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Long gone are the days of selling door to door hoping to find a buyer. Now we have tools that help us find relevant prospects. While it’s great to be able to target potentially ideal customers, it’s harder than ever to get them to notice you. In the world of outbound sales it’s become more important than ever to not only identify the right people, but approach them with the right message.
The right message for a potential customer is to some degree based on the general profile of the prospect, but increasingly relies on specific research about the prospect and their company. Research is becoming a fundamental part of outbound sales, especially enterprise. Knowing who your prospect is, what their specific responsibilities are, what they’re engaging with or writing about can all inform a well tailored cold email that is more likely to get a reply.
If it isn’t obvious, there are 2 primary reasons for why this is effective. The first is that on a very human level people want to know that you made an effort in understanding their potential needs as a person or company and that they are being targeted for a reason. The second is that research allows the seller to tailor a message in a way to more accurately touch on the pains or needs of the prospect.
All things being equal, a relevant personalized email will perform better than a generic one. And relevant personalization requires good research. Sellers need to sift through a lot of information related to their prospect and prospect’s company. Data like what the company is hiring for, their 10k report, news, or even podcasts featuring executives. The seller requires a wide range of data to make informed decisions about who to target, when to target them and what message to target them with. Sales, therefore, is becoming a data profession. Reach is providing sellers with the data they need, but equally importantly, the insights they need to make the data actionable for sales and cold outreach.
