Hannah Simons
If you are solely reliant on inbound sales enquiries, building a dependable process for lead generation and forecasting your sales figures for each month can become increasingly difficult. With targets to hit, and pressure to onboard new customers, many sales leaders may be looking for new ways to generate leads. But what is an effective way to rapidly increase the quantity and improve the quality of leads in your business’s sales funnel?
In this blog, we discuss the benefits of building an outbound sales function and how Furza can help your business with this process.
What is Outbound Sales?
Outbound sales is a strategy that relies on tactics such as cold calling, cold emailing and cold outreach, via social media platforms such as LinkedIn, to engage with prospects with the aim of generating new business. These prospects are considered ‘cold’ because they are not familiar with or haven’t shown interest in your company’s products or services. This pro-active approach ensures that your sales team is contacting leads, instead of waiting for inbound leads to come to you. The defining feature of outbound sales is that your sales team is initiating contact with prospects, rather than inbound sales, which relies on the prospect contacting your company.
Inbound vs Outbound?
Inbound sales teams typically rely on lead generation from marketing efforts such as pay per click (PPC), search engine optimisation (SEO) and content marketing to drive website visitors and new business enquiries. While inbound campaigns can produce a significant number of leads, organisations must assess leads based on quality as well as quantity. Qualifying leads in the early stages of the process ensures time and resources aren’t wasted on an unqualified lead moving through the sales funnel.
While inbound sales is where most companies start, a proactive outbound strategy can yield significant benefits to drive business growth, such as control over selling cadence, immediate feedback, measurable results, targeted outreach, and personal relationships built and nurtured. Here are four clear signs that you’re ready to build an outbound-focused sales team.
Sign It's Time to Build an Outbound Team
1. New business is a key objective
All businesses should have a sales process that is repeatable, controllable and scalable. All businesses want to be able to close deals each time, not just occasionally. In order to succeed at this, a structured, proactive sales process is required – everything an outbound approach provides.
2. You don't have enough time
You may find with managing sales for the company, including attending meetings, handling complex deals and taking care of outreach, that you simply do not have enough time to contact new prospects. Often, sales leaders need to devote time to more pressing business-critical areas so they can ensure they close the deals in front of them.
Employing an outbound sales team ensures that prospecting is taken care of, and can feed the sales funnel with valuable leads, increasing the sales pipeline and driving results for the business.
3. Your solution or product experiences long sales cycles
If your solutions or products have longer sales cycles, then a defined proactive approach is needed to frequently follow up with prospects in order to nurture relationships. Longer sales cycles are often due to the complex nature of the solution or product. With complexity, transactional approaches don’t allow for value to be created. An outbound, consultative approach can help potential customers articulate their problems in order to align an appropriate solution - which is where outbound salespeople can really add value.
4. You are targeting a specific demographic
Outbound prospecting campaigns can be highly targeted so you can focus on specific businesses within your vertical, that are more likely to have an interest in learning more about your company’s products or services. Compared to inbound where you have no control over the type of leads coming in, outbound allows you to choose and target your ideal customers, every time.
5. Your lead volumes fluctuate
Outbound sales teams help grow businesses on a formulaic process. Once you have a thorough and effective outbound sales process, you will be able to land a predictable number of qualified leads. This way you have more control over your sales pipeline and new business, and are only limited by the number of companies you reach out to.
6. Your sales funnel is drying up
Often, inbound campaigns such as SEO and content marketing can take several months to produce significant results, and sometimes these results won’t achieve the qualified leads you hoped for. If executed well, outbound sales can help generate revenue and build the sales pipeline from the day it is implemented.
Why Build Your Own Outbound Sales Team?
1. Be in control of your sales cycle
All businesses should have a sales process that is repeatable, controllable and scalable. All businesses want to be able to close deals each time, not just occasionally. In order to succeed at this, a structured, proactive sales process is required – everything an outbound approach provides.
2. Reduce risk
For many businesses, the loss of key accounts can be a major cause for concern. Having an active outbound sales process, rather than relying on inbound sources alone, allows you to regain a sense of control over your sales function and the future of your business.
3. Take control new business
With an active outbound sales process, you can take more control over the direction of your company by targeting the clients you really want to work with. If you’re looking to drive growth through new business, a well-developed and effective outbound sales function and process will form the foundation for your prospecting, feeding the sales funnel with new leads, and contributing to revenue.
Furza Solution
At Furza, we specialise in recruiting, training and developing salespeople. Our rigorous and comprehensive assessment and training process is managed and supported by our in house team of experts, working in partnership with you to understand what it takes to deliver successful sales professionals within your space, and support you with an end-to-end solution to forge a right-fit salespeople for your organisation.
If you’re a sales leader with a mandate to grow and scale fast, we can build your outbound sales function and ramp them up to scale your business faster. Contact us today to find out more.
