Outbound Prospecting: Business Benefits
September 23, 2010
Editor’s note: This post is part of OpenView’s Outbound Prospecting Series, which walks you through all the steps, necessary roles, and best practices you’ll need to establish and improve your company’s own high-performing outbound prospecting practice. You can also download our free eBook, Building Your Sales Funnel: How to Create an Outbound Prospecting Machine.
Outbound prospecting offers significant value to your marketing efforts by enabling your people to 1) communicate directly with users and buyers, and 2) significantly grow your sales pipeline.
Create more sales opportunities and sales.
The most direct result from outbound prospecting is the greater number of qualified prospects you’ll be giving your salespeople, which will ultimately result in more sales. In most instances, these sales opportunities would not be created through other marketing channels.
Lower the marketing cost for customer acquisition.
For many companies, the marketing cost of a closed sale is higher than the cost of a closed sale through an outbound prospecting program. If this is the case for your company, then you will lower the marketing cost of acquisition as you expand your outbound prospecting program.
Reduce the sales cycle time and increase conversion rates for your entire business — not just the business created by your outbound prospecting.
When the results from outbound prospecting are closely tracked and turned into insights, and you use those insights to generate and implement ideas for improvement, you can substantially increase your business overall. Using the insights you gain will enable you to improve in a number of areas, including:
- Find better and more specific target customer segments and roles where your product is most appealing. Constantly adjusting the target lists based on results will help you increase your conversions and refine your other marketing channel results as well.
- Improve your competitive-advantage messaging and content. Direct conversations with cold prospects will dramatically improve your ability to figure out what messages and content resonate with them and what kind of information will turn them into warm prospects. You can use that information to improve your messaging and content throughout all other marketing channels as well.
Identify the most frequent buyer objections and figure out ways to overcome them; you can then incorporate those replies into your messaging and content to prevent or mitigate similar objections in the future.
Outbound prospecting gives you the best opportunity to identify the reasons why your target prospects may not want to buy a product like yours, or your product in particular. This gives you the opportunity to craft your messages and content in a way that addresses the objections across all of your marketing channels.
Next week I’ll be showcasing how outbound prospecting is a company level strategy with a lot of value.
Face it – without new customers, your company can’t grow.
But while startup and expansion stage organizations are always on the lookout for new business, attracting qualified prospects is often easier said than done. The answer is to develop a highly-functional outbound lead qualification process, also known as outbound prospecting.
In OpenView’s eBook, Building Your Sales Funnel: How to Create an Outbound Prospecting Machine you’ll find insights from top sales strategists like Dave Kahle and Colleen Francis to help put your outbound prospecting team on the path to rapid growth including:
- Tips for developing a customized outbound prospecting strategy
- Key ingredients to successful outbound calling from thought leader Trish Bertuzzi
- Details on the best metrics for tracking your prospecting efforts
- Additional quick guides for hiring and onboarding lead qualification managers and business development representatives