The number 1 B2B outreach strategy for 2024

The pace of evolution in B2B outreach and sales in 2024 is breathtaking. 

Technology and the use of data are disrupting the status quo like never before. The number of decision-makers is ever-increasing. Buyer journeys, experiences and preferences continue to change. 

If you’re experiencing a slowdown in sales, here’s a handy guide to help you stay ahead of the game.  

The B2B outreach strategy below was developed by the experts at Sopro and is proven to deliver consistent results. 

Step one – Find your audience 

Running a standard search on LinkedIn is a great start. 

Use LinkedIn to zero down on your broad targets via the standard firmographic and demographic filters. (Sector, size, location, job titles, etc.) 

Next, enrich your audience with high-value data points relevant to your product or service, such as the technologies they use (technographic data points). 

Then, further enrich your list with AI. Parse and summarise every website, appending outputs from custom prompts (E.g., “Review the website summary and determine if the company is likely to operate commercial Greenhouses”). 

Filter these newly enriched audiences to isolate the most likely buyers. These are your primary outreach targets. 

Step two – Web tech 

Your tech stack is critical. As an example, several of the channels and communications needed for next-level outreach will be triggered by tracked buyer intent events, as opposed to cold outreach. 

So before you send a single message, ensure your prospecting platform is tightly integrated with your website and ready to track prospect-level and company-level intent. 

This should include IP deanonymization to reveal business names and prospect-level tracking from any outreach-driven site traffic. 

Deploy personalised web chat on your site to capture and convert leads, with human agents greeting visitors on arrival.

Step three – Building your intent pool 

Email:  Email is your primary form of introduction and will be responsible for driving responses, calls, and web traffic. Develop strong personalised messaging sequences that you would respond to yourself.  

Bland, generic messaging won’t work. The best results come from casual and tightly personalised intro notes. Be fresh, be human, and aim to crack a smile. And yes, you can indeed ask for a call in your first note.  

Sopro recommends a sequence of 4-6 emails with a 3-6 month cool-off period. 

Display Ads: Sync your full visible audience to display ad engines (Facebook, Instagram, Google, and LinkedIn) to drive 100% ICP-qualified traffic to your site. This also grows brand awareness and recall, increasing the effectiveness of subsequent B2B outreach. 

At this stage, leads will start arriving… but you’re only halfway there. 

Step four – Converting your intent pool 

Monitor web intent events at the individual and company levels, mapping events to the associated account. This builds an engagement story for each account, enabling powerful event-driven comms. 

You can then trigger custom email and custom LinkedIn outreach to convert your intent pool to active discussions. 

Monitoring buyer intent also enables you to warm call the prospects who most actively and consistently demonstrate intent. These prospects may not have responded directly but their intent is a game-changer when calling. Not only will your call be well timed, but the intelligence gained from intent tracking arms you with relevant questions. 

Always source mobile/cell numbers for the best results here. 

Send Direct Mail to your intent pool. Unit economics at around $1 (including postage) may prevent a DM campaign to your full market audience.  But your intent pool is far smaller, and the investment is well worth it at this stage of the funnel.    

Include an offer if you can. 

Step five – Over to Sales 

We can’t advise too much in this area other than to say that the age-old wisdom of pitch, propose, and close is as relevant today as it ever was.  

Support each stage of the sales process with great collateral and keep your sales team motivated with a great incentive package. 

Following the steps above will keep your sales team busy and your pipeline flowing. The approach outlined is the forefront of B2B sales outreach in 2024 and the steps listed are a well-proven formula to generate consistent and closable sales pipeline. 

Additional considerations for B2B outreach

Volume 

Forget about high-volume campaigns: they don’t work in 2024. Instead, focus on precision targeting, high-quality comms, building your intent pool and converting it with event-driven multi-channel messaging. 

A high-quality multi-channel approach to 1,000-2,000 ICP-qualified prospects per month can easily keep a salesperson busy with a steady flow of closable sales opportunities.  

Investment 

Multi-channel prospecting sits alongside other aspects of your GTM strategy and, when executed correctly, will drive most of your sales pipeline. Think about that when apportioning budgets.  

Your outreach strategy should be funded to reflect your expectations around deal flow and output, so avoid unbalanced cost-saving in this area if results are important.  

Consider expert support 

Okay – an obvious plug. But the level of time, tech, process, skill and experience required to deliver competitive B2B outreach is often out of reach, particularly for smaller firms. 

It’s so easy to get things wrong, and many businesses benefit significantly from handing their B2B outreach to an expert operator. So, if the campaign model above sounds like something you’d rather have done for you, you’re not alone. It can often be cheaper, faster and far more reliable to pass the baton to Sopro. 

Our fully managed B2B outreach campaigns have been setting the benchmark for years, and we’d love to share pricing and performance expectations when you are ready.