How old is your company? a month? 2 months? 1 year? 5 years?

Whatever that is, your company’s age shouldn’t be the parameter for your sales strategy. Instead, re-evaluate your brand. As part of this evaluation, analyze your marketing costs to better understand customer acquisition expenses.

• Do you have a functional website?
• What is the number of your website visitors?
• Do you have enough people in your sales team for content marketing?
• How many followers do you have on LinkedIn and Twitter?
• Do you have a YouTube channel?
• How big is your audience base?

Now, if any answer to the above questions seems reliable enough to bring 15k visitors per month, you can stop reading.

And, if that’s not the case, then you need to know about outbound sales. It’s the quickest sales strategy to generate more leads.

Introduction to Sales Mastery

Sales mastery is the ultimate goal for any sales professional or sales team striving to outperform the competition and consistently exceed targets. It’s not just about closing deals—it’s about building lasting relationships with potential customers, understanding their needs, and delivering value at every stage of the sales process. Achieving sales mastery requires a blend of effective outbound sales strategies and inbound sales strategies, as well as the agility to adapt to ever-changing market dynamics.

For outbound sales professionals, staying ahead means continuously refining your sales techniques, adopting the latest sales tools, and leveraging advanced sales intelligence tools to gain deeper insights into your target audience. Mastery comes from a commitment to ongoing learning, experimentation, and improvement. By optimizing your sales processes and embracing both inbound and outbound approaches, you can unlock new opportunities, generate high-quality leads, and drive exceptional results for your business. Whether you’re part of a growing sales team or a seasoned sales rep, the journey to sales mastery is paved with innovation, resilience, and a relentless focus on delivering value to your potential customers.

Outbound Sales: What, Why, & How

Definition

Outbound sales refers to a type of lead generation technique where sales teams proactively reach out to potential customers who have not previously expressed interest, aiming to find new prospects, warm them up, and convert them into customers. Popular tactics are cold calling, cold email outreach, cold sms, LinkedIn outreach campaigns, etc., using various tools. The outbound sales approach also involves strategically monitoring performance through CRM systems and analytics, as well as gathering customer feedback to continually refine and improve the sales process.

Is Inbound Marketing better than Outbound?

Source

In the decade-old debate of Inbound vs. Outbound marketing, currently, inbound sales are winning. Many sellers assume inbound is better than outbound sales techniques.

Around 82% of marketers believe inbound leads are of high-quality than outbound leads. But, is that true?

NOT REALLY. Consider inbound vs. outbound as the “black & white” debate. Instead of picking one side, focus on creating a “gray” area.

When comparing inbound and outbound sales, it's important to note that inbound sales rely on potential buyers initiating contact after engaging with your marketing content, while outbound sales involve proactive outreach by sales reps, such as cold calling or emailing, to generate leads.

Think about it. Marketing managers use Social media platforms to create valuable posts. The process looks somewhat like this.

Create a post

🔽

Post it

🔽

The prospects see the post

🔽

Respond

🔽

You follow-up

🔽

They become customer

The process is good enough. In fact, a very impressive one. But, what if your audience is small or prospects aren’t ready to buy?

Will you keep waiting, then? Here, swoops into outbound marketing strategies. Now, it looks like this.

Create a post

🔽

Post it

🔽

Send it to the potential audience

🔽

You follow-up

🔽

They respond

🔽

They become customer

Or

You find the prospects in an appropriate channel (such as LinkedIn), send them a personalized sales pitch, and they become your customer.

In both scenarios, you are

• Saving time
• Increasing audience base
• Finding prospects who are ready to buy
• Plus, saving time and labor (remember, labor comes at an expense too)

The point is: COMBINE INBOUND & OUTBOUND for better results.

Why Outbound Lead Generation?

Outbound leads have a 1.7% closing rate, which is definitely less than 14.6% of inbound leads. The difference seems huge, but it really isn’t.

Why so?

Because, in outbound strategies, you are targeting 10 times or more leads than inbound strategies.

If your brand is an established one, then you are likely to receive a good number of visitors to your website. However, small or mid-sized businesses aren’t too fortunate in this case.

According to a stat by Hubspot, around 49% of websites get only 1001 to 15k visitors per month 😞

If your website is getting less than 5k visitors per month, it’s time to try outbound sales strategies.

So, to list them down, the benefits of outbound selling are:

👉EASY PROCESS: Be it cold emailing or calling, all you need to do is create a script/sample, personalize it, and send it across to your targeted customers using relevant outreach tools.

Unlike the inbound process, it’s simple and doesn’t include many steps. This is why it’s great for newbie businesses.

👉 TIME-SAVING: Most inbo include content marketing, which needs a greater audience to bear results.

For small-scale businesses with a smaller sales team, it can take almost a year to create the content and then market it. In comparison to this, outbound strategies can bring results in a short period.

👉ATTRACT CUSTOMERS PROACTIVELY: Outbound sales strategies allow you to proactively reach out and attract customers, rather than waiting for inbound inquiries. This gives you more control and flexibility in building your customer base.

👉PERSONALIZED MARKETING: In outbound selling, sales reps use various automation tools to collect relevant information and create a personalized sales pitch.

According to statistics, B2B marketers prefer personalized messages when contacting them.

👉READY PROSPECTS: As inbound sales are content oriented, their audience is mostly information-seeking novices in the field. It can take a long period for the audience to convert into prospects.

Contrastingly, cold leads, especially in B2B marketing, are ready to buy your product.

👉NETWORKING: Imagine, you contact your targeted B2B customer via LinkedIn, but the sale didn’t happen. Instead, they became your LinkedIn connection.

Here, the worst-case scenario is that your prospect ends up being your audience. Later, you can use inbound tactics and convert them into a customer.

Read ahead to find out if you should go for outbound marketing.

Who should do Outbound Marketing? 

The answer is EVERYBODY unless you are as big as Hubspot or Neil Patel.

I am listing down a few criteria. If any of the below points suit you, include outbound strategies in your campaigns immediately.

• The official website has less than 7k visitors per month
• Your company is less than 1 year old
• The official LinkedIn account gets less than 400 new connections monthly
• Your business is struggling with low ROI

Outbound sellers play a key role in reaching new prospects and building relationships with cold leads across different market segments, including both B2C and B2B, at various sales stages.

However, if you get more than 10k website visitors per month and 400 new connections on LinkedIn, then you can rely on inbound tactics.

Is cold calling dead?

As the millennials and the Gen Zs have come to prefer emails over calls, many think cold calling is dead. For B2C, cold calling may have gone cold, but it’s very much there for B2B conversations. Outbound sales calls, which involve proactively reaching out to potential customers to promote products or services, remain a key strategy for engaging new prospects and driving sales.

According to a study by RAIN, 57% of C-level and VP buyers, 51% of directors, 47% of managers still prefer cold calls as the first contact from you. So, as far as the data is concerned, calling is very much there as an outbound tactic.

Now, it’s your responsibility to get creative and come up with relevant topics that the customers would like to talk about. If you are hesitant to do so, go with interesting voicemails.

The Role of Outbound Sales Professionals

Outbound sales professionals are the driving force behind revenue growth and customer acquisition in any organization. Their mission is to proactively identify potential customers, engage them through targeted outbound sales efforts, and convert them into loyal clients. This requires a deep understanding of effective outbound sales strategies and the ability to execute them with precision.

Sales reps specializing in outbound sales must be adept at a variety of outbound sales techniques, from cold calling and social selling to crafting compelling sales pitches that resonate with their target audience. Success in this role hinges on the ability to build relationships with key decision makers, understand the unique pain points of each potential customer, and tailor outreach efforts to address those needs directly.

To maximize their impact, outbound sales professionals leverage powerful sales tools and technologies that streamline prospecting, automate repetitive tasks, and provide actionable insights. By combining data-driven strategies with a personal touch, outbound sales reps can generate high quality leads, nurture relationships, and ultimately drive business growth. In today’s competitive landscape, the most successful outbound sales professionals are those who continuously refine their approach, stay informed about industry trends, and remain committed to delivering value at every interaction.

How to Kill It in Outbound Sales? 

If you’re wondering how to improve outbound sales, try the tips given below. These actionable steps are essential components of an effective outbound sales strategy.

1. Create ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)

Creating a customer profile is like summarizing your customer using brief but important key points. The goal is to find ideal prospects. The key points may include geographical location, age group, company size, annual revenue, demographics, buying pattern, etc.

Creating your ideal customer profile is figuring out the characteristics of your prospects who are most likely to purchase your product/service. Leveraging customer data is essential for understanding your target audience and refining your ideal customer profile, as it provides valuable insights into customer behaviors and preferences. The first step to creating an ICP would be to figure out who derives the most value from your product or service.

Once you have your ICP, try to make a list of people who resemble with the characteristics of your ideal customer profile. Then, target them in your outbound campaigns.

Some of the common characteristics that most B2B sales teams consider while creating ICP are:

• Demographics
• Psychographics
• Company size
• Annual Revenue
• Business sector
• Buying pattern

2. Choose a Channel for your Outreach Campaigns

Although multi-channel outreach programs are a successful trend, it’s not a good idea if you’re just beginning your outbound journey. It will confuse you and mess up your marketing strategies.

To launch a successful outreach campaign, first, you need to settle down with your marketing channel. Where do you want to target your potential customers?

If you’re a B2C marketer, social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok are the ideal options. However, these platforms are a big NO for business-to-business outreach programs.

Did you know around 575 million professionals, 2.8 million decision-makers, and 260,000 C-suite executives are active on LinkedIn?

Yep, that’s what LinkedIn claims.

This is why it’s better to pick LinkedIn and Twitter if you are planning social media outreach. But, if social media analytics is confusing to you, your safest option is cold email campaigns.

You can also integrate account based marketing with your outbound strategies to target high-value accounts by coordinating sales and marketing efforts and developing account-specific content.

According to a study by Hubspot, email marketing was an effective strategy for 64% of B2B marketers to meet business goals in 2021.

3. Segment Your Audience Base

The key to creating an effective outbound sales funnel is to divide your audience base into sub-categories based on common interests, needs, behavioral patterns, buying patterns, etc. This process is called marketing segmentation.

Segmenting your audience base helps streamline your sales campaigns and brings fruitful outcomes. Business development reps (BDRs) play a key role here by bridging the gap between marketing and sales, developing new business opportunities, and qualifying leads before passing them to sales closers. Some of the ways it can help are:

• Knowing your customer better
• Improving buying experience
• Make the product or service user-friendly
• Generate high-quality leads
• Find your niche market
• Personalize sales pitch
• Increase customer retention

Marketing segmentation plays a crucial role in sales campaigns and the growth of the company. Businesses that take up this practice earlier are more likely to see a high ROI than the ones that didn’t segment.

4. Send Personalized Cold Emails

As I mentioned above, more than 60% of B2B marketers saw profit using email marketing in their sales strategy in 2021. And, 77% of marketers have seen a hike in email engagement in the next year. Now, it’s 2023, and email still stands as a profitable channel for business-to-business sales.

Personalized cold emails are a core part of outbound prospecting, which involves proactively identifying and engaging potential customers through techniques like cold calling, email outreach, and social selling.

But, is cold emailing enough in this competitive market?

You guessed it right; no, it’s not. With more than 300 billion emails written, sent, and received per day, it’s definitely important to stand out with your cold email. Here’s how you can do that:

• Use their names correctly
• Use salutations carefully. For instance, don’t refer to non-binary recipients as “Mr”
• Provide relevant content in the email body
• Attach information that will catch the recipient’s attention
• Increase interactivity by adding games, polls, and surveys in the emails
• Write formal emails while writing to executives and directors

5. Send Personalized DMs

Emails are undoubtedly great. But, to increase engagement, try sliding into the DMs of your potential buyers too. Personalized DMs are an effective way to engage potential customers and capture their attention through targeted outreach. Check out the platforms your prospects are most active. Here, active means where they are talking about their business and getting influenced to make business decisions.

Take a detailed look at their profile. Note the minute details. Do your research thoroughly and don’t forget to find the basic details of their company. Once you’re done with that, it’s time to write the personalized text. How to do that?

• Congratulate on a recent achievement
• Open a conversation referring to a recent post
• Send informative material on which they about recently
• Provide solutions to the problems they are talking about

Take a look at an example:

Dear {Prospect},

I came across your profile while {mention how you found them}. I read a few of your articles, and I must say you provide great value in each of them.

Congratulations on {so-and-so achievement}! You totally deserve it.

I am {your name} from {company’s name}. We create software that {solves so-and-so issues}. Considering that you are a {mention the profession}, our product can {mention how it can help}.

It can also help with {mention additional features}.

Let’s get connected so that we can take this conversation further.

Thank you

6. DM the Decision Makers

Let’s talk about a sales team. It has got salespeople, sales reps, the social media manager, the manager, etc. Now, when it comes to buying a product for the team, can you guess who will make the decision?

Obviously, the manager of the team or anybody who’s in charge. So, always target the decision makers while pitching for a product or a service.

Your goal is to set a meeting, a video call, a product demo, or a sales call with decision makers. Sales calls are crucial for presenting your product and moving the sales process forward. So, write a DM or email keeping these points in mind. One can begin with sentences like:

Hey, you need to check out this product before the end of this season.

Or

Hey, done finalizing {a strategy} for the next season? If not, you need to check this out.

In case you don’t know if the person you’re texting is the right person, here’s how you can approach them.

Hey, quick question: can you connect me with the {designation} of {so-and-so team}? They need to see this.

Starting the conversation with sentences like this will help you stand out amongst the hundred unread messages in your inbox.

7. Pitch to Social Butterflies [on LinkedIn & Twitter]

Yep, pitching to social butterflies is highly recommended as an outbound tactic. Please note “social butterflies” here aren’t the chatty uncles in your church. I am obviously referring to the LinkedIn handles, or Twitter accounts that have 20k or more followers.

Such people are great at creating content-oriented posts on a regular basis. This is why many decision-makers follow them too.

While digital channels are often the first choice for outreach, phone calls can also be an effective way to connect with high-profile prospects when those channels are saturated. Personalizing your approach during these phone calls can help you stand out and start a meaningful sales conversation.

Imagine this. You pitched to people who are popular on relevant social media platforms, and they agreed to give your product a try. Now, if they like your product (and need it) and decide to continue with you, then muy bien. In case they decide the opposite, you can always request a post a review of your product on their timeline.

The perk of pitching to social butterflies is that they may or may not buy your product; either way, you win. Social selling is like fertilizer to your outbound selling techniques.

8. Pitch Influencers

Let’s say you are selling a cold emailing tool that comes with features like unlimited emails, unlimited follow-ups, automated replies, AI-generated email content, etc.

Now, are business owners the only people who use such products?

Definitely, not. Influencers or YouTubers with large audiences also use such tools to find new subscribers or keep the existing ones in the loop.

Targeting influencers can also be a strategic component of an outbound sales campaign, helping with lead qualification and increasing brand exposure.

If you can bag an influencer/YouTuber as a customer, your product will get extra publicity that you didn’t pay for. So, cold Dm-ing to influencers must be in your interruption marketing too.

9. Use Your Network

Considering the fact that you are reading this article, I am guessing you have either started a new company or are thinking of starting one. So, it’s safe to conclude that you’re new to founding a company but an old player in the industry.

Use your network to get introduced to your potential clients.

If you have been working for more than 5 years in an industry, you must have your share of contacts. At the least, you will contact the numbers of your previous colleagues.

While starting your outbound venture, don’t hesitate to use those contacts. Call your past co-workers and ask them if their team needs the product/service you are selling. If they don’t, ask them to introduce you to other decision-makers in their network. Leveraging your network in this way can help generate sales qualified leads for your sales team, strengthening your sales pipeline.

10. Move to Automation Tools

The efficiency of outbound techniques depends on finding out your niche audience and sending them highly personalized emails/DM. Outbound sales tools play a crucial role in streamlining prospecting, outreach, and account management efforts, making it easier to engage with potential customers efficiently.

One way to do that is to research and find them out–one by one. But, this way, you will only contact a handful of them in a month. The biggest perk of outbound strategies is that you can target a big group in a short time, but that’s impossible manually.

The other way to do this is to use automation tools to do the job for you. This way, you can create personalized messages for a large audience without spending much time on them.

Therefore, be it emailing or social media outreach programs, always use automation tools to reach a larger audience.

11. Track Your CRM

CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, is a feature in various software that allows you to keep track of all the interactions between you and your customers (including the potential ones). 

If you're new to generating outbound leads, track CRM to see more conversions. This is how tracking CRM can help you: 

• Building long-lasting relationships with customers
• Create ICP (ideal customer profile)
• Shortlist top customers
• Find customers who waste time & energy
• Potential customers
• Build a customer retention strategy
• Improve customer support
• Improve the product or service
• Understand customer's behavioral pattern
• Understand buying pattern
• Evaluate your campaigns

12. Use the Right Metrics

I know you know that you should use the right metrics. But, here, I am not talking about KPIs.

If you are tracking KPIs, that’s a good thing, but to track the performance of each and every campaign, it’s important to check the sales metrics too. Tracking outbound sales metrics is essential to measure success and evaluate the effectiveness of your outbound sales activities, helping you optimize your outreach efforts.

KPI or Key Performance indicators are used to track if the company is meeting its long-term goals. However, sales metrics are to check how well a campaign performed.

And, when it comes to outbound strategies, sales metrics are stepping stones. It’s needless to say that the initial campaigns would bounce. If you still keep going at it by learning from your mistakes, pretty soon, you will see a profit.

The general sales metric includes the following parameters:

• Number of leads
• Conversion rate
• Cost per lead
• Sales per representative
• Sales by geographical region
• Average win rate and deal size
• Sales cycle

In case you’re launching cold email campaigns, then check the below parameters:

• Open rates
• Email click-through rate
• Response rate
• Which version performed what in A/B testing

13. Do Your Research

Before sending out a cold email or DM, always do your homework. Find out the company's priorities. Check if they have taken any special action to achieve those. If yes, what did they do? What tools are they using? 

Find something in the features of your product/service that will catch the prospect's eye instantly. Your pitch should prioritize their goal and try resolving whatever issues they are facing. Don't forget to create a sense of urgency in your pitch. 

Optimization and Growth: Scaling Your Outbound Sales

Scaling your outbound sales team is both an art and a science, requiring a strategic approach to process optimization, technology adoption, and performance measurement. As your sales team grows, it’s essential to develop scalable outbound processes that can handle increased outreach without sacrificing personalization or effectiveness. Leveraging sales automation tools allows your outbound sales teams to reach more potential customers, streamline workflows, and focus on high-impact sales activities.

To ensure your outbound sales strategies are delivering results, it’s crucial to track key metrics such as customer acquisition cost, sales cycle length, and conversion rates. These metrics provide valuable insights into outbound sales performance and help you identify areas for improvement. By regularly analyzing data and measuring success, sales teams can make informed decisions, refine their sales strategies, and adapt to changing market conditions.

Continuous testing and optimization are at the heart of effective outbound sales. Encourage your sales team to experiment with new outreach methods, messaging, and sales tools to discover what resonates best with your target audience. Foster a culture of innovation and learning, where feedback is used to drive improvement and fuel growth. By staying agile and data-driven, your outbound sales teams can scale efficiently, reduce costs, and achieve sustainable revenue growth in a competitive marketplace.

Final Thoughts!

Email marketing is undoubtedly the most common outbound strategy. But, do you know what works best in email outreach?

Personalized emails with information collected from the prospect’s current activity on the internet or achievement.

However, with 70% of marketers reporting high work pressure, I understand personalizing is almost impossible. Luckily, you have the choice of AI-driven automation tools, which will collect personal information, create an email body, and send emails at the prospect’s convenient hour.

Probably, this is why 87% of B2C marketers include automation as a crucial part of their email marketing strategy. If you want to see a high ROI in 2023, it’s time you jump the ship of manual work and start using automation.

To ensure sustainable sales growth, consider developing a scalable outbound process that allows you to expand operations, hire the right talent, and continuously optimize your outbound activities. Also, using a good outbound sales tool does help. In which case, Smartlead can be your go-to sales outreach tools as it comes with AI-powered deliverability features that help your emails land in the primary inbox.

Start with their 14-day free trial.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How Can I Improve My Outbound Sales Tactics?

To enhance outbound sales tactics, first, create a precise Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) to pinpoint potential buyers. Focus on a specific outreach channel, segment your audience for tailored campaigns, and craft personalized cold emails. Utilize direct messages, engage with influencers, leverage your network, incorporate automation tools, and track CRM data for continual improvement. Optimizing your outbound sales process is essential for improving results, as refining each step and supporting your team with the right resources can maximize outreach success.

What Role Does Cold Emailing Play in Outbound Sales?

Cold emailing is a pivotal element in outbound sales, serving as a direct communication channel to reach potential customers. It allows for personalized outreach, introducing products or services, building relationships, and initiating the sales process by capturing the attention of prospects and fostering further interaction.

How Do You Personalize an Outbound Sales Strategy?

Personalization tactics to create the best outbound sales strategy involves tailoring communication to individual prospects. Start by creating an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and segmenting your audience. Craft personalized messages for each segment of your lead list by leveraging prospect-specific data, preferences, and pain points. This targeted approach enhances engagement, fostering meaningful connections and increasing the likelihood of successful conversions.

How Do You Measure the Success of an Outbound Sales Strategy?

The success of a B2B outbound sales strategy is measured through key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates, lead generation, and sales cycle duration. Sales development reps (SDRs) play a crucial role in this process by focusing on outbound prospecting, qualifying leads, and nurturing potential buyers, which directly impacts lead generation and qualification metrics. Tracking metrics like open rates, response rates, and click-through rates in campaigns, along with overall revenue growth, provides valuable insights into strategy effectiveness and areas for improvement.

What Are Common Mistakes to Avoid in Outbound Sales?

Common mistakes to avoid for a successful outbound sales strategy include neglecting proper audience segmentation, using generic messaging, insufficient follow-up, and a lack of personalization. Overlooking prospect research, relying solely on one channel, and not adapting strategies based on feedback can also hinder success.