“Outbound sales are dead” – you might have heard this many times. Partially it’s true – outdated outbound sales are dead. But for the rest – it’s very much alive. 

It’s the process that never stands still. To stay always relevant you need to continuously adjust your approach, take the latest tendencies and tools into account. And what’s more important – constantly work on mistakes. 

We’re not going to talk about classic ones which (I’m sure) you already know. Like not perfect prospecting, lacking value proposition in your messages or ignoring pain points.  Instead, let’s look at them from different perspectives. 

1. Quantity over quality

Reaching out to more people does not mean better results. In earlier times – when people were not fed up with outreaches yet – such a strategy could work. But not anymore. If you want to build an effective outbound strategy, you need to be more specific, personalized and just different. “Always-Be-Closing” approach won’t bring you good results either. 

As time goes by, the customer becomes more sophisticated. Today people want you to do your homework – research about who they are (your prospects), what they are passionate about, why they do what they do, what is happening in their business. All this will not only help you with getting more responses, but also have them of a higher quality. 

The same goes for the quantity of deals closed (or revenue amounts) over their quality. If your sales managers go for any deal stumbling upon their path, without ensuring sufficient margins, after all this won’t make any business sense. 

2. Follow ups

Number of follow ups and their frequency is another very popular mistake which you might have seen before. And while it all still remains important, another point you need to work on – the quality of your follow ups. 

Let’s compare 2 examples: 

And second one

Not every follow up you write will add value to your prospect – just accept it. Simply because not every one of them should. If your main goal is to get on top of your prospect’s mind and remind yourself – ask about the latest news, interesting cases or achievements. Unless you had a more specific business discussion before. Then a simple check in is suitable. But again – if there’s no answer after concrete business discussion – follow up several times (if appropriate). 

3. Being too straightforward

Pitching your product or service from the very beginning of your interaction with potential lead – does it still work for you? That’s another mistake a lot of salespeople make. 

Don’t go there until you know if the problem you are able to solve is even a problem. And the pains you might envision for your target group might be not relevant to this specific person. Are you sure they have this problem? If so – is it big enough to take an action? Are they ready to solve it now? Why should they choose you? 

Think about it before pitching your product or service. 

4. Focusing on sale, not relationship

Partially resulting from the previous point, focusing on making the sale rather than building the relationship with potential customers might push away a lot of good leads. 

In the 21st century – where everyone knows the approaches and techniques of salespeople, the best thing you can do – build trust. And get to know people and their businesses. 

Good relations might not bring you sales – immediately or at all. But in the result you will get something much more important – quality network and good reputation. 

Be genuinely curious – why do they do what they do? Why is it important for them? Which problem their business solves? For whom? Why? How did they get there where they are now? People are the most interesting “stories” to explore. Be an explorer. 

5. No processes standardization

If you have more than 1 salesperson in your team – you need to be sure that everyone follows the standardized processes and adhere to the unified policies. It includes well structured CRM management, deals pipelines, lifecycle stages etc. If everyone does their own thing in their own way – there will be chaos. It will be hard to build good reporting, KPIs, analyze results. Simply because there would be no standard which everyone would follow. 

So be sure to formulate basic rules, set up KPIs, define workflows. 

6. Hard scoring

Scoring is a part of prospecting process. We all know about problems around inefficient prospecting. But spending the time on the wrong lead and spending the time on the lead which is relevant but is not on their buying journey yet – are 2 different things. 

That’s why prospecting itself might not be the problem – because you target the right people. Assessing their score is more important. If you see that the score is not high enough, it does not necessarily mean that you have to abandon this person. And possibly check in later. Or not. Focusing only on those who are ready to buy here and now seems like a better way – because you push your pipeline to close. On the other hand, you lose a big part of people who might become your customers in future. Those who need more trust and time. 

It’s like managing a financial portfolio. Some securities have higher risks which is combined with higher returns. Others are more stable and at the same time less profitable. You have to always keep both in balance. If you only rely on fast sale or talking only to those who are interested, you limit your outreach and lose a part of the audience which requires more effort. 

7. Wrong buyer persona

Even if you target the right businesses, corresponding to your ideal customer profile (ICP), it does not mean that you talk to the right person in that business. Finding a potential account which would cater your ICP is not enough. In order to keep your outreach effective, you need to talk to the right people, having a credit to make the decisions you are interested in. 

Sometimes it might be hard to get the decision maker you need. If your target buyer persona is CEO of a company with 1000 people – it might be a challenge. At the same time it does not mean that you should pitch your product to everyone above and beyond. Start with people on the lower levels, get useful information. Move up slowly. Be patient. 

8. Excessive competition

Each team leader manages their team differently. Some prefer to have it chill, others create more competitive environments. While a little competition is good, don’t be too hard on this. If your salespeople / SDRs compete for the lead, it might bring chaos and unnecessary conflicts. Moreover, if everyone works on everything, without subdivision and focus, it might also be hard to analyze their results. Different people communicate differently. Use different approaches. So if for one person vertical X or market Y does not work – it might work for another one just because their communication style might be more appropriate for the specific segment. 

9. KPIs / OKRs not detailed enough

In order to analyze if the team moves well enough, you need to have a good analytical framework in place. And having 2 basic KPIs and one key goal is not enough. 

It’s important for everyone – team leaders, business owners and team members. Everyone should be on the same page and clearly understand what’s expected of them. 

The metrics should include both operational and strategic goals and KPIs. And having it as detailed as possible will help you to find the bottlenecks and fix the problems if they occur. 

10. Lack of business impact understanding

If your SDRs only think about the number of calls they generate and sales – about quotas, without understanding the impact they make on business overall – you have a problem. Then they care about operational results and not strategic ones. And might not necessarily do their work effectively enough. 

What are the costs associated with getting a new customer? How much revenue will they bring? Is this revenue marginal?  – do they know the answers to these questions? 

They should. It will help them to adjust their strategies. 

11. No operational processes automation

Everything that may be automated should be. Each salesperson understands the importance of operational processes automation. And at the same time you can still find the teams using excel sheets and google docs. And it’s not even about having a CRM. But about using your tooling as efficiently as possible, minimizing manual work. In your CRM – set up automation and blueprints / sequences. Create tasks scheduling mechanism. Make Notes field mandatory after the call. Set up automated invoicing. Let your sales team focus on process and not on operational difficulties. 

12. No regular messages review

Whichever approach you use – direct or not – you need to understand if your messages work well enough. If they bring a good enough response rate and result in sufficient conversion. 

Be sure to have analytics that will allow you to track this – charts, funnels, graphs. Use tags and specific fields in your CRM to mark it. Play around with A/B testing. If the metrics are not good – do a review. You need to constantly experiment with messages. Simply because people’s mood changes – world events, risks, vulnerabilities. And you have to take all this into account. You cannot write it once and then use it for decades. 

13. Excessive automation

Looks a bit weird after point 11, right? But no. Automation should be done in a smart way. And the best place to implement it – operational processes. On the other hand, using too much automation within the outreach itself might lead to distorted results, missed opportunities and analysis complexity. Personal human touch is always better than a dry machine message. And let’s be honest – customizing your messages with the name and company is not enough anymore. Being genuine always works better. So be sure to use automation wisely and in appropriate scenarios. 

14. No outreach channels diversification

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Focusing on only one channel might be tricky – what if it does not work? Or not good enough? You need to always combine several channels – LinkedIn, email, calls, meetings etc. Moreover, if it’s LinkedIn – how many profiles do you use? If it’s one – and it generates good results, what would you do if this person left the company? Your major lead generation source would be gone. That’s why it’s important to use different channels – to find those which would work best and hedge the risks of losing one. 

15. No team synchronization

Sales team’s main goal – generating revenue for the company. And each person should work on attaining this specific goal. No matter which part of the process they are responsible for. 

If your SDRs work solely on hitting their quota and not on generating quality leads for sales managers – we have a problem. Pre-sales team that works too long on proposals and keeps leads waiting. Lead generators bringing the contacts not corresponding to ICP. All this might even move to calls and meetings. But without any meaningful results. So in fact – the team accomplishes their goals, but at the end of the day it does not move the business forward. 

16. No external reviews

When we do some things for a long time – our focus gets blurred. We get too consumed by our goals and results achievement, and might not see the problems which may exist. Or not adopt new approaches which emerge. So it’s good to get an external opinion on your processes once in a while. Not only to find and fix the problems (if any), but to motivate the team for the thinking process. And new knowledge never hurts. 

Summary

Nothing is perfect in this world. And your outbound process might not be either. If you see any problems or challenges, don’t give up on outbound. It’s still a very efficient and easily manageable way of growing the business. And what’s more important – it’s easier to control than inbound. You can plan your activities and build forecasts which will mainly depend on your own dedication. What could be better?