1. Analyze the target leads

Before making an outbound call, have a clear definition of what your ideal customer looks like. That doesn’t necessarily mean all of your customers have to fit into this specific profile, but it does mean that the time you spend targeting someone with an outbound marketing strategy won’t be a waste simply because you weren’t talking to the right person.

To find out what that ideal customer is, make a detailed customer profile and base it on actual advocates and users of your product. Which employee, company size, title, and industry is your product best suited for? What and how do these factors determine the way your target customers use your product?

Plan and prepare well in advance before reaching out to your customers.

Probe through their social media to understand exactly what it is that sparks their curiosity and what their pain points are. Once you’ve completed these steps and have a clear picture, then it’s time to tailor your outbound calls to them.

2. Filter the market and sales qualified leads

The fact is, not all leads that come into your sales funnel will be fully qualified. Instead of immediately passing on newly generated leads directly to sales, you should have them further reviewed in advance to determine which of them are marketing qualified leads or sales qualified leads.

The contacts that identify themselves as sales-ready should be categorized as marketing qualified leads. They are more deeply engaged than your regular sales leads, but aren’t quite ready to be labeled as opportunities. The contacts that, for example, download an eBook from your website might be considered marketing qualified leads if they meet your target industry, business size or revenue. Whereas sales qualified leads are those whom your sales team have personally determined as worthy of a direct follow-up. These sales qualified leads would have to subsequently be qualified and deemed ready to move further down the sales funnel.

This process of verification and validation can make it much easier for sales teams to filter market and sales qualified leads.

3. Create a communication strategy to establish connections

Customers prefer to receive unscripted calls because of their more natural and conversational tone. It makes the customer feel valued and appreciated as people rather than seeing them merely as a sales prospect. This is the number one ingredient to a successful outbound calling strategy. These types of calls grab attention and the customers from the very beginning.

Try not to assume you know everything about your targets – the key to being effective is being genuine and sincere. Earn your customer’s trust by being upfront and leave any bluster out of the conversation. Make your customers know that you’ve called for a reason – mention your product or service by tying it into their pain points.

Make sure you don’t overplay. A successful outbound sales strategy involves under-promising and over-delivering. Create an atmosphere of enthusiasm with your prospect and don’t get tempted to oversell your product in order to close the sale.

4. Maintain a follow–up process

By following up with your customers you communicate to them that you are interested and engaged in ensuring that their needs are being met and that their problems have been solved. In today’s sales environment, where negative or harassing experiences are more common, you can stand out as someone who is a trusted, genuine resource for your customers’ business or personal needs.

Recognizing that you’re invested in their well-being, customers will eventually start looking to you for help and will be receptive to your recommendations and suggestions – they begin to trust you with more businesses and can sometimes offer you referral businesses.

When you ethically invest in serving your customers, you’re not only building trust with them, but also building trust with their friends, family and other connections that might also be looking for someone like you to meet their needs.

With effective follow-up, you’re opening doors to establishing new sales connections and are continually demonstrating your solution, the quality of your company, and yourself as a salesperson.

5. Create appointments for senior levels to convert a lead to a sale

Closing a deal is often the most emphasized part of sales process. One of the mainstays for any business’ closing process is getting appointments with influential people in an organization. Set appointments using strong notes and provide them to the senior levels to drill down on with the prospect and build value for that appointment.

You’ve done a commendable job nurturing your customers throughout their journey. When it comes to closing the sale, with your comprehensive prep-work in hand, you can be confident that you can leave it to the senior-level team to do their magic to convert the prospect into a loyal lead.

Create a successful outbound call strategy with Flobile

Flobile innovates new methodologies for nurturing strategies and outbound telemarketing sequences that set a rapport with the buyer throughout the buyer’s journey, and sets a tone for successful business connections and conversions.

Flobile allows businesses to build meaningful relationships with their target audiences and creates effective buyer journeys through omnichannel experiences.