If you’re an agency owner and you’ve been around for more than a few years, you’ve probably had at least one frustrating experience trying to make outbound prospecting work.
Maybe you tried to build an outbound program internally, and it fizzled out when you got busy, or maybe you hired a company to blast out emails and automated LinkedIn connections, and after six months, they produced zilch (or worse, time-wasting meetings).
Perhaps you’ve avoided outbound altogether after getting bogged down by spam, since you don’t want to be part of the problem.
It’s no surprise that so many agencies fail at outbound – the lead generation industry at best sets the wrong expectations and at worst flat out lies, which dooms most outbound efforts to failure.
But here’s the thing – if you’re looking to build a reliable business development system, and break out past unpredictable referrals at your agency, sooner or later, outreach must be one of the legs that holds up your business development table.
At Sales Schema, we’ve used targeted email outreach to generate thousands of prospect relationships for agency clients since 2014, including among C-suite decision-makers in the world’s biggest companies. Our wins aside, the entire B2B sales world functions by proactively contacting prospects, including many organizations selling expensive and complex offerings.
Reasons to implement outreach:
- Control. Instead of waiting around for ideal prospects to find you, you will build relationships with them before competitors do.
- The inbox is where we go to make plans and do business. 77% of B2B buyers prefer communication via emails, which is more than double compared to any other channel (source: SoPro).
- If your market is small, being proactive is a must. For ‘upmarket’ agency services, total addressable markets are relatively small, so there is often a low likelihood that prospects will find you through advertising or content alone. Plus you can actually get to know just about everyone.
- Hedge against platform risk. Since outreach, including email, phone, and direct mail, are channels no one owns, they act as an important hedge against platform risk on networks like LinkedIn, Google, and Facebook. There are far too many business downfall stories involving algorithm and policy changes, and it’s hubris to assume that platform risk will never affect you.
- Manageable for small teams. While outreach requires work and attention, it’s far more manageable for boutique agency sales teams, often comprised of 1-3 people, compared to other resource-intensive approaches like content, trade shows, or speaking engagements.
Instead of running toward a single short-lived tactic or software product, you will be much more likely to make outreach successful by starting with the right expectations and understanding.
With that in mind, here are six simple reframes to help you build a profitable outreach program:
Reframe 1: Leads —> Relationships
While outbound will certainly produce “leads” and immediate opportunities, at the beginning, they are the exception, not the norm. If you’re selling an upmarket offer, the goal is building relationships and nurturing them until your prospect is ready. If you keep that frame, you’ll have an easier time with the next one…
Reframe 2: Short-term cash grab —> Long-term practice
Many salespeople are sold into doing outbound as a method for scraping up a few leads and deals in a short amount of time, which sets them up for failure when the going gets tough, and most quit in the dip.
If you’re used to inbound referrals for new business, the rub is that outreach moves at a different pace, and you will see your ACTUAL, full-length sales cycle for the first time.
The good news, per above, is that you’re in control, it scales, and you will build the prospect relationship before your competitors do. In our experience, 80% of outbound’s ROI comes from re-engaging prospects, and having follow-up calls, weeks or months after the first intro meeting.
Reframe 3: Buy right now —> De-risk conversation
Most sales copy either explicitly or implicitly asks prospects to buy. When it comes to a five-to-seven figure engagement, that’s a ridiculous thing to ask from a first touchpoint.
Our most successful campaigns focus on simply de-risking conversations and offering value. This means that you get to contact your limited market while being tasteful and protecting your reputation.
Reframe 4: Blackbox —> Learning platform
Since data and software products are often sold as a quick and automated solution, many salespeople miss out on a huge opportunity to learn about their markets and develop a powerful edge.
Outreach lets our clients deeply understand their prospects by mapping out all of the exact companies and decision-makers they have the ability to do business with. This list building process is many times more enlightening and clarifying than reading articles about various industries. From there, once prospect meetings happen, our clients use outreach to gather continuous feedback and market intelligence so they can make big decisions about content, events, and other marketing initiatives.
Reframe 5: Cold —> Commonality-driven
Most salespeople, with the goal of automating and scaling from the jump, choose to run cold outreach campaigns to thousands of people. Since most markets are skeptical, and the message is unpersonalized and sales-y, this approach sends them right into the spam box, without passing go or collecting $200. We give our clients the right process for identifying prospects who are already likely to trust them based on business and personal commonalities.
Reframe 6: Lone wolf —> Division of duties
Many organizations prioritize answering questions about the “what”, and with outbound that usually means jumping the gun on a data or software product, or a quick fix tactic. From there, one ‘lone wolf’ owner or salesperson gets saddled with the whole process, which is unsustainable, just like it would be in your client fulfillment process. In our experience, success from outreach requires a division of duties, even if one person wears multiple hats.
Summary
Accurate expectations and reframes are almost always a better foundation for completing complex projects, and outbound is no exception. Hopefully, these reframes were useful if you’re considering building an outreach program at your agency.
By focusing on building relationships instead of just generating leads, using outbound to learn about your market, leveraging trust and commonalities, and dividing up duties, you can build a program that’s profitable and sustainable.
P.S. If you’ve read this far, you might be wondering:
- What does the right team structure look like for implementing outreach?
- What’s the right tech stack and process for sourcing data and lists?
- What are some commonalities you can use to open doors with skeptical prospects?
- What KPIs should you aim for?
Our new video training answers all of these questions and more, and if you’d like to get it, reply “YES” in the comments, and I’ll DM you a link.
