As businesses commence reopening, B2B sales and marketing teams are looking for smart ways to achieve better ROI from their existing budget and resources.
Cold outreach will continue to be used by those teams given it is the most effective and inexpensive way to generate new business.
Let’s say you’re looking to acquire, and retain small and medium size businesses customers. This is challenging even at the best of times and now more than ever.
Even if you are the most brilliant copywriter or built an incredibly innovative product none of that will matter if you reach out to small and medium size businesses at a time when they do not need your solution.
Timing is everything!
You need a hook, a purpose for reaching out to increase your chances of a response.
So how can you identify when is the right time to approach?
Using intent data and more specifically combining external trigger events can arm your teams with valuable knowledge, sometimes well before the rest of the market.
These triggers are changes and signals about companies, which if monitored closely, on a regular basis, can be used for smarter outreach. These can help you zoom in on customers who likely need your solution right now.
Below are 3 buying events with example messaging outreach you can adopt to enhance your response rates and achieve your team’s goals.
The third example showcases the advantage of accessing several trigger events that, when combined, provides you with a precious commodity – the first to reach out to a business before other providers.
Example 1: New hires / Change in personnel
A business just hired a new CFO or promoted someone to senior management.
This type of event represents a good opportunity to reach out because it can mean the business might be reevaluating their existing processes and solutions.
Key finance hires, might mean reviews of where budget is being allocated and this could open the door for new vendors to offer their solutions, especially if it is finance related.
Example messaging:
I wanted to congratulate you on your new role, being responsible for {{department name}} activities.
Typically this indicates a need to review {activities} and be open to learning about other {products/solutions} that allows your {department name} to
Or
Noticed you brought on a new {position}. I am sure they have a lot going on – so this might be the time for you to determine if it warrants their attention.
We recently helped a company in {company industry} by offering [unique value proposition]
Example 2: Company Growth
There are hundreds of different data points that can help give indications that a company is growing.
3 examples are:
- New Job postings are a great leading indicator to track if a business is growing or even expanding into new markets and fields. Look to see in particular, if there are newly created positions such as a new Country Manager or Head of UK Sales job postings.
- Adding a new office
- Growing online marketing spend
Using a combination of many different data points give a strong signal of company growth.
These are valuable trigger events because the business is growing and has evolving needs for all sorts of solutions from accounting & payroll software, merchant services and insurance policies among others.
Leveraging these signals in your outbound messaging will mean your teams are both relevant and timely with your offering. Likely to yield positive responses.
Example messaging:
We noticed that your {company name} is looking to hire a {job posting} which suggests growing {function} activities is a priority for the next 12 months.
We’re helping {function} activities to scale by allowing them to {value proposition}
Or
I wanted to congratulate you on opening up a new branch for {company name} in {new location}. This prompted us to reach to you because {value proposition}
Example 3: Company Funding
One of the typically interesting points of time, if your targeting startups and technology companies is around fundraising.
Funding rounds indicate the business has aggressive growth plans and there is high likelihood they will need to invest in solutions to achieve those targets.
A great data point for your outreach.
However, if you reach out to a tech company on the day the press release for fundraising comes out, you are then one of potentially hundreds of providers reaching out. Chances of them responding are quite slim.
In addition, fundraising PRs typically go out months after the round has closed. By then, you might be too late.
What if you could identify when they really fundraised the money and be the first to reach out to them?
The data and indicators are out there – from significant increase in hiring, incorporation of new international subsidiaries to revamp of the company’s website.
This is a good forecasting indicator and example of combining multiple intent data points.
B2B marketing and sales teams can then be the first to reach out to these businesses by identifying they have raised money.
Example messaging:
We just noticed that your team size has grown to [number of employees]. At this point, you might be looking to scale your {function} activities and continue growing.
Or
I have been following {Company} for a while now and I saw recently you have grown your headcount to {number of employees}. Congratulations on your rapid growth!
The purpose of my email is to further support your growth in {function} of the business in order to meet your investors goals.
Final Tips to ensure you cold outreach is successful
The above examples illustrate how your outbound sales and marketing teams can start to use intent data events and signals to ensure their outreach is both timely and relevant.
For many teams who are tracking these types of signals already, it’s more important that they are utilized effectively. To be effective, you need to ask yourself whether the data is up to date to ensure accuracy so you can approach businesses at the exact right moment.
Just tracking intent data is not enough, there are plenty of others who are doing outreach to the same company with probably a similar message based on the same data.
You need dynamic data, enriched with signals and events that position you to uncover prospects right before they are actively looking for solutions and allow you to be first to reach out.
Your response rates will improve, your sales pipeline will increase and you will close sales quicker.
Are you leveraging intent data to ensure you meet your sales and marketing goals?
Let Tarci’s dynamic data power your sales and marketing.
