The Blueprint: Outbound Strategy at Different Stages of Growth

1. Structuring Your Outbound Strategy at Different Stages of Growth

When you’re iterating, structuring and approaching outbound strategy, go back to the basics.

The bottom line?

Really think about where you’re focusing your reps’ time.

Ask yourself the all-important question: which approach will provide the biggest impact on your success?

Cognism’s outbound strategy during the ‘scale-up’ period

To start, let’s discuss what Cognism’s priorities were when building a successful outbound strategy 👇

This just scratches the surface.

TIP 👉 Once you’ve tested, iterated, and improved, make a note of what works and what doesn’t.

The biggest lesson for Jonathon was the importance of documenting everything, when the team scaled up.

It was almost like a school that everyone in the team went through - process was followed and that ensured the entire team was aligned.

He said:

“For us, that was the differentiating factor around the $25m to $30m mark - our processes around outbound became standardised, and everything was documented.”

2. Cognism's current outbound strategy

The Account-Based Outbound Model

Our outbound model now follows an account-based approach.

In the early days we ran spray and pray with little to do data on our target accounts.

Today, we know exactly who our ICP is and which accounts we should be focusing outbound into.

We use hard data such as retention rates, ACV, and sales cycle data to determine what accounts to target.

Cognim’s RevOps and Management team select the accounts and categorise them by segment.

Enterprise: 500+
Mid-market: 100 - 499
SMB: 1 - 99

The outbound sales function then exclusively focuses on the Mid-market and Enterprise accounts with high retention and high annual contract value.

Outreach

We’ve refined our approach through a focus on multi-channel outbound.

Here is David’s 30-day prospecting cadence.

Since this has been in use, our reps have seen a 20% increase in meetings booked 👇

3. Sales qualification

All aspects of BANT aren't necessarily effective at the top of the funnel.

We've found it can be off-putting to ask questions regarding budget in a first-touch or cold interaction in outbound.

At the top of the funnel, the sales team purely focuses on the 'N' in BANT, being 'need'.

Our team qualify and discover around the Need, and pique interest in the solution with help from persona relevant cold calling scripts.

Download these scripts for your team directly from SDR Zone 👇

The Mid-Market to Enterprise Perspective

We’ve learnt that when it comes to targeting accounts in MM-ENT, the demands of outbound change - a lot.

We encourage our team to consider the different components that are at play, that are actually going to determine whether they’ll be a customer:

That last point is crucial for our sales team’s outbound success, especially given the current economic climate. It’s paramount when you consider the fact that budgets are tight.

This is where investment into processes surrounding training and technology will be essential.

Speaking of which…

4. Cognism's Current Tech Stack to Support the Outbound Strategy

Here’s a key learning from Jonathon regarding the outbound tech stack:

Don’t invest in tools unnecessarily. Understand why the tech is being purchased and the KPIs that will be impacted. Your reps should know what the tech will be used for too.

Here’s a snapshot of our core tech stack:

Metrics

Here’s what we track when assessing our outbound strategy’s success ⬇️

Segment breakdown in terms of ACV and win rate
Contribution to revenue for marketing vs sales
Competitors in deals
Win rates vs competitors

Tip 👉 Measure your reps on general activity KPIs. David said that's worked for us, because you're pushing the hard work, instead of a call KPI. And the long-term ROI of this is that your reps can play to their own strengths, and double down on areas that are most successful, for them!

And all of these data points are discussed in one dedicated session and recorded in our Salesforce dashboard, as seen below ⬇️