniture and offer new clients a discount on a new living room set once they purchase their new home.
We've all heard the phrase "content is king." The truth is that content that adds value to the lives of your leads, prospects, and customers can help you gain their trust and sell more products.
Creating valuable content can be as simple as adding a blog to your website that supports your buyer's journeys and addresses their challenges and pain points. For example, a hardware store might make a variety of educational and how-to posts, like "10 Signs It's Time to Remodel Your Bathroom" and "How to Retile Your Bathroom Without Calling an Expert." Share your posts on your social media sites and link them in your emails. Incorporate SEO to help drive more people to your site.
Another way to place valuable content in front of your buyers is to host webinars and workshops that offer educational information. Going back to our hardware example, if the store owner hosts weekly workshops on how to DIY various household tasks, she's going to end up with customers purchasing products from her so they can go home and try their hand at what they learned. If you own a software company and you have an exciting new product, you can host a webinar that demonstrates how it works and specifically addresses how it might handle the challenges your target audience often faces.
If you're not currently utilizing technology as part of your sales strategies, it's time to start. From automating part of your workflow to centralizing all of your prospects' information in one location, there are countless ways that it can help you supercharge your sequences and your entire process.
A good CRM system is a must for tracking prospects. You can input information and keep it in one centralized location so that your entire team has access to it. It can help you segment your leads into manageable groups ranging from key demographics to where they are in the sales funnel. Your CRM will also log each interaction you have with a prospect so reps know when and how to follow up.
Using technology to automate your emails will also help you with your sequences. Not only does it remove the potential for human error from the process, but it also helps speed up your workflow so you can spend time focusing on other more important tasks. Why and how you automate your emails will vary, but you can utilize this technology for perfectly timed follow-ups, responding to specific triggers, or personalizing content based on various segments. Typically, your email automation tool will integrate with your CRM so you can use it to gather metrics and align your internal communications.
Speaking of metrics, the key to making all of these outbound activities work for your team is measuring your success and optimizing your strategies and campaigns for continued improvement.
If you want to know if your sequence strategies are working, you need to set KPIs and track your metrics. For example, let's say you decide to add personalized videos to your emails next week. You can create a report to determine how many people opened those emails or engaged with them compared to the ones without videos from the previous week. If the numbers are up, you might want to continue this practice. If the numbers are the same or going down each week, you may find that this is not something that resonates with your target audience.
Another simple yet effective way to determine what's working and what's not is A/B testing or testing two versions of a similar idea. Maybe you're hoping to improve your email engagement rates, so you're working on adding various types of valuable content. You might send 50 emails with a link to a how-to post on your blog and 50 emails with a customer testimonial. You can then view your metrics to determine which offering was more appealing to your audience.
Finally, if you work in sales, it's important to be agile so you can adapt to anything that comes your way. Things may be going well for your business, but they can always go better. And you never know when new technology, a new product from a competitor, or a change in buyer preferences can shake things up. When you implement these strategies and others, it's essential to test their success rates and stay on top of your metrics so you can adjust and move forward as quickly as possible.
Sales is part art, part science, which means there's no one-size-fits-all way to do it. What works for you may not work for the sales team in the office next to yours and vice versa. That's why it's important to be innovative and experiment with new strategies. Testing and tracking metrics is easier than ever with today's technology, so you can quickly learn what
works and what doesn't. Trying new ideas prevents your sequences from becoming stale and takes your outbound sales game to the next level.
