What is Cold Outbound?

Cold outbound is when a sales person reaches out to a potential customer who has had no prior contact with their business. It can involve cold calling, where the initial contact is made over the phone, cold email, where it is made by email, or social selling where it’s over social media.

The strategic importance of cold outbound lies in its ability to create new opportunities and expand your market reach. By targeting specific prospects who may not be aware of your product or service, cold outbound efforts can generate leads that might otherwise remain untapped. Yes, it’s difficult. Yes, it can be unpopular. Yes, it can be difficult to learn and perfect. But when executed properly, cold outbound can become a significant contribution to pipeline growth and revenue generation.

Understanding Cold Outbound

Cold Calling: The Direct Approach

Cold calling involves contacting potential customers via phone without any prior interaction. It’s a direct and often challenging method, requiring persistence and resilience.

Cold calling involves a lot of rejection. What’s that saying about there being a thousand no’s for every yes? Well cold calling is a little like that, although, granted, with less than 1,000 no’s. But a lot of people will tell you they’re not interested. A lot will just hang up. And it takes a long time to build a script that doesn’t sound scripted and keeps your prospects on the phone for enough time to discover their main pain points.

Cold Emailing: Reaching Prospects at Scale

Cold emailing allows sales teams to reach a larger audience in less time. Crafting emails that get opened and read requires personalization, a strong subject line, and concise, value-driven content.

B2B contacts will likely receive more cold emails than cold calls and it’s also easier to ignore an email. It makes the cold-emailing space very competitive and small changes can result in big differences to your results. The best cold emails use a mixture of automation and human-touch to send the right message to the right contact at the right time.

Social Media Outreach: Engaging in the Digital Space

Social media platforms, particularly LinkedIn, offer a rich environment for cold outreach. We call it social selling – building relationships with contacts by slowly interacting with them on social media over time. It can start with liking a couple of their posts and then a connection request. Then move onto commenting on their content and sending them a direct message. It’s important to make this relationship seem natural and to not ruin it by dropping into their DMs with an immediate request for a meeting.

How to Enhance a Cold Outbound Strategy

Integrating CRMs for Seamless Outreach

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are essential for managing and optimizing cold outbound efforts. A well-integrated CRM can track interactions, manage contact information, and streamline the outreach process, even when it’s across many channels. Surfe, for example, enhances CRM integration by allowing seamless data synchronization between LinkedIn and your CRM. This ensures that all prospect interactions are logged and accessible, making it easier to track progress and follow up effectively.

Surfe simplifies CRM management by automating data entry and enrichment. When a LinkedIn contact is added to the CRM, Surfe captures essential details like name, position, company, and professional email address. This automation reduces manual work, minimizes errors, and keeps your CRM data up-to-date, enabling your sales team to focus on building relationships and closing deals. So if your main cold outbound channel is by email, you can depend on a CRM that’s full of accurate email addresses because Surfe gained them for you.

Automating Outreach Efforts

Automation tools can significantly enhance the efficiency of cold outbound campaigns. Sales automation platforms can schedule emails, track opens and responses, and follow up automatically based on predefined triggers. These tools not only save time but also ensure consistency in outreach efforts.

For instance, you can use tools like Salesloft or Outreach to send emails when a specific condition or criteria is met. Did a lead meet your marketing lead-scoring threshold? Did they attend a webinar you hosted? Salesloft or Outreach can help you make sure that the right message is sent at the right time.

Enriching Your Contact Data

Accurate and comprehensive contact data is vital for successful cold outbound campaigns. I mean… how are you supposed to email or call them if you don’t have their email address or phone number? Data enrichment tools enhance your contact list by providing additional information such as professional email addresses, phone numbers, and social media profiles. You put their name, job title, and company in, you get their email address and phone number back.

Surfe’s email finder uses a waterfall enrichment cascade, searching multiple databases sequentially to improve find rates when you make a search for contact details. It then validates email addresses through ZeroBounce to ensure your outreach lands in the right inbox, which is crucial when you’re sending a lot of cold outreach.

Building an Effective Cold Outbound Campaign

Identifying and Targeting the Right Audience

The success of a cold outbound campaign largely depends on targeting the right audience. Defining your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and Buyer Personas helps in identifying prospects who are most likely to benefit from your product or service. If you can better target your cold outbound, then your success rate will be higher and you’ll be able to improve more and more over time.

Personalization is still important

Personalization is key to making each interaction meaningful. No, we don’t mean starting your emails with “Hi {first_name}”. What we mean, is that every contact you email or call is unique. It’s going to drastically improve your chances if you address that by identifying a contact’s potential pain points or unique professional situation as best as you can and using those insights in your outbound.

Crafting Compelling Messages

Effective communication is at the heart of successful cold outbound efforts. Crafting compelling messages involves creating a strong opening, clearly stating the value proposition, and including a call-to-action that prompts the prospect to take the next step. Have the marketing team read through your copy. Have the CS team read through it. Hell, even ask your friends and family! Once you’ve sent a bunch of emails, make a few changes to the messaging and see if response rates go up.

Measuring and Optimizing Cold Outbound Efforts

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to Track

Tracking the right KPIs is essential for evaluating the success of cold outbound campaigns. Common KPIs include response rates, conversion rates, and the number of qualified leads generated. Monitoring these metrics provides insights into what is working and where improvements are needed.

Analyzing and Adjusting Strategies

Regularly analyzing campaign performance allows for data-driven adjustments to improve outcomes. This might involve tweaking messaging, adjusting targeting criteria, or experimenting with different outreach methods. Using data to refine your approach ensures continuous improvement and higher success rates.

Overcoming Common Challenges

Handling Rejection and Objections

Rejection is an inevitable part of cold outbound efforts. The sooner you accept that, the sooner it will stop being a problem. Remain resilient by learning from each interaction and refining your approach based on feedback. Understanding common objections and preparing thoughtful responses can also improve your chances of turning a “no” into a “yes.” Write down every rejection you get. The contact has no budget? Well your product or service pays for itself in savings, right? They don’t have enough time? Well, that’s the problem your service is solving, right? Every possible thing that contact could say to get you off the phone, make sure you have a response. Over time, you’ll be handling those rejections in your sleep.

Ensuring Compliance

Navigating legal and ethical considerations is crucial in cold outbound campaigns. Compliance with regulations such as GDPR ensures that your outreach efforts are above board and respectful of prospects’ privacy. Using tools that offer compliance features, like Surfe, can help manage consent and ensure that your practices align with legal requirements. It’s important to always give email recipients a chance to unsubscribe for example.

Let’s Wrap It Up!

Cold outbound is undeniably challenging, but when executed effectively, it can unlock new opportunities and significantly contribute to your sales pipeline. By understanding the essentials of cold calling, cold emailing, and social media outreach, you can tailor your approach to each channel and maximize your impact.

If you want to learn more about cold outbound, we have more articles that can help:

• How to warm up cold outreach
• 5 ways to increase outbound lead generation
• 10 sales automation processes for B2B outbound

Cold Outbound FAQs

What is the success rate of cold outbound compared to other sales strategies?

Success rates for cold outbound can vary widely depending on industry, target audience, and execution. While often lower than inbound strategies due to the lack of prior relationship or interest, a well-executed cold outbound strategy can still yield significant results. Success is often measured through response rates, conversion rates, and the number of qualified leads generated. Even better, it’s entirely in your control to improve those success rates – A/B test your messaging or cold-email script, better target your prospects, use better personalization – see what works and improve over time.

How can I improve my cold calling technique to get better results?

Improving cold calling involves a few things you won’t be able to avoid:

• Preparation: Research your prospects thoroughly before making the call – if you don’t they’ll be able to tell.
• Script Development: Develop a flexible script that allows for natural conversation – trust us, you’ll need one. Obsess over improving it.
• Listening: Focus on listening more than talking to understand the prospect’s needs. This can also be a clever trick to keeping them on the phone.
• Handling Rejection: Be prepared for rejection and have strategies in place to handle it gracefully. Take notes. Be ready.

What tools can help automate and streamline my cold email campaigns?

Tools like Salesloft, Outreach, and Surfe can automate and streamline your cold email campaigns. Salesloft and Outreach can schedule emails, track opens and responses, and automate follow-ups based on specific triggers, while Surfe handles enrichment, ensuring that you’re always sending the right message to the right contact at the right time.

What’s the best way to create a compelling cold email subject line?

A compelling subject line is crucial for cold email success. Make sure to tackle:

• Personalization: Specific to their pain-point – what conditions and criteria have they met? What do you know about them that they may not expect you to? Their favorite pizza topping? Favorite movie? Something they mentioned in a LinkedIn post 2 months ago? Mention it in your outreach!
• Curiosity: Pique curiosity without being vague.
• Relevance: Highlight a benefit or pain point relevant to the recipient.
• Brevity: Keep it short and to the point.
• Actionable Words: Use action-oriented words to encourage engagement. Who doesn’t love a verb?