10 Signs It’s Time To Hire An Outbound Sales Team⎪Predictable Revenue

If you’ve developed a novel solution, your potential customers won’t really be looking out for it. This will render inbound sales efforts largely ineffective, or at the very least extremely expensive. In this scenario, you will need to raise awareness about your new product. One of the most effective ways of doing this is by individually reaching out to the people who you’ve identified as most likely to be interested. This task is ideally suited to an outbound sales team.

If your solutions have long sales cycles, you will need to frequently follow up with prospects. Similarly, sales email sequences can facilitate follow-up emails. Nevertheless, if your sales cycle takes months or years to complete, there is a need to be more proactive in your sales approach and nurture the relationship. An outbound sales team works wonders in such circumstances.

When you go to events and network with attendees, do they respond positively to your products or services? There’s a simple way of assessing this. If people ask you questions along the lines of “what pricing schemes do you offer?” or “how quickly can you have this installed?” then you can reasonably assume that people are receptive to your offering.

In fact, these are the types of questions that indicate you’re on the brink of closing a deal. In these instances, an outbound sales team will help you to capitalize on such great opportunities.

If profit margins on your product sales are thin, it will be difficult to afford premium salespeople or adverts. Such circumstances aren’t conducive to successful outbound sales operations. However, if you have high profit margins, you will be better placed to attract elite talent. When a team of results-driven experts run your outbound sales operation, your business is in a much stronger position to amplify revenue and growth.

Some audiences are more receptive than others to cold calling and emailing. If your pool of potential clients is not averse to getting sales calls and emails, use an outbound team. Doing so also means you can conveniently guide prospects through the purchasing process, instead of making them work their way through the journey on their own accord. On the whole, this will generally be for more established companies rather than small business and start-ups.

Since outbound sales is a more proactive, targeted strategy, you can focus on the specific people you want to sell to. For example, if you want to contact software developers at Apple, or data scientists at Twitter, outbound is going to be the more efficacious approach.

Where inbound sales is very broad, more passive, and unlikely to reach an audience that specific, outbound sales will hit its mark without a problem.

If you’re a smaller business, you may find that the sales aspect is taking up too much of your schedule. If you’re a founder or CEO and currently handling all the sales for the organization, giving demos, or taking care of outreach could mean other areas in your organization take a hit. If this describes your company right now, it’s time to invest in an outbound sales team so you can devote more time to other business-critical areas. Not only do specialist outbound teams free up valuable time for you but they can also drive better results due to the more dedicated nature of the role.

It’s important to factor in the funnel math when deciding if you’re ready to hire an outbound sales team. Quite simply, you’ll need to factor in your average sales cycle and on average how many deals you’re currently able to close a month to determine how much revenue you can potentially generate per outbound sales development rep. 

 If your average deal size is over $10,000, outbound can be a profitable sales development function at your organization. 

There are many signs that indicate it’s time to invest in an outbound sales team. This more proactive approach is a great way to enhance targeted prospecting, raise more awareness of your product, and free up your time, among many other benefits. 

Just remember that even without these signs, you may not be fulfilling your true potential without any outbound efforts. Think about all the outcomes outbound sales teams can accomplish, and then consider how much your business would benefit from adding this strategy.