In the first part of this series, we covered the foundations of building an outbound lead generation process.
Once you have your buyer personas, ideal customer profiles (ICP) and messaging sequences ready, you can move on to the next step.
In this last part of building an outbound lead generation engine, we will cover:
- where to look for quality leads
- how to reach out to your leads
- industry best practices
Building an Outbound Lead Generation Engine: Where And How To Reach Out To Leads
1. Build Your Lead List
We recommend using LinkedIn Sales Navigator as your lead list building tool. Sign up for an account and refer back to your buyer persona and ICP to guide your lead filtering.
Other tools can filter more attributes such as:
- the technology they’re using
- whether they’ve recently received funding
- whether they’re hiring for a specific role
- if there’s buyer intent data
- more industries that LinkedIn doesn’t cover
If you’re able to build a list of accounts on another tool, you can use LinkedIn. You are able to find leads within those companies that fit your buyer persona.
2. Reach Out To Your Leads
The messages you send in the initial outreach and each follow up thereafter will be based off of your messaging sequence.
A manual approach is not what we would first recommend, as it is too easy to fall behind and miss following up with leads.
The second approach we recommend the most is using an automation tool. However, we would suggest not going for a Chrome extension tool, rather a standalone tool instead.
Pro tip: Once you start getting responses, it’s very important to respond immediately. We recommend responding within 2 hours. It doesn’t look professional when someone reaches out for a business offer, receives interest and makes the other person wait again.
Pro tip: Make the process as easy as can be for your prospect and never slap a calendar link. Suggest two to three time slots for your prospect. You should be doing most of the legwork here, not your prospect. Secure a time slot with your prospect, get their email, and book the meeting in.
Best Way To Reach Out To Prospects For An Effective Outbound Lead Generation
- Do you have a good number of new connections?
- Are you hitting a good benchmark for your connection rate?
- Is your response rate acceptable?
You can check out these metrics to measure for your LinkedIn outreach and what benchmarks to measure against to in this article.
Conclusion
In the first part of this series, we covered the following:
- foundations of defining and establishing your ideal customer profile (companies)
- buyer personas (decision-makers)
- messaging sequence to build your outbound lead generation engine
In this last part of the series, we covered how to build your lead list, where to reach out to your leads, and best practices when reaching out.
If you’d like to save time (and headaches) of this process, chat with one of our team members. We’ll research your industry and figure out a way to help you in your lead generation efforts.
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