Outbound sales, or sales made by pitching directly to new leads, is not a tactic of the past. In fact, 82% of buyers today say they will accept meetings from those who proactively reach out to them, proving that they are very useful.
Still, winning outbound sales is not just about getting meetings and closing deals. If done successfully, it can help you develop stronger relationships with clients by adding that personal touch. Even better, you can also receive immediate feedback on what works, allowing you to continually experiment with your pitch.
While inbound sales have the advantage of getting clients to come to you, outbound sales can help you tap into a whole new audience. Though outbound sales can seem tricky to master, learning the right steps from the get-go can set you up for success. This guide will cover everything you need to know about winning your first outbound sale.
Winning an outbound sale only takes a little research and strategic thinking.
Step 1: Identify your target audience
The first strategy for outbound sales for beginners is figuring out your audience. Take the time to build an idea of what your ideal customer would look like by considering the following:
- Demographics, such as age, location, and gender
- Buyer persona as a whole
- Pain points: what can your product/service do to help them?
- Buyer role: decision-makers, supporters, early adopters
You can undergo market research, look at your competitor’s customers, or examine your own customers to see who is already buying your product or service.
Step 2: Nail your value proposition
After you’ve defined your target audience, it’s time to create a value proposition that defines the solution and benefits you can provide customers for their problems.
It should be clear, easy-to-understand, and enticing. The proposition will also guide your outbound sales process, helping you explain to customers the benefits they get from using your company.
Step 3: Start generating leads
You’ll then need to generate a list of leads to work with. You can do this using a variety of modern, online tactics.
Use social media: You can either post organic content or use social media marketing to gain interest on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram. Include email form submissions on each post to easily rack up leads. In order to network effectively through social media, choose the platform used by your ideal customers. Before launching a social media lead generation campaign, study the demographics of various social media platforms. If they align with your target market, then it would most likely be a good fit for your campaign.
Ads and retargeting: Search engines like Google or Bing allow you to post pay-per-click targeted ads. Your ad will be one of the first results shown to users who look up keywords related to your business. You can also do retargeting campaigns to bring back website visitors to your page and convert them into leads. Remember that these people have already visited your site in the past, so you would have to be able to present an enticing offer for them to start chatting with you.
Content marketing: To generate leads organically on search engines, use search engine optimization. Create high-quality, relevant web content such as blog posts or articles. The more useful and relevant your content is, the higher you will rank on search engines, making your website more likely to be viewed by search engine users. You can also offer a lead magnet, which is a free item or service for the purpose of gathering contact details. Lead magnets can be eBooks, white papers, e-newsletters, trial subscriptions, and free consultations.
When a person provides their email address to receive the lead magnet, they then become a lead who is now part of your sphere of influence. You can now reach out to them and nurture them through the sales funnel, with the goal of eventually converting them into customers.
Step 4: Qualify your leads
It’s one thing to generate leads, but it’s another to qualify them. To see which leads are worth pursuing, you will have to research your prospects.
Most people have a social media profile these days, so simply looking up a lead’s profile for a few minutes can tell you about their interests. You may even find information that can be useful during the pitch itself.
For the rest of the qualification process, you can use the BANT model. This model examines a lead’s budget, authority, need, and timeline:
- Budget: Can the lead afford what you are offering them?
- Authority: Does the lead have the authority to make the purchasing decision? Or is there a higher-up you can target?
- Need: Is your company able to provide a solution to meet the lead’s needs?
- Timeline: How soon does the lead need a solution?
Figuring out a prospect’s BANT will require you to ask questions during your pitch. If you find that the prospect doesn’t meet the above BANT criteria, you can list them as a dead lead and move on to the next one.
It’s also important to measure your lead generation success using designated metrics. For example, you could keep track of the cost per lead or number of leads gained per channel. Monitoring these metrics lets you know what avenues are seeing the best results.
Step 5: Make initial contact
Now begins the actual sales process. You can perform your outbound outreach efforts via phone call, email, or SMS messaging. The best outbound sales strategy usually involves a mixture of them. For instance, perhaps you’ll start with a phone call but follow up with an email or text message. As you engage with your prospects, you’ll see what works best.
Bonus hacks for making initial contact:
- Use scripts as a guide: Scripts provide consistency and help decrease initial contact stress. Still, reading the same lines to each customer can come off as repetitive. To keep things fresh, personalize each call script for every customer, adapting to the customer’s unique needs and desires as they express them.
- Utilize automation: You can automate the initial contact process, such as performing automated calls, emails, and follow-ups. Automation can also be used to gather client data, saving you time and money.
Step 6: Follow up at the right time
80% of all sales require five follow-ups. The key to how to win outbound sales, then, is following up a few times without seeming overly pushy. Space out both your follow-up times and channels used.
You can strategically space out your follow-ups by setting up automation. With automation, you can set up a day and time to send emails, texts, and phone calls. For instance, you can set up an email to be sent right after contact, and schedule a follow up text for two days afterward. Using a format like this gives you (and the prospect) more options and feels less overbearing.
Step 7: Close the sale
When closing the sale, remember to ask questions, listen, and reaffirm what your product or service can do for the prospect. Once you’ve won your first sale, you’ll find that the entire outbound sales process is not as hard as it seems.
It also helps to get customer feedback and measure your sales metrics as you go along. Doing so helps you realign and refine your outbound sales process to close sales more effectively in the future.
Find outbound sales success with Aloware
Outbound sales strategies remain useful and effective in closing deals. Creating the right outbound sales outreach requires some introspection and research as you settle on your target audience and product or service value.
Once you’ve done that, you need to sift through your gathered leads to find the best prospects. Finally, as you run with your outbound campaign, you’ll adjust your techniques and strategies to meet customer demand.
The process doesn’t have to be a challenging one. With Aloware’s omnichannel, automated outbound sales tool, you can start seeing results without wasting time, money, or effort.
