Tag Archive for: sales

15 B2B Outbound Sales Tactics to Accelerate Growth

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The Winmo team understands that B2B outbound sales tactics are a powerful way to drive business growth. We’ve drafted up a handy list of approaches to incorporate this strategy in 2023. Keep reading to explore the key tactics… And, bonus! We’ve also created custom email templates to help your sales team effectively communicate with prospects and clients.

Download Email Templates 

1)  Identify your target audience

First, have a clear understanding of who your target audience is. Then, tailor your messaging and sales approach to the specific needs and pain points of your potential customers.

2)  Build a targeted prospect list

The next step is to build a list of potential customers to target. This can be done through a variety of methods, such as leveraging a tool like Winmo to build a list of prospects who match criteria such as:

  • Company size
  • Ad investment
  • Demographic Focus
  • Vertical
  • Territory

3)  Develop a strong value proposition

This is the unique benefit or value that your product or service offers your customers. It’s important to clearly communicate this value proposition in your outbound sales efforts, too. This differentiates you from your competitors and convinces potential customers to choose your company.

4)  Create a personalized outreach strategy

Rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, create a personalized outreach strategy for each potential customer. First, customize your messaging and sales pitch to address each prospect. Then, to aid you in your outreach efforts, our team has put together some email templates to help guide you along.

5)  Utilize a multi-channel approach

Don’t rely on just one method of communication when reaching out to potential customers. Instead, consider using a combination of email, phone calls, and social media to make a connection and close a sale.

6)  Follow up consistently

As you know, most customers aren’t ready to make a purchase decision right away. Follow up at regular intervals, so you can stay top of mind and increase the chances of eventually making a sale.

7)  Leverage customer testimonials and social proof

Customer testimonials and social proof, such as case studies or customer reviews, can be powerful tools in your outbound sales efforts.

8)  Use data to inform your sales approach

By using data and analytics, you can gain valuable insights into the effectiveness of your outbound sales efforts and make data-driven decisions about how to optimize your strategy.

9)  Stay up-to-date on industry trends and best practices

To stay competitive in the B2B space, it’s important to continuously educate yourself on industry trends and best practices. This can help you stay ahead of the curve and position your company as a thought leader in your industry.

10)  Utilize automation and sales technology

There are a variety of tools and technologies available that can help streamline and optimize your outbound sales efforts. From automated email campaigns to CRM systems, these tools can help you save time and increase efficiency in your sales process.

11)  Use personalized messaging

In today’s market, customers expect personalized and relevant messaging. By taking the time to research each potential customer and tailor your messaging to their specific needs and pain points, you can increase the chances of making a connection and ultimately closing a sale.

12)  Use social media to connect with potential customers

Social media platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter can be great tools for reaching out to potential customers and building relationships with them. By regularly posting valuable content and engaging with your audience, you can establish yourself as a thought leader in your industry and position your company as a go-to resource for potential customers.

13)  Utilize video to enhance your outreach efforts

Video can be a powerful tool for connecting with potential customers and bringing your value proposition to life. Consider using personalized video emails or video sales pitches.

14)  Invest in employee training and development

Your sales team is the face of your company. It’s important to ensure that they are equipped with the skills and knowledge to effectively execute your outbound sales strategy. Investing in employee training and development can help ensure that your team is up-to-date on industry trends and best practices. Additionally, they’ll learn to effectively communicate the value of your products and services.

15)  Offer unparalleled customer service

Finally, excellent customer service is important not just for retaining current customers, but also for attracting new ones. By ensuring that your team is responsive and helpful, you can build trust with potential customers and increase the chances of closing a sale.

Obviously, what we’ve laid out above may not be one-size-fits-all solutions. You may have to do a little extra work by analyzing exactly which of the methods and tactics best suit your business development goals. Nonetheless, we’re confident that by handpicking these strategies á la carte. And continually evaluating and optimizing your outbound sales strategy, you can drive growth for your business in 2023 and beyond.

Download Email Templates 

If you liked this blog post, check out:

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Introducing WinmoStream, a new tool to build your sales pipline

Introducing the WinmoStream API

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Introducing WinmoStream

Winmo, the #1 sales intelligence tool for the marketing and advertising industry, is giving its customers even more flexibility to utilize its sales intelligence and provide personnel and representatives with relevant information when they need it.  Winmo is accomplishing this through the WinmoStream API. “Logging into Winmo for exclusive sales leads is an essential part of our customer’s daily routine. To make accessing and distributing Winmo’s daily sales leads even easier, WinmoStream will help sales operations and CRM managers easily distribute leads, set up alerts, and realize all the benefits of Winmo within their native CRM environments,” said Dave Currie, CEO of Winmo and its parent company List Partners, LLC.

Streamline the Sales Process (and BYO-CRM!)

Simply put, the WinmoStream API affords Winmo customers the ability to streamline accessing Winmo data and create more actionable leads for accelerated pipeline velocity. 

Transporting contact data typically involves utilizing a CRM as a destination for the data to easily organize/manage it, and WinmoStream is CRM-agnostic and Winmo will not make customers choose a specific CRM to integrate with. The WinmoStream API also allows for sales teams to automate data updates via Winmo on a daily, weekly, or designated interval basis. Additionally, you can set up automatic data pulls and automated alerts in your sales workspace about relevant prospects and categories.

Why Would I Need an API?

Integrating a CRM with Winmo is incredibly useful to sales reps and the business at large, as it improves upon and expands the ecosystem of data that a sales department uses every day. The business benefits are massive:

  • Set up timely, automated updates + alerts in your sales workspace about the prospects and categories you care about, and create a unified front for your sales/partnerships team to get your foot in the door before competitors
  • Winmo data will be centrally located and easily accessible, no need to login to Winmo to source contact information
  • Salespeople who are ingesting data typically export a CSV file and then set up an import into their CRM, and then need to rinse and repeat every time they want fresh or different data. WinmoStream removes the need for these steps
  • Save hundreds of hours with a streamlined and improved process for anyone who is pulling data from Winmo

Interested in expanding the ecosystem of data that a Sales team uses every day? Learn more about the API and request access to this new feature here: winmo.com/winmostream-api

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The 5 Top Sales Podcasts to Up Your Game During Quarantine

The 5 Top Sales Podcasts to Up Your Game During Quarantine

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Lately, I’ve found myself with tons of extra time during quarantine. I’ve already binged watched Tiger King, completely overhauled my workout routine, and re-organized my closet. So naturally, I’m finding ways to stay productive, including binging sales podcasts on my runs and while cleaning the house.

Request a Winmo trial today

If you’re looking to up your game during this time at home, here are a few of my recommendations for sales podcasts:

1)  The B2B Revenue Executive Experience 

Ratings: 5/5 stars with over 92 reviews on Apple Podcasts

What people are saying: Great podcast if you’re looking to up your game and learn from guests with proven sales success along with the host, Chad Sanderson. – Apple Podcasts review

Length of episodes: 20-45 minutes

Why you should listen: The B2B Revenue Executive Experience is the podcast geared toward helping executives train their sales teams better and optimize growth. It’s known to provide truly deep wisdom with immediate, actionable insights – every week. Even if you’re an individual contributor, you’ll walk away with nuggets to take back to your team.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Website

2)  B2B Sales Show 

Ratings: 4.5/5 stars with over 23 reviews on Apple Podcasts

What people are saying: Indeed this is fresh and real. Love the content and the fact the discussions are real world. I’m a new subscriber but hooked and loyal starting today. – Apple Podcasts review

Length of episodes: 15-30 minutes

Why you should listen: Every episode you listen to an inspiring B2B sales thought leader, executive, or individual contributor discuss everything in B2B sales. The show helps pros navigate the sales process and engage their target accounts to become a more effective seller.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Website

3)  Sales Gravy 

Ratings: 4.5/5 stars with over 359 reviews on Apple Podcasts

What people are saying: Short, simple, and to the point! Really enjoyed the episode about prospecting and caring for the customer during Coronavirus chaos. Very informative, good reminders, and a great way to approach these times as a sales representative. – Apple Podcasts review

Length of episodes: 5-45 minutes

Why you should listen: Host Jeb Blount is the best-selling author of People Buy You, which is a great book to get you back to the truest of sales fundamentals: Success is equal to your ability to solve the problems of the customer. He teaches you how to open more doors, close bigger deals, and rock your commission check.

BONUS: Jeb posts a daily sales briefings every day to keep listeners motivated and focused.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Website

4)  Conversations with Women in Sales 

Ratings: 4.9/5 stars with over 39 reviews on Apple Podcasts

What people are saying: Fantastic insights you’re not getting anywhere else. For many years, Barb has been a force for advancing sales and the next generation of sales skills sellers need to master (Social Selling!). In this podcast, she handpicks women sales leaders that have tremendous insights into their industry and unique perspectives that will challenge your view of selling. I walk away with serious notes and plenty of ‘do this NOW’ advice to put into my sales practice. – Apple Podcasts review

Length of episodes: 25 minutes

Why you should listen: Women in Sales is dedicated to becoming the best resource in the world for female sales professionals. Every episode features a woman in sales that are doing incredible work and each guest will share practical advice for advancing your sales career.

Each episode features topics like leadership, career management, social selling, overcoming adversity, sales and marketing alignment, B2B sales, strategic partnerships, buyer personas, account-based selling, content creation and promotion, social media, and more.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Website

5)  The Science of Success

Ratings: 4.7/5 stars with over 732 reviews on Apple Podcasts

What people are saying: Want to improve your A-game? Listen to this podcast! It gave me the proof this logical thinker needed to make big changes that worked! – Apple Podcasts Review

Length of episodes: 20-60 minutes

Why you should listen: As, the number one evidence-based growth podcast on the internet, The Science of Success, is about the search for evidence-based personal growth. It’s about exploring ways to improve your decision-making, understand your mind and how psychology rules the world around you, and learn from experts and thought leaders about ways we can become better versions of ourselves.

Understanding these foundational concepts and looking at the bigger picture on how you and others tick will only help you become a better seller.

Listen: Apple Podcasts | Website

If you liked this blog post, check out:

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  3. Check out our COVID-19 resources here.

Advantage You: How to Baseline Business Intelligence Tools

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Serving up leads and sales is easy with the right sales intelligence. Knowing what you want in a platform, however, can prove to be a bit more challenging (think trying to take down Serena Williams or Andy Murray: Not an easy task!). We thought we’d break it down a bit, giving you the top four tips for finding your must-have sales resource.

Human-verified data

While a machine can serve you tennis balls to help up your game, one thing technology can’t do accurately is verify data for prospecting. The people checking the data in your business intelligence solution should understand how you’re going to use the information to ensure the data they gather is up to date and useful. Some providers data-scrape websites or social media communities for contact information. But if there’s no verification by actual humans, then the contact information you get could be out of date, inaccurate, or just wrong. Like strawberries and sour cream, or cucumber sandwiches in principle.

Relationship mapping

The ideal business database contact platform needs to break down the who’s who for you in a way that’s accurate, valuable, and easy to understand. You shouldn’t have to guess which agency and marketing contact is working with which brand. Bigger corporations often have multiple marketing divisions, each dealing with individual brands. Sometimes getting the contact information for the CMO of Nissan UK will be less helpful than getting the contact information for the SVP of marketing for the Nissan Micra team. Unless you’re looking for a conversation that ends with “you cannot be serious,” let your sales intelligence platform serve up something you can smash.

Custom filters

Blindly swinging your racquet trying to hit the ball will almost always result in failure. Whether you’re looking for organizations to prospect or waiting to return service, focus and concentration will always get better results. Your sales intelligence platform should allow you to focus on the information you need and cancel out the noise. You don’t want to work with every High Street clothing retailer, so a function that helps you filter media spend or agency specialities allows you to identify your top prospects with one smooth hit. If you can’t narrow down your prospects in the platform, you’re going to end up spending time filtering them manually, and if you’re going to do that you might as well go ahead and make your Pimm’s with 7-Up.

Integrations

While your sales intelligence platform may be the main event, it’s no secret that your sales team uses a variety of resources to perform at their peak. The business database platform you choose should integrate with other information sources, such as LinkedIn to uncover potential connections, and provide CRM integration to help you import and develop leads and prospects. If you work with advertisers, or creative agencies that develop content, look for integrations that give you a firsthand view of potential agencies’ creative work through platforms like AdForum. When resources like Nielsen are connected as well, you can expect to have easy-to-find information on media spending by channel, giving you the advantage over your competition.

Request a trial and hit the ground running.

Your new resource is sure to be an ace!

Why Sales is a Marathon, Not a Sprint

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On Sunday morning, thousands of serious runners and fun runners will gather in Blackheath to begin the 37th London Marathon. Some will be dressed in running shorts and vests, others as superheroes or Teletubbies. On the surface, running and selling might not have very much in common, but as you explore the ways prospecting, sales and running are similar, it’s very clear that sales is definitely a marathon, not a sprint.

It’s about endurance and persistence

You’ve probably heard that it takes somewhere between 8 and 12 “touches” to get a prospect to understand what you offer and how it will benefit them. As a sales professional, you know that it makes sense to spread these points of contact out over a few weeks because the timing matters. If you called and emailed the same prospect every hour for a day there’s a good chance you’d ruin your chances of ever making the sale because that kind of behavior is irritating. But if you wait too long between contacts you might have to explain yourself from the beginning again to help them remember you.

It can take a while just to get to the starting line

As you watch the marathon on television this weekend you’ll notice that the fastest runners (usually professionals and Olympians) get to go first so they don’t have to fight their way through thousands of tubby amateurs in fancy dress. That means most participants have a slow trudge just to get to the start line. In sales, you might have a long stretch of fruitless outreach before you finally get your prospect on the phone, which is when the race really begins. If you allow yourself to lose focus just because you’re not “racing” yet, you won’t be ready when it counts.

It’s lonely

“The winning post was no end to it, even though crowds might be cheering you in, because on you had to go before you got your breath back, and the only time you stopped really was when you tripped over a tree trunk and broke your neck or fell into a disused well and stayed dead in the darkness forever.”

Well, that’s cheerful.

There’s a reason Alan Sillitoe called his book The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Runner and not The Fun Party Times of the Long-Distance Runner. When you’re on your own, putting one foot in front of the other for 26 grueling miles, not talking because it upsets the rhythm of your running breath, you’re alone in your head with your thoughts. Even the person running next to you is having a completely different experience, locked in their head, constantly running diagnostics on their tired muscles and bones.

If you’re successful in sales, you know that you have to keep going, because a dry spell might be waiting for you in the next week. You know that – even in a room full of sales people – you’re alone. Just you, your email, your phone and your call list. You’re doing the same activity as everyone else, but having a completely different experience.

Good or bad individual miles get evened out over the course

When you’re running a marathon you’ll sometimes have a fast mile or a slow mile, but with 25 more of them on the course, the difference one mile makes to your overall time is likely to be very small. In a sprint, ten bad metres can destroy your chances of winning.

It doesn’t matter what metrics and KPIs your sales activities get measured against, if you’re looking too closely at too short a time period, you might think you’re the best or worst salesperson that’s ever lived. And you’re probably neither. You can’t judge your entire year’s performance by a single good or bad day, and understanding that you might lose on the swings but win on the roundabouts can help you feel more level headed about your best and worst days.

Pace yourself

Everyone thrives on routine. You wake up, you put the kettle on and put bread in the toaster, you take the dog out, you come back in and make tea and toast. While you don’t have a timer running, you know how long your kettle takes to boil and how quickly your toast will pop up. So you know how long you can be with the dog before you’re walking back in to cold toast. Routine.

For sales professionals, it’s important to break routine. You might like to get into the office, send all your prospect-nurturing emails, then talk to Brian from accounting about football for 20 minutes before picking up the phone to make 50 calls before lunch. But…what if your prospects have meetings all morning? What if they don’t even get into the office until noon? How can you ever expect to reach them if you keep repeating a tactic that always fails?

In a marathon you’ll find yourself varying your pace, and the same should be true for your prospecting.

Is Your Sales Crew Pulling Together?

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On Sunday, Oxford and Cambridge students will gather at Putney Embankment to contest the 163rd Boat Race. The crews have to work together, synchronizing their sweep speeds, drive, and recovery, to power their team’s boat to Chiswick Bridge finish line, 6.8 km away. If you’re a sales team manager, you can probably relate to the focus and exertion required.

Making sure your sales team are all rowing in the same direction can be the difference between leaving your competitors in your wake or running aground. There are three key areas where managers can influence their team’s performance, and there are more nautical puns ahead, so let’s get to them…

All hands on deck!

Communicating your vision and expectations is one of the most important things you can do as a manager. If your team doesn’t know what you want from them, they can’t possibly deliver it consistently. Your expectations are informed by your department’s sales goals, which hopefully help the company meet revenue numbers. As those expectations trickle down to your team members, it’s imperative that you do a few things:

Take them on a fantastic voyage

Christopher Columbus somehow managed to persuade three boatloads of sailors to embark on a voyage that, by contemporary understanding, would sail them off the edge of the world to certain doom. Think on that for a moment when you’re wondering how you can motivate your team to make a few more calls every day.

If you can visualise a destination your team wants to go to, where untold riches await them (maybe actually untold riches if that’s how you structure their commission), and tell them that you know how to get there, they’ll go along with you. It’s about using every persuasive instinct you possess to paint a picture, more Frederick Milner than William Turner; about drawing a big X on a map and yelling “Seaward ho!”

Fathom out what the numbers mean

What measures are important?
Is it pipeline velocity? Calls per day? Closed deals per month? Allocation of time for sales activities? Lead response time? Win rate? Deal size? There are dozens of possible sales measures you can choose, and if you can’t tell your team which ones are important to you, any assumptions you harbor about them guessing right belong on the poop deck.

Take some time to understand what the instruments are telling you and make sure you know how to use them to navigate your crew to its destination. It can mean the difference between striking land in India or the Caribbean.

Who’s your best mate; who needs to walk the plank?

What is the review process and frequency for each sales person?
Douglas Adams, writer of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, once famously said “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.” People are motivated by different things. For some it’s stickers on a chart, for others it’s the squeaky bum time of a looming deadline.

Letting your team know what their review process is going to be, and how often they can look forward to accounting for their numbers, will allow them to manage their time in a way that makes sense to them and their methods. It’s “quay” to effective management. (Sorry.)

Land ho!

So you’ve made it. Your team all know what’s expected of them. They know what criteria they’re being judged against and how those benchmarks affect the company’s broader goals. They even know what the consequences are for them – and for the company – if they should fail; and the bounty that awaits them when you reach your destination.

Find a New World of prospecting with a free trial of Winmo.

Now…bring me that horizon…