Proven practices to convert more meetings, with examples.
Outbound sales is a growth strategy that involves proactively reaching out to leads, rather than waiting for them to find you. One of the most popular forms of outbound sales is cold email outreach, where the goal is usually to generate warm replies.
But how do you actually convert those warm replies into new revenue? For most businesses, this requires a meeting.
Scheduling meetings from outbound channels requires much more persistence and personalization than you may be used to. "Outbound" implies that you are contacting people who aren’t familiar with your business, so it will naturally be harder to get them on a call compared to someone who came through a referral channel or Google search.
Remember, you found these people and are trying to engage, they didn't actively search for your solution.
To help with this challenge, we analyzed the results from hundreds of email campaigns and conversation threads and created this checklist. Learn how to take the warm leads that you worked so hard for, and turn them into booked meetings.
Implement these basic rules into your sales flow to immediately increase your booking rate.
This may seem obvious... but in order to schedule meetings with prospects, you have to ask for them! Every email should end with a clear call to action, ideally in the form of a yes or no question.
Strong:
"Are you available to chat more about this next week?”
Weak:
“Interested to hear what you think.”
If you only take away ONE thing from this guide, it should be this.
When a prospect says they are interested, respond back to them within the same work day, or within 24 hours at the most. The faster you respond, the more likely they are to stay engaged and convert to a meeting!
Our data shows that the majority of email replies come in between 9 am-11 am in the morning. Try blocking off 30 minutes after this time window each day to check your inbox and respond promptly.
Even if you're short on time, you should still reply immediately and let the prospect know you've received their message and will follow up with more information soon. Seriously- it takes ten seconds, and it makes a big difference!
It’s very common that a prospect will need 2-4 follow-up messages before agreeing to a meeting. Be persistent and check in at regular intervals. Remember, this person took time out of their day to respond to you because something about your pitch was truly interesting to them.
After their initial engagement, keep checking in and sending personalized, value-adding messages. Follow up every day for 4 days, then move to bi-weekly or once a month. If they haven’t say “no”, the door is still open!
We recommend putting a calendar link (Calendly and Hubspot are good options) in your signature so that the prospect can book with you directly. You can also offer it up in the body of your email response after they reply.
I have time on Tuesday from 2-4pm EST
Or if you see a time here that works better go ahead and snag it: https://calendly.com/schedule-me
Your initial outreach may have been automated, but the reply was not! Don't forget to read the conversation thread and address the original ask. If you offered to share a case study in our outreach message, send them the case study! If they ask you a follow up question, answer it!
Your campaigns will likely contain different pitches and offerings depending on the strategy, so always make sure you look at the context reply accordingly.
It's also important to match the tone of the prospect. If they wrote back with something like, “send me pricing” or “do you work with startups?”, focus on writing a simple and direct answer. Do not send 15 bullet points and a pitch deck explaining everything you've ever done.
Our SDRs follow these crucial steps every time they respond to a prospect.
Check out their website and LinkedIn profile. Reflect on why they would be a great customer for you, and what you will be able to help them with.
Write a unique sentence (not copy/pasted from a template) that includes something about their industry, role, or company.
Read the call to action in the message that the prospect responded to. Is there a specific resource they are expecting? Did they ask a clarifying question you need to answer?
Always, always, always propose a meeting. Provide a calendar link to make it easy to book.
Here are examples of a content marketing agency booking a meeting with enterprise AI company:
Here is an example of a cold outreach firm books a meeting with a digital agency:
