There are nine easy steps to successfully building an outbound SDR process, as we outline below.
1. Conduct Market & Prospect Research
You need to have a good, clear grasp of what it is your product or service solves, and what market it works in.
Take SalesPipe, for example.
We know we offer outsourced SDRs for SaaS startup companies, as these companies often experiment with new technologies or products, or need to grow fast with a limited budget.
We exist in a very specific market and solve a very specific problem, as wide-reaching and versatile as our SDRs are.
It works because we
know the pains the companies we partner with face, and we know exactly how to solve them.
You need to have the same understanding of your market's pains, and how your product or service solves them.
2. Determine Your ICP
Based on the above research, you can now build your
ideal customer profile or ICP.
Key qualities to include will include their job title, the scope of their role, their industry, location, the size of their company, and how long the company has existed. You can even segment them by the type of software they are currently using or how much funding they have received.
It is with the ICPs that SDRs are able to then start building their prospect lists for contacting – it is their north star of the ideal prospect to look for.
3. Pick Your Tools As we saw, having the right tools can make or break your outbound SDR team and process.
Select the tools you believe your team will need and benefit from, but keep in mind that this may change as the process develops.
Key tools to have are LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a CRM, and an email outreach tool.
4. Create Templates and Scripts Based on your knowledge of your prospects and their markets, you want to help your SDRs get started by having email and message templates and call scripts ready.
Especially as they're starting out, it serves to guide your SDRs into how they should approach prospects.
You don't want to be too rigid with these in the future, however, as it may limit the team's approach.
Or you may want to consider looking into
an outsourced SDR to test out different templates – we can help you with that here at SalesPipe ;)
5. Create Additional Content It's always a good idea to have additional backing content ready for your SDR to reference should the need arise.
Anything from case studies to landing pages or blog posts, or even flyers or statistics that they can quickly share with a prospect can make a huge difference when it comes to getting that meeting.
6. Begin Prospecting Have your team or yourself begin prospecting with the above material. The idea is to try things out at this stage of the process to see what happens.
Apply your logic as it stands to see how it plays out.
7. Evaluate Your Tools Based on your experience prospecting, it's a good time to evaluate the tools you have selected to work with.
Are they all proving useful? Is there something you are missing?
These are the questions that you need to ask yourself, and your team, in this step.
8. Receive, Analyze, and Apply Feedback Having begun prospecting, you will also start receiving feedback from both your SDRs and your prospects.
Perhaps your messaging is not working, so it is necessary to tweak it.
Perhaps your team has found that LinkedIn InMails are particularly fruitful, but email has proved a tougher nut to crack.
Perhaps there's a tool no one has been able to find a use for.
Take all of this feedback and apply it to the different parts of your process where it is relevant. As you grow, you will continue to do so, but maintaining the core parts will make these changes easy.
9. Document Everything
Make sure you keep notes of absolutely everything.
Negative or positive feedback from prospects, SDR opinions on tools, SDRs noting what works well or what doesn't, information about changes in the market or their company you may receive from prospects.
It is by documenting everything that you will be able to then make the necessary changes.