How to Improve Outbound Sales: 8 Tips for Boosting Conversion Rates

Is a lack of outbound sales holding your business back?

Some businesses struggle to get the ROI they’re looking for and end up walking away from outbound sales completely. The problem is that they’re also walking away from:

Effective outreach: 62% of marketers contend their outbound efforts are effective.
Contact with decision makers: 57% of executives in the C-suite prefer to be contacted by phone.
The perks of persistence: Reaching out to a lead six times increases the likelihood of getting in touch by 90%.

The answer isn’t to give up on outbound sales, but to revamp your approach to be more effective.

Below, we detail how to improve outbound sales with several tried-and-true tactics.

1. Create Your Ideal Customer Profile

One of the first questions you’ll need to answer to improve your outbound sales is: Who is your business’s product or service for? Zero in on a precise niche and create a detailed buyer persona that includes details about your target demographic.

Your buyer persona should include insight into the customer’s identity, such as:

Location
Profession
Age
Interests
Business goals

If you’re in B2B sales, your customer profile should also include details on all key decision makers.

Surveying your current top customers is a great place to start. You can use data from the survey to inform your personas.

2. Memorize Their Pain Points

What do you have to offer? Why should your lead care?

When it comes to outbound sales, the burden of making your prospect pay attention rests solely on your shoulders. After all, they didn’t come to you looking for anything. Before you can wow them with your incredible product or service, you need to make them care.

Fortunately for your sales team, something drives your lead crazy. Connecting your product or service to their pain point is the best way to get them to care about your pitch and give your team the chance to clinch the sale.

Pain points are quite possibly the most essential aspect of the customer profile and the foundation for the script you’ll develop. After all, if you can meet the lead’s needs, why wouldn’t they listen to what you have to say?

3. Perfect Your Script

To improve outbound sales, you’ll want to tailor your messaging to fit each customer’s specific needs and challenges. This requires you to create a map of your ideal customer’s buying journey, giving you a clear idea of where you want to steer each conversation and your goals for each of your subsequent calls or emails.

This will help ensure your conversations with prospects remain on-topic, logically leading into one another, so they culminate in a sale.

You may also want to reevaluate whether a “script” (by traditional definition) is necessary at all. Sometimes jotting down a few bullet points ahead of your call and then having a free-flowing conversation can work better than a more structured pitch.

At a minimum, you should:

Aim for authentic and spontaneous responses: Whether or not you use a script, look for places in your pitch where you can improvise. If your script can accommodate a loose outline, this can open the door to spontaneity, leaving your conversation more natural and relaxed.
Respect your prospects’ busy schedules: Keep your conversation or emails short, especially with your initial outreach.
Listen, listen, listen: The quickest way to earn a lead’s trust is to listen carefully when they talk about their needs. You’ll then be able to tailor your pitch so that it provides concrete value for your customer.

A strong script acts as a guardrail for every agent working for your brand. Use it to provide structure to each conversation, but remember that every lead is different. A genuine conversation is more valuable than a canned spiel.

As you evaluate your current sales process, look at the common questions your leads ask, as this may reveal holes in your script or buyer journey.

4. Scale Strategically

Startups and small businesses often fall into the pitfall of scaling up their sales department too early. This includes over-hiring sales reps, spending too much time chasing unfruitful leads, and setting unreachable goals.

Sustainable growth takes time, and the best way to learn how to improve outbound sales is to remain in touch with the reality of your business as it actually exists.

Create strong yet realistic KPIs for your sales teams and focus on organic growth.

5. Outsource with Purpose

One way to scale strategically is to include smart outsourcing decisions in your business plan. A contact center that specializes in outbound sales can supplement or even replace your in-house team, enabling you to scale with ease while providing a seamless outreach experience.

Business can be unpredictable. You can be caught off-guard by both ebbs and flows, each of which causes issues. Turning to a third-party solution lets you expand or reduce the number of agents on-hand as circumstances dictate.

6. Use the Right Tools

Your CRM is so much more than a digital address book—it’s a system that enables your team to perform at their peak while gathering insight and staying organized. Tools that help with automation, documentation, and analytics remove admin tasks from your teams’ plates, freeing them to focus on building relationships with potential leads.

Timesaving tools to consider are:

Calendly integrations
Collaboration software
File-sharing software

7. Measure the Right Metrics

Are you using the right KPIs to evaluate the efficacy of your outbound sales? What are the right metrics?

The best answer may be unique to your industry, but here are some KPIs to keep an eye on:

New Business Revenue: Ultimately, your outbound sales team should be making sales. Looking at this number tells you in a nutshell how successful they are.
Outbound Sales Growth: It’s probably not realistic to expect your numbers to go up all the time, but it’s a great sign to see a general pattern of growth over time.
Average Call Duration: Be careful with this one. You don’t want to pressure your agents into such short calls that they’re rushing and missing out on opportunities. Conversely, lengthy but unproductive calls waste resources that could go toward another prospect.

Bear in mind that these metrics are tools that can guide your strategy in the right direction. Focusing on numbers to the point where you lose track of the people involved—meaning leads and employees both—is a critical error.

8. Have Compassion

One mistake agents make when learning to improve outbound sales is being far too clinical. While sales professionals need to be just that—professional—they also need to keep in mind that there is an actual human being on the other end of the line.

The best way to connect with a potential customer is to be authentic and honest, full of compassion for each lead’s struggles. This requires emotional intelligence and active listening.

By listening and communicating openly, your prospects will feel comfortable expressing their needs honestly, which can have a tremendous impact on your conversion rates. Remember: Great sales depend on genuine interest.

Improving Outbound Sales with ROI CX Solutions

Is it possible to boost your revenue through outbound sales tactics alone? You may be surprised—even minor adjustments to your outbound sales process can make a huge difference to your bottom line. ROI CX Solutions can help.

Sometimes, the best way to improve customer relations and increase sales is to invite the right contact center into the fold. Our telemarketing services might be the missing piece of your puzzle.