Raise your hand if you agree with me:
Generating leads is so flipping hard – especially on a consistent basis!
However, there is something you can do to keep your sales pipeline full, and that is, diversify your lead generation strategies. You can categorise pretty much any lead generation strategy into two buckets: inbound and outbound sales.
At Growbots, we have reached $1 million annual run rate in 7 months using outbound sales alone.
And in today’s blog post I am going to talk about the mistakes that prevent you from making the most of your outbound sales. And trust me… its potential is huge (if done right).
Relatable, one of our customers managed to schedule 1,164 meetings in 12 months, all via Growbots. See, nothing is impossible and you too can achieve outbound sales success!
Without further ado, here are 11 reasons why you are failing in outbound sales.
11 reasons why you are failing in outbound sales
1. Your targeting is wrong
Outbound sales will only be effective if you target the right people. Which means, those, who are interested in buying your product. Your outbound sales adventure will fail if you don’t know who your ideal customer is!
You have to start by creating your ideal customer profile. This blog post will tell you how.
Do you know what will happen if you send your cold email campaign to somebody who is not in your target? They will perceive it as spam… and no wonder, because nobody likes to be bothered without a good reason.
Remember: Targeting is the basis of effective outbound sales.
So, if you sent a few outbound campaigns without much success, go back to targeting and revise it if necessary.
2. You don’t know who the decision maker is
Another reason why you might you might not be seeing outbound sales success yet is the fact that you contacted the wrong person.
I know that sometimes it is difficult to figure out who the decision maker is, which is why you should always try to target the decision-making process.
The bigger the organization, the more complex the purchasing process. Try to identify all key decision makers. This will increase your chances of succeeding.
3. You use bought email lists
You cannot buy happiness… and neither can you buy good email lists. Because good email addresses aren’t for sale!
Email lists cost A LOT of money, and unfortunately, their quality is highly questionable.
You will only succeed in outbound sales if your emails get delivered, and purchased email lists are not updated regularly enough to stay relevant. This means a high bounce rate.
So did you buy that email list?
It’s ok, just don’t do it again.
Don’t risk damaging your reputation.
You are much better off using outbound sales automation platforms like Growbots. You can access over 200 million contacts, all emails are verified using artificial intelligence which results in bounce rate below 10%.
4. You do not personalize your emails
Email is still perceived as the most effective communication channel… therefore, the volume of emails that we receive is increasing. On average we get 120 emails a day. In general, we prefer to read emails from people that we know.
Unfortunately, when it comes to cold emails we cannot count on that familiarity factor, so the least you can do is to personalize your emails!
Personalized emails improve conversions by 10%.
And if you don’t do it, then it might be the reason why you are failing in outbound sales.
I am not talking solely about including your prospect’s name or their company name in the email.
Do some proper research, segment your list and tailor your messaging accordingly.
5. Your messaging is poor
Your messaging has to resonate with your reader. It might seem obvious, but too frequently we receive emails that fail to properly explain what a company does. Emails that don’t even address prospects’ pain points or lack a call to action.
Get your messaging right! Poor messaging will definitely result in no response from your prospect.
6. You send your emails at a wrong time
People like to receive emails at different times, which is why nailing your email sending time is so important. It will require quite a lot of testing but it will be worth the effort.
Here is a free tool that will help you figure out the best time to send you emails.
7. You gave up too easily
Most of us want to see results really quickly. And if you gave up on outbound sales just because you didn’t see any results after sending a few campaigns then you made a big mistake.
Learning how to do outbound sales well will take time! There is no magic formula, but there is a set of rules that you have to follow to succeed.
At Growbots it took us 3 months to start seeing results.
So if you have just started your outbound sales journey, and you are already thinking about quitting then do not do that! Because…
8. You use marketing automation platforms
A lot of marketers use marketing automation platforms for outbound sales (Why, why, why???!).
And this is coming from a marketer – marketing automation platforms should not be used for cold emailing. Period.
You should use marketing automation platforms like Marketo, Hubspot, etc. to communicate with your subscribers, not with your prospects!
Didn’t you notice that these platforms always ask you if you have the permission to email your contacts?
If you had the permission to email your prospects than they would be called your subscribers while the emails that you send to them wouldn’t be called cold emails… would they?
Using marketing automation platforms do to outbound sales is just wrong, and it will cause your outbound sales process to fail!
Use outbound sales automation platforms instead. Growbots will not only provide you with awesome quality leads instantly (thanks to very specific targeting criteria and continuously updated database) but it will also automate the outreach for you!
And the best thing is, your results will get better with every campaign you send because our platform uses machine learning to optimize your results.
Do not use marketing automation platforms for outbound sales just because you are familiar with them. Do it the right way – using sales automation platforms or just don’t do it at all.
9. You don’t have the right tools
It’s practically impossible to do outbound sales effectively without the right tools because it is a time-consuming process. No doubt about it, luckily there are tools that you can use to optimize it.
Prospecting and prospect outreach are the most time-consuming aspects of outbound sales. The good news is, you can use Growbots (or other tools) to automate them. It will save you tons of time which you can spend on closing deals.
If you need more inspiration on what else you can automate, here are some ideas – 12 sales processes that you can automate.
10. You don’t optimize your results
Unless you are very experienced at outbound sales (which I am assuming you are not since you’re reading this article), you will have to do a lot of testing to achieve good results.
And to be able to do some testing, you will need… yes, you are right, an outbound sales platform.
Without access to A/B testing, it will be super hard for you to figure out what impacts your conversion. And you won’t have access to analytics, and how can you optimize your campaign results without analytics?
You can’t.
Those of you who are great at outbound sales, who says you cannot get any better! If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you’ve always got. So test, test, test!
11. Your product or your pitch needs more work
If you have tried everything mentioned above, and you still haven’t succeeded, it might mean that your product or your pitch needs some perfecting.
I know it’s super hard to accept it, cause you’ve put a lot of time and effort into developing your product but it’s time to face the truth. Your product needs more work.
At least you know it now, right?
Outbound sales is a good way to check your product-market fit, so all that time you spent on outbound sales wasn’t wasted.
Cheer up!
Have we forgotten about something? Are there any more issues that are stopping you from achieving outbound sales success? Let us know!