The Ultimate Guide: B2B Sales Outreach in 2023

Do you go by the philosophy - “the more prospects, the better”? 

Well, generating more leads and engaging with lots of prospects is great! However, if your sales team is putting all their efforts into nurturing low-intent prospects, they are wasting valuable time, money, and other resources. 

Ideally, sales managers should encourage the sales reps to focus on quality rather than quantity when it comes to B2B lead generation. And for that, any organization will need an effective B2B sales outreach strategy. 

This comprehensive guide sums up some of the most unique yet easy-to-implement B2B sales outreach strategies for organizations in 2023. 

What is B2B Sales Outreach? 

Sales outreach is the process of interacting and engaging with prospects, directly or indirectly. The goal of direct and indirect sales outreach is to convert a prospect into a paid customer. A B2B buyer operating in 2023 is always navigating through noisy channels like emails, social media, and so on. A set of sales outreach strategies help the B2B decision-makers to cut through these commotions and get to the appropriate solution they are looking for to solve a problem. 

B2B sales outreach works best when sales teams have a consistent, targeted strategy to attract new leads. Depending on the business and its target customers, sales managers can opt for two sales outreach types: inbound and outbound. 

• Inbound sales outreach is where Sales reps reach out to potential buyers by building their interest in your products and services through inbound marketing campaigns

• Outbound sales outreach is where sales reps directly reach out to the prospects through cold outreach approaches. 

Ideally, a combination of these sales outreach types can help the sales reps influence the buying process. 

7 Tried and Tested B2B Sales Outreach Strategies 

Here are some of the easiest sales outreach strategies that can help businesses power up their outreach process: 

Figure out where the leads are coming from 

Every sales team uses a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool to track and manage the sales leads. However, most sales reps miss out on one thing - identifying the source of these leads. 

Imagine you are using multiple outreach channels, including emails, social media, cold calls, etc. You are sending 50+ cold emails, 30+ social media outreach messages, and making 10+ cold-calls daily. 

However, what you are not doing is assessing which of these channels is the most effective. When you figure out the source of these leads, you can focus on that channel and take action to multiply leads by personalizing the buyer’s journey for this channel. 

Here are a few ways to identify the lead generation sources and segregate them: 

• Identify the hand-raisers. These are the leads who reach out to the sales team directly by requesting a demo or clicking on “Contact sales” CTAs on the website. These potential customers are well aware of your products and are interested in your services. Hence, converting a hand-raiser target audience is easier. 

• Sometimes business development managers create their leads lists manually. They use their personal social media profiles, LinkedIn Sales Navigator search, and other online tools to create such lists. A sales personnel can further personalize these lists by adding potential customers’ pain points, industry types, etc.  

• Another approach is to educate the prospective customers through lead magnets like ebooks, datasheets, checklists, templates, etc. Prospects need to download these resources by submitting their contact details. Sales reps can use these contact details to follow up with these prospects. However, the possibility of getting low-intent leads is very high in this case. Hence, the sales reps should be extra careful. 

• The most effective way to identify lead sources is through intent analysis. A sales team can organize the identified leads into three segments, namely high-intent leads (having a high interest in buying from a brand), medium-intent leads (moderately interested in buying from a brand), and low-intent leads (least interested in buying from a brand). Labeling the leads will help businesses to figure out which channel is responsible for generating more high-intent leads. Accordingly, sales reps can put extra effort into that channel. 

Create a clear sales outreach process 

A complicated B2B sales outreach process is not scalable. Sales managers and VPs should create a clear and to-the-point sales outreach framework where every sales rep can collaborate. 

An ideal sales outreach framework should combine outreach, engagement, and nurturing of the leads. Here are a few tips for B2B sales teams can use to build their sales outreach framework: 

• Going for a multichannel approach can pay off as a critical B2B sales outreach strategy. This means targeting using different channels like LinkedIn, emails, and websites to improve maximum sales efficiency.   

• A great way to execute any multichannel approach is through sequences. A sequence is the order of different actions that the users might go through during their journey before getting converted into customers. 

For example, suppose you are using an ebook on the website to generate more leads. The lead generation process can follow the below sequence: 

In the above image, the first activity - entering an email address to download the ebook and the final activity - sends emails to the user to nurture from a sequence with several other activities. 

Engage leads with videos 

A recent HubSpot research has shown that 54% of users prefer videos over other types of content like emails, blogs, and downloadable resources. A short and informative video can engage potential buyers without pushing them to purchase from your brand. A video builds the users' interest and increases their urge to know more about your products and services. 

Sales teams can use and repurpose videos in various ways. Incorporating videos in email outreach campaigns, social media outreach messages, and selling pitches can derive massive results. Many B2B businesses are using animated videos and explainers to explain a product and its features. 

Social proof videos are also getting momentum in B2B sales. These videos show customer stories, testimonials, and results to help the sales process. Reps can use these videos at any sales funnel stage to influence the B2B sales process. 

A TOFU strategy never goes wrong!

Some of the proven TOFU strategies for B2B sales reps include: 

Automate your sales outreach process 

Did you know that sales professionals spend only 36% of their time on what they are supposed to do? Is that selling? The rest of their time is spent on manual and administrative activities. If you think closely, this is a huge waste of their time and a loss of opportunities for businesses. 

A great strategy to address this is by automating sales outreach activities. Some of the easiest ways to do that are: 

• Creating automated email sequences 
• Using VOIP to automate sales outreach process 
• Using social media scheduling tools to automate publishing posts
• Creating automated sales playbook to train the new sales reps joining your team 
• Automate sales pipeline analytics process to identify leads and their level of intent 

All these selling automation strategies can help sales teams enhance their productivity as they invest their valuable time in more meaningful activities like research, sales outreach strategy building, and execution. 

Always follow-up 

B2B sales reps are occupied with several responsibilities and sometimes unintentionally miss out on sales conversations. A personalized follow-up sales outreach message can help the sales reps to re-engage these prospects. 

Here’s a follow-up template for sales outreach that B2B selling professionals can use: 

Send personalized outreach emails 

Well, these emails are personalized for each prospect, making them attention-grabbing. Here are a few tips for writing personalized outreach emails: 

• Write compelling subject lines to create a long-lasting first impression 
• Write a concise email that doesn’t bite around the bush and delivers the core messaging straightaway 
• Add a relevant CTA that directs the users to the appropriate webpage 
• Add a professional signature with social media links so that the prospects know where to reach you 

Here is a personalized email from HubSpot: 

Here’s why this email stands out: 

• Addressing the user with the first name 
• Explaining the purpose of the email straight away 
• Appropriate CTA to download the ebook 
• A professional signature to authenticate the sender 

Build a Steller B2B Sales Outreach Strategy with Salesken 

Developing a sales outreach strategy from scratch is difficult. Sales reps need an advanced, real-time sales platform to help them in this process. 

A great sales platform that can help businesses in this process is - Salesken. It can accelerate the selling process through: 

• Real-time cueing 
• Automated call summaries 
• In-depth and actionable post-call analytics 
• Exceptional performance intelligence 

To know more, start your free demo!