Getting to a prospect has never been easier. Digital tools allow any salesperson to create multi-channel sales sequences to target prospects. In addition, prospects have become very savvy and use the internet and their social networks to find solutions and evaluate potential vendors.
Times have changed, and a salesperson can no longer only successfully send a 5-6 email sequence to a prospect pitching their product. Now salespeople need to work closely with marketing to create value-added email sequences that will save prospects time in their research and will help prospects solve business problems. In addition, an email sequence is no longer as effective as a multi-channel sequence that uses social media, direct messages, social media engagements, chat, ads, and phone calls.
Also, a typical 5-6 email sequence is not as effective as an 18-20 multi-channel sequence packed with added value. In the past, a salesperson could pitch their product. Today, the salesperson has to build a relationship with the prospect and their decision-making team to get their interest. The more personalized the sales approach, the more trust the salesperson will have with the prospect and the greater chance of winning the deal.
If a company wants to build a multi-million dollar outbound sales funnel in today's environment. They will need to create highly personalized, value-added 18-20 multi-channel sequences that can scale.
Building A Scalable Multi-Million Dollar Sales Funnel
A typical salesperson is limited in the amount of time finding a prospect, crafting a message, social selling, and calling. Consequently, companies have specialized their sales team into functions that help schedule appointments(BDR or SDR) and close deals. Appointment setters need to focus on scale, and usually, there are one to three appointment setters for each salesperson. Scaling a team of appointment setters and salespeople is the most common way for a B2B company to create a multi-million dollar sales funnel.
In the United States, if a company wants to scale an appointment setter and sales closer team, they will need to invest a significant amount of money in adding additional appointment setters ($50k - $70k) and sales closers ($100k+). The company hopes to get incremental sales with each sales team member through a broader outreach and more deals. However, each salesperson is limited to fewer outreach emails, social engagement, and phone calls with a longer email sequence. Tools such as Outreach.io, Yesware, Reply.io, Salesloft, and other similar tools help salespeople become more efficient. However, there still is a significant investment cost in people to grow your funnel to millions of dollars.
A Better Model For Creating A Multi-Million Dollar Sales Funnel
Tasks performed by the average appointment setter are programmatic in many ways and can be automated and optimized. For example, appointment setters who need to send outbound emails use templates to send emails. They use a database to find leads for the companies they are assigned. They use a template to send outbound direct messages, and they use templates for sales calls. The most challenging part of the appointment setter sales process is when a prospect engages and asks questions and wants to talk to a salesperson.
Consequently, at Sales Innovator, we ran several experiments, and we were able to make appointment setters a lot more effective while delivering a higher ROI on the sales investment.
Automate Sending Emails At Scale
First, instead of using appointment setters to find leads and create emails, we used a centralized team to do all the lead research and create optimized emails. Then we created sales robots that would send emails on behalf of salespeople. Changing this process allowed us to streamline the process by removing outbound email efforts from the salesperson and centralized email replies across sales robots. Instead of paying ($50k - $70k per year) for having salespeople send outbound emails, we removed that cost and added a sales robot that costs $69 per month. With sales robots, we can increase our reach by 300x.
Scaling Social Sales Legally
Second, we created social selling sequences targeting accounts that showed interest from the email campaign and reached out to those prospects over LinkedIn and other social networks. Instead of using expensive appointment setters, which cost $35+ per hour for this job, we created email templates and hired offshore salespeople that cost $4-$8 per hour, and all they do is reach out to prospects via social networks. This approach is genuine, and it uses real people to send and reply to prospects.
Also, this approach is safe since it is compliant with all social network policies and will not get you banned. Those who tried using automation tools on Facebook and LinkedIn quickly realize you can land in LinkedIn or Facebook jail and have your account blocked for life.
Offshore resources do well reaching out to people via social media. The risk of impacting your brand negatively is minimal. You can reduce risks by using software such as Sales Innovator to present templates, record interactions, and approve replies. Scaling a global social selling team is very affordable and easier to do, especially since the international markets have less labor shortage than the US market. Also, if you give your international team a way to move up in your organization and get paid more, they will remain loyal.
Scaling Calling Without Damaging Your Brand
Third, when prospects have shown interest through email or social media but have not scheduled an appointment, you can have your appointment setter reach out via phone call to offer help, qualify the prospect, and give assistance in scheduling a meeting. Offshore resources can also do this job efficiently and for a lot less. An offshore appointment setter who speaks English will likely cost you $4 to $12 an hour, and they will work your work hours.
The calling team can be significantly smaller than the social selling team. The calling team can also do social selling to consolidate both groups into one unit, depending on the workload. Using a central calling system that presents call templates, records interactions, and scores prospects will help you quickly scale your team and optimize their interactions.
Calling prospects who have shown interest during an email or social selling engagement minimizes the risk of cold calling, creating a negative experience with the prospect. Prospects are busy and receive a lot of unsolicited calls. Instead of just dialing a cold lead without previous interaction, you will be calling a lead that has interacted with you in other channels, which will make your call more receptive.
Implementing A Better Sales Funnel
To get to a multi-million dollar sales funnel, you need to increase your appointment setting and sales closing team. To do this with the United States-based resources will be very expensive and less effective. By centralizing sales functions and using technology and a global team of appointment setters, you can reduce your costs per appointment setter by at least 88% and for email outreach by 99%. Also can increase your reach by 4x for appointments setters and 300x for email outreach.
By innovating the team structure, using advanced technology, and leveraging a global marketplace, companies can create their million-dollar sales funnels at a much lower price with a more effective reach. Building direct relationships with all your potential prospects is now feasible, more effective, and affordable.
If you are interested in learning more about optimizing your sales funnel to create a multi-million dollar funnel feel free to reach out and schedule a meeting: https://www.salesinnovator.com/.
Sales Innovator is a full-service sales funnel-building company, and we can optimize your funnel and set it up to drive millions in revenue while delivering the best ROI.
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