High-quality sales sequences are the key to generating outbound leads. Explore sales sequence best practices and how to create one that improves outcomes.
Outbound leads are those that are generated through the efforts of your sales team. They may not know about your product or service even though they could potentially benefit from it. Your team's goal is to make them aware and attempt to move them into the sales funnel. One of the best ways to do this is through a quality sales sequence or strategic series of touchpoints.
Leads can be either inbound or outbound. Inbound leads come to you. Perhaps they visit your website or engage with your social media pages. In contrast, you go to your outbound leads through various cold contacting methods. They've likely never shown any interest in your product, and they may not have even heard of you. Any form of initial contact is initiated by the sales rep rather than the consumer.
Identifying outbound leads can be a lengthy process. It involves gathering data, conducting research, and identifying your target audience. But your efforts typically pay off. Outbound sales strategies allow you to reach a wider audience, as well as one that is more targeted to align with your ideal customer profiles. Focusing on outbound leads also helps create brand awareness and puts much of the sales process in your control.
Outbound lead generation often involves building a strong list of people who match up with your buyer personas and are a part of your target audience. It also involves reaching out to the people on the list regularly yet respectfully, often through multiple channels. That's where your sales sequence comes into play.
A sales sequence is a strategic series of steps that sales reps take to reach out to leads with the hope of engaging with them and eventually turning them into customers. These touchpoints might include any combination of emails, cold calls, social media interactions, text messages, direct mail, in-person events, content marketing, and video. The goal is to deliver them at specific intervals over the course of a certain period, which is typically predetermined before the sequence begins. You can deliver your communication manually or you can incorporate tools that automate some or all of the process.
A sales sequence has several components. They include the messaging, as well as the channels you'll use to deliver it. You must also determine how much time should lapse between each touchstone and how many times you'll attempt to contact someone before you stop.
What your sales sequence looks like will vary from organization to organization. Your goals, your buyer persona, your industry — all of this and more can influence your unique strategy. But a generic sales sequence might look something like this:
Everyone's process for creating an effective sales sequence will look different. What works for your industry might not work for the next. What works for your business might not work for the one in the office next door. But there are some of the steps that everyone will take as part of the process.
Before you can start crafting your sales sequence, you must identify and understand your target audience. Who are the people who want or need to buy your product? You can do this through a number of methods, like going over previous customer data, conducting market research, social listening, and conducting competitive analysis. You'll want to look for trends in demographics, psychographics, and buyer behavior. As patterns emerge, segment your ideal customers into groups based on similar qualities.
You should also use this information to create a buyer persona (or multiple personas), which is a fictional profile of your ideal buyer. It offers better insights into your customers' motivations, behaviors, and challenges. Not only will it help you create more efficient sales sequences, but it will also help with nurturing, improving the customer experience, and efficiency.
As you map out your sales process and the buyer journey, you can start determining the structure of your sequence. This includes identifying your touchpoints. What will you do to initiate the sequence or make the prospect aware of your product or brand? Email? Direct mail? How will you follow up? Cold calls? LinkedIn direct messages?
The structure of your sequence is a formula that includes identifying touchpoints, making sure you use the right channels for each of them, and your timing. How frequently will you reach out to the lead? It's important to remain persistent, but you don't want to overdo it and appear intrusive or annoying.
Once you have your structure in place, you can focus on your messaging. What do you want to say? Your goal should be to differentiate yourself from your competition and make a lasting (but positive) first impression. You can do this through personalization — the more specific the better. Show your leads that you took the time to do your research.
While personalized details can grab the lead's attention, adding valuable content to your messages can hold it. Don't shy away from adding video, educational content, customer testimonials, how-tos, case studies, and anything else that can make you stand out.
Incorporating sales enablement tools can make your sales sequences much more efficient and effective. They might automate tasks like sending follow-up emails so that they go out on time and free your sales reps up for more important work. They might help with content management, storage, and customization. They often track your metrics and build reports so you can monitor your results. They also help you scale your sequences as needed.
We specifically like sales engagement platforms, like Outreach.io and SaleLoft. Both tools were designed with sequences in mind.
Outreach allows you to automate tasks based on triggers, like the recipient opening an email. Its templates allow you to focus on personalization at scale, and it supports multiple channels. It also integrates with your CRM and dozens of other vital apps so that all of your lead and customer information is centralized in one single location.
SalesLoft uses the term "cadence" rather than "sequence." It allows you to automate tasks and its intuitive workflow feature is a favorite among reps. It also integrates with your CRM and numerous apps that can help you streamline your entire sales process.
