How to Create a Successful Outbound Sales Strategy

Outbound sales is a strategy used by businesses to generate leads for their customers. It's a way of getting in touch with the people who might have a problem your offering can address, and showing them why they need your help. If you're new to outbound sales, it can be hard to know where to start and what steps need to be taken next. That’s why we’re here to help.

1. What is outbound sales?
2. How to create a successful outbound sales strategy

1. Nail outbound prospecting
2. Create a plan
3. Design your message
4. Choose the right channel
5. Use the right tech
6. Constantly test and optimize

3. Measuring the success of your outbound sales strategy
4. Conclusion

1. What is Outbound sales?

Outbound sales is, quite simply, the process of selling to customers who don't yet have your product or service, but have a problem that you can solve.

Essentially, outbound sales is a sales process that involves reaching out to potential customers by phone or email. The goal of this process is to find out what the customer needs, what they're willing to pay for it, and how you can provide them with it.

Outbound sales is a great way to start building your business because it's low-risk and low-cost. If you are able to get in touch with potential clients who are interested in what you have to offer, then you've already made the first step towards making them a customer.

2. How to create a successful outbound sales strategy

1. Nail outbound prospecting

Proper outbound prospecting is the first step of a successful outbound sales strategy.  You need to first find people who would be interested in what you're selling (the best leads are referrals). This can range from prospects who have expressed interest in buying something similar on social media platforms such as Facebook or LinkedIn--but also includes anyone who has visited your website recently and left without making contact with someone else within 24 hours. Or you could use a sales prospecting tool to find a database of your ICP - or the target people who are bound to have use for or experience a challenge that could be solved by your offering. Your prospect list needs to be accurate to ensure that your entire outbound campaign isn’t wasted on a contact for whom your product isn’t relevant.

2. Create a plan

To create a successful outbound sales strategy, you need to think about the customer's needs and how your product or service can help them. In other words, you need to be very clear about what you want from your customers and why they should choose you over your competition.

Once you have this information in mind, it's time to start planning. Your plan involves allocating your teams (by product line or geography or any other way that makes sense), building out your budgets, forecasting your results to set up targets, and setting up cadences to evaluate where you stand against your targets. You'll also want to consider how long-term this process will take--it may be months or even years before results begin showing up!

3. Design your message

So, the first step in creating an outbound sales strategy is to identify those pain points that are most important for your customers. Because you’ll be targeting prospects that are also being targeted by your competitors or are already using your competitors. 

Keep this in mind when you design the message you want to send. What is the point behind this message?How can it best showcase your unique selling points? How will it be delivered? When should it be sent (and how)? What format should your emails be in and what should its subject line contain? Do you have a winning cold email template or cold call script you should use? 

These questions can seem overwhelming at times but they're crucial if you want success with your outbound emails--and especially so if they're going out in bulk!

4. Choose the right channels

The right channels are the ones that will help you reach the right people. The wrong channels are those that waste your time and money. Choosing the right channel calls for having a strong understanding of your ICP and their preferences. You’ll need to understand what outreach channel they’re most likely to respond favorably too. Do they prefer calls because they’re more direct or do they find them intrusive? Do they spend time on LinkedIn? Are you likely to get a quicker response over emails? Usually, a multi-channel outreach strategy works best for the B2B world. But you still need to find the right mix.

5. Use the right tech

Executing and scaling your outbound sales strategy calls for an investment in the right sales tech. An outbound sales platform that integrates with your preexisting tech stack (especially your CRM) is a must-have for any growing sales team. A platform like this can help teams personalize their outreach with outbound sales automations and create multi-channel sequences that run on autopilot. A platform like Outplay even offers a template library, and (even more impressively) an AI email writer that crafts messages without having reps do them from scratch. A software like this also gives you access to the metrics you need in real-time to assess both campaign and team performance to see where you are against your goals and course correct if you need to. Or multiply and replicate what has been working. Outplay customers have achieved some incredible outbound success. 

6. Constantly test and optimize

Always be testing. If you’ve chosen the right tools, you’ll have access to valuable metrics that show how your outbound campaign is performing. There are many metrics you can track, some of which you’ll read about below. But it’s important to keep an eye on how these metrics change as you test different elements of your campaign. For example, A/B shorter vs longer email copy to see how it affects click-through rates. Test different subject lines to see their impact on open rates. Change the timing of your emails. Test the impact of changing the duration between each engagement. Use the results and tailor your campaign to yield the best results.

3. Measuring the success of your outbound sales strategy

Once you've created a solid outbound sales strategy, it's important to measure the results of your efforts. There's no shortage of data when it comes to outbound sales strategies. The challenge is understanding which metrics actually matter and how to best measure them.

Below are the essential metrics for measuring the success of your outbound sales strategy, along with tips on how to track them:

1. Response rate

This metric measures the percentage of leads who respond to your initial outreach attempts. To calculate it, simply divide the number of leads who respond by the total number of leads you contacted.

You can track response rates manually or with an outbound sales platform system that automatically calculates them for you. Either way, be sure to track responses over time so you can identify patterns and optimize your outreach accordingly.

2. Sales cycle time: This is the average length of time it takes to close a sale from start to finish. This is important to track as it will give you an indication of how efficient your sales process is.

3. Meeting conversion rate

This metric measures the percentage of meetings that result in a sale. To calculate it, divide the number of deals closed by the total number of meetings held.

As with response rates, tracking meeting conversion rates manually or your sales engagement platform can give you valuable insights into your sales process. Pay attention to any trends or patterns in meeting conversion rates so you can make adjustments as needed.

4. Customer lifetime value (CLV)

CLV measures the average revenue generated by a customer over their lifetime with your company. To calculate it, divide the total revenue from all customers by the number of customers you have. CLV is a long-term metric, but tracking it can give you a good idea of whether your outbound sales strategy has a good RoI.

4. Conclusion

It's important to remember that success with outbound sales requires planning, patience and persistence. You can't just start sending messages out without testing them first. When you're ready to launch your campaign, make sure you have a tool in place for every stage of the cycle. A tool like Outplay helps you prospect, engage, track and monitor outbound campaigns across channels like emails, LinkedIn, calls, text, and Twitter. Want to 3X your meetings booked without 3X-ing your budget? Give Outplay a shot for free.