Why Your Outbound Sales & Marketing Strategy Fails to Generate New Business

Is outbound marketing getting you down? Are you seeing declining profits from your cold calls and outreach? Are your leads vanishing?

Chances are good that your outbound marketing program is suffering from one of the common issues that plague all businesses from time to time. Outlined below are a few of the common mistakes sales professionals and marketers like yourself make that cause outbound strategies to fall down on the job.

1. You are Using Obsolete Data

This is a major problem for companies, because when you are juggling time, expenses, employees and goals, it can be very easy to ignore data quality in order to focus on other goals.

As a result, businesses often start their outbound campaigns with an inaccurate marketing list and unorganized prospecting database. This means opening up with a round of "who are you and do you exist?" calls which waste time on already low-quality leads.

Your database of prospects should be complete, fresh and constantly updated, either with help from sales intelligence tools or through your own thorough research.

2. You Only Call Prospects Once

This is a common problem for sales teams that have not developed or documented a repeatable outbound process or don't have time to build out 7-15 touch points for prospecting.

These days, contacting prospects more than once is not only okay, but it is often necessary to attract and engage profitable leads. To be clear, this doesn’t mean calling the same person over and over again or bugging someone to the point that you become a stage-five clinger.

It means seeking out and calling contacts throughout the company to reach key decision makers, or creating a variety of touch points that include voicemail, email, social media, and more. Persistence is often key.

3. Your Customer Data is Limited

Are prospects not responding the way you want? You could be missing out on valuable customer data.

If buyer personas and prospecting profiles are not a key part of strategy, it's time to update how you collect and use data.

4. You Have No Way of Filtering Leads

If collecting customer data isn't your problem, filtering that data might be.

Today's CRM systems and sales tools include many options to filter leads based on specific factors and scoring metrics. This helps you and your team prioritize the most qualified leads and maximize profitability.

It may just be the missing piece you've been looking for.

5. You Have No Training Program

Does your sales team know what to say to prospective clients to effectively engage them in profitable conversations? Do they know what not to say?

Outbound marketing contact and lead management is often based on skill sets. If you aren't seeing the results you need, your sales team may benefit from sales coaching. Ongoing training on consistent brand messaging and effective selling techniques is very important for maximizing productivity and profitability.

6. You Aren't Monitoring Your Competitors

If your outbound campaign is failing, you could be playing right into your competitors' hands.

You should keep a constant pulse on their sales and marketing strategies to make sure you aren't getting outplayed when it comes to value proposition and differentiators.

Also, it's important to keep in mind that discounting or undercutting the price of your own product to beat competitors is only going to hurt your company in the long run.

Looking for a sales intelligence resource to make your outbound sales strategy more effective? Click here to find out how Winmo empowers sales teams to win more business!