Achieving sales growth involves so much more than just letting your product do the work or letting your potential customers come to you. Your organization’s outbound sales campaigns could be the difference between having a good year and a fantastic one. We take a look at how you can get the most out of your Outbound sales efforts and turn yourself into a deal-closing, target-smashing machine.
What is an Outbound Campaign?
Before we dive into the ‘How-to’ section, it is important that you understand what an Outbound campaign is. As an Outbound sales professional, it is your responsibility to carefully search for, identify, qualify, and contact potential customers or leads. They are introduced to the sales cycle and guided through the sales process one step at a time until they become customers and are willing to refer you to other prospects because they were so impressed with your level of service.
Benefits of Outbound Campaigns
So why choose an Outbound campaign as your vehicle to get you to the land of sales success? Well, there are a number of reasons:
- Getting the company’s name out there (growing your customer base)
Getting potential customers to be familiar with the company and what it does is the best way to stay top-of-mind with your prospective client base. If the contact with the client is completely ‘cold’ then it is important that the first contact is positive, informative and impactful.
- Targets specific demographics
One of the most important characteristics of an Outbound campaign is that your Ideal Client Profile (ICP) has already been established and you can now focus your sales efforts with surgical precision. The old method of throwing everything against the wall and hoping for something to stick is a waste of time, energy and yields terribly low results. Targeting specific demographics allows you to create messaging that appeals to those clients and lets your voice cut through the noise.
- Building relationships with potential clients
They have a connection with you as the point of contact with the company. They also form a subconscious association with you as a problem solver or someone that is willing to help. If they have an issue, they are more likely to contact you rather than anyone else. Your communication with any client should always be appropriate to their level of familiarity with you and your company. It is for this reason that personalization of correspondence is so important. Using sales data, trigger events and a genuine tone of voice can have the effect of making a cold contact feel like a warm one. Everyone hates sales calls, so go into the call or email with the attitude of adding value and insight.
Outbound Sales Strategies
- Defining your perfect customer is priceless to your sales efforts. Your ICP tells you where you should be looking, what you should be looking for and even their personality type.
- Qualifying the lead is all about determining if the prospect could be turned into a client or not. Do they have a problem that you can assist with via a product or service? Why are they looking for a solution at this point in time? Do they have the budget allocated to fixing the issue? Who makes the decisions and how? What could be the potential roadblocks along the way?
- Reach out using your battlecard and your script and start a conversation. Know your product and understand the value proposition that you are offering. Your battlecard contains all the information that you need to answer client questions or potential objections.
- There is more than just one way to reach out to a lead. LinkedIn or email are just as effective. Every lead is different and has a preferred contact method. Find out what works best and use it to your advantage.
The Importance of Personalization
Personalization is not all about higher open rates for emails or longer conversations during cold calls, but rather about winning over the leads’ attention and hopefully their business. People deserve to know that whoever is calling them is not wasting their time. Time is so valuable in today’s busy world, it is your job to make sure that a lead does not waste a single second reading an overly automated email or listening to a dry pitch.
Personalization might sound as though it takes a lot of time and skill. However, with the internet at our fingertips, conducting a little bit of research before reaching out to a lead takes very little time but it is always worth the effort.
Whistle’s Outbound Approach
Our approach is as easy as 1…2…3.
Step 1 – Be prepared by getting into the right mindset and have all the information you need for the call ready and waiting.
Step 2 – Know your product and all the benefits that it has to offer. Prospects can tell immediately if an SDR is unfamiliar with the product or if they are going through the motions of reading a script.
Step 3 – Get your scripts, battlecards and client info ready. Have a conversation where you actively listen. Often, what a client doesn’t say is just as important as what they do.
Outbound sales is an integral part of any organization’s sales success. Knowing who your target market is, how to approach them and how to win them over is all part of good outbound strategy. Following the above principles should give you an excellent footing towards closing your next deal.
