Why Outbound Fails

The following is an excerpt from The Predictable Revenue Guide To Tripling Your Sales:

don’t become road kill on the road to building a killer outbound team

i’m writing this from the Wicked Spoon restaurant in the Cosmopolitan Hotel in Las Vegas (and yes, i have some coffee at hand – it’s decent.)

i’m feeling a weird mix of crappy and excited. crappy because while a ton of people loved my talk at this EO conference yesterday, a workshop i gave later didn’t go so well.

but i’m also excited because that touch of failure gave me some new ideas in putting together a new workshop for today… one called “Predictable Revenue for Professional Services.”

but this note here isn’t about that – it’s about failure, which whether in business or in life marriage feels horrible in the moment…even if you know (or hope) it’ll lead to better things later.

well, like starting a business or getting married or having kids or drinking coffee – outbound prospecting can be amazing for some businesses, but it isn’t for everyone.

here are a few reasons not to make outbound prospecting a priority, or to be very careful or adaptable in how you use it for your business:
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It’s not a real management priority: Management hires an intern to dabble, then forgets about it, or are just too busy to give it time. Or they won’t pay for even some basic data or apps you need. (Funny how companies will spend $5000 a month on paying someone, but not $50 a month on an app that person needs.)

Unrealistic expectations: “Hey guys, it’s been 30 days – where are our closed deals?” It takes 4-6 months to go from scratch to consistent pipeline generation – and longer for revenue. though you should see signs of progress (like appointments) week by week.

The CEO believes all prospecting needs to be done only by salespeople, & doesn’t believe in dedicated prospectors.

You’re in a commoditized or saturated market, and everyone you call on already has something in place that’s “good enough.” where it’s not only hard to break out of the noise, but you don’t have anything really very new or compelling compared to everyone else to offer – at least in the eyes of clients.

You don’t have any way to sell deals bigger than $10k – $20k+ (lifetime value).

You’re a professional services company that has NOT developed a niche-based offering that is easy for prospects to understand & differentiated or uniquely interesting. Usually the place to begin with professional services is a much more narrower niche…