Outbounding Is Not A Crime
Outbounding. This is the term we think people should start using to describe a formal Telequalification process. Here’s how we define it at a high level.
OutBounding
verb
1. to communicate personally and proactively with a sales prospect via email or phone with the goal of determining their level of interest in your product or service:
It’s not a dirty word. Outbounding is a well kept secret. Hardcore sales people will tell you that you can build and maintain your business and hit quota with nothing but Cold Calling. The Inbound Mafia will tell you that you don’t need to pick up a phone until the contract is ready to be signed. In truth, they are both wrong. For all intents and purposes Cold Calling is dead, and your Inbound will amount to nothing if you don’t have a team in place to Outbound it.
Outbounding was born from the conflict between the aforementioned schools of thought. It is a natural phenomenon for there to be a “middle ground” created between two such polarizing viewpoints. While Hardcore sellers were keeping it cold and Inbounders were banning phones in their offices, the rest of us saw an opportunity. An opportunity to build a new skill set that respects and maintains all the competencies needed to be an epic cold caller while leveraging the staggering capacity of Inbound to feed the top of your funnel. Outbounding was born.
What does it mean to you to NOT have an Outbounding strategy and team in place? Well, let’s look at the numbers. Sirius Decisions* recently found that MQL’s (Marketing Qualified Leads From Inbound) passed directly to sales have a 22% less chance of becoming Sales Accepted Leads (SAL’s). Sirius took it a step further and found that those MQL’s that were passed to Sales with no Outbounding will close 43% less frequently than those that receive some level of Outbounding. That is a staggering statistic in that it’s almost 50% and so readily addressed through a basic and sound Outbounding strategy.
Companies can’t ignore this fact anymore. Drop the partisan rhetoric and get on board. It’s way more fun to close more business. Get your Outbounding going now.
*Sourced from SiriusDecision's SiriusIndex(TM) 2012-2013.