Quick Guide to Outbound Prospecting for Sales Professionals

Quick Guide to Outbound Prospecting for Sales Professionals

Quick Guide to Outbound Prospecting for Sales Professionals

Imagine you are selling from a showroom where products are displayed. This showroom has all the stops and whistles on the outside, even a flashy sign right above the door. Your job is to get people into the building and to sell them the products. There are two ways this can be done, from the inside and the outside. 

Inbound: you can stand by the door and welcome customers that pass by, inviting them in, telling them about the showroom and the products. 

Outbound: you can hit the street and invite possible prospects to head to the showroom. 

Now, let’s dig a little deeper into the outbound method.

What is Outbound Prospecting?

Outbound prospecting, or outbound sales, consists of cold calling, social selling, email marketing, and so on. This is where companies push their message or pitch to their prospects. In outbound prospecting, sales reps contact the leads versus the leads coming to them. 

Some of the great benefits of outbound prospecting are: 

  1. Conduct hyper-targeted outreach
  2. Obtain quick feedback and results
  3. Have personal contact with the prospect
  4. Take control over the selling process

Outbound prospecting has 5 stages.

  1. Identify potential customers: define your target market and market segments
  2. Generate Leads: obtain prospects information with either a lead generation team or with a sales intelligence tool like Apoll.io
  3. Contact and qualify leads: this is where the outbound team contacts prospects and decides if they are a right fit or not
  4. Show off your solution: The team schedules a demo to show the leads your product or service
  5. Close the deal: the contract is signed

Tip: An outbound prospecting strategy involves using sales prospecting tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator in conjunction with Apollo’s Chrome Extension to find potential leads, source their contact information, sync them up with your CRM, and load them into a sales messaging sequence.

Outbound Prospecting Strategy

Data is everything. Not only will good data help you acquire more customers but it also increases the retention rate by 6x’s. This is where Apollo.io comes in. 

We have a 5-step email verification process that is the most accurate in the industry. When signing up for a free account you also get access to our database of 210 million contacts and 20 million companies. 

From there you can search the contact info for your ideal customer profile using search criteria like: industry, annual revenue, employee headcount, and more. Once the prospects have been identified, outbound outreach can begin.

Send Targeted Email Campaigns

Email blasts have their own time and place but we are talking targeted, personalized emails that lead to a higher overall engagement rate. 

The better you know who you are targeting such as buyer persona, characteristics, motivations, and how they perceive you, the company you represent, and your intentions in a well-crafted email, the better the success you will have.

Ask yourself these questions when creating a targeted email.

  1. Where in the sales funnel does this email fall?
  2. Who are you talking to?
  3. What is the takeaway message from the email?
  4. What is your call to action?
  5. Do you have a great subject line?

Apollo is an all-in-one platform that combines data and engagement. That means that as a sales rep, you have the ability to seamlessly find leads and reach out to them in one place, saving time and hassle from integrating multiple platforms. Try for yourself with a free account.

See the full article here: https://blog.apollo.io/blog/outbound-prospecting-guide

Joris van Huët

We cure frustrated DTC brands of their inaccurate marketing analytics. || Founder Grow Your Boat. || Freelance End-to-End DTC & SaaS Growth Strategist.

5mo

Solid tips! Hyper-targeted outreach and maintaining personal connections are game-changers. Thanks for sharing! 🚀

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Andrew Black

Social Media & Digital Marketing Professional 🛸 Focused on Paid Media, Digital Strategies and Social Media Growth

2y

Great article, #Data truly is everything!

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