Thought Leadership – It’s all about Outbound
by Henry Schuck and Robert Osgood
If you’re in B2B marketing or sales you have probably heard the Siren Call of the Marketing Automation Leaders: “It’s all about Inbound, Inbound, Inbound”. The folks at Hubspot or InsideView or hundreds of other marketing vendors would have you believe that what you need to be doing to grow sales is writing a blog, tweeting, being active on Google + and Facebook and creating content, content, content. Seen Field of Dreams? This takes a page right out of that playbook: “If you build it (it being content) they will come”. But even Kevin Costner had to venture out to and find James Earl Jones in order to get the job done.
We put this inbound theory to the test with a survey of 1,000 IT Decision Makers at Fortune Ranked, Midsize and SMB companies last week. We wanted to know: Is Outbound Really Dead? The results, confirm that the growth of our company, in the face of “Inbound Noise”, is a result of providing a product that truly drives leads, opportunities, and sales.
Our survey focused on how outbound sales calls and emails affect and more importantly disrupt vendor selection. The short survey included two questions: 1) whether a cold call or email has led to an IT vendor being evaluated, and 2) whether a decision maker has taken an appointment or attended an event that came from a cold email or call.
Of 1,000 surveyed decision makers, nearly 600 said a outbound call or email led to an IT vendor being evaluated.
About 75% of IT leaders have attended an event or taken an appointment that came from an outbound email or call.
If you’re selling to IT and you’re counting on Inbound techniques alone to drive your sales and marketing then you’re sitting on the sidelines as sales pass you by. 75% of IT Executives have set an appointment or attended an event as a direct result of outbound email and call techniques.
As outlined above, outbound techniques in sales and marketing have very clear benefits.
IT vendors can and do see success leveraging DiscoverOrg’s dynamic database, which not only lists emails and direct dial phone numbers at your targeted accounts, but also IT intelligence including budget, hierarchy, initiatives and business goals – information with which you will want to be armed when reaching out for the first time.
