An outbound sales strategy is where you are actively seeking new customers - not waiting for your customers to come to you. The pandemic has meant that a lot of businesses now need to be more proactive to drive online sales. An effective outbound sales strategy is crucial to how successful you will be in attracting new customers.
You will need to define your KPIs and have a clear understanding of your user persona. A good strategy will also ensure that your sales team is properly integrated with other departments like marketing and customer support. In this blog we will set out some useful tips on how to create a successful outbound sales strategy:
Clearly, an outbound sales strategy will differ depending on your company, your objectives, and the people you want to reach, but it usually includes these stages:
We will explore these in a bit more detail:
This first stage identifies the micro-markets that you can sell to. This helps you define your target groups and set the right tone to help you promote your products and close deals more effectively. You should ask yourself the following questions:
Usually, a good place to start is to segment your market by demographics (age, education, income), psychographics (lifestyle, values), behavioural trends (purchase history, shopping preferences), and location (country, city). Doing this research effectively is the bedrock of every successful outbound sales strategy. Here are some tips to do it right:
The purpose of this stage is to find leads and feed them into your outbound sales process. That means creating a list of contacts that you'll promote your products and services. The main factors determining how successful this will be is the quality of your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and the lead generation tools you use.
A quality ICP will help you communicate effectively, create powerful campaigns and promote the most relevant products and services to your target audience. In addition, high-quality lead generation tools can help you filter and extract contact information for the people you want to reach and create a really powerful contact list. Having a tool that can verify an email address is also important as it ensures that the emails on your list are verified (ie: they actually exist). As a result, you should end up with a list of high-quality leads that will find the information you send them interesting and relevant.
Once you have a good list, it's time to contact people! The goal is to start a dialogue and try to create a relationship with your prospects. Here are the most popular ways of getting started:
Typically, your leads will be:
You will obviously get a mix of leads at the output — cold, warm, and hot. Here are some tips to bear in mind at this stage:
Tools that you can leverage at this stage are:
By this stage, you will have identified priority leads that you aim to schedule a meeting or a demo with. In the current climate, this will probably happen online. Until things get back to normal, your proposal should be ‘pandemic-friendly' — offering discounts or promotional offers or just simply help and advice. One thing that will really help during these calls is a stellar sales script. You should have a list of points you would like to get across - you can deviate from this but it's a very useful place to start.
Of course, your final stage is to close the deal - turning your lead into a valued customer. That means listening to your client's requirements, having good negotiation skills and just maybe a bit of persistence. Your proposal should be clear and concise and - if required - tailored to your client's individual needs.
We hope you have found this brief outline of how to create a successful outbound sales strategy usefully. Outbound sales are not easy - it requires research, planning, negotiation skills, the ability to listen, and to successfully pitch your proposal. Most people need a little help with one or more of these skills.
If you are looking to sharpen your skills using Zoom or Microsoft Teams we have courses that will enable you to do that. Or you might be looking for a course on how to radically improve your professional phone skills or how to produce stunning Powerpoint presentations.

by Oli Bridge | 13 Nov 24