The Art of Direct Outreach, Act Two
The Prerequisites
Last week we discussed the importance of Targeted Direct Outreach. If you missed that article you can read it here. This week I want to kick things off with some definitions. Targeted direct outreach is like the facelift people who sell* gave cold calling in a post-inbound world - it’s leveraging existing assets within your business to identify implicit buying signals and inviting those prospects to have a no pressure conversation with you.
Targeted Direct Outreach is a powerful sales strategy that anyone who sells should be leveraging, but it’s power lies in how well and consistently you’ve established it’s prerequisites.
The prerequisites of any direct outreach strategy are effective marketing and trust in the marketplace. If you don’t have either of those, or only one of those, targeted direct outreach will not be the magic cure-all it’s sometimes positioned to be.
Targeted direct outreach relies heavily on consistent marketing efforts, not only to educate your prospects about the problems you solve, but also to help identify prospects that might be ready to learn more about your offering. Prospects leave breadcrumbs or identify themselves all the time with implicit buying signals - and it’s your job to not only give them an opportunity to do so (aka marketing) but also to be able to interpret those signals.
Examples of implicit interest or implicit buying signals can include email opens, click throughs and responses, likes or comments on social posts, reviews of your podcast, downloads of lead magnets, abandoned carts, views of your webpage. In order to achieve these - you need to be consistently giving opportunities to your prospects to engage with your marketing. If you are not consistently nurturing your prospects via content marketing, any direct outreach efforts you employ will likely be treated as cold outreach….because it is. To be clear - there is nothing wrong with cold outreach, but it will take longer to convert a cold prospect than a warm prospect. Targeted direct outreach is about identifying warm prospects and sending them direct invitations to engage with you.
Trust in the marketplace is another important prerequisite. You can establish this by having endorsements/testimonials/reviews and other forms of social proof on our social profiles and website. You can also establish this by training your audience on how to engage with you and what to expect from you - i.e. train them to expect a reach out from you by reaching out to them after you notice they’ve engaged with a piece of your content. Train them to expect professionalism and support from you by basing all outreach on relationship building rather than selling.
The key to employing targeted direct outreach is by consistently providing your prospects opportunities to engage with you. You do this through consistently marketing to them. But marketing alone is not enough. Don’t simply rely on people who are ready to buy to book meetings with you. This is not Field of Dreams, just because you built a business and have an offer that solves an important problem doesn’t mean your prospects will come to you. Be proactive - reach out to them and offer a conversation - or if you aren’t ready to do that reach out to them and thank them for their interest in your business and ask them how you can support them. It doesn't have to be hard or complicated, it just has to be authentic and consistent :)
