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Top 3 Mistakes Building Outbound Sales
The document discusses the three critical mistakes companies make when building an outbound sales model, namely not understanding their top segments, failing to run experiments, and pitching too early in the buyer's journey. It emphasizes the importance of segmenting the market, conducting disciplined experiments, and educating potential customers instead of pushing for a sale prematurely. Additionally, it suggests strategies for optimizing lead generation and improving sales efficiency.
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Top 3 Mistakes Building Outbound Sales
- 1. Liz Cain Rainmaker 2018 TOP3 MISTAKES BUILDING OUTBOUND
- 2. Proprietary and Confidential©2018 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved 2 “Companies were investing massive amounts in building high-touch teams that operated in far-flung offices. We broke that mold—mostly because we couldn’t afford to follow it in the traditional way—and proved that telesales could win a high close rate at one-third the cost and in one-third the amount of the time as the traditional selling model.” Mark Benioff CEO, Salesforce 1999 - Present
- 3. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 3 and modern inside sales was born.
- 4. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 4 I’m going to let you in on a secret…
- 5. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 5 …everyone sucks at outbound.
- 6. Proprietary and Confidential©2018 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved 6 TOP 3 MISTAKES BUILDING THE OUTBOUND MODEL What most often goes wrong when building the outbound sales model? You don't know your top segments. You don’t run experiments, you pivot. You are pitching too early in the buyer’s journey.
- 7. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 7 You don’t know your top segments. 1
- 8. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 8 SEGMENT A group of customers that can be addressed with the same product and the same go-to-market strategy
- 9. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 9 We haven’t segmented our market yet because we believe that anybody could be a customer. We don’t want to turn people away. “
- 10. Proprietary and Confidential©2018 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved 10 WHEN YOU DON’T FOCUS, BAD THINGS HAPPEN Lack of coordination and alignment. Incoherent messages to the market. Inefficiency of time and resources.
- 11. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 11
- 12. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 12 REVIEW • Where are your leads coming from today? • What is your win rate, average deal size, time to close, retention, etc. with different industries, countries, buyers and company sizes? VALIDATE • How large are those markets? • Where are competitors focused and how can you differentiate? • Where is the product mission-critical? EXPERIMENT • Run campaigns with your SDR team within target verticals • Align SDR campaigns with targeted marketing (events, digital ads, content, case studies) 3 tips for segmenting your market
- 13. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 13 You don’t run experiments, you pivot. 2
- 14. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 14 This is the new company. This is how we are going to win. We need to make this successful. “
- 15. Proprietary and Confidential©2018 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved 15
- 16. Proprietary and Confidential©2018 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved 16 HOW TO RUN A DISCIPLINED EXPERIMENT Experimenting can be made simple using these four steps. Generate Hypothesis Design Experiment Run Experiment Analyze Results
- 17. Proprietary and Confidential©2018 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved 17 LEVERS WE CAN TEST TO OPTIMIZE LEAD GEN Self Sourced Offshore Team Build Build Web Scraping Process Outsource Lead Score Outsource Appointment Setting Round Robin Organization Structure List Creation Data Append Lead Source Scoring Enrichment Prioritization Outbound Sales Process Internal Appointment Setting Buy Verticalized Geographic Inside Sales ModelNone None Contact Verification
- 18. Proprietary and Confidential©2018 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved 18 LEVERS WE CAN TEST TO OPTIMIZE LEAD GEN Self Sourced Offshore Team Build Build Web Scraping Process Outsource Lead Score Outsource Appointment Setting Round Robin Organization Structure List Creation Data Append Lead Source Scoring Enrichment Prioritization Outbound Sales Process Internal Appointment Setting Buy Verticalized Geographic Inside Sales ModelNone None Contact Verification
- 19. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 19 You are pitching too early in the buyer’s journey. 3
- 20. Proprietary and Confidential©2018 OpenView Advisors, LLC. All Rights Reserved 20 You’re dealing with suspects, not leads. You must generate interest.
- 21. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 21 The Buyer Journey
- 22. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 22 Awareness Consideration Purchase
- 23. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 23 Awareness Consideration Purchase Inbound You “pitch” here
- 24. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 24 Awareness Consideration Purchase Outbound You can’t “pitch” here
- 25. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 25
- 26. Proprietary and Confidential©2016 OpenView Investments, LLC. All Rights Reserved 26 Get started with outbound (again). Define and prioritize your segments. Run disciplined experiments. Educate, don’t pitch.
- 27. Liz Cain |lizc@ov.vc THANK YOU
Editor's Notes
- #3 I’m going to take you back, way way back. The year is 1999. Salesforce is founded and Marc Benioff and his team demonstrated consistent ability to scale with an outbound sales team Companies were investing massive amounts in building high-touch teams that operated in far-flung offices. We broke that mold—mostly because we couldn’t afford to follow it in the traditional way—and proved that telesales could win a high close rate at one-third the cost and in one-third the amount of the time as the traditional selling model.”
- #12 I want to give you an example of a company that has segmented a massive market really effectively. You all use LinkedIn, and you’ve watched the features change and price increase, but have you thought about the use cases? LinkedIn is targeting 4 distinct segments – each with a different product feature set and message. Professionals, Job searchers, sales teams and recruiters.
- #16 Every new idea is a GREAT idea, but more importantly they want the entire company to chase it. I believe a culture of experimentation needs to be established at the top and pushed down into an organization. It takes guts to test things, fail and go again. Leadership teams need to create room for this and encourage creativity without repercussions. And then, you need to allocate budget, time and establish a process by which you do this.
- #18 Let me take you through an example of how to do this at your own company. When you decide to start an outbound team, you don’t just START. You narrow in on a particular segment and make a hypotheses around what persona to target, what messaging to use, how to procure the targets, and prioritize outreach. Each of these small decisions is a variable to be tested.
- #21 I’m going to take you back, way way back. The year is 1999. Salesforce is founded and Marc Benioff and his team demonstrated consistent ability to scale with an outbound sales team Companies were investing massive amounts in building high-touch teams that operated in far-flung offices. We broke that mold—mostly because we couldn’t afford to follow it in the traditional way—and proved that telesales could win a high close rate at one-third the cost and in one-third the amount of the time as the traditional selling model.”
- #23 At the most basic level a Buyer goes through 3 stages in buying: Awareness where the prospect identifies a problem or opportunity in their business Consideration where the prospect has clearly defined their problem or opportunity, and commits to researching and understanding all of the availability approaches/methods to solving it Decision where the prospect compiles a long list of all of the available vendors and products, and narrows in on a short list before making a final purchase decision
- #24 At the most basic level a Buyer goes through 3 stages in buying: Awareness where the prospect identifies a problem or opportunity in their business Consideration where the prospect has clearly defined their problem or opportunity, and commits to researching and understanding all of the availability approaches/methods to solving it Decision where the prospect compiles a long list of all of the available vendors and products, and narrows in on a short list before making a final purchase decision
- #25 At the most basic level a Buyer goes through 3 stages in buying: Awareness where the prospect identifies a problem or opportunity in their business Consideration where the prospect has clearly defined their problem or opportunity, and commits to researching and understanding all of the availability approaches/methods to solving it Decision where the prospect compiles a long list of all of the available vendors and products, and narrows in on a short list before making a final purchase decision