When you proactively look for prospects and approach them — either directly or directly, you’re applying the outbound sales approach.
So what exactly does outbound sales mean? How is it different from inbound sales? Why should you do it? How to implement it successfully? Let’s find out the answers to these questions in this article.
What are Outbound Sales?
Outbound sales is a proactive selling approach that B2B sale reps have used for a long time. In outbound sales, you reach out to those who haven’t engaged with you and discover if they’re your potential buyers.
Inbound and Outbound Sales
Inbound sales and outbound sales aren’t the same things.
Inbound sales refers to situations where someone becomes a lead as they contact you and ask you about your solution first. They already have interests in your product or service and might want more information.
Meanwhile, outbound sales is where a lead is generated as you seek out them through emailing or calling and present cold pitches. You’re not sure whether that person is the right fit for your solution, and you want to communicate with them to find out.
That said, outbound sales have a lot of advantages. For example, it gives you the freedom to choose who you want to contact. You can also determine when, where, and how to approach them — email, phone, or in-person meeting. With advanced technologies available, you now have access to a lot of data to segment people and develop personalized outbound sales strategies that help increase your chance of success.
Outbound Sales Process
An outbound sales process (sometimes called outbound sales funnel) is a series of steps that guide you through converting prospects into buyers. This process can vary depending on what you’re selling and who you want to target. That said, typically, it can include the following steps:
1. Identifying leads by understanding what you’re selling and researching the market
2. Generating leads using lead generation strategies
3. Qualifying leads through cold emails and cold calling
4. Making sales pitches or product demonstrations
5. Closing deals
Outbound Sales Activities
- Meeting: This is the best and most common way to start outbound sales. When meeting people in person, you can ask many questions and get immediate, valuable feedback. You can also see their responses and get a real sense of their interest in your solution.
- Calling: Calling prospects is also a good practice to have one-to-one conversations with them (outbound calls). Some people are busy and don’t have time to go out, so they prefer being called. You can contact prospects by phone or video call.
- Emailing: This activity allows you to reach many people within minutes. Using sales intelligence platforms, you can collect data about audiences’ engagement, analyze results, and learn more about your audiences, as well as improve your cold pitches.
Outbound Sales Strategies
Here are some outbound sales techniques you can follow to accelerate your revenue growth in 2022:
- Use segmentation to identify the most attractive markets: Start by grouping broad audiences into specific segments of individual people who have common needs and interests. You can do that by using demographics, geographics, or psychographic segmentation methods.
- Gather customer data and insights: Take advantage of your CRM or sales operations platform to collect data about your prospects.
- Develop your ideal customer profiles: Find common characteristics you see across all segments. Identify which segment is the most attractive using criteria like the size of the segment, ease of outreach to the segment, or fit into your current business model.
Keep in mind that while these are widely-used B2B outbound sales strategies, they can also be excellent for B2C outbound sales tactics.
Outbound Sales Metrics
Outbound sales KPIs or metrics are used to track what your outbound sales reps are doing on a day-to-day basis, including the number of calls made, number of emails sent, number of in-person meetings, number of interactions on social media, number of meetings scheduled. These metrics can be tracked easily with Revenue Grid.
Revenue Grid allows you to create automatic sequences for your outbound sales emails gameplan. It also supports interactive analytics visualizations showing all the data you want to see. For example, how many unique emails open per step, how many people click a link in the email, and the number of those interested in your product.
Outbound Sales Services
If you find it hard to develop successful outbound sales strategies, you can partner with an outbound sales service. They’ll do all of the prospecting, cold-calling, qualifying, and follow-up for you. Generally, they offer services like cold calling, appointment setting, and call center.
Now that you’re ready to start outbound sales for your business. Let’s give it a try today, and you’ll be amazed at how it can help bring in more leads and closed deals.
