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Despite the hard work that B2B salespeople put into building trust, over 79% of leads never convert! Even the best-performing sales companies only close a fraction of their sales qualified leads (SQLs). Lead nurturing is the main challenge behind the low conversion rate.
With a well-thought-out sales outreach strategy and tools, the sales department can minimize the chances that their efforts will be overlooked by their target audience. But before we get down to the tools, let us first explore what a sound sales outreach strategy is.
What is Sales Outreach?
Sales outreach is the process of engaging with potential customers through email, text messaging, LinkedIn messaging, and other social channels with the goal of turning them into customers. These potential customers should meet your ideal customer profile (ICP) so that they can be turned into paying customers more efficiently.
But sales outreach doesn’t stop at attracting new customers. Sales outreach enables the sales and marketing department to respond to B2B churn rates that average 28%, depending on the industry. By improving customer service and raising the value of your products, your sales team will be more equipped to combat customer churn for the long haul.
2022 Sales Outreach Statistics
- More than 50% of your prospects aren’t a good fit for your business.
- 42.5% of sales reps take 10 months before they can contribute to the company’s goals. Ultimately, this leads to the loss of 15% of potential customers in the process.
- 79% of salespeople use social selling to meet their quotas.
- 80.3 percent of B2B buyers come from LinkedIn, which is higher compared to Twitter’s 12.7% and Facebook’s 6.7%.
8 Effective Sales Outreach Tips
A well-defined outreach strategy incorporates a two-pronged approach featuring input from the sales and marketing departments in an organization. Key objectives of the collaboration include the following:
- Attracting new sales opportunities.
- Initiating contact with decision-makers.
- Identifying their unique challenges and needs.
- Fostering trust in the relationship.
We’ve compiled our top 8 sales outreach strategies guaranteed to expand your reach and build meaningful interactions with B2B audiences in your industry.
1. Identify Your Ideal Customers
The widespread thought that more customers mean higher sales is often farfetched to some extent. With B2B outreach, target audiences demand more personal relationships based on trust and a genuine understanding of their unique challenges, with the aim of providing long-term solutions.
The ideal customer can be identified through a wealth of data, ranging from:
- Industry
- Demographics
- Location
- Income
- Interests
- Purchase intentions
As such, your inbound marketing efforts should be channeled toward building content that addresses the ideal customer’s unique challenges.
2. Use Buyer Personas to Develop Sales Outreach Messaging
Fictional characters in a marketing strategy are called buyer personas. They’re basically accurate and detailed representations of your desired target customer. A buyer persona is a profile of your most suitable customers based on deep research about them. The details included in the persona’s profile include:
- Behavioral traits
- Age and gender
- Location
- Interests, hobbies, and goals
- Biggest challenges
With buyer personas representing an accurate painting of your ideal customer, you want to create email templates, LinkedIn outreach messages, and content that is as tailored to them as possible.
3. Prioritise Your Decision-Makers
While small companies are run by individuals and a few employees, large and medium-sized organizations have hundreds – and sometimes thousands – of employees working at various levels. In a B2B environment, your outreach efforts should be aimed at the decision-makers.
Buying decisions in a B2B setting are made by a select few C-suite managers, who have the final say on the company’s spending. Unfortunately, getting in touch with key decision-makers can be a difficult endeavor, but on the bright side, most have a strong presence on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a professional platform boasting over 65 million decision-makers. What’s more, 4 out of 5 LinkedIn users influence business decisions. LinkedIn allows its members to search for key decision-makers via:
- Job titles
- LinkedIn groups
- Influencers
- Mutual connections
Once you identify the right decision-makers, the next step would be to select a means to reach out to them through their favorite channels.
4. Pick Your Sales Outreach Channel
Now that you have a clearer picture of who your ideal customers are, it’s time to figure out how to initiate contact with them. One of the popular outreach channels in the past was cold calling. However, today, email and social media channels take the top spot.
With over 800 million members, LinkedIn is the right place to be when reaching out to B2B leads. Currently, 59% of marketers generate leads from LinkedIn, as opposed to 26% for other social media channels combined. What’s more, 78% of marketers rate LinkedIn as the most effective social channel for their specific goals.
To drive better results, we recommend a mix and match of several – if not all – channels. A multi-channel approach ensures broader coverage and ensures that your sales team’s success is not limited by the channel that they use.