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The Executive Guide To Outbound Sales

Understand the process, advantages, and the stages of the outbound sales process

This guide to outbound sales is designed to help executives, founders, sales managers, and ambitious sales reps develop a comprehensive understanding of the outbound sales process and how it fits into lead acquisition.

Learn when to prioritize outbound sales, the advantages and disadvantages of this channel, and the seven critical stages that make up the outbound sales process.

What Is Outbound Sales?

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What Is Outbound Sales?

Outbound sales is a proactive sales approach where sales representatives reach out directly to potential customers to pitch a product or service.

This method typically involves interrupting the customer's normal routine to initiate a sales conversation, with common outbound sales tactics including cold calling, sending unsolicited emails, direct mail, and attending trade shows or conferences to connect with prospects.

The goal of outbound sales is to proactively seek out and find new customers via the fastest, most direct route possible, unlike inbound sales, which relies on attracting customers through content and nurturing their interest organically.

Historically, outbound sales has been what most people associate with the term “sales”. Only within recent decades has the rise of inbound sales turned outbound sales into a distinct sales category of its own.

Other than a handful of specific, modern, online business models, the vast majority of businesses throughout history have started via an outbound sales model, usually with the founder of the business selling their product or service directly and proactively to anyone they can.

For companies that have survived the startup phase, outbound sales can continue to be a highly effective sales strategy for the right business models and target markets, but it comes with its own unique advantages and disadvantages.

Main advantages and disadvantages of outbound sales

Advantages of outbound sales

The vast majority of businesses today can benefit from outbound sales, mostly due to the following three advantages specific to this sales approach.

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Disadvantages of outbound sales

Outbound sales does have a few notable drawbacks.

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Outbound sales offer the fastest, most direct route to the next sale.

There is no faster direct way to reach customers than through outbound sales. Sales development reps can target the company’s ideal customer profile, specifically, reach out to the prospect immediately, and close without needing to wait on third party individuals or processes to take effect. When speed is critical, outbound sales shine.

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Outbound sales teams can be expensive.

The success of outbound sales depends entirely on the sales staff. Great sales reps are not plentiful, do not come cheaply, and will typically require support staff. Sales managers are rare too, as they need to have skills of a rep and the skills of a great manager. Perhaps most concerning, scaling outbound sales typically requires hiring more personnel, leading to an increase in variable costs instead of a decrease.

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Outbound sales are simple to track and improve.

The outbound sales process is siloed and simple to track. Managers know exactly where every prospect, lead, and customer originates, how each one behaves at every stage of the sales process, and how effectively the individual sales rep is performing through each stage of the process. This makes it incredibly simple to understand and improve performance stage by stage and rep by rep.

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Outbound sales can convert at a lower rate.

Common outbound methods like cold calling and unsolicited emails are often perceived as intrusive or annoying by potential customers. This can result in a negative impression of the company and prevent relationships from forming, which can be especially damaging in smaller industries and niches. Outbound sales also convert at a lower rate when compared to inbound sales, which can be problematic in smaller markets.

Outbound sales systems are straightforward to scale.

While outbound sales teams certainly aren’t cheap to run or grow (which we’ll address next), they do tend to be fairly straightforward to scale. An effective 10-person sales team can be turned into an effective 100-person sales team using virtually the same process. Bigger teams come with more personnel challenges, but there are few strategic challenges that arise with each doubling in team size.

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Outbound sales requires an accurately defined customer profile.

One of the hidden advantages of inbound sales is having a steady stream of interested prospects helping evolve the customer profile over time. With outbound sales, knowing exactly what the company’s ideal customer looks like is a prerequisite to targeting them, which can be a big problem for startups still developing product/market fit, established companies launching new products or ventures, and companies that are adapting to an evolving industry.

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The Outbound Sales Process

1. Identify the ideal customer profile (ICP).

Businesses cannot begin an effective outbound sales motion without knowing their ideal prospects.

The optimal scenario is to have clearly established product/market fit with an existing, successful product. Sales leaders should analyze patterns within their most successful and satisfied customers. Look at factors such as company size, industry, geographic location, and annual revenue.

2. Develop a prospect list.

After identifying the ICP, sales teams will then use the ideal customer profile to create a list of prospects to reach out to.

On larger sales teams with specialized roles, dedicated prospectors – called sales development representatives (SDRs) – can be responsible for building prospecting lists. SDRs focus on researching and identifying potential prospects, qualifying them based on the company's ICP, and creating targeted lists for the sales reps to work with.

On smaller sales teams, individual sales reps are typically responsible for creating their own prospecting lists. This approach requires each rep to have a solid understanding of the company's ICP and buyer personas. Sales reps can use tools like social media, attend industry events, or simply dig through online databases to create their own lists.

In some cases, companies or sales managers will acquire prospecting lists for their teams to target, either by purchasing lists from third-party vendors or using in-house resources to generate the lists.

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3. Reach out and begin pitching

With targeting set, sales reps can begin reaching out to prospects to create relationships or simply deliver their pitch up front.

The sales manager’s job here is to help identify winning patterns to use as a template for all sales reps.

For example, if reps using LinkedIn Sales Navigator were consistently adding qualified leads into the pipeline at a higher rate than reps cold calling, it would make sense to make LinkedIn Sales Navigator the standard outreach method for at least 80% of the team.

In addition, it’s important to develop a standard pitch script for all reps to work from, even if they aren’t required to adhere rigidly to the script.

It’s important to try multiple approaches in the beginning, but the goal is always to find a winning formula and turn it into a standardized approach that can be used to train new reps as the team grows.

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4. Qualify new leads based on the ICP.

Once sales reps get an initial response from a prospect, they need to assess the level of interest and readiness to buy from each prospect.

There are a few key things to look for here:

Is the prospect experiencing challenges or pain points that are solved by the company’s solution?
Is the prospect's budget within a ballpark range of that solution?
Is the prospects timeline for solving the problem within range of the target sales timeline?
Is the prospect engaged with sales during their conversations about these issues?

Given outbound’s low conversion rate and the volume of conversations sales reps must go through in order to close each customer, it’s important that reps spend as much time as possible on leads that have a genuine potential to close.

At the same time, there can be a lot of subjectivity built-in to this process, and not every sales rep will be great at navigating that subjectivity, so providing some objective ranges is nearly always the right choice.

Does the prospect have at least one clear problem with their current solution?
Is the prospect's budget a minimum of $10,000?
Is the prospect’s timeline within two quarters?

The goal is to have clear qualifying metrics that minimize time waste while still allowing for some flexibility.

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5. Nurture qualified leads into opportunities.

Once leads are qualified, the heavy lifting begins for the sales representatives.

Nurturing leads typically involves building relationships, understanding the prospect's needs, and positioning the solution as the best fit to address their challenges.

The following sales strategies can be useful during this process:

Establish trust and rapport: Develop a genuine connection with the prospect by showing empathy, actively listening, and understanding their unique situation. This helps in building trust, which is a critical factor in the buying process.
Personalize communication: Tailor messaging to address the specific needs, pain points, and interests of the prospect. This demonstrates an understanding of their unique situation and showcases how the solution is a good fit for their needs.

Provide valuable information and social proof: Share any relevant content, industry trends, case studies, or expert advice that can demonstrate expertise in solving the prospect's problem. And ALWAYS share every available testimonial, case study, and customer reference available.
Maintain consistent follow-up: Regularly engage with the prospect through various touchpoints, such as emails, phone calls, or social media interactions. This helps keep the business’s solution top of mind and demonstrates the rep’s commitment to addressing their needs.

The amount of time invested in the nurturing phase will vary from company to company, solution to solution, and ICP to ICP. It’s important that sales reps don’t rush the process, but it’s also important that they don’t overshoot the sale.

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6. Close opportunities and create new customers.

The ultimate goal of any outbound sales motion is… closing sales.

Sales reps should attempt to close as soon as it’s possible, and this timeline should look fairly consistent across customers and reps. It’s good to provide the team with some flexibility, but it’s also important to push outliers toward the averages, provided they aren’t simply overperforming relative to the team.

The following sales strategies can be useful during this process:

Present a compelling proposal: Create a personalized and comprehensive proposal that clearly outlines the benefits of the business’s solution, addresses the prospect's unique needs, and showcases the potential return on investment. Make sure the proposal is easy to understand and effectively communicates the value proposition.

Address any final concerns or objections: As the prospect nears a decision, they may raise additional concerns or objections. Be prepared to address these with well-informed responses that emphasize the advantages of the offered solution and alleviate any lingering hesitations.

Offer tailored pricing and payment options: Be flexible and accommodating with pricing and payment structures, as these can often be sticking points in closing a deal. Provide the prospect with options that cater to their specific budget and financial preferences while maintaining the profitability of the proposed solution.
Involve key decision-makers and influencers: Ensure that all stakeholders involved in the purchase decision are informed, engaged, and on board with the proposed solution. Address any remaining questions or concerns and emphasize the value that the offered solution brings to their organization.

Closing should be the simplest part of the process, and it’s the team manager’s job to make sure reps aren’t letting great fish off the hook.

Does the prospect have at least one clear problem with their current solution?
Is the prospect's budget a minimum of $10,000?
Is the prospect’s timeline within two quarters?

The goal is to have clear qualifying metrics that minimize time waste while still allowing for some flexibility.

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7. Follow-up with new customers during onboarding.

When a new customer is closed, they are beginning the most important phase of their relationship with the company.

Many companies make the mistake of having the responsible sales rep drop out at this point. The customer is handed over to an onboarding team or customer success team without any further communication from the rep who closed the sale, which is a huge mistake.

The rep responsible for closing the sales should always stay engaged with the customer through onboarding, past any critical retention milestones identified by the company, and ideally, for the duration of the customer’s life cycle.

The simplest way to accomplish this without taking up the rep’s time is to have automated check-ups sent from the rep’s email to new customers at regular intervals. Reps can field any customer responses personally and provide personalized encouragement around the benefits or challenges that led to the customer closing in the first place.

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Close more deals with LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the first deep sales platform created to provide insights and recommendations at scale.

Here’s what that means for outbound sales teams.Sales Navigator provides reps with high quality, first-party data to help:

Research leads prior to outreach to identify mutual connections and interests.
Identify buyer intent signals such as when prospective buyers are engaging with content or ads, changing jobs, or expanding their team.
Find the full buying committee and key decision makers who can be turned into allies to get the deal across the finish line.

If you’d like to see what LinkedIn Sales Navigator can do for your pipeline, click here for a free trial or contact us.