A Head of Sales or CEO has to consider two main influencers when choosing a cold outreach approach:
- The sales team experience and temperament
- The optimal strategy for your target market
If the sales team had previous success with a type of cold outreach approach, then it might be beneficial to adopt it (if it fits with your business model). Also, the salespeople’s personalities may match better with a slow or faster pace approach.
Here are a few factors to help you choose the optimal approach based on your target market:
- Market saturation – the number of competitors to possible targets can impact your aggressiveness with each company; or how many new companies you reach out to at the same time.
- Number of employees in target companies – reaching out to companies with more employees can allow for long term extensive targeting; with fewer employees, you will go through accounts much faster.
- Reputation management – if you are in a smaller market, then it is better to take longer to reach out so that you do not damage your reputation; bigger markets allow you to be more aggressive because you are easily forgettable.
- Pacing – if you have any external pressure to get more deals, be that investors, debt or running out of runway, then you will need an aggressive strategy to find customers rapidly.
I have discussed the factors that influence the choice of a cold outreach approach. So now, let’s examine the pros and cons of three common cold outreach approaches.
Note: the following three approaches are the ones that I commonly see our customers take on. That does not imply that there are no more. As a company striving for a leading position, you should test new methods to optimize your sales approach.