Outbound sales has long been a cornerstone practice of successful organizations. However, with the ongoing hassle of inbound vs outbound sales, you just have to get conversant with how both sales techniques work and determine which is best for you. Here, we’ll define what an outbound sales strategy is, and the different software that sales representatives can use to drive sales.
What is Outbound Sales?
Outbound sales entails proactively reaching out to potential buyers via email, phone, social media, or another channel. The primary goal is to contact people with the intention of generating sales rather than waiting for them to take action. This differs from inbound sales, in which the potential buyer initiates the conversation (for example, by completing a demo request form).
Outbound sales may include cold contacting leads on a list, but more often than not, salespeople call prospects who have already proven desire by engaging with a brand’s content, registering for an event, emailing a firm, or making a previous call. Many sellers agree that outbound sales can be demanding, with 40% of reps citing prospecting as the most difficult aspect of their profession.
What Is An Example Of Outbound Selling?
Common examples of outbound selling include cold cals, cold emails, door to door visits.
The Benefits of Outbound Sales
According to popular opinion, outbound sales are less qualified than inbound sales. While this is true, outbound nevertheless offers a few advantages that inbound (generally) does not:
- Outbound sales representatives can focus on fresh prospects who are more likely to meet your ideal customer profile.
- Outbound allows for immediate feedback and outcomes, making it easy to test and try new sales methods. If a new strategy works, you’ll know right away and can scale it up to include more reps.
- Prospects want to buy from people they know and trust. Outbound sales allows you to establish trust with prospects right away.
- Control over the marketing and sales pace: Outbound selling is more direct and easier to scale–if you need more customers, make more calls.
Outbound sales is a powerful revenue-generating channel because of these advantages. You reach out to your ideal customers rather than waiting for them to come to you, and you can see right away if your strategy is working.
Both tactics have advantages, and the debate over outbound vs. inbound sales will never be settled. Most businesses profit from a combination of both sales tactics.
The Outbound Sales Process
Every organization has a unique outbound process, but there are five phases that every outbound sales staff must follow. Here’s a rundown of how that normally looks:
#1. Determine Your Target Audience
Who are you going to sell to? Who is your intended audience? Without this data, your sales force will not be able to contact enough of the correct people to close a substantial amount of transactions.
Segmenting your market into smaller groups also aids in the customization of your sales technique. This is especially significant if you sell a variety of products or have customers from several industries.
#2. Generate Leads
Lead generation is a complicated subject, but it all boils down to having a full pipeline. Outbound leads are generated by creating a list of persons to contact and locating their contact information.
You may have an in-house lead-generation team at times. Sometimes you’ll have to pay for a lead database. You might even hire outbound lead generation organizations to help you. Lead generation can also be handled by salespeople.
You’ll have a list of persons for your sales staff to contact at the end of the process.
#3. Qualification and Expansion
This is the point at which your sales staff begins to take action. Salespeople may contact your leads by phone, email, or other means. Calling and contacting prospects accounts for a large portion of this process.
Salespeople decide whether or not a lead is a likely customer for your company during their first encounters with them; this is what sales qualification is for. If they do not, they are removed from your list. They will go to the next level of the sales funnel if they are qualified prospects.
#4. Meetings and sales calls
Your team can now focus on what they do best: selling. This might include a live software demo, a meeting with management, or a phone call to discuss the capabilities and benefits of your product.
This approach may take some time depending on your target market. Longer sales cycles and more decision-makers are typical in B2B and enterprise sales. Smaller deals may be completed in a single phone call.
#5. Closing the deal
If the sales calls and meetings go well, the contract can be signed. The transaction has been completed, and your sales team has achieved a sale. Of course, there’s a lot more to do after this—but your sales team’s participation in the process is complete.
B2B vs. B2C Outbound Sales
What Is B2B Outbound Sales?
Reps sell to members of prospective companies in business-to-business (B2B) sales. Sales cycles in B2B sales are sometimes lengthier, and sealing a deal frequently takes numerous touches. Following up with prospects is an important function for B2B outbound sales agents. B2B salespeople will typically call previously contacted leads. That is why it is critical for B2B sales representatives to document activity in CRM platforms like Salesforce, so that every member of a sales team is aware of a lead’s status in real-time.
Is B2B Inbound or Outbound?
B2B marketing can be both inbound and outbound.
What Is B2C Outbound Sales?
Inside sales representatives that work for business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations typically sell directly to consumers, and sales are frequently more multinational. Companies that offer insurance policies, stocks, or time shares are examples of B2C businesses. Because B2B prospecting is primarily focused on a limited number of customers, B2C sales professionals often have to dial more leads per day than B2B reps.
Who Is An Outbound Sales Representative?
An outbound sales representative is responsible for securing sales by contacting clients via phone, correspondence, or face-to-face contact. They generally provide products and services to customers, aiding them every step of the way to ensure client happiness. They must do research and analysis to find business prospects, design sales tactics, generate leads, review product specifications with clients, present payment plans, and negotiate contracts in order to carry out their duties. Furthermore, an outbound sales representative must maintain strong client connections while complying with the company’s laws and regulations.
Responsibilities of An Outbound Sales Representative
Here are some instances of responsibilities from genuine outbound sales representative resumes that depict regular tasks they will be performing in their employment.
- Through in-home meetings, community seminars, and direct telesales, contact Medicare eligible recipients to promote Medicare benefit plans.
- Build rapport with consumers while selling solar panels, porches, and double-glazed windows.
- Assist consumers with their inquiries and problems, telemarket, and distribute flyers in the surrounding area.
- Multitasking, effectively reacting to customer queries and concerns, and negotiating sales for extra items and services are all required.
- Educate customers and experts in all TWC goods, services, and packages, as well as competitive offerings.
- Assist consumers as an expert and instructor on all TWC products, services, and bundles, as well as rival offerings.
- Respond to DSR inquiries about billing, service bundles, pricing, products, and features.
- Troubleshoot and install technical trouble tickets for DSL customer outages and connectivity difficulties.
Outbound Sales Software for Sales Reps
Sales representatives must strike a delicate balance. Fortunately, there is outbound sales software for almost everything, from pipeline management to meeting scheduling. Here are some outbound sales software available:
#1. Kaspr
Kaspr is a prospecting tool that assists SDRs and recruiters with lead generation. You can retrieve GDPR and CCPA compliant phone numbers and emails directly from LinkedIn by using Kaspr’s LinkedIn Extension.
Once you’ve collected your contacts, you may augment the information and transmit it to your CRM using clever integrations. Alternatively, you could set them up in a LinkedIn cycle with invitations and InMails via the Kaspr dashboard to help automate your outreach.
#2. Cognism
Cognism is a sales intelligence platform that assists revenue teams in automating the prospecting process. With premium contact, company, and event information, such as sales trigger events and intent data, you can easily identify the top prospects.
#3. Salesforce
Salesforce is a CRM software that is intended to serve as a one-stop shop for the full sales process.
It centralizes all client information and offers several app connectors and customization choices. Salesforce is a superb CRM tool for sales executives’ teams.
#4. Sales Hub by HubSpot
HubSpot Sales Hub assists sales teams in managing and filling their pipelines by focusing on priority leads. The usage of automated email templates and lead nurture sequences makes interacting with prospects considerably more efficient.
Furthermore, SDRs get access to premier sales content, ensuring they have the expertise they need to succeed.
#5. Zoom
Zoom is a cloud-based collaboration technology that makes it simple to schedule video meetings.
It’s a must-have in the SDR toolset, including features like screen sharing and recording.
#6. Navattic
Navattic enables product-led growth (PLG) businesses to develop and customize interactive product demos.
It works well for both outbound and inbound lead generation.
Outbound Sales vs Inbound Sales?
In the sales business, there is a never-ending war going on right now. Outbound vs. inbound sales. What is the difference? What is the best strategy for your company? We’ll answer these and more questions in this section.
People that only use inbound marketing do so because it allows firms to acquire customers, be cost-effective, and scale incredibly well. Outbound selling, on the other hand, is still one of the most effective strategies to create trust, close large sales, and preserve control.
The truth is that both approaches have advantages and disadvantages, and they should be considered as tools to be used in order to achieve results and goals.
The type of sales plan you use will be determined by the strategy you establish for your team, which should be based on your sales team setup, goals, target audience, product or service, and other elements relevant to each case.
Outbound Sales vs Inbound Sales: What’s The Difference?
The most fundamental distinction between inbound and outbound sales is who initiates the sales interaction. Inbound sales processes begin with the prospect, but outbound sales begin with salespeople contacting the prospect first.
To be clear, neither method is intrinsically superior. Both strategies can be effective instruments for expanding a business and increasing revenue. The method you implement will be determined by a number of factors, including the type of business you run, the average deal size, and how knowledgeable your consumers are about the solutions you provide.
We’ll take a closer look at both sales tactics so you can see which plan will be the ideal growth channel for your company.
Inbound Sales
Inbound sales is a process in which businesses “pull” interested prospects and qualify them to determine if they are a good fit for their product. In other words, inbound sales is focused on the demands of the client, and the salesperson adjusts to the buyer’s journey as a trusted advisor.
The inbound sales process is divided into four segments.
#1. Identify potential customers
This is where you interact with strangers who come into the showroom and turn them into leads. Assume you obtain their contact information and consent to deliver them information via content downloads, webinars, or live chat.
#2. Connect with leads
Now you assist the leads in becoming aware of their wants and determining whether or not you can assist them. They are considering your suggestions as part of their overall objectives.
#3. Dig deeper
At this level, you start a conversation with the leads to establish trust and dig deeper into their problems to see if your solutions are a good fit for them and to identify sales chances.
#4. Provide advice on a solution
Once you’re confident that your offering meets the needs of your leads and you have their trust, you may provide advice (your sales pitch) on how your product is the greatest solution for their needs. The leads are then converted into customers.
Because you are just targeting and connecting with people who have expressed an interest in your brand, the inbound sales methodology can be highly cost-effective.
However, creating content, building a list, and generating high-quality leads can take time at first.
Outbound Sales
Outbound sales is a practice in which businesses push their message or pitch to prospects via cold phoning, social selling, email marketing, and other means. In outbound sales, salespeople contact leads rather than waiting for leads to come to them as in inbound sales.
Outbound sales are sometimes criticized because of its intrusive practices, such as cold calling, and some even claim it is dead. However, it is still useful in many instances
The outbound sales process is divided into five segments.
#1. Identify potential customers
Define your target market and market categories, then train your team to approach them.
#2. Generate leads
Now that you know who you want to reach out to, you must get their contact information – either through an in-house lead generation team, a database purchase or by outsourcing sales lead production to a third party.
#3. Contact and qualify leads
The outbound sales team now contacts the contacts on the list via email or phone to determine whether they are a good fit for your product or service. If they are, they proceed to the next phase; otherwise, they are removed from the list.
#4. Demonstrate your solution
The sales staff arranges for a meeting or a demo to show the leads all of the benefits of your product or service.
#5. Seal the deal
If everything goes as planned, the contract is signed with the customer.
Outbound sales and cold calling are frequently confused, however. Whereas cold calling is an attempt to capture leads through random contacts, outbound sales is the outcome of data-driven research.
Combining Outbound and Inbound Marketing
Is it necessary to choose between the two? Certainly not!
To increase your pipeline, use a combination of inbound and outbound sales. For example, it’s become usual in recent years to rely extensively on content marketing, a sort of inbound marketing, to acquire leads online.
That’s all right. So, after you have those inbound leads, you can follow up with them, qualify them, and close the business using outbound tactics. Calling leads who have downloaded your content but have not responded to your follow-up emails is one example.
Utilize the best of both worlds by combining inbound sales analytics with proactive outbound sales outreach.
To summarize,
Outbound sales is a sales technique in which salespeople initiate contact with prospects rather than attracting leads through content, paid advertising, or other inbound strategies.
An efficient outbound sales approach necessitates significant upfront effort. To assist outbound selling, you’ll need a solid plan, new leads, knowledge about possible customers, and the necessary tools.
It appears to be a lot of work. When you combine all of those factors, you’ll have an extremely successful outbound sales program.
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