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Outbounding

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Outbounding

Win New Customers with Outbound Sales and End Your Dependence on Inbound Leads

HarperCollins Leadership,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

For results-oriented prospecting, focus communication on your customer – not on you or your wares.

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Comprehensive
  • Applicable
  • Well Structured

Recommendation

Expert sales trainer William (Skip) Miller teaches B2B salespeople how to line up sales. First, Miller recommends, you need a thoughtful, well-developed outbounding strategy. Make sure your communications focus on your prospects – who they are, what they care about and what they need – and not on you, your offerings or your solutions. Miller explains how to plan and structure your messaging – emails, phone calls, sales conversations and social media content – to secure prospects’ attention and make them curious about your wares. B2B salespeople will welcome Miller’s results-oriented prospecting advice. 

Summary

Marketing for inbound sales no longer garners the results it once did. Outbounding – reaching out to prospects – suits today’s world.

In 2005, HubSpot CEO and co-founder Brian Halligan introduced inbounding, a sales approach which uses content marketing, social media marketing, search engine optimization and branding to attract consumers to your offerings and – in the process – to develop inbound leads salespeople can follow up. This follow-up represents 40% to 100% of the typical B2B company’s lead development activities. But inbound leads are drying up.

Outbounding – prospecting for leads and other proactive lead-generation activities – is the logical solution. Unfortunately, outbounding is not going smoothly for many B2B firms because:

  • Companies don’t train inbound salespeople to develop outbound leads.
  • Outbound salespeople rely too heavily on sales development representatives or business development representatives for their leads.
  • Most outbound salespeople don’t use formal outbound sales processes.
  • Most B2B ...

About the Author

William (Skip) Miller is founder and president of M3 Learning, a sales and sales management training company in Silicon Valley. Outbounding is his seventh book.

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    R. T. 4 years ago
    A nice read.

    According to this book, over the last 20 years we've gone full circle from emphasizing inbound over outbound, and then back to outbound again! I'm definitely not qualified to know whether this is true or not, but I'll take it as the author argues.

    And while essentially there’s nothing new in what he's saying it’s a worthwhile summary of outbound B2B sales nevertheless.