Hey there, fellow salespeople! The struggles of manual prospecting are all too real. 

The tedious hours spent searching for accurate contact information, the frustration of reaching out to leads only to have your emails bounce back, and the endless struggle of prioritizing and organizing your leads.

Prospecting can often feel like a series of dead ends and follow-ups can often feel hopeless. After all, 60% of customers only say yes after saying no 4 times and 80% of sales are only successful after 5 follow-up calls!

But the most challenging aspect of prospecting is not only the fact that it can be hard work but also that without accurate customer data and outreach strategies, it can end up being a financial liability.

But fear not, because ContactOut is here to help you streamline your workflow and fill your sales pipeline to ensure your prospecting journey is more enjoyable and efficient. 

Let’s dive into how to find accurate contact information for your target audience quickly, verify email addresses, enrich prospect data, organize and prioritize leads, then automate your outreach with email campaigns. 

Your sales workflow will never be the same again!

 

1. Identifying and Understanding Your Target Audience

First things first: who are you looking for?

Although it may seem wise to cast your net far and wide, doing so only wastes resources. Prospecting requires a lot of effort, so why spend energy on prospects who would never need your products and services?

You must ensure that the prospects you are seeking out have the highest probability of being interested in your service or product. Data shows that the two most important factors that determine whether or not a prospect responds are need and budget. 

Therefore, you need to prioritize people who would reasonably need your product and who would be able to comfortably afford it. After you have identified companies, organizations, and even individuals who would fit your ideal client the next step is figuring out how to best reach them.

That’s where ContactOut comes in.

The search portal allows you to filter and prioritize leads based on specific criteria, such as job title or company size. This feature will save you several hours by allowing you to focus on the most promising leads first, rather than wasting time on low-priority targets.

If for example, a B2B SEO consulting business is looking for potential leads to build a sales pipeline, they first begin to find leads by using the contact-out search portal. By searching for contacts that meet the customer persona the business quickly compiles a list of leads.

You can say goodbye to seemingly endless emails to uninterested people!

 

2. Finding Accurate Contact Information Quickly

Who has time for complicated prospecting? 

We sure don’t, and neither do you.

Listen, the prospecting process is already challenging. You need to minimize any issues along the way as effectively as possible. Struggling with inaccurate contact information is one sure way to fail at that.

Easier said than done, right? Well not anymore.

ContactOut has built a search portal that is simple, accurate, and totally customizable. You can easily find the contacts of prospects most likely to engage with you instead of fumbling in the dark for hours and hours.

With the user-friendly interface, you can easily streamline your workflow and efficiently get the contact info you need faster than you can imagine.

Once you identify the profile of the prospects you would like to engage with, ContactOut ensures that you get their contacts without any errors. So when you make your calls or send out your emails, you are confident that your message is getting to the right person.

Simply enter a name and company, and the portal will provide you with accurate contact information, including verified email addresses and phone numbers. 

With the help of AI technology, it ensures that the email addresses provided are correct, saving you valuable time and effort.

Now that’s what you call peace of mind.

Using the search portal allows sales teams to focus on other aspects of the sales process, such as personalizing outreach messages or conducting in-depth research on potential leads. The time and resources saved can be put towards more productive tasks and increasing the overall efficiency of your sales team.

 

3. Verifying Email Addresses

But is finding accurate contact information enough?

Yes, most of the time it is. However, when it comes to cold outreach via email, you need an extra step: verifying email addresses.

This step is necessary because people and organizations switch email addresses frequently. It is also possible that some emails listed by companies may only be for a specific purpose and they either cannot respond to you, or your email goes to spam.

Let’s not forget that email marketing is the highest ROI for small businesses and more than 43% of professionals believe it is by far the most effective medium for generating sales. In other words, you can’t afford to make mistakes!

If you want to ensure your cold outreach email campaign is a success then invest in obtaining accurate email addresses only. Email verification tools make it easy to confirm that the email you’re using is legit and ready for action.

Verifying email addresses is especially important for sales teams, as it can help improve the effectiveness of their cold outreach efforts. 

Sending emails to incorrect or inactive email addresses not only wastes time and effort but also damages the sender’s reputation and credibility.

Using the email verification tool is a simple process. You have the choice of either verifying one email at a time or uploading a file to verify in bulk. A status indicating whether the email address is valid or not is returned for each email entered. 

By leveraging the bulk verification tool you are able to immediately ensure your outreach is going to real people and get on your way to lead qualification. Fast. 

Sales teams can streamline their outreach by ensuring that their emails are reaching the right people and avoiding the negative consequences of sending emails to incorrect or inactive addresses.

 

4. Enriching Contact Data

Every sales professional, from appointment setters to closers, is constantly seeking new ways to improve their outreach and engage with prospects more effectively. The best way to achieve this is by understanding your audience and staying updated on their needs.

Having access to accurate and timely information about a consumer or business makes all the difference in closing a deal. That is why you must leverage enriched data to provide deep insights into customer behavior, preferences, and needs. 

By using tools that can enrich data from various sources, such as LinkedIn profiles, company websites, and email addresses, sales teams can gain a more comprehensive understanding of their target audience. 

This understanding allows outreach specialists to tailor their messaging accordingly, and ultimately increase their chances of success.

Normally the enrichment process involves sifting through mountains of information to find the data you need which involves manual, in-house research or requires hiring a VA. Both incur extra costs. 

Forget all that. Instead, use ContactOut’s simple data enrichment functionality.

To enrich your leads begin by creating a CSV containing the URL of the LinkedIn profiles. Next, export the CSV file and use the enrichment functionality to gain crucial insights. The enrichment tool returns all the relevant information you need to further validate prospects and improve conversion rates. 

 

5. Automating Outreach with Email Campaigns

You’ve got your refined list of leads and their contact info, now what? 

Well, it’s time to hit them up and start the conversation. But who has time for individual emails?

The most important step in creating an effective sales flow is automation. But don’t get the wrong idea; automation does not mean a compromise on being human and personal with your prospects.

With ContactOut’s email campaign feature, you can personalize your messages and send them out in one fell swoop, saving you time and hassle. 

And this will be easy because you already identified and defined your target audience in the previous steps so you know how to communicate value to them based on their needs.

Sounds amazing right? 

Here are the recommended steps to successfully automate your cold outreach email campaign.

 

Creating Branded Email Messages

The email campaign feature allows you to create and customize your message to fit your brand and the specific audience you’re targeting. You can create an email campaign from scratch or use one of the pre-built templates.

Regardless of what you choose, your feature will help you ensure that the essence of your brand is effectively captured in all your emails, and to all your prospects.

 

Personalizing Your Message

Personalization is critical when it comes to email campaigns. A personalized email is better at connecting with prospects than one that sounds too formal and robotic.

Personalization is so effective that a personalized subject line can boost email open rates by 22%. 

With ContactOut, you can easily add custom fields to your email, such as the recipient’s name or company. This feature makes your email feel more personalized and increases the chances of a response.

 

Sending Your Campaign

Once your email campaign is set up and personalized, you can send it to your list of leads with just a few clicks thanks to the email campaign feature.

Just think of all the hours you will be saving without compromising accuracy, effectiveness, or security!

The feature also allows you to track your email open rates and click-through rates, so you can see how well your campaign is performing.

 

Following Up with Leads

Following up with leads is an integral part of any outreach strategy. 

With the ContactOut email campaign feature, you can schedule automatic follow-up emails to be sent to leads who haven’t responded to your initial email. This helps you stay top-of-mind with your leads and increases your chances of converting them into customers.

Let’s face it, sales teams have better things to do than spend all day crafting emails. That’s why the email campaign feature is a game-changer with a mind-boggling ROI.

ContactOut’s email campaign automation streamlines your outreach while still allowing for personalization, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

 

Conclusion

Streamlining your sales workflow is crucial for achieving success in sales. It can be a challenging and time-consuming process, but with the right tools, it is nothing but a joy.

With a personalized sales workflow, you will observe higher conversion rates and greater productivity, resulting in reduced costs and improved business efficiency. 

ContactOut’s search portal and chrome extension make finding accurate contact information a breeze, while email campaigns and data enrichment allow for accuracy and higher rates of success.

By implementing ContactOut into your sales workflow, you can save time, increase productivity, and ultimately drive more conversions without using cost per action advertising.

Get in touch today to transform and enhance your sales workflow.