Sales outreach is about connecting with potential, former and current customers to persuade them to make a purchase. When launching a sales campaign, concentrate on the prospective customer. Ask them about their needs and the pain points that they face. Listen to their answers carefully, and then, point out how your product or service can help them.
Doing a large-scale sales outreach campaign is not an easy task in today’s market. Simple advertising is sometimes not enough since consumers are bombarded daily by numerous offers that can get ignored. In today’s crowded marketplace, it has now become even more difficult to launch outreach sales campaigns that will engage prospects and persuade them to make a purchase.
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How do you organize sales outreach?
You need to be SMART in organizing your large-scale outreach sales campaign. SMART is an acronym that stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-bound. These are the criteria used in setting goals for your campaigns. A SMART goal incorporates all of these criteria, so you can succeed given the available resources.
It would be helpful to have a strategic approach when it comes to launching sales outreach campaigns. Following the correct steps right from the start can make your campaigns more effective and productive. Here are 7 steps to follow when doing outreach sales campaigns for your business.
Step 1: Set your goals
Set a goal for your business to identify the steps in achieving it. Before contacting your leads, you have to know why you are reaching out to them. The best goals impact the company at large (e.g. improving annual revenue, profit margin, customer lifetime value). Having a clear goal in mind can help you measure the success of your sales team.
Here are some examples of sales campaign goals:
- Increase monthly revenue by acquiring 10 new customers in the next 30 days
- Boost customer lifetime value by encouraging former customers to make 20 repurchases in the next 30 days
- Increase the number of qualified leads by tripling call volumes
Step 2: Profile your target leads
Sales teams have found that 50% of their budget gets wasted on unqualified traffic and leads. That is why profiling your ideal customer may possibly be the most crucial part of the sales outreach process.
What is an ideal customer profile?
An ideal customer profile is a fictional yet detailed description of the perfect customer for your company. Customer profiles (or buyer personas) contain the information that you need to know about who you should be targeting as part of your sales strategy. It is important to identify the key demographics, behaviors, and interests of your target customers.
For a B2B business, establish the ideal customer profile of companies that are the best candidates for your products or services. Criteria may include:
- Size
- Average revenue
- Industry
- Location
For a B2C business, your ideal customer profile may include criteria such as:
- Age
- Sex
- Job
- Interests
- Location
For example, if you are selling electric vehicles in the state of California, you may reach out to prospects in California who are employed, between 30-50 years old and are interested in eco-friendly alternatives.
Step 3: Send the right message
When targeting an ideal customer, you have to send the right message at the right time. A good outreach message is short, direct to the point, and easily comprehensible. It would be best to craft a message that shows you understand the pain points of the prospect and that you have the ability to help solve them.
If you are a pet store company owner, what would make you stay on a call?
- Someone calling to inquire about who is the decision-maker?
- Someone calling to bundle your pet foods with their pet supplements?
If you answered B, then you are on the right track.
As you can see, the right message together with the right targeted lead can leverage your sales process to easily transition to the next steps. Consider the sales goals mentioned previously:
- 10 new customers in the next 30 days
- target customers who made contact within the last 15 days
- target customers who visited your website more than 3x in the last 15 days
- 20 repurchases from former customers in the next 30 days
- target customers who gave you positive reviews
- target customers who engage with your emails
Step 4: Choose the sales channel
How do you identify the best sales channel for your campaign? Study the cost, the return on investment, and rate of conversion. If you pick the wrong sales channel, you are likely to be less profitable. For modern-day outreach campaigns, it is recommended to combine multiple sales channels. Depending on the targeted ideal lead profile, message, and job title, you may use these four common channels in implementing your sales outreach campaign.
- Phone call. A timely phone call is often the best way to convert prospects. You’ll have a much higher chance of converting a lead into a sales opportunity on the phone as you get real-time feedback. You can use these verbal cues to adjust your sales pitch depending on the person and the situation. When doing phone calls with prospects, follow the best practices of outbound call campaigns. Consider using a powerful phone dialer to boost operational efficiency and reach more contacts daily.
Best suited for reaching out to decision-makers and current customers
- Email outreach. One popular way of reaching your prospects in the digital age is email. If you are targeting high-ranking company executives, it is recommended to send them an opening email. Then, on the phone, further discuss with them what the email was all about. This is a great way to transition to your sales pitch.
Best suited for business-to-business transactions
- Social media. According to Statista, 3.6 billion people around the world were using social media in 2020. The market research company predicts this will increase to almost 4.41 billion by 2025. These numbers strongly suggest social media as a great channel to reach prospects and customers. Not only that, this means that you have to look into engaging with mobile customers since most people access social media on their phones.
Best suited for targeting direct consumers.
- Texting. SMS marketing is another channel that allows you to reach large numbers of mobile customers. Text campaigns can deliver higher open rates than other digital marketing channels. It is convenient, cost-effective, and you can get feedback immediately. Make sure to learn about proper business texting etiquette before conducting your sales outreach campaign.
Best suited for quick updates and direct response campaigns
Step 5: Set multiple layers for follow-ups
In an ideal world, your sales outreach campaign should focus on getting an immediate response from your prospects. However, there are prospects who will most likely shrug their shoulders upon hearing your sales pitch for the first time. This is the reason why you should set multiple layers for follow-ups.
According to a study by Brevet, an average of five follow-ups are needed in order to close 80% of sales deals.
Follow-ups can be done through a combination of different sales channels. For one, you can leverage business texting to support your calling efforts. As the business adage says, “Sales is a numbers game.” The more calls you make, the more likely you will make a sale. However, it should be stressed that making sales calls to the right targeted prospects will exponentially increase the success rate of your campaigns. However, there will be times when you get redirected to your prospect’s answering machines. When that happens, you can make use of these compelling voicemail scripts to get you more callbacks.
Step 6: Automate your sales outreach campaign
You are pretty much done with your sales outreach campaign, and all that is left for you to do is automate the sales workflow by choosing the right tools.
Large-scale sales outreach campaigns are time-consuming. It is essential that you set up automated workflows and sequences to replace manual and time-consuming sales tasks.
If you are still hesitant to use automation for your company, consider this statistic: According to HubSpot, 61% of organizations that leveraged automation reported that they surpassed their revenue targets.
Here are some features you may want to consider in a contact center software if you are going to automate your sales outreach campaign.
- Communication triggers – Automatically call and text your prospect when an email comes from your lead generator.
- Follow-up sequences – Automate follow-ups so that you can nurture leads into customers without any extra work.
- Power dialer – Eliminates manual dialing and boosts pick up rates, so your agents can focus on live conversations.
- SMS broadcasting. Set up a schedule to easily broadcast promos and updates via SMS.
If you are worried about the process of automation and its technicalities, you can check this sales automation guide to learn more about automating your sales workflow.
Step 7: Track your sales outreach campaign
The response of prospects to the follow-ups should help you make modifications to your sales campaigns and identify areas for improvement. Monitor whether prospects ignored the text messages, opened your emails, or responded to your CTAs.
Tracking certain metrics and measuring them against your goals are important when conducting a large-scale sales outreach campaign. Setting up KPIs or key performance indicators is also a great way to assess the performance of the campaign and allow you to make adjustments so that your sales team will be able to reach its goals.
For accurate measurement, it would be best to consolidate all your customer interactions in a CRM. To do that, you can turn to a CRM-integrated contact center software like Aloware. Look at these sales goals and the KPIs that you can monitor with the right tooling.
Goal 1: 10 new customers in the next 30 days
Possible KPIs: Sales Qualified Leads (SQL), Conversion Rate, Sales Velocity
Goal 2: 20 repurchases from former customers in the next 30 days
Possible KPIs: Email open rates, Repurchase Rate
Goal 3: Increasing the number of demos or appointments weekly
Possible KPIs: Engagement Rate, Calls Made, Appointments Booked
You can easily make assessments by tracking conversions directly from specific touchpoints which can help you identify where your prospects drop out of the campaign.
Stay ahead of the competition
Automated sales outreach campaigns, when done right, can provide your company with a repeatable pipeline at a reasonable acquisition cost. In this age of complex buyer personas, you have to leverage the right tools to truly penetrate your target market and not lose to fast-moving competitors.
Aloware can help you execute your next large-scale sales outreach campaign with its unlimited calling and texting plans. Learn more about its powerful features, and discover how you can automate your lead outreach to increase your opportunity rate. Book a demo with our representatives today!
