POV

Did you know that 80% of sales require up to five follow-up calls or emails? Yet, 44% of sales representatives give up after just one more attempt. Increasing sales is hard. But it requires persistence.

Many prospects say no to a sales pitch several times before they agree to buy from you. That said, you can improve your sales by defining your prospects accordingly and by reaching out to them using the proper channels.

In this guide, we’ll break down steps you can take to improve your business outreach campaigns. Let’s dive right in.

Define Your Lead

If you want to close more deals, you need to target high-quality leads. But how do you determine who qualifies as a high-quality prospect? Create a list of features you want to see in every lead before you reach out to them.

For starters, you want to reach out to a person who can benefit from your products or services. Secondly, this lead should be located in a region you offer your services in.

Crucially, contact someone with the authority to close deals with you. This means you can aim for a website owner or the marketing executive. But before you make an outreach call, prepare your outreach message.

Define how your business can help your lead. Do you have a marketing tool that can help your prospect increase sales? Do you offer a service that could increase their net profits? Be prepared to answer what value you will add to a business.

Choose the Right Outreach Channel

Outreach channels are not created equal. Find out what channels your leads prefer and use them for your first outreach message. Generally speaking, emails and contact forms are excellent ideas.

Emails work because they are the standard way of initiating business conversations. Beware, though, more and more people ignore outreach emails from strangers.

Contact forms are another great idea. If your lead owns a website with a contact form, use it to deliver your message. Most website owners read messages sent through contact forms.

To increase your success rate, automate the outreach process. Use a tool like https://formcloud.ai/ to fill in contact forms online. Not only will you save time, but you will also get out your message to a bigger audience. 

Personalize your Pitch for Each Lead

If you want more leads to become customers, start personalizing your message. No one cares about an email that feels like it was sent to a thousand people. But if the email feels personalized, they may give you a response.

So, how can you personalize a sales pitch you plan to send hundreds of prospects? As mentioned, start by targeting the right leads. You want to address people who share something in common.

Maybe you’re targeting bloggers. You know they care about increase web traffic and email subscribers. Next, evaluate how to connect with your leads. Do you also own a website and find it hard to increase traffic? Have the leads visited your website in the past?

You want to focus your message on your mutual goals. This way, your outreach message will feel personalized. What’s more, your message will target a pain point your prospect wants to address.

Focus on Helping and Not Selling

Ever received a call from a sales representative trying to sell you a product you don’t even know if you need? It can be frustrating. No one wants to feel pressured to buy products by someone they don’t even trust.

However, people are always willing to accept help from anyone if the assistance can help grow sales or improve brand awareness. In your outreach campaign, talk your prospect about a business problem they may be experiencing.

Of course, you don’t want to make guesses. Spend time researching what problems your leads are having. Then, talk about this issue empathetically. After that, offer a way to help solve this problem .

As we stated earlier, there will be a few follow-up calls and emails before you close a good deal. So, don’t even try to make a sale in your first outreach message. Once you’re confident that your recipient is interested in your product, you can work towards closing the deal.

Respond to Prospects Fast

This may come as a surprise to some, but up to 50% of people close deals with the business that responds fast. This calls for speed in your response rate. If a lead responds to your first outreach message, respond on the same day.

If they show an interest in buying your product, do everything you can to close the deal. For example, you can now make a phone call to the lead to find out if the prospect wants any questions answered before they make a purchase.

The thing is, you’re not the only marketer out there. Your competitors also want to close deals. So, once you get a quality lead, respond to their queries quickly. Pitch them your product or service and close a deal before anyone else does.

Follow Up

We can’t emphasize this strategy well enough. You need to follow up on your outreach message a few times before you give up. According to invespcro.com, 75% of people expects a sales representative to call 2-4 times before giving up.

The explanation is that every lead is at a different level of the buyer journey. For some, they know they have a business problem but have taken no steps to solve it. Others are researching how to solve a business problem but have not yet found the right partner.

Still, there are some people shopping around for a vendor to solve their problem. In light of that information, it’s in your best interest to follow up with messages aimed at helping your leads solve different problems.

Conclusion

If you can identify a quality lead, you can close a deal with them. All you need is to follow the right steps. People don’t want to feel pressured to make a purchase. As such, work on establishing a relationship with a lead by contact them through their preferred channel.

Then offer to help them solve a business problem. They may say no a few times, so be ready to follow up until you close the deal.