Sales outreach is a crucial part of any sales process, as it’s the first time you connect with potential customers. Not to mention, it’s often the first impression you make with a buyer.
A make-it-or-break-it part of the sales cycle, sales teams need all the help they can get when it comes to improving sales outreach. Today, we look at ways you can:
- Improve your sales outreach
- Maximize prospect conversion rates
- Close more deals
How to reach the right prospects
When it comes to reaching the right sales prospects, you’ll have to do most of the legwork before you begin your sales outreach.
The first thing you’ll want to do is connect with your marketing team to gain a better understanding of your ideal customer profile (ICP). Doing this, will highlight the characteristics your best customers share and will allow you to engage with prospective buyers who exhibit these traits.
The result of this groundwork will not only allow your sales and marketing teams to align on outreach strategy but will let you know which types of prospects are most likely to convert.
How to reach more prospects
The key to increasing your outbound sales is to focus on automating your sales workflows wherever possible. And luckily, there are plenty of ways to streamline your outreach efforts and reach more prospects.
A simple way to do this is to use a CRM solution. With the help of a CRM, you can easily automate processes like:
- Email outreach.
- Scheduling follow-up activities.
- Estimate creation.
Other tools like dial automation software and social media schedulers offer additional ways to reduce admin work and increase the number of prospects you reach.
How to keep track of your sales outreach
Activity tracking is a crucial part of any sales process and it’s particularly important during sales outreach. Without it, you run the risk of:
- Forgetting who you messaged and when.
- Not reaching out to qualified leads.
- Multiple reps reaching out to the same prospect.
- A disorganized sales outreach strategy.
The best way to keep track of your sales outreach efforts is to use a tool that everyone on your team can access and update in real time. A cloud CRM, like Method, allows your sales team to keep a record of their sales outreach activities and updates your sales pipeline as opportunities progress down the funnel.
Plus, Method’s native integrations with tools like Google Calendar, Gmail, and Outlook reduce the need for sales reps to manually log their sales activities.
How to get prospects to continue the conversation
Generating interest around the products or services you sell is a crucial but challenging part of sales outreach, especially when you consider that 72% of consumers will only engage with outreach and messaging that’s personalized to them.
“72% of consumers will only engage with messaging that’s personalized.”
– Forbes, 2020
To deliver the level of personalization buyers expect today, you want to:
- Put yourself in your buyer’s shoes and really understand how your offering can benefit them.
- Tailor your value proposition to your buyer’s circumstances.
- Clearly state how you can help them solve some of the pain points they deal with daily.
- Highlight what your buyer will gain from taking a meeting or a call with you.
How to gain prospect trust
Whether or not a prospect trusts you greatly influences their decision to buy later in the sales cycle. This is why you want to build a relationship with your prospect early on in the sales process.
During sales outreach, you should take the time to learn about your prospect and avoid centering every conversation you have around your product. Doing this will help you not only dig deeper into the pain points they have but might also reveal nuggets of information you can use to seal the deal later on.
Later in the sales process, sharing customer stories and case studies is an additional way for you to build credibility with prospects, as these resources affirm all the great things you’ve told them about your product.
Recap: How to make the most of your sales outreach
If you’re keen to improve your sales outreach, here are some actionable and easy to implement takeaways for you:
- Touch base with your marketing team for prospecting, messaging, and outreach advice.
- Automate your sales workflows wherever possible.
- Use a CRM to keep track of your sales activities.
- Personalize your sales outreach and nurture efforts as much as you can.
Streamline your sales outreach today with a free trial of Method CRM.
Image credit: Adam Solomon via Unsplash
