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Eric is in charge of content and SEO at La Growth Machine. A specialist in Outreach topics for over 8 years, Eric has written for numerous French and English blogs, sharing his experiences, hacks, and other use-cases. A trainer and speaker in his spare time, he is a reference for all topics related to B2B prospecting and automation.

In the past, sales teams have long relied on outreach techniques like cold calling and email blasts to generate leads and close deals. Sales methods and customer journey has evolved a lot since then, especially with B2B. Aside from inbound sales, we’re now talking about outbound sales.

What is outbound sales? Why should you focus on outbound sales for your business? How to create an effective outbound sales process?

In this post, we’ll answer all these questions so you can learn more about outbound sales and how they can benefit your business.

What is outbound sales?

Outbound sales is the process of proactively reaching out to potential customers to generate leads and close deals.

This involves actively prospecting for new B2B leads through very specific techniques, such as:

Outbound sales is the opposite of inbound sales: instead of waiting for customers to come to you, you go out and find them.

Historically, sales and marketing were focusing only on outbound methods. With time, more and more efforts are made to attract new leads without spending time and money chasing them.

That’s the purpose of inbound sales.

In the meantime, outbound sales methods have evolved a lot, especially with the help of automation: with a sales automation tool such as LaGrowthMachine, sales organizations are now able to outreach thousands of people on different channels to get the best out of your B2B lead generation.

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What are the benefits of outbound sales?

Outbound sales is not only about prospecting new leads: it’s also a way to improve customer relationships, customer loyalty and therefore, turnover.

Below are some of the main benefits of outbound sales.

1. Reach more people in less time: With outbound sales, you can reach a lot more people in a shorter period of time. This is especially useful if you’re looking to generate a large number of leads in a short amount of time!

2. Short-term strategy: Compared to inbound sales methods, it’s a much more direct method. If you invest money in outbound strategies, you’ll be able to see the results very soon.

3. Efficiency: outbound sales gives you the insurance that you’ll get new leads and new clients soon enough.

It’s all a matter of budget when it comes to lead generation: either you’re willing to get new leads quickly to activate your sales pipeline or you’re preferring to reduce your cost acquisition, you’ll have to choose between inbound and outbound sales methods. Or not!

Quick Tip 💡

At LaGrowthMachine, we recommend that you do both: start with outbound sales methods to develop your lead generation funnel quickly, but don’t forget to work on inbound sales as well to get new B2B clients costless later!

If you want to focus on outreach methods, you should definitely consider a tool such as LaGrowthMachine, that will help you save time and money. Our clients are generating more than 3.5x leads than they used to previously!

What are the best outbound sales techniques?

As said before, in B2B, there are three common outbound sales techniques:

  • Cold calling;
  • LinkedIn outreach;
  • Sales emailing.

Now we’re going to talk about each of these techniques a bit more deeply, so you’ll know why they’re effective and how to proceed with them.

Cold calling

In B2B sales, cold calling is the process of making phone calls to people who you think could be interested in your product or services, even though they’re not expecting your call.

It’s considered one of the most common outbound sales techniques. Even if it’s a bit of an old one, it’s still working nowadays, especially for B2B.

The goal of a cold call is to identify if the lead is qualified, schedule a meeting with the sales reps, and close deals.

Related Post 📝

We’ve written a great post about the difference between cold calling and hot calling, in which you’ll find all the information, guidelines and personal tips to improve your skills in B2B sales.

To make sure that your cold calls are going in the right way, here are some tips that you’ll need to follow:

  • Do your research: Before reaching out to someone, make sure that you know everything about them and their company. The more you know, the easier it will be to have a relevant conversation with them.
  • Prepare your pitch: Focus on having a good elevator pitch ready, so you can introduce yourself and your company in a few seconds.
  • Don’t be afraid to be direct: When you’re making a cold call, you need to be direct about why you’re calling and what you’re offering. Be prepared for rejection, but don’t let that stop you from reaching out to more people!
  • Follow up: After your call, make sure to follow up with an email or LinkedIn message. This will help keep the conversation going and increase your chances of scheduling a meeting! Plus, it’s been proven that multichannel prospecting is working more than everything else, in outbound. You can do this easily if you’re using LaGrowthMachine!

LinkedIn Outreach

LinkedIn outreach is a strategy that consists in connecting with B2B leads on LinkedIn, building relationships, and eventually selling them your product or services.

It’s a bit similar to cold calling, but the main difference is that you’re reaching out to people on LinkedIn, instead of by phone.

The goal of LinkedIn outreach is to generate more B2B qualified leads (MQL) and turn them into customers.

With LaGrowthMachine, you can track your results live!

To make sure that your LinkedIn outreach is going in the right way, here are some tips that you’ll need to follow:

  • Research your lead: Just like with cold calling, you’ll need to do your research before reaching out to someone on LinkedIn. Look at their profile, see what kind of content they’re sharing and what their interests are. This will help you determine if they’re a good fit for your products or services.
  • Personalize your message: When you’re sending a LinkedIn message, make sure to personalize it as much as possible. Mention something that you have in common, share a relevant article, or simply compliment their profile. This will make them more likely to respond to your message! To personalize your sales outreach messages, you can use LaGrowthMachine, as well.
  • Be professional: Even if you’re reaching out to someone on a social network, you’ll need to be professional at all times. This means avoiding any typos or grammatical errors in your message, and not being too salesy.
  • Follow up: Just like with cold calling, you’ll need to follow up with your LinkedIn messages. If you don’t hear back from someone, wait a few days and then send them a second message. If they still don’t respond, move on to another lead.

Sales Emailing

Sales emailing is the process of sending sales emails to potential leads in order to generate more business opportunities. It’s considered one of the most effective outbound sales techniques, as it allows you to reach a large number of people with a relatively small amount of effort.

When writing with LaGrowthMachine, we’re giving you advice and support for each message

The goal of sales emailing is to generate more B2B qualified leads through sales email.

To make sure that your sales emails are going in the right way, here are some tips that you’ll need to follow:

  • Personalize your email: When you’re sending a sales email, make sure to personalize it as much as possible. Mention something that you have in common, share a relevant article, or simply compliment their profile. This will make them more likely to respond to your message!
  • Keep it short and sweet: Sales emails should be short and to the point. Get straight to the point and don’t include any unnecessary information. The goal is to get the recipient interested, not bored! If you’re using LaGrowthMachine, our support will help you with the copywriting of your messages, to get the most out of it!
  • Include a call to action: Every sales email should have a call to action, such as scheduling a meeting or requesting more information. This will help you move the prospect further down the sales funnel.

And don’t forget: test, test, test!

How to set up a good sales outbound process?

Elaborating a sustainable and scalable sales outbound process requires a good methodology.

That’s what we’re going to show you right now.

If you respect all the following steps, you’ll get a clean outbound process that will boost up your sales.

Step 1: Define Your Needs

The first step is to sit down with your sales and marketing teams and figure out what you need from an outbound sales process regarding your sales objectives.

Are you looking to generate more B2B qualified leads? Or are you looking for a way to increase the close rate on your existing leads? Are you looking to decrease your client acquisition cost?

Maybe you’re looking for all of this!

You’ll need to go deeper in that process, trying to evaluate as accurately as possible your goals with proper KPIs, such as:

  • The number of new B2B leads you need to generate per week/month;
  • The number of meetings booked per sales reps per week/month;
  • The number of deals closed per week/month;
  • And so on!

Step 2: Set Up Your Sales Organization

Once you’ve defined what you’ll need, it’s time to set up your sales organization in order to achieve your objectives.

This means that you’ll need to assign the right roles to the right people and make sure that everyone is on the same page regarding the goals, the process, and their responsibilities.

Set up your sales organization will go through several tasks, including:

  • recruiting salespeople;
  • training your sales mates;
  • creating your sales pipeline and process;
  • choosing the right sales tools.

If you want to save time and increase your sales efforts, we strongly advise you to go for a sales automation tool such as LaGrowthMachine. This way, you will be able to automate all your manual outbound tasks.

Step 3: Create Your Outbound Sales Playbook

Now, it’s time to create your outbound sales playbook!

Quick Tip 💡

Your playbook is a document that contains all the information about your outbound sales process, from start to finish. It should include everything from how you’re going to generate leads to how you’re going to follow up with them.

The goal of your playbook is to make sure that everyone in your sales organization is following the same process and using the same sales methods.

Some elements that you should include in your outbound sales playbook are:

  • Your ideal customer profile;
  • Your buyer persona;
  • Your target market;
  • Your value proposition;
  • Your competitive analysis;
  • Your outbound sales strategy;
  • Your content marketing strategy;
  • Your lead generation tactics;
  • Your lead nurturing tactics;
  • Your sales email templates.

Step 4: Implement Your Process & Track Your Results!

Now that you have everything set up, it’s time to implement your outbound sales process and track your first results.

With LaGrowthMachine, you have access to a live reporting

You’ll need to pay close attention to your KPIs in order to see if you’re achieving your objectives.

The KPIs you’ll need to track are:

  • The number of B2B leads generated;
  • The number of appointments created;
  • The number of sales closed;
  • The closing rate;
  • The time you spent with the client.

If you see that something is not working as expected, you’ll need to go back to the drawing board and make the necessary changes. After all, a good outbound sales process is never set in stone!