It is given that getting new leads and growing sales takes time. These are completely understandable, especially for new businesses just starting out. However, when you follow a few simple steps, you’ll find it leads to significant growth for your business.

To help your business grow, here are 3 of the most successful outbound strategies to grow your sales!

1. Build the Best Outbound Sales System.

Market segmentation can help you find the best leads. With insights and customer data, you can analyze that data and evaluate your market. From there, you can separate leads into micro-segments.

Use the following steps:

Break your market segmentation into customer groups

While simple in concept, it requires creating subsets of a broad target audience. But, it’s easier to evaluate when you set up target strategies and campaigns. Separate your market segments into value-based, needs-based and firm demographics. Many CRMs, like Insightly, will allow you to label customers based on industry, sales funnel location, position or even type of customer.

Use a value-based hypothesis for each segment

Create a hypothesis for customer characteristics. You want to separate your current customers into clear value-based segments. A business might use your software to increase conversion rates, like Leadpages. Another market segment might use your technology to improve marketing team communication, like Wrike.

Gather insight and necessary customer data

Assemble your customer account lists from your CRM system. Remove any outliers or accounts that are outdated or too small. Your lists should represent your customer group for your analysis.

Break up your data into segments

Your customer group has specific characteristics you can separate it into. This will be your ideal customer profiles. Your customer group might include high online traffic, marketing agencies, more than 50 employees, etc.

Evaluate the specific segments

Create a formula for your micro-segments. You might use segment size, sales cycle length or future growth opportunity. Keep in mind your micro-segments will be obvious. As such, it is easy to make these your final segments. But your market might change over time as will your segments. Feel free to refine them accordingly.

Review each segment for leads

After outlining your ideal customer profiles, generate lead lists. However, it can be hard to create high-quality leads that convert. Don’t focus strictly on volume alone. Qualify your leads as you increase volume. That way you won’t decrease the quality of your leads.

2. Use effective lead generation.

Your outbound sales will improve if you start with a more effective list of leads. There are several different ways to develop an effective list of leads. For example, you can create an original list of leads by prospecting industry events or industry blogs. But, be careful with adding leads to CRM to avoid duplicates.

Alternatively a contractor can help or you can hire a company that does lead generation by searching for companies on the web or on sites like LinkedIn. Ensure they are highly recommended and leads are verified and relevant to your business. Finally, while tempting, we recommend to stay away from bulk lead lists. These might be too broad. You want targeted lists based on company size, location, or industry.

3. Create outbound emails.

Once you’ve created your micro-segments, your outbound emails are next. These are personal messages and you might have several for each campaign. But, don’t send them all at once. Wait a few days in between messages.

Here are some tips:

  • Start with an introduction and make your messages personal. Don’t cut-and-paste from other messages. Keep your messages short and relevant.
  • Find a pain point or a positive area. With pain points, stress where a business or person might be losing money and how you can help. With positive areas, explain how you can add value.
  • Request a time to talk. You can recommend a 15-minute call to address their needs with no obligation. Use an email technology, like Mixmax, with instant scheduling to block a window of time. Instant schedule will avoid back-and-forth emails and scheduling conflicts which in turn will increase your meeting acceptance rate.
  • Add credibility with sample customers you work. Then close with a strong call-to-action. Your CTA can be something like, “Your competitors are doing it this way. Can you afford to wait?”
  • Lastly, monitor your campaigns and use A/B testing.

For effective sales strategies, create micro-segments and target emails around them. Don’t be afraid to hire someone for lead generation but avoid bulk lists and remove duplicates. Review your campaigns and use A/B testing. You can convert leads into clients. It’s just a matter of breaking them up into the right customer groups and removing any outliers.