Using Sequences For Sales Outreach (AKA, Making It Outbound Friendly)

[SeanReid]

I've worked very closely with Sales teams for the past 4 years, and when I bring up sequences as a tool to use, I'm sometimes greeted with "But we do outbound prospecting also, how can it help us there?" However, I would always challenge them that the sequence tool is more than a way of sending automatic emails to engage with your prospects, it also you to manage the entire prospecting journey you might have in place. If it helps, you could instead call this process "Building Your Outreach Strategy".

It's important to remember that during this stage on the buyer's journey, your prospects are typically in the consideration stage. Right now, they know they have an issue or roadblock and are trying to figure out what is the best way to tackle this. As a sales rep, your role here isn't to connect by saying "We can help, buy our service", but instead to connect with value, be it offering insights to how they can address this issue or by asking them how they handle this problem at the moment. So everything we add here is designed to add value to the prospect and to help them reach the conclusion that you have something to help them tackle their issue.

It's important to not treat your attempts to connect as separate. They all have the same goal, so you want to think of them as areas to help compliment each other. For example, you might try to connect with someone on the phone, and if they don't pick up you won't just leave it be, you will move onto the next stage of your process to pass on the message you wanted to bring on the phone, ie, you are moving them along your sequence.

We will start by mapping out each activity and connection attempt. Remember that it can take up to 9 attempts to successfully connect with a prospect, so don't just send 3 emails and hope for the best. Keep at it, and use your sequences to help with this. Your attempts to connect could be:

• Phone call
• Email
• Connection on social media
• Your Meeting link

An example of this that I worked on with a customer of mine looked like this:

As you can see, we have gone with 9 attempts, but they all are things that our sequence tool can manage. So between each email, use tasks to assign those phone calls or social media activities to your sequence and add in the desired delays. Now once you start the process, you as a rep no longer need to worry about following up or wondering if you did connect on social media with a prospect. Once someone is ready to be connected with, as they have not booked a call with you or responded to an email, the sequence will create your tasks for you as they are needed.

By building out your sequences in this fashion, you will have maximized what can be done with the tool, and used it for much more than just the tool to send emails to your prospects with. Have you built out any interesting sequences, or use tasks in a creative way to stay on top of your prospects? I want to hear them! Leave a comment below and let's keep the conversation going.

[ekim77]

I am just getting started in sequences - what ACTUALLY starts the execution of the sequence? I don't see any buttons that says "start" or "schedule".  How do I schedule it for a certain time in the future?

[AudreyBailly]

Is there any course or anyone able to help for setting this up, We have a 12 step outbund reach process which include connecting to contact on Linkedin,... 
How do you currently view your current list based on those stages? Is there a quick visual ? Is there a best practice on hubspot? 

I find it very hard to navigate or creating this myself

[ESommers]

@SeanReid , what if I see the value in a sequenced approach, but dont really know how to map it out in HubSpot?  Are you able to recommend any resources that can help do this?

[Alysha_TW]

For laying out your sequences, we recommend drawing it out with bubbles on a tool like Moqups. You can say what the ideal response is to an outreach (your goal) and how you will re route (or remove) that lead when you don't get the ideal response back. As an agency, we do this kind of work throughout a whole sales process 🕵️so at every stage of your sales, marketing and retention process has a Sequence or marketing workflow to stop money 💰 stagnating in your pipeline. 

[DianaGomez]

Hi @Alysha_TW hope you are doing well!

Thanks for sharing 🙂

Best,

Diana

[Kbohan]

Thank you for sharing! I like this approach

[GF20]

Thanks very much for sharing this @SeanReid!