Month: June 2022

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Outbound Sales pipeline development Sales Advice Sales and Marketing Sales Management

Surefire Outbound Sales Strategies That Will Drive Your Growth

Surefire Outbound Sales Strategies That Will Drive Your Growth

Outbound sales, in a nutshell, is any form of traditional selling initiated by salespeople to the target customer – meaning they start and drive the interaction. Given the nature of selling and buying these days, it’s more appropriate to call it outbound communication. However, some proven strategies help an outbound effort be more effective while reducing attrition rates regardless of what you name it. 

Here are some tips that can serve as a guide for sales professionals who want to improve the execution of their outbound sales strategy:

Craft Your Ideal Customer Profile

Craft Your Ideal Customer Profile

Creating an ideal customer persona is a three-step process:

  1. First, identify the traits of your ideal customer.
  2. Understand their problems and how they’re currently solving them.
  3. Determine what makes your product or service superior to the alternatives for this customer and their particular problem(s).

Additionally, you can create a customer persona by asking yourself a few key questions:

  • Who are the people using my product or service? 
  • How old are they? 
  • Where do they live? 
  • What kind of job do they have? 
  • What is their annual income? 
  • Do they have kids? 
  • Do they own a car? 
  • Do they own a home? 
  • Are they married or single? 
  • What do they like to do for fun? 
  • How much time do they spend online per week? 
  • What search terms do they use when looking for products or services like mine?

Once you have all this information, it will be easy to develop marketing strategies targeting them directly.

Social Media Marketing

Social Media Marketing

Social media provides an excellent opportunity for businesses to reach consumers with relevant content that is easily accessible on their devices and in real time, making it highly effective at getting customers interested in what you’re selling.

The advantages of using social media are:

  • It’s a great way to build a community around your brand, which can help with customer retention, loyalty, and growth.
  • It can be used as a lead generation tool, where you can offer incentives to those who sign up to your email list or follow you on social media.
  • Social media is free! It could be a good option for you if you have time and resources available.

Here are some strategies to help you make the most of social media marketing:

  • Post regularly. Posting on your company’s LinkedIn page or Twitter account daily is essential for maintaining visibility and keeping customers engaged.
  • Use visuals. Visuals help attract attention with their bright colors and graphics, so include photos and videos in your posts whenever possible.
  • Focus on engagement. Engagement is critical in social media marketing because it helps you better understand what people want from you—and how they want to interact with your brand.

By sharing relevant, engaging, and helpful content, you will be able to attract new clients looking for a particular type of service.

It is also possible to use social media platforms such as LinkedIn and Twitter to drive traffic to your website or blog so that potential customers can learn more about the products or services you offer.

Invest in Outbound Sales Tools and Tech

Invest in Outbound Sales Tools and Tech

Inbound and outbound sales strategies are not mutually exclusive—in fact, they work together to create a holistic customer experience that makes you stand out from your competition. But what is the difference between these two approaches?

Inbound sales focuses on attracting new customers through content marketing, SEO optimization, and other digital tactics that drive traffic to your website. 

Outbound sales focuses on attracting potential clients who are already in motion toward making a purchase decision; they require more active engagement with customers via phone calls or email campaigns, which can be automated through a CRM system.

It’s not enough to have a tool like Salesforce, HubSpot CRM, or others. You need to use it as the baseline for everything else you do—and you need to ensure it’s set up correctly from the beginning. Outbound sales teams will be responsible for driving your company forward, and if they don’t have all the tools they need, it will be much harder for them to succeed.

Outbound sales teams will rely on data for their success, so make sure that you’re making it easy for them with an intuitive interface and seamless integration between different systems (CRM and marketing automation). They’ll also want access to information about their leads’ behaviors and preferences to tailor their pitches accordingly. Finally, they’ll need access to customer data to anticipate what each person wants before they even ask them!

Final Words

If you want to increase sales, you need to start selling. Although most companies have moved to an inbound approach, they still struggle with inbound sales because they don’t understand what makes people buy something. Outbound sales techniques are still very effective at generating leads that convert customers because they focus on the right things.

Outbound sales is not about pushing people into buying something from you (although that can be part of it). It’s about building relationships with prospects so they know who you are when they need what you offer. 

By creating a relationship with prospects, you can build trust and credibility and establish yourself as an authority in your industry. Show them how valuable their business is by providing helpful advice, free resources, or even just engaging them with questions about their business.

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Outbound Sales Sales Sales Management sales performance sales pipeline Sales Play Sales Process sales skills sales strategy

Outbound Sales: The Follow-Up

Outbound Sales: The Follow-Up

You’ve just sent an intriguing and persuasive email to a prospect. You get a reply. They’re interested. They want a demo. They’re ready to speak with you. And then…that’s it. All work and no follow-ups make Jack a dull boy. 

When making outbound sales, it’s easy to focus on setting the hook. The initial contact. The opening email. But more likely than not, you fail to continue the conversation and close deals after your first outreach.

In this article, we’re going to explore the often-overlooked follow-up.

What is an Outbound Follow-Up?

You’ve just made a sales pitch. You’re excited and hopeful, but there’s one small thing you need to do before you can put your feet up: follow up.

Following up with a potential customer is a great way to ensure that the customer does not forget about you or your company after the initial contact at the top of the sales cycle.

A sales follow-up can be the key to landing a sale. Follow-ups are a salesperson’s prompt to the prospective customer to take action, whether making an appointment, scheduling a meeting, or placing an order.

Setting your follow-up schedule can be challenging. You don’t want to annoy your prospects, but you also have a limited time frame to get the appointment or sale. The best way to approach this is to send emails or calls, beginning immediately after your initial contact and continuing for about a week after.

Sales follow-up is essential because it helps create a friendly, familiar relationship with your potential customers. It also allows you to answer any questions they might have and ensure they understand exactly what they’re getting into if they decide to purchase from you.

How Many Follow-Ups Should You Make?

How Many Follow-Ups Should You Make?

When you reach out to someone cold, you must realize that they might not be expecting your email. The best way to get through that mindset is by following up with them multiple times. The first time, you should send a terse and concise email explaining who you are and what your company does, along with a link to your website and an offer that will help them.

You can follow up three days later with another email or call-to-action, but if they haven’t responded, it’s probably time to move on to other prospects.

If the prospect responds positively, it’s time for a more extended conversation—maybe over the phone or in person!

If the other person is a colleague or someone in your network, you might have an opportunity to connect with them again. But if it’s a stranger, you should probably move on.

You can usually tell if someone is interested in your offer when they say something like “I’m interested in learning more about [product name]. Do you have any time next week?” or “I know our schedules won’t sync up but let me get back to you when they do! Thanks for thinking of me!” This doesn’t mean they will buy from you—just that they’re willing to learn more about what you’re offering.

Here’s a general outline you can follow. It is possible to tweak this depending on your product and what conversations you’re having.

  • 1st day: Follow-up #1
  • 3rd day: Follow-up #2
  • 7th day: Follow-up #3
  • 14th day: Follow-up #4
  • 28th day: Follow-up #5
  • Two months after: Follow-up #6
  • One follow-up for each month after
What To Do (and Not Do)

What To Do (and Not Do)

DO: Be persistent but not annoying. Inbound leads are easy because they come to you, but outbound sales require a little more work and persistence, so don’t give up too quickly if someone doesn’t respond immediately. If they don’t answer their phone or email, try again later in the day or week. If that doesn’t work, send them another email or call them again later in the week (but not too much later).

DO: Take notes about what worked for each person you call so that you know where it went wrong with others and can adjust accordingly the next time someone from that company calls you back.

DO: Be specific about what you want from them. Don’t just say, “Please reply if interested in scheduling a meeting next week at 3 p.m.,” because many people will simply delete that email without replying or taking action. Instead, clarify why they should respond (e.g., “If interested in scheduling a meeting next week at 3 p.m., please reply with confirmation and availability details by Tuesday morning”). 

DO: Send them your email only when you have something relevant to send them. Don’t send random emails just because you haven’t sent one in a while. That will annoy them more than anything else.

DO: Follow-up with them if they reply to your email with a question or comment. You don’t have to write an essay every time, but at least acknowledge that you received their message, so they know you read it and care about their response.

DON’T: When you send an email asking someone for their information or a quote, you mustn’t make them feel guilty about not responding. If they haven’t responded yet, that means they’re busy and haven’t had time to get back to you yet. If you contact a prospect and they don’t respond, it’s not necessarily because they’re ignoring you. It could be that they just haven’t had time to reply. Or maybe they’re waiting for something else (like a response from another sales rep). Or perhaps they’re just not interested in what you’re selling.

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sales fundamentals Sales Management sales people sales performance sales pipeline Sales Play

Outbound Sales: Renewal, Upsell, and Cross-Sell Discussions

Outbound Sales: Renewal, Upsell, and Cross-Sell Discussions

You’ve reached your first revenue milestone once a customer makes the initial purchase. But your sales opportunity doesn’t end here — it’s just beginning. While products sold are a great way to measure revenue, there’s so much more potential beyond this initial transaction. 

By putting in place cross-selling, upselling, and renewal processes, you’ll be able to improve customer lifetime value and grow your bottom line even more.

Let’s define each process first.

What is Cross-Selling?

What is Cross-Selling?

Cross-selling is a term that gets thrown around a lot in business, but do you know exactly what it means to cross-sell?

Cross-selling is the concept of encouraging a customer to purchase additional products in conjunction with the primary product. This is critical and very powerful in the subscription business model, where recurring revenue is the goal. 

What is Upselling?

What is Upselling?

Millions of dollars are wasted every year because of the inability of salespeople and other customer-facing staff to upsell effectively. A lack of precise questioning on the value of a product often leads to costly, low-quality purchases that never even get used.

Upselling is a strategy focused on encouraging these purchases through improved and enhanced products, but it can be challenging to pursue. Your first business sale was only part of the way towards financial growth; you must now do everything possible to ensure that customers will return for upgrades and add-ons. Here is where upselling comes into play.

But take note – The idea behind an effective upsell is to build rapport with clients and show your expertise so that they understand you’re suitable for their needs.

What is a Renewal?

What is a Renewal?

A renewal sale, or a repurchase conversation (“repurchase” only if it is the same product/service), occurs when a customer has a question, concern, or issue needing resolution. 

The challenge is that customers will likely not come directly to you with a renewal question unless they have some form of complaint, issue, or problem. A renewal discussion often occurs at the right time. There are five primary categories of renewals — based on the date when the existing contract expires –, and each can be handled differently based on the company policy and sales strategy.

For anything you sell (SaaS, recurring billing, etc.), renewal conversations constitute a significant component of any sales strategy. 

One Thing in Common

Salespeople are constantly using different strategies to find leads. This can be limiting, though, since new sales reps may not have the tools they need to find leads. Enter outbound marketing: one of the best tactics you can use to reach leads and generate new business. Using this method, you’ll be able to get prospects and stay on their radar intelligently.

The best salespeople always reach out to their leads and existing customers to stay connected and make sure they’re both happy with the deal they’ve struck. The more they build that relationship, the easier it’ll be to find that next opportunity together – an upgrade, an expansion of services, or a renewal.

Conclusion

Sales, like any other profession, is a game of numbers. Hopefully, you already have your sales machine in place and are starting to see sales trickle in for your product or service. The next step is to build a stronger team to handle these incoming sales and help you reach even higher numbers. Renewals, upsells, and cross-sells are highly effective at achieving this goal.

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sales fundamentals Sales Management Sales Metrics sales pipeline Sales Play Sales Process sales skills

Why Your Outbound Sales Sequences Are More Important Than Your Product

Why Your Outbound Sales Sequences Are More Important Than Your Product

Outbound sales sequences are a foundational component of an outbound sales strategy. Think of them as your digital playbooks: you create the structure that guides how your team initiates and closes new business opportunities.

How to Analyze and Improve Your Outbound Sales Sequences

Sales sequences are among the most potent tools that outbound sales teams use to close deals and provide value to potential clients. Sales sequences allow reps to execute predictable, consistent workflows. But not all sales teams are using outbound sales sequences — many still rely on organic email outreach, cold call/cold email, or general best practices. This can result in wasted time, missed opportunities, and unsatisfied customers.

Your Targets Should Be Clear and Defined

Your Targets Should Be Clear and Defined from the Get-Go

Your outbound sales strategy is only as good as your target.

So what makes an outbound sales sequence successful? It all comes down to knowing your target audience. Your target for each sequence should be either a persona, industry or specific company. Once you know who you’re talking to, it’s easier to tailor your messaging and get them excited about using your product. You’ll also be able to create a consistent tone that resonates with them.

If you can’t define your target audience clearly, it’s impossible for any of this to work. If you don’t know who you’re selling to, how will you know how to sell them?

The amount of time and effort you put into your outbound sales sequences depends on who you’re targeting. Your sequence may last longer if you’re targeting a VP-level persona, and you may need to manually touch the lead more often than you would a lower-level persona.

In other words, the more critical your target customer is to your business, the longer your outbound sales sequence should be.  The longer the sequence, the more chances to make an impression on your target customer before they become part of your company.

A/B Testing is Crucial to Success

A/B Testing is Crucial to Success

Do you know how your outbound sales sequences are performing?

If you’re not testing, then you’re flying blind. And we all know that flying blind is a bad idea when trying to land a plane full of passengers!

Why? Because even the best product in the world won’t be able to sell itself if the sales sequence is poorly written and structured.

There’s a reason why the best-selling products don’t use generic email templates: they know that it’s not just about writing copy that’s good enough but also about writing copy that converts.

That’s where A/B testing comes in. By running A/B tests on your emails, you’ll be able to learn what works best for your audience and what doesn’t work at all. You’ll also be able to see which versions are most effective at getting signups or sales from customers who have given their contact information in exchange for information about your product or service.

You might think that having a great product is enough, but if no one knows who you are or what you do—let alone cares—then how will anyone buy from you?

Use the “Right” Mix of Sequences

Use the “Right” Mix of Sequences

As you’re reviewing your sequences, make sure you look at the types of steps involved in your email and call sequences. Some sequences lend themselves to more calls, while others are email-heavy.

But no matter what sequence type you’re reviewing, make sure you have a mix of step types. This is what makes sellers appear authentic and genuine to buyers. And that quality, in turn, ups the likelihood of a response and builds rapport.

When building out your outbound sales sequences, make sure you have a mix of step types.

It’s easy to think that all you need is an email. But if your buyer is expecting a call or LinkedIn message, they’ll be disappointed and annoyed when you don’t deliver on the expectation you set. This will hurt your chances of getting a response and building rapport with the buyer.

So what does it mean to have a good mix of step types?

Let’s say your sequence has three steps: email, call, and LinkedIn touch. If those are your only three steps, it might be time to add something else there! If this is true for you, think about what kinds of calls would work best in this case—maybe two emails followed by two calls? Or perhaps a series of emails followed by one call and then another email?

Consider Adding More Steps to Your Sequences

Consider Adding More Steps to Your Sequences

Yes, you can add another step to your outbound sales sequence.

If you’re following a sequential sales process, you can use the same logic to determine when to add more steps.

The reply rate for each step will tell you how well your target audience is receiving your product and give you insight into where they’re getting hung up. If your first step has a low reply rate, then it’s likely that people aren’t interested in what you have to offer. If the second step has a low reply rate and the third step has a high reply rate, then it’s possible that people are interested but don’t know how they can get started with what you’re offering. And if all three steps have high reply rates, then it means that people are ready to buy!

If you want to increase your sales success rates, try adding another step and see how much impact it has on your overall reply rates.

Note:  It’s easy to feel like you should keep adding steps to your outbound sales sequence. You want to be sure that you’ve exhausted all possible resources, right?

But what if adding another step doesn’t help?

It’s tempting to add another step to your outbound sales sequence because it seems like it could help—and it might! But you also have to consider the cost of doing so.

Every time you add a new step, there are associated costs: time spent creating and refining the content and time spent running A/B tests on the content (if applicable). It increased the cost for each contact who will receive the additional message.

So before you start adding more steps, look at how many contacts are still clicking through from your last step (or from the first step). If their click-through rate is still high, go ahead and tack on an additional step if you think it might help! If their click-through rate has dropped significantly, you can feel confident that you’ve exhausted all resources and won’t see any gains from adding additional steps.

Change the Focus of Your Language

Change the Focus of Your Language

What’s the first thing you think of when you hear “outbound sales?”

If you’re like most people, it’s probably “pushy” or “annoying.” But if that were true, why would we keep doing it? Why would companies spend so much time, energy, and money on outbound sales when all they get in return is a bad rap?

Because it works.

The truth is that inbound sales—when your customers come to you—aren’t enough anymore. With so many options for customers to find what they want (and for them to do it without talking to anyone), it’s no wonder that inbound sales have become less effective than ever before. That’s why outbound sales have taken over: because they work! They get your potential buyers’ attention in ways that other techniques don’t.

The key is not being pushy or annoying; instead, it’s helpful. Your buyer doesn’t care about how great your company is, how many awards you’ve won, or how great your product is. They care about how you can make their job easier and make their business more money.

Do you ever wonder why your outbound sales sequences don’t seem to be as effective as they should be?

It’s not your product. It’s not your salespeople. It’s not even the market.

It’s all about the buyer.

No matter how great those things might be, your buyers aren’t interested in hearing about you or your company. They want to know how you can make their job easier and how you can help their business make more money.

So what does this mean for your sales process? It means that it’s time for an overhaul! You need to start making it about THEM, not YOU, from the very beginning of your outbound sales process until the end.

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