The Outbound Sales Process: It’s Not Rocket Science!
Let’s start with the basics of the outbound sales process. The outbound sales process is part 1 of the entire sales process. Part 2 is when you get a sales opportunity and part 3 is when you close a deal. In order to get to part 2 and part 3, you must go through part 1 – which is developing an outbound sales process.
The main goal of the outbound sales process is to start a two-way conversation. Once the 2 way conversation starts in the positive direction, then you have created a sales opportunity. The more sales opportunities that you create, the greater your chances of making a sale.
Oftentimes, companies have no set direction on how to set up the outbound sales process. This can lead to sales teams being left on their own to find sales opportunities. When this occurs, a wild west scenario develops with many individual outbound sales processes dominating the landscape. Ironically, this scenario is considered a traditional outbound sales process.
To dig deeper and get a better understanding, let’s look at a traditional outbound sales process compared to the right outbound sales process.
What is the Traditional Outbound Sales Process?
For many companies, especially start-ups and growth companies, a salesperson is given a laptop and is simply instructed to “go make it happen”.
To start the outbound sales process, a salesperson will make phone calls or send out emails. The outbound email message can be more effective than a phone call, as it presents a direct and descriptive way to reach the prospect. With an email message, the prospect is given more time and information to understand what is being sold.
Here are the traditional steps:
- Hire salespeople
- Train the salespeople to understand the value of your product or service
- Give them a phone and computer
- Buy them a sales contact list
- Send them on their way
I know these steps sound very basic and loosely organized, but the reality is that many companies still follow this process today. This traditional process can lead to success, especially when you have experienced salespeople, but it can also be a very expensive and a less consistent model to follow. This ultimately means that many companies still need to know how to set up the right outbound sales process.
How Do You Set Up the Right Outbound Sales Process?
The right outbound sales process is not rocket science. It is a common sense approach to creating a successful outbound sales process. It is a system that can be used by a start up with one sales person or with no salespeople. It can also be used by larger organizations to instill the steps of the process across entire sales teams. It is a system that runs on know how, elbow grease and some automation. Once you put in the work, you will get sales opportunities
Here are the 3 key steps to setting up the right outbound sales process:
- Build the sales contact lists from the ground-up
- Format the sales message in a way so that it generates a response
- Automate the outbound email process
Each step of the process does include critical parts to ensure success. For example, you must create the contact list in a certain way and you must create your email message in the right format to reach a successful outcome. You must also do the 3 key steps together to get the right outcome. When you do that – you will have success.
There is no magic to setting up the process. It really is a straight-forward, common sense approach – and one that is the farthest thing from rocket science. It is a tried and tested method for each step of the process. It is a system, and there is a science to setting up each step of the process – but it is not rocket science.
Bottomline: If you want to sell a product or service, you need an outbound sales process. But to truly succeed, you need the right outbound sales process.
Start thinking about your own outbound sales process. Yes, you have an outbound sales process, but do you have the right outbound sales process – one that is optimized to get your company maximum results. As we move into further articles, we will begin to discover just what a successful outbound sales process looks like.
Oppaday is a proven outbound sales process system.
The Oppaday system provides the knowledge and foundation to build an ongoing successful outbound sales process.
Share: