Outbound sales is a highly effective marketing strategy that can help you close more deals and increase revenue. However, there are so many sales strategies and tactics that you can apply in outbound sales techniques. This article will discuss the sales outbound process, how it works, and the common techniques to apply.

Sales Outbound Process

Sales outbound process is about reaching out to potential buyers and convincing them to buy from you.

It’s the opposite of inbound marketing, which targets people who have already shown interest in your company.

Outbound sales are the traditional method of selling to a list of customers. To make sustainable revenue from this method, you need to segment your market and tailor your message.

Outbound sales are directly contacting your potential customers, often through emails or phone calls. The keys to success are segmenting your ICPs and reaching out to them with tailored, personal messages. By building a repeatable and scalable process, you can ensure your business’s growth.

At Grow Labs, we’ve gone from $0 to $2.5 Million ARR in 6 months. Our Outbound Sales System is the fuel behind this growth, and in our guide, we break it down for you.

A successful outbound sales strategy is built on research and planning. Without direction, your efforts are likely to be fruitless. To see real results, you must work upfront to map out a clear path to success.

Why Outbound Sales Strategy is Important in 2022?

It makes sense that people who initiate contact with a company are more likely to convert to a sale.

But, as we head into 2022, there’s still a strong case for outbound sales prospecting (particularly for B2B sales), and that case has a lot more to do with data and analytics.

Gone are the days of “spraying and praying,” where SDRs would send out a mass email to a list of individuals based on their title and location.

Account-based selling is a more strategic approach to sales and involves using data points and triggers to identify when a prospect is looking to buy.

Using personalized, relevant information in your pitch can help you connect with your prospects, turning a cold call into a warm one.

A prominent leader in the sales industry offers some helpful tips on personalizing your outreach to your prospects.

Inbound Vs. Outbound Sales Strategies

Inbound sales teams have a variety of methods at their disposal for attracting visitors to their website. Some common examples include SEO, PPC, and content creation. Some organizations will even employ an inside team to handle incoming inquiries.

With Outbound Sales, the Outbound Marketer does not wait around for leads to come in but actively reaches out to them via email and phone calls.

Outbound sales teams have the advantage of responding to prospects with specific information that they need quickly. This allows them to close deals before another company has a chance to reach out.

Additionally, it lets you better control your outbound efforts.

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Outbound sales representatives are responsible for various activities, from cold calls and emails to following up with hot leads who attended a sales webinar. The sales reps also play an important role in connecting with potential customers on social media. In short, outbound sales put you in the driver’s seat.

Outbound selling puts YOU in the driving seat.

To successfully execute an outbound marketing strategy, you’ll need to use various methods. For example, you may want to use social media, email, and phone calls to reach your target audience.

Common Outbound Sales Tactics and Strategies

When you’re starting outbound sales, there are three main things to focus on: building a list of potential customers, developing relationships with those customers, and closing deals.

Let’s talk basics.

1. Cold Calling

This is a classic technique for getting through to people. They’re not calling you—they’re usually avoiding you.

This is why some people think the cold-calling game is over.

Inbound marketing is all the rage these days, but there’s no denying that the cold-calling technique is still effective.

Many companies have found success with outbound sales, but you have to do it correctly. Many use a combination of inbound marketing and outbound marketing for lead generation, so they’re not as “cold” as they could otherwise be.

But, unfortunately, there will always be people you contact who have no interest in speaking with you.

An Outbound Call Tool like CallerReady helps automate dialing through a list of contacts. 

By integrating your dialer with your CRM system, you can make a higher number of sales calls and speak to more clients. Still, you’ll also be able to track all sales conversations with your prospect in the CRM, reducing the need for any manual data input.

(Which means that your reporting will be much more accurate, as you’ll be able to track numbers directly in your CRM system.)

Most people have negative connotations with the concept of making a cold call. However, this method of reaching out to people has many of the same benefits as traditional, in-person, or over-the-phone selling.

If you’re looking for a way to make personal connections and get immediate feedback on your sales process, cold calling may be a good option.

While successful, the cold-calling process can be time-consuming, requiring you to make many phone calls.

Salespeople often have to contact people who haven’t requested a call, which is exhausting.

Cold calling may not be the most fun task, but it is essential for any outbound sales campaign.

2. Cold Emailing 

Sales teams have started to use cold emails to reach out to potential customers. The process is very similar to cold calling, where salespeople would reach out to customers to set up a sales call or demo. However, this has become a more popular method for sales teams because the business world runs on email.

Some distinct advantages of using email over phone calls are that you can contact many people quickly, and scaling the process is easy.

Salespeople often get less feedback when pitching through email than they would over the phone. Additionally, the less personal nature of email may make it less effective than calling, and a greater number of emails are likely to go unreturned.

This is why some companies use a combination of cold and email marketing for outreach. Here’s an example schedule:

When it comes to outbound sales, many companies use a combination of cold calling and cold emailing for the best results. A typical schedule may look like this: Make a cold call and leave a voicemail on day one. Then, send a cold email requesting a follow-up.

On day three, follow up with an email. On day five, make a phone follow-up call. On day seven, follow up with another email.

Finally, on day nine, make a quick call with the prospect and send a thank-you email with additional information.

Your sales team will have more options when reaching out to your prospects by using both emails and phones.

3. Email Automation 

If you’re using emails for prospecting, you’ll need to use an automated process. You can write each message out manually, but if you’re planning on scaling your outreach, you’ll want to automate as much as possible.

This means setting up a sequence of automated emails sent on a certain schedule and responding to specific triggers.

In Close, you can automate the entire sequence of emails that you send to a prospect if they ignore your initial outreach.

After downloading your lead magnets, your subscribers might receive follow-up emails from you that similar share information.

When they receive a sales call, they’ll know a little more about who you are and what you do.

There are a ton of ways to use marketing automation in outbound selling. You have to figure out which parts of your process can be automated!

Outbound Key Metrics You Should Be Tracking

Measured results equal success.

Like inbound, it’s important to evaluate your campaign’s performance to see how well your sales team is doing.

There are a variety of ways companies measure their outbound sales success. But the two most common are:

1. Perfomance Metrics: These are the metrics that measure how well your strategy is performing.

2. Optimization Metrics: These analytics programs help you gauge the success of your email campaigns.

Outbound Sales Performance Metrics

b) The conversion rate

The conversion rate of leads to customers measures how many of your prospects become actual paying customers.

This KPI gives you an idea of the quality of the leads that are generated by your outbound sales team.

b) Outbound pipeline

One key performance indicator for outbound sales teams is to measure the total value of deals in the pipeline.

This metric is important because it helps track the number of sales-qualified leads in the pipeline. This information helps forecast future revenue.

c)) Your average deal size

Sales teams often use average deal value as a measurement of their success. This is calculated by dividing the total amount of closed deals with the total value of those transactions.

This metric helps you estimate whether your contact list is growing, shrinking, or remaining the same.

When trying to move upmarket, you’ll want to increase the average size of your deals. Alternatively, if you’re looking to attract more small-to-medium sized businesses, you may want to decrease your average transaction value.

By analyzing your call-to-close rate monthly or quarterly, you can get a better sense of which direction your contacts are moving.

e) The close-to-call ratio

The close-to-call ratio tells you how many phone calls resulted in actual purchases.

This is a good way to determine how likely it is that your prospect will purchase from you.

Optimization Metrics

a) Call delivery rate.

This is one of the most important metrics because it tells you the percentage of emails that were successfully delivered.

This measurement is a benchmark you can use to evaluate the effectiveness of your email marketing.

b) Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is the percentage of total emails sent that were rejected.

Keeping your domain’s and IP’s reputation high is important for any email marketer. A high bounce and complaint rate can negatively affect your deliverability.

d) Open rate

This tells you how many recipients opened the email you sent.

A low open rate could suggest that you should work on your email copy. You could also be facing issues with email deliverability.

d. Reply Rate

This tells you how many recipients responded to your outreach email.

These email campaign metrics tell you how successful you have achieved your email marketing goals.

e. Click-Through Rate

This tells you how many people clicked on any links in the message against how many people opened it.

This metric is a good indicator of the potential interest your prospects have in your offering.

Conclusion

Outbound sales is a great way to out your competitors and make more revenue. This is possible only if you have a well-defined and executed sales outbound process. With these sales techniques in hand you can transform your sales team into a great revenue-generating machine. Remember to keep track of the key performance metrics and make improvements where necessary.


Need Help Automating Your Sales Prospecting Process?

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Go through a variety of filters to zero in on the leads you want to reach. This is crazy specific, but you could find all the people that match the following: 

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Editors Note:

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Justin McGill
About Author: Justin McGill
This post was generated for LeadFuze and attributed to Justin McGill, the Founder of LeadFuze.