Are you searching for answers to the following questions, as most of our clients were doing before meeting us when thinking of establishing an outbound sales team:
1. How much should I pay a salesperson?
2. How many salespeople can I add to my organization?
3. How should I document our sales process?
4. How can I create more predictability in our sales team’s efforts?
5. Who should I target?
6. Where should I find leads?
7. Which channels should I use to target them?
8. What outreach approach should I use?
9. How can I grow my revenue?
But before we look for answers to these questions, let’s find out if you’re ready for having “Outbound sales” operations.
If 5 of these 10 conditions apply to you:
1. Inbound leads have plateaued
2. Innovative new solution to the marketplace
3. Product or service is expensive and targeted at enterprise customers
4. Longer sales cycles
5. Product or service generates attendance at conferences and events
6. Higher profit margins that allow larger commissions to be offered
7. The Target market is receptive to cold outreach
8. The Very specific target market
9. Moving away from a founder-led sales
10. Average deal size is over $10,000
Do you still want to master outbound sales?
Let’s begin
What is “Outbound Sales”?
Outbound sales are initiated by sales professionals by cold phoning, cold emailing, cold SMS texting, or social selling. The source of the lead distinguishes inbound from outbound sales development. Outbound leads may be unaware of your presence or have not been actively studying your unique solution, whereas inbound leads are actively hunting for your product, service, or solution.
The majority of businesses want predictable, repeatable, and scalable revenue. You want to be able to set up a sales operation that will allow you to invest in your business and watch it grow. However, this is not possible without a robust sales process in place. And you won't be able to predict the sales numbers and revenue growth.
Why Outbound Sales?
By doing outbound sales strategies, you take advantage of four key elements:
1. Highly targeted prospecting (i.e., decision-makers)
2. Relationship building with your future customers
3. Predictable lead generation
4. Predictable sales pipeline
3 key elements of outbound sales:
1. Predictable Lead Generation: Determine your target market and ideal customer profile (ICP), then build your list and track your conversions.
2. A Dedicated Sales Team: When it comes time to engage your second salesperson, they must specialize. We'll talk about it more later. Someone should be in charge of lead generation, while another should offer demos or discovery calls and close deals.
3. Consistent Sales System: Describe your sales process so that all team members follow the same steps and you can analyse trustworthy data and results.
And here is the process to establish predictable lead generation:
1. Identify your target market
2. Identify your ideal customer profile
3. Map out your buyer personas
4. Build your list of prospects
5. Outreach using outbound best practices
6. Qualify leads
7. Handoff leads to account executives (closers)
8. Sales calls
9. Close deals
10. Feedback loop
Things to keep in mind as you begin hiring your outbound team:
Ownership: Who is the owner? Sales, not marketing, should be the owner of the outbound prospecting staff. Why? Prospectors must collaborate closely with account executives, and the position should be part of the sales career path. The exception: whomever the leader is who is most committed to the team's success, regardless of whether they work in sales or marketing, should own it.
Territories: Prospectors (and salespeople) require concentration: We always advise clients to assign geographic regions or industries; additionally, have separate employees focus on simple or small clients and others on larger or more complex clients. If you're not sure why, read Why Your Salespeople and Prospectors Need Territories.
Hiring Ratios: The optimal person-to-prospect ratio is one prospector for every one to three salespeople, depending on how much extra pipeline your salespeople require. A strong prospector can quickly exhaust a single salesperson. When a prospector actively helps more than three salespeople, the working relationships and focus deteriorate, and the outcomes suffer.
Onboarding and Initial Training: Don't just put your new hires on the phones after a few days. Ensure that they spend significant time within the first month learning about your organisation, culture, products, and customers. They'll be slower, to begin with, but faster to ramp up.
Need help establishing an outbound sales team from the start? Without the pitfalls, that could happen. Look at which coaching or consulting service might be the right fit for your organization.
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