How to scale your outbound sales

Focus on your sweet spot, not the margins

In the previous issue of The Revenue Architect, we looked at what to do before expanding your sales team. This week we look more specifically at the strategy and preparation for adding/scaling an outbound sales motion in a business that has an existing inbound sales motion.

Before we get into the best practices, let’s talk about what not to do.

• Do not extrapolate your inbound results into your outbound goals.

• Do not assume your inbound processes will work for outbound.

Inbound and outbound are fundamentally different because inbound and outbound prospects are at different stages of their buying journey with you—outbound prospects are earlier in that journey, inbounds are later.

This means you have to put more effort into engaging with and demonstrating credibility to outbound prospects in order to get them interested in buying your product. This in turn leads to longer sales cycles and lower win rates, which increase your cost of customer acquisition and make it harder for you to justify your outbound investments.

Scaling outbound essentially comes to 3 principles:

1. Focus on the sweet spot of your target market, not the margins.

2. Refine your ICP, insights and messaging. Make it customer-centric.

3. Standardize your process and measurement. Nail the basics.

Let’s look at each one in turn:

1. Focus on the sweet spot of your target market, not the margins.

Your outbound efforts are more likely to succeed if they are focused on a market segment where you already have consistent inbound success—your sweet spot, because buyers in your sweet spot are more likely to: