What is Outbound Selling?

Outbound sales is the process where a salesperson initiates customer engagement from its end. The sales rep utilizes different sales channels to reach prospects. This is opposed to inbound sales, where the potential buyer begins the conversation. Compared to inbound selling, the outbound approach is more aggressive. It is highly probable that a lead has no knowledge of the product itself or has hardly heard of it. This is why outbound agents are trained and provided with sales scripts while approaching prospects.

Cold calling is a classic example of outbound selling which has been followed for decades by many businesses. Modern outbound sales teams also use email and other outreach channels for communication. Social media such as LinkedIn, Twitter also provides a huge pool of leads for outbound campaigns. Outbound Sales rely heavily on having leads to contact. The more leads there are, the better the chances a sales agent can meet his sales quota. However, outbound selling has a lot of end-user factors to consider like the prospect’s time zone, call interruption, schedule, and so on. Therefore, widening your potential contact list for outbound selling is important for better results. Today sales teams don't just rely on cold calling for outbound selling, but use multi-channel outreach capabilities like email, SMS, LinkedIn for reaching out to more and more leads.

Advantages of outbound sales:

Outbound selling is more proactive than inbound selling. You reach out to customers rather than waiting for them to reach out to you. The possibility of converting an inbound lead may seem better than an outbound lead, but outbound selling has its advantages. Through outbound campaigns, you may be able to reach people who are not aware of the product or service being offered. Some of the key advantages of outbound selling are:

Highly-targeted outreach: You can make your high profile target account list for your outbound selling and strategize how to approach and process them for converting to customers. A properly targeted account management system will give you powerful insights about the account and inside information around decision-makers. This will help the salesperson for better outreach.

Immediate feedback and results: Get immediate results on how to proceed the lead further in the sales funnel. For the responsive leads ask for feedback which will help analyze the similar profiles.

Personal contact with prospects: The outbound campaign will act as the foundation of relationships with potential prospects. The sales rep will be in touch with the potential prospects to build a lasting relationship. This will further help in the nurturing process.

Control over the pace of marketing and selling: One of the major advantages of outbound selling over inbound selling is control over the pace of selling. It's up to the sales team to control the limit of outreach and control the scalability of the sales process.

Essential tools and software for outbound selling:

Outbound sales tools help your team efficiently operate and optimize the process. All the recommended tools are not mandatory but will help you enhance your outbound selling with improved results.

Sales CRM: A CRM will provide you with cloud storage where you can organize and store all the leads. Since outbound selling is a complicated process, a CRM will help you keep track of all your leads.

Sales Engagement Platform: While the CRM will help you with organizing leads, an sales engagement platform will provide you with end to end customer interaction via multi-channel outreach.

Sales intelligence tool: After you initiate engagement, you need to gather information to figure out which of them are worth pursuing; that’s where sales intelligence tools come in. You get all sorts of information on companies, like org charts, contact information, and revenue.