8 Tips to Improve Outbound Lead Generation Outcomes

Outbound lead generation is a method of interacting with potential consumers who are unfamiliar with your product. It operates by providing communications to potential prospects via sales reps.

The objective is to develop a sales pipeline by generating interest in a product or service. Cold calling, direct email, social selling, and direct mail are some of the communication channels utilized for outbound lead creation.

Here are eight different tips to help you maximize the success of your outbound sales prospecting and lead generation.

1) Segment Your Lists

Segmentation involves organizing a list of target accounts or prospects into categories based on a set of specific characteristics.

With list segmentation, you can tailor outreach to specific personas, market niches, or situations that you commonly encounter when selling to target accounts.

Segmentation improves the accuracy of outbound prospecting and creates more relevant messaging for prospects. It also makes cold introductions easier to pull off.

To segment a list, first identify the attributes or information that is most valuable to track and categorize for accounts or prospects. These categories can be divided in a variety of ways, including based on persona, company situation, team composition, and more.

For example, accounts may be segmented using company size, recent hires, or changes in corporate partnerships. For a prospect list, you can segment it by job title, time at company, hires in their department, or changes affecting this job category.

2) Find Multiple Stakeholders

A stakeholder is anyone within the firm that can have an impact on the deal, and today’s buying processes are likely to have several stakeholders engaged at any point.

Some deals can be closed with one person, but it’s common for companies to involve multiple departments and therefore stakeholders in their buying process.

Getting to know your stakeholders gives you a wider context of what you need to think about while putting your sales plan into action.

The importance of stakeholders is determined by their capacity to influence the process. During the life cycle of a project, one stakeholder may be more relevant than another in terms of project objections, while certain stakeholders may demand more attention than others.

Make a list of the stakeholders and prioritize them according to their effect on the project, or deal. You can do this by ranking them according to who you need to talk to win the deal, and then make for yourself to get a visual representation to act as a map.

Once you have your deal map, use it to bridge yourself from the people you have contact information for to the people you need to win over.

Even though ultimately there’s a handful of key decision-makers that are responsible for signing off on a purchase, a conversation with minor stakeholders or gatekeepers can lead you closer to deal champions and decision-makers.

Network your way to the right person.

3) Personalize to Personas

A persona is a group of people who behave in similar ways when it comes to making purchases. You will expose what is specifically relevant to each targeted audience by recognizing their distinct preferences or requirements.

Buyers have limited attention and the default setting is to dismiss anything that appears irrelevant; thus, if you want to get their attention, you have to give them something relevant and helpful. This is where sales personalization and personas comes in.

The purchasing triggers, pain points, and needs of a Head of Finance at a large enterprise are very different from those of a VP of marketing a startup. Likewise, your messaging should be tailored to fit your target persona.

You can subdivide your list into personas depending on the information you have. Use any of the following indicators: age, gender, and location, budget, firm size, job title, preferred channels, recent hires, and so on.

Use these to develop a persona and construct outreach relevant to their situation.

4) Monitor Buying Triggers & Engagement

Any compelling event or situation that acts as reason to interact with a prospect is referred to as a buying trigger. It can also be referred to as a sales trigger, a conversation trigger, or a marketing trigger, depending on the situation.

They may range from a corporate merger to a new hire and they’re fantastic ways to personalize your outreach.

The most difficult part of selling is creating a sense of urgency. Buying triggers are essential for reaching prospects at the right time and convincing them to have a conversation.

Using buying signals allows you to make your messaging contextual, not cold. Customizing outreach can stop it from feeling automated and spammy.

Identify and track the buying triggers that indicate good timing for a sales conversation. Keeping an eye on key purchase indicators can help you create meaningful interactions and even resuscitate a cold prospect.

Whether it’s new legislation, a new C-suite executive, or just some major development in the industry, let your prospect know that you’re there with a solution to their problems.

5) Use More Than One Channel

Multichannel outbound marketing is the practice of interacting with customers through a variety of direct communication channels: email, LinkedIn, Slack, and so on, and allowing customers to respond via the channel of their choice.

This is critical because sellers must go where the prospects are active and receptive. You increase your chances of interacting with prospects at the appropriate moment by using various channels.

Relying on a single channel yields restricted outcomes and exposes you to the danger of losing out on possibilities.

Selling across multiple channels will help you reach more people than being laser-focused on one method of communication.

Maximize your opportunities, you’ve already taken the time to find the prospect, go ahead and develop a strategy that involves reaching out with every tool you have.

After reaching out on social media, send a follow-up email. If you see they’ve opened your email or clicked through to your website give them a call.

6) Align the Sales Cadence with Buying Cycles

A cadence is the rhythm at which you organize your outreach, while the buying cycle describes the steps a client takes to purchase a product or service.

As buyers educate themselves and get closer to making a final purchase decision, they will naturally progress through several stages in the buying cycle with differing needs as they go along.

Some sales are easy & can be closed with 1 call, while others take multiple calls, stakeholders, and months to get to a close.

Companies frequently demand returns too quickly from outbound sales prospecting without taking into account the time it takes to earn a customer.

Customize your process to the typical length of your deal history in your CRM. Use the data in your CRM to determine a cadence to keep your prospects engaged periodically throughout their buying journey.

To stay on a prospect’s radar and optimize the odds of catching them at the right moment in the buying cycle, create a multi-step sales journey over multiple months.

If your average sales cycle is 1 – 3 months, then you should commit a few months to an outbound campaign that matches with how buyers get to a purchase.

7) Have Diverse Offers in Call-to-Actions

A call to action (CTA) is a request to take a specific communicative action. An offer is something of value you provide to those who respond to a call to action.

The call to action is an important component that serves as a guide for the prospect on what to do next.

So by using different offers & CTAs, you maximize the chances that you generate a sales conversation.

You will generate more conversations, even if they’re not in-market.

Personalize CTAs based on any field in your contacts database, such as persona, industry, buying cycle stage, and more, to guarantee that the most relevant and successful CTAs are displayed dynamically to take leads further down the funnel.

Have a low-risk actionable way to end your messaging. Offer them some sales collateral, or invite them to visit your site, or schedule a call to see if your product is a good fit.

Conclusion

Outbound lead generation efforts are the most effective approach to initiate contact with key decision-makers at organizations that are a suitable fit for your product.

You won’t have to wait for new consumers to come to your website and hope they’re a good fit.

You have complete control over who you contact and how you connect with them.