This post will share everything you need to know about outbound lead generation and some strategies you can implement for better results.
What are outbound leads?
Outbound leads are generally any leads you get from your outbound lead generation campaigns. These are prospects that have been identified and contacted by your sales team because they fit into your ideal customer profile.
For example, if you’re an accounting software company, your outbound leads will be the accounting managers you’ve discovered from Linkedin, email finder tool, or other sources.
Since a lead is someone who hasn’t purchased anything yet, once they enter the outbound sales funnel, you can then qualify them either as a marketing-qualified lead or as a sales-qualified lead. It all depends on where they are in the sales funnel.
How does outbound lead generation work?
Since outbound lead generation involves proactively reaching out to afghanistan phone number list people who fit your ideal customer profile, there’s a process for discovering these people to convert them. The process includes;
1. Identify your target audience
This stage involves creating an ideal customer profile from your already existing customers. The goal here is to outline the characteristics you want to look out for. What job roles, age, company size, industry, or more would your prospect be in?
Here’s what that might look like when you’re done:
Most importantly, what challenges do they face and how can you solve that problem? What value are you offering? lemlist offers a free ideal customer profile generator to help you get started.
2. Build your prospects’ list
Once you have an idea of who they are, use a B2B lead generation tool to find contact information like email addresses, social profiles, and even phone numbers.
Use a tool like lemlist’s AI-powered B2B database of 450M+ contacts for one-click access to verified, high-relevance leads that you can filter based on your ideal customer profile.
3. Start your outbound outreach and qualify your leads
Identify the channels your leads engage with the most and launch an outbound lead generation strategy. So depending on the audience, it could be cold calling, sending cold emails, invitations on LinkedIn and so much more.
Engage with them and assess their level of interest. Qualify these leads based on how they engage with your outreach.
For better results, you can engage leads on multiple channels and tailor your engagement based on each lead interaction with your message sequence, using lemlist’s multi-channel workflow and advanced conditions for automating outreach sequence.
4. Demo your product or service
For your warm leads or those who’ve shown the most interest, you take them down the funnel by setting up meetings for consultations or demos. This stage consists of making the hard sales pitch.
You’re showing them the value or solution you’re offering and giving them a chance to ask any clarifying questions they might have.
5. Close the deal
After your demo or consultation, your sales team has to keep following up and addressing any concerns the prospect might have. Negotiate any payments (if applicable) and get them to sign a contract. The end goal here is to have a paying customer at the end of the funnel.
Outbound vs inbound lead generation
Inbound lead generation might be somewhat similar to outbound lead generation, however these two strategies are vastly different. Here’s how;
1. Outreach approach
Outbound lead generation involves reaching out directly to the prospects. In this case, your sales team initiates the contact via methods like cold calling, email outreach or social media.
On the other hand, inbound lead generation involves creating resources or value so your prospects are attracted to you. In this case, your prospects initiate the contact by interacting with your resource and offering you their contact details.
2. Controls and permissions
In outbound lead generation, your leads don’t exactly consent to you reaching out since you initiate the contact. However, in inbound lead generation, they give express permission through the lead generation form to be contacted about your offerings.
3. Outreach channels
Outbound lead generation consists of mostly paid channels like advertising or PPC, targeted email, phone and social outreach, or even networking. Inbound lead generation on the other hand uses more SEO, content marketing, social media marketing, or community resources like infographics, industry reports, and more.
4. Lead qualification
Outbound leads are often less qualified because since they didn’t initially express interest in your business, your sales team has to spend more time nurturing them before they convert. Inbound leads are considered more qualified because they have already shown interest in your business and so they are easier to convert.
