Questions

What is the best sales material to use to support a B2B outbound strategy. And what should be the order of outreach? I.E email, phone call, mail?

We provide a SAAS. For a targeted outreach campaign, should I Call, email first. Then should we send out info or send to a landing page. I would like some clarity on the sales funnel process and what sales material would help in the sales process.

7answers

People hate calls. People hate emails. People hate mail. Do you really want your first impression to be that of an interloper and a pusher? Then again, most recipients aren't event going to look at what you send them.

What is your niche? Office managers for private family healthcare providers in Peoria? Athletics department directors for NAIA schools? Sales managers at wholesale car dealers that make over $180 million per year in gross revenue?

Know your niche and define your buyer (and it better be the CIO or VP). Is your buyer female or male? Older, middle age, or younger? What about her or his college education? What does he drive? Where does he live? Where does he eat his lunch and get his coffee in the morning? What does he read? Etc.

Go to your buyer. Find congregations of your buyer. Professional associations. Conferences. Meet-ups. Trade shows. Offer to do free presentations--not on your product but on best practices or trends you observe in the industry. Make your presentation about solving problems your buyers deal with every day. Write blogs or columns for media they read. Again, focus on what they need/want to read. You will have a hard time keeping enough business cards in stock and click-throughs from your byline.

This is a true "targeted outreach campaign." Don't waste your money and time with anything less than this.

You're going to do great. Please let me know if you'd like to talk about it more!


Answered 9 years ago

In Canada, we have the new CASL legislation preventing us from cold emailing without prior OPT-IN so we are forced to either make an outbound call or a very targeted mail out (Not the most economical).

This may sound a bit cliche, but I think it truly depends on who you are selling to. Who is your ideal customer? In Calgary, Alberta we are selling to a lot of traditional Oil and Gas personalities. They dont even know what a landing page is...therefore we build a lot of white papers and collaterals that are sent either via email or physically mailed out.

If you are sending to a technically savvy prospect, then a landing page is excellent (Very Economical with more testing options). You may want to embed videos into your email campaigns as an intro to what you do. Ensure all of your material has a call to action OR there is specific contact strategies (I.E. you send content on day 1, and you send another piece on day 5). Figure out who it is you want to reach and think about how these people will respond to content and which medium will yield the best result...

Happy to chat if you want some advice on how we are scaling specifically through our outbound efforts. We are currently taking advantage of a local event to push content...


Answered 9 years ago

You should hire an expert to help you with your funnel or at least get a book on selling. A funnel is going to be specific to your business, and you are going to have to test to see what works. Look up the term "split testing".

Not every funnel works for every business. What works in one field fails in another. That's why you must test.

I could go into depth on each element of a funnel, but I think you need to get some basic learning done on sales funnels and split testing before we go into that level of detail.


Answered 9 years ago

Hi!

My answer to this would be to do all of the above. The most important thing to have in mind is to be perceived as a value creator.

Have the customers rethink what they see as reality today. Put your expertise as the foundation for the dialogue.

Phone calls are the most effient way to go about, but nurturing as emails, marketing automation etc. are all part of a successful strategy for bringing in new clients and long term partnerships.


Answered 9 years ago

Go and talk face-to-face with the decision maker. Show yourself as a problem solver and what is the difference you provide with your offer, among million others of the same business.


Answered 5 years ago

It depends on the ticket size of the sale. I recently sold a brand new SaaS product for ~$2500 with a cold call. But there were about 20 calls that went unanswered before we converted. For emails, we had a far higher conversion rate, but conversion was defined as getting the client to click and accept a meeting invite. Note: This is just a single example, and is not representative.

It's true, GDPR and other regulations limit the channels you can use for marketing.
Ultimately, SaaS sales should start with genuine leads. You can get leads by optimizing SEO/SEM. You can buy leads from other sources.
Next step is to research these leads. Then based on geography, seniority, number of potential contacts in the firm, you identify your approach. Spray and Pray is probably not the best approach.

For many clients freemium works.

You can setup a call with me for follow up questions.


Answered 5 years ago

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