Using outbound calls is a good strategy to find more potential customers for your business. But it’s not easy to do and requires a lot of practice.
Let’s discover more about outbound sales calls in this article.
What Is an Outbound Call?
An outbound call (sometimes called a cold call or sales discovery call) is a call that is initiated by a salesperson. Specifically, a sales rep reaches out to a customer who hasn’t contacted the business or expressed interest in products or services. In other words, the customer isn’t expecting the call.
Some companies avoid making outbound sales calls as it may annoy receivers and affect business reputation negatively. That said, if done right, outbound calling can be a great strategy to improve brand awareness, generate prospects, and qualify leads.
Difference Between Inbound and Outbound Calls
Inbound and outbound calls aren’t the same things:
- Inbound calls are initiated by a person who previously showed interest in your business. The person might download a free ebook on your website or contact your team via Facebook Messenger. They now reach out to you for more information about your business.
- Outbound calls are made by sales reps, and the persons who receive the calls haven’t interacted with your business before.
Tips for Outbound Sales Calls
1. Automating Outbound Calls
Outbound calls aren’t effective if your contact list includes inactive phone numbers. To avoid this issue, many companies have implemented outbound call automation.
By automating outbound calls, you can build a list of verified business email addresses and phone numbers. You can also create detailed buyer personas for your ideal customers and use the information to personalize messages for your call, making it easier to start a conversation with prospects.
Another benefit of outbound call automation is that it helps sales reps save time on tasks that don’t add value, like manually dialing a phone number or listening to the dial tone. When your reps can be more focused on calling, they can reach out to more people, and more people mean more opportunities.
2. Defining Goals and KPIs
Like any other lead generation strategy, effective outbound calling requires you to define goals and KPIs beforehand. When you know what you want to achieve, you’ll know what you need to do to get it.
Depending on your business, your outbound calling goals might be different. For example, it can be selling a product or creating brand awareness, or promoting sales.
Regarding KPIs, you might want to track the average handle time, conversion rate, first call close rate, or occupancy rate.
3. Research Before an Outbound Call
Researching before calling can help you gain more knowledge about the person you’ll call, for example, what they’re doing, what they care about, who they hang out with, what problem they’re struggling with, and more.
From that, you can develop a call script that helps grab their attention and create instant connections with them.
4. Overcoming Objections
Objections are a part of all sales activities, not just outbound calling. You can’t be sure you can make everyone interested in your business — it’s impossible.
When you understand that clearly, you can anticipate objections that can happen and develop responses to them. Then, practice calling your team and asking for their feedback. The more you practice, the easier it’ll be to overcome sales objections.
5. Using Call Script
Actors use scripts, and so do salespeople — they use call scripts to lead the conversion and ensure they don’t miss any key points.
Here are some tips for you to use call scripts effectively:
- Memorize the introduction and your business’s value proposition. If you start a conversation smoothly, you’ll have more confidence to continue the talk.
- Make use of open-ended questions (what, when, where, why, which, how) that help unlock your conversations.
- Prepare answers to common questions and objections.
Outbound Call Script Example
“Hello Jane, this is Millie with Revenue Grid. How’s it going today?
Right now, Revenue Grid is working on a new tool that will help sales teams acquire more qualified leads, more opportunities, and more sales. Is that something that you would be interested in?
[If the prospect says yes, then continue.]
Our new tool has two key benefits. First, it’ll give you a detailed picture of your sales pipeline’s health. All metrics are presented on a clean, intuitive dashboard. Second, it’ll make it easier for you to track your sales reps’ pipeline performance — you’ll quickly see who are top performers and who will need more training.
[prospect’s answer]
Great. Can I ask you some questions before we move forward?
[Use open-ended questions to discover the prospect’s interest.]
Sure. I’ll tell you a bit more about our tool, and then we can schedule a demo to help you understand how it actually works for your business. Does that sound great to you?”
How to Improve Your Outbound Calls Efficiency
Typically businesses use spreadsheets or CRM to manage contacts and keep notes of each call. This can be time-consuming and cause errors. To improve your outbound sales call efficiency, try sales engagement software like Revenue Grid.
Revenue Grid is a powerful tool that allows you to automate call dialing and handle incoming queries without leaving Salesforce. It also helps synchronize your data (contacts, messages, emails, calls, etc.) between Salesforce, Outlook, and Gmail automatically, making data more accessible and your workflow more streamlined.
By using Revenue Grid, you can increase leads in Salesforce by up to 37% and help your reps save at least 10 hours every week.
