You know there are customers out there for the product or service –  But, how to find them?

A marketing team is great for attracting people to your business, but it is not ideal for going out and aggressively targeting new prospects. If your goal is to quickly generate pipeline and proactively reach out to new potential customers, an outbound lead generation team may be your best. These teams are designed to dive deep into your target market and connect with some of your most likely potential customers.

Outbound lead generation is a way to reach out to targets, educate them about your product, gauge their interest and, hopefully, turn them over to your sales team to convert into paying customers.

The success of the sales team relies heavily on a growing pipeline. Other factors matter, of course – how the team is managed, how valuable your service is and how skilled your sales representatives are – but without a healthy pipeline, you stand no chance of reaching your growth goals.

Probably, the query might be, “Why to invest in an outbound lead gen team instead of one of the alternatives?” Outbound lead gen teams require a significant upfront investment and do not always offer immediate results. However, many companies find that this investment is well worth it once they start seeing the fundamental benefits of an outbound prospecting team.

Essentially, the advantages of adding a prospecting team fall into three categories

1. Prospecting teams allow your company to add pipeline at a much faster pace than alternative methods such as inbound marketing or partnerships.
2. They help you efficiently explore new markets, experiment with new messaging techniques and gather a great deal of data about talk tracks, value propositions, and buyer personas.
3. They add more depth and versatility to your sales team by allowing you to outsource low-value work from your more expensive Inside Sales Representatives and providing you with a bench of your next sales representatives.

Once if we understand the benefits of outbound lead gen teams, we will agree that they are one of the most reliable ways to grow your pipeline and that they often have a very high ROI.

Before we consider building an outbound lead gen team, you must make sure you would actually benefit from one, especially if the company exhibits one or more of the following common signs.

• You want to grow sales but you don’t have enough opportunities in your pipeline.
• Your sales are complex and require extensive legwork from your sales representatives to navigate elaborate businesses or bypass numerous gatekeepers, which leaves them little time to do their own prospecting.
• You are trying to expand and you need more information about new markets.
• Your sales process needs recalibration and could benefit from more interactions with, and feedback from, a wide range of prospects.
• You want to experiment with market segments and new messaging.

Questions to Ask Before Building a Prospecting Team

• Who am I selling to?
• What do I want my prospecting team to accomplish?
• What is the Team’s Reporting Structure – in Marketing or in Sales?
• When do I need more sales?