Outbound sales strategies are essential for reaching the widest possible audience. Explore these crucial tips for mastering your outbound sales every time.
Outbound sales is a proactive approach to reaching your leads rather than sitting back and waiting for them to come to you. It can speed up the sales process, help you reach a more targeted audience, increase engagement with prospects, improve brand awareness, and even save your business some money.
It's also one of the best ways for a business to expand its reach. After all, it provides you with the opportunity to engage with practically anyone in the world. But it's not for the faint of heart. Some have even compared it to the Wild West. And if you want to master it, you can't let your outbound sales strategies overwhelm you.
One of the best ways to do that is to be prepared for your next campaign. From building a strong team to using the most effective tools, here are our best tips for mastering the art of outbound sales.
Your entire sales process starts with your team. Hire good people, and you'll usually get good results. But not everyone is cut out for working in outbound sales, and not everyone will align with your company's goals and mission. It's also important to make sure a candidate's approach to sales is compatible with the rest of your team's ideas.
They should be ready to provide metrics from their previous positions. Focus on soft skills as well. You'll want to hire someone who is a good communicator and problem-solver, but they should also be good negotiators, have excellent customer service skills, and be great critical thinkers. It's also best to hire sales reps who have a strong understanding of business ethics and who are dedicated to lifelong learning.
Speaking of lifelong learning, once sales managers have a strong team, it's important for them to commit to offering continuous training and development to make the team even better. Whether they're learning how to master a certain sales technique or learning to use your new sales engagement software, knowledge is power. It may sound cliche, but it's true.
In 2023, the American Society for Training and Development conducted a study that found that companies that offer training programs earn 218% more income per employee compared to those that don't. Training and development can also help you retain those rock star employees. According to research from the Society of Human Resources Management, 86% of HR managers say that training helps with employee retention, while 83% said it works well as a recruiting tool.
When you work with a sales team, cohesiveness and collaboration are essential. Everyone must be on the same page, working towards the same outcome. That typically happens when the sales manager sets clear goals and expectations.
Just like in sports, when every team member understands their role and their mission, it can help them unify and work together to achieve those goals. Being clear about expectations and eliminating any confusion can enhance productivity. It also builds trust between sales managers and reps. Your team will appreciate and respect your transparency.
Any type of outbound sales strategy should start with identifying and understanding your target audience. Research has shown that using buyer personas can improve lead targeting by up to 73%. Companies that use them tend to exceed revenue goals, have a 14% higher customer retention rate, and improve conversion rates by 10%.
A buyer persona is essentially a fictional profile of your target customer. It's created based on data and market research, and it can help your sales team understand the pain points and motivation behind why a buyer makes the decisions they do. It typically includes demographics, like age, location, job title, gender, income level, and family information. It also includes behavioral details, like pain points, interests, values, beliefs, and lifestyle details.
Before creating a buyer persona, you must conduct market research. It will help you get to know your customers' preferences and behaviors better. It can help you zero in on market trends that impact your customers, as well as what your competition is doing to attract them, so that you can develop strategies that give you an edge when selling the same products and services. Market research is also one of the best ways to find general demographic information, like the age, profession, and income level of your target customer.
Relying on customer data is also essential for targeting the right leads. You can use it for segmenting or breaking your target customers down into smaller groups. For example, if you have both Gen Z and Baby Boomer leads, you might segment them by age so you can send emails with language tailored to each generation. Looking at your historic customer data can give you an idea of how your targets behaved or responded to specific content and campaigns in the past, which could be a good indicator of how they'll behave in the present or future. Don't forget to rely on qualitative data, like customer feedback and reviews, as well.
The next step in the outbound sales process is convincing those leads that they need your product or service through compelling messaging. That all starts with your value proposition, which is a short message explaining why customers should choose you and not someone else. According to Hubspot, a value proposition should answer four questions:
Your value propositions should be short and to the point. Anyone should be able to read it and have a clear understanding of what your company offers, but you want to make sure it speaks directly to your target audience. Don't shy away from including facts and figures, bragging about product features, or even adding images or graphics to grab attention.
Creating personalized messaging can help sales teams improve engagement and response rates, build stronger relationships, and close more deals. McKinsey & Company reports that consumers are 76% more likely to make a purchase from a brand that offers personalization. They're also 78% more likely to make a second purchase or recommend your company to people they know.
Adding a personal touch shows your targets and prospects that you see them as individuals. It shows that there's a human on the other line or behind the screen. Your goal should be to make someone feel like you're there to help them resolve their pain points and make their lives better rather than selling them a random product or service.
Once upon a time, outbound sales was all about picking up a phone and making calls to the people on a list, but today, you have so many channels through which you should communicate, and it's important to take advantage of all of them. Not only does it expand your reach and potentially, your customer base, but it also helps you build stronger relationships with those who do engage with your content. It also gives your leads the opportunity to operate at their comfort level. Someone who is unlikely to pick up the phone when they receive a call from an unknown number might be more willing to respond to a message on LinkedIn or a comment on Instagram.
Cold calling may feel like a dinosaur to some sales reps, particularly with so many channels available for reaching leads, but it's still an incredibly effective sales technique. At least 69% of buyers have taken a cold call in the last year and 57% of C-level executives prefer cold calls to receiving sales communication through other channels. Still, 63% of sales reps say cold calls are their least favorite part of the job. While it's understandable, sometimes changing up your technique can improve your experience and even help you reach more leads. Some of our favorite cold calling best practices include:
The majority of buyers say they prefer to receive emails over cold calls and email is an effective tool, so perfecting your technique is an absolute must if you want to remain competitive in outbound sales. Some our favorite email outreach best practices include:
Social selling is the process of using social media platforms to interact with prospects, build relationships, and make sales. Which social media platform you use largely depends on what you're selling. B2B companies typically rely on LinkedIn, while other organizations tend to use Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and TikTok. Your strategies will largely depend on your product, industry, and platform.
Not yet convinced? Social selling opens you up to a huge audience. Over 63% of the world's population is on social media, and chances are, some of them need what you have to offer. Some of our favorite social best practices include:
When dealing with prospects directly, don't get upset or angry, and don't give up just yet. Ask questions about why they're rejecting or objecting to your offer. While a rejection may be the end of your relationship with a prospect, you can often overcome an objection. When they respond, listen to what they have to say. Empathize with their problems but remain confident in your sales pitch. Something might have been lost in translation. You may find that you can explain a feature of your product a little better and change their mind. You might ask them if you can share some recent case studies or customer reviews with them to give them something to relate to.
In many cases, persistence may put that prospect back into play. If it does, great. Move on to the next stage. If it doesn't, step away for a little while and follow up in three to five business days. At some point, you may have to retreat and move on to the next person and use it as a learning opportunity.
Most of your prospects won't become customers. Knowing this can make sales a stressful job. Understanding it can motivate you to keep going and not take rejections personally. Because it's not about you. You've had success in the past, and you'll have it again in the future. They're just not going to happen every day, even if you're the best salesperson in the world.
When you can't help but doubt your abilities, ask for feedback from your customers, colleagues, employees, or managers. See your challenges as opportunities to learn. Adopt a growth mindset. Surround yourself with like-minded positive people. Cultivate your communication and problem-solving skills. Set new goals for yourself. Dig in and learn as much as you can about the industry.
While you'll run into many internal challenges during your outbound sales process, sometimes you'll run into external ones, too, like market changes. Customers' preferences could turn around seemingly overnight, leaving you scrambling to understand their new needs. But adjusting to market changes can help you stay ahead of your competition, build stronger customer relationships, and boost your brand's reputation.
For this reason, it's important to remain agile. Conduct market research regularly and pay close attention to your outbound sales metrics. When you see changes, address them as quickly as possible, and adjust your sales strategies to meet your new challenges. Collaborate with other teams — marketing, customer service, etc. — within your company for further insights.
Every sales team should have a good CRM system in place, so you can centralize information, streamline your process, automate certain tasks, and gather data. They can also help with lead and pipeline management, and they typically offer internal communication tools so all of your team members can collaborate and remain cohesive throughout interactions with prospects and customers.
What's better than having a CRM? Having a CRM that syncs with a sales engagement platform, of course. A sales engagement platform can help your team automate workflows, personalize messaging, create effective sequences, and access data in real time. All of this can lead to increased engagement. When you sync the platform with your CRM, it combines all of your interactions and activities in one place so you have access to the most accurate, up-to-date reports and a unified overview of each prospect or customer. It adds additional context so you can personalize your outreach messages, and it saves your reps time by automating repetitive tasks. .
One of the most important benefits of taking advantage of various sales tools is that they gather data analytics for you and provide you with accurate reporting. Your metrics are your lifeline at every point of the sales cycle. They tell you what you're doing right and what you could be doing better. They help you understand whether you're meeting your goals. And you can break them down into multiple categories ranging from activities (like emails sent by your sales reps) to conversions to revenue stats. To master your outbound sales strategies, you must refer to your data reporting frequently.
A lot goes into mastering outbound sales. You need a strong sales team that can easily overcome challenges and a firm understanding of your target audience. You also need compelling messaging, effective sales techniques, and access to accurate data and automation tools. But when you combine all of these elements, it can elevate your entire sales process to the next level.
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