Breaking Through the Outbound Barriers

For any organization that relies on outbound customer outreach - for-profit, B2B, B2C, or nonprofit sectors - getting calls through is becoming increasingly difficult.

Consumers and businesses alike are reluctant to answer calls from numbers they don’t recognize, screening calls due to concerns about fraud, or simply avoiding interruptions to their busy lives. With digital communication methods the norm, voice calls are often seen as intrusive rather than helpful.

One of the most significant shifts affecting outbound calling is the rapid decline of landlines. Once a staple in households and businesses, landlines are being abandoned in favor of mobile phones and digital communication methods.

Among U.S. businesses, only 31% use landlines (Tech.co). That number drops to 6% for small businesses, many of which rely on systems that combine landlines with voice over internet protocol (VoIP). With the surge in remote workers, reaching people via their mobile phones has become commonplace versus calling a company’s main phone number.

Unlike landlines, mobile phones feature built-in call screening, making it easier for users to ignore or block unknown numbers. This shift means traditional dialing strategies that worked a decade ago are now no longer effective.

Adding to the challenge, organizations must navigate a bewildering array of regulations governing outbound communications, from compliance with consumer protection laws to industry-specific restrictions.

Despite these challenges, outbound sales remains a powerful go-to strategy to grow many businesses. What sets top-performing teams apart is their ability to combine automation tools with proven best practices to deliver personalized outreach: connecting with more potential customers faster and more effectively than ever.

5 Strategies for Outbound Success

Staying ahead of the curve with the right strategies and best practices can help you close more deals and build stronger customer relationships. Here are five of the latest outbound strategies for driving success.

1. Personalize Outreach

Personalization is expected by buyers and is a must have for growth.

According to McKinsey, reported by Demand Gen Report, companies that offer the most tailored 1:1 outreach are 1.7x more likely to have gained market share compared to those who deliver only moderate personalization efforts.

Tailored messages are therefore a must. We recommend prioritizing personalization so that your calls can be a value-added interruption. Here’s how:

• Researching who your prospect is, what they do, and the industry they are operating in.
• Identifying the key challenges your prospect is likely facing.
• Tailoring your outreach to focus on those challenges and how your company uniquely solves them rather than listing product features. Prospects aren’t interested in what your product does; they care about how it addresses their specific challenges and helps them achieve their business objectives.

If you can grab prospects’ attention by showing that you understand them and can offer something mutually beneficial, you have a much greater opportunity to motivate them to engage with you.

...outbound sales remains a powerful go-to strategy to grow many businesses.

Much like personalized outreach via email, the first conversation/message is critical in setting the tone and priming memory. Leveraging opening statements that capture attention and create curiosity - and having the ability to quickly connect to value and show you have researched their company - establishes your credibility.

A sample call introduction might look like this:

Hi [Buyer’s Name],

You don’t know me, and I know you were not expecting my call.

We’ve been working with [Buyer’s Role] to help them deal with major concerns such as [Buyer’s Likely Challenges].

I’ve helped my customers [Success and Value Metrics from Similar Situations] and would welcome an opportunity to discuss some approaches with you.

2. Follow up with Multiple Calls and Channels

Perseverance pays off. A single cold call rarely seals the deal, but follow-ups increase your chances. We recommend adopting a strategic multi-channel approach that includes five different forms of outreach:

• Phone
• LinkedIn messages to your network of first-degree connections or InMail
• Email
• Online groups
• Other social media

When trying to connect with someone new, you don’t know their preferred method of communication. Reaching out via different communications channels has proven to increase the number of connections made and meetings set.

Prospects aren't interested in what your product does; they care about how it addresses their specific challenges...

Custom call cadences provide customers with best practices for different situations based on lead value, lead age, and past outcomes. Best practices include elements like 800 numbers, branded numbers, local presence, and past call outcomes. These elements help create flexible and specific call schedules for different situations.

Look for cadence tools that are easy to use with a simple rule-based system. Tools with strong call cadence features help businesses adjust their outreach strategies to improve contact rates and engage effectively.

3. Improve Caller ID Reputation

No one wants their phone numbers to be labeled as “Spam” or “Scam Likely.” For sales agents and call center businesses who use outbound dialing as a sales tool, understanding and adhering to the compliance requirements for contacting leads is a must.

Following these three effective steps to manage your Caller ID or direct inward dialing (DID) numbers’ reputation, along with ensuring you’re using best-in-class dialing software that was built with compliance and security in mind, will help ensure the reputation of your phone numbers remains intact.

This way you’ll make more connections, increase your team’s effectiveness, and your customers will know and trust the business who’s calling.

• Register your numbers to your business. This is increasingly the number one factor in determining if your call is flagged as a nuisance or gets delivered to your lead.
• When you register your phone number (DID) as belonging to your business, it sends a clear signal to carriers and consumers that you stand behind the calls that you’re making. The best place to register your numbers is the Free Caller Registry.
• Have enough phone numbers (DIDs) to remain under 80 calls/day/phone number (see FIGURE 1).
• Aim to place fewer than 80 calls per phone number per day, on average. While there isn’t a published number that carriers look for, our internal testing along with the best industry data available suggests that 100 calls is the maximum number of calls a single phone number (DID) should place in a day.

Carriers assume that phone numbers placing large numbers of calls are robocalls and will very quickly flag high volume numbers as Spam/Scam Likely.

• Ensure your phone numbers route sensibly when your leads call back. When consumers call back into a number that’s called them, they should be able to identify who is calling them (your business). Also, to add themselves to the National Do Not Call Registry if no agent is available to speak with them.

Carriers periodically do ringback testing (also known as call authentication) to ensure that phone numbers making calls continually are linked to a reputable business. And failing a ringback test will get your number labeled Spam/Scam Likely very quickly.

4. Use AI and Predictive Dialing to Supercharge Cold Calling Efforts

Cold calling is definitely not dead. In fact, when a cold call is made first, the email reply rate from prospective buyers increases 190%, reports Gong. It found that emails sent without a prior cold call get a 1.81% reply rate. But when a cold call is made first, the reply rate jumps to 3.44%, an increase of 190%.

But success depends on more than just picking up the phone. You need the right strategy and the right technology.

...outbound teams can continue to drive meaningful conversations and business growth...

Here are three ways predictive dialers, sophisticated dialing systems that uses algorithms to predict agent availability, can help drive sales success:

• Predict call outcomes. With the use of automation, data analytics, and AI machine learning, predictive dialers are becoming increasingly sophisticated, with the ability to predict call outcomes and improve workflows. For example, AI tools can learn from previous data and predict the best time to call leads (or follow up), so your agents can use their time more efficiently.
• Personalize customer interactions. Because predictive dialers are software-based, they can be integrated with CRM systems to improve lead targeting. That means your agents have customer data at their fingertips during a live call—such as their purchase history and preferences—making it easier to engage, cross-sell and upsell.
• Customers don’t want to feel like a number. With CRM data integrated into your outbound dialer, your team can personalize interactions, leading to higher conversion rates.
• Improve training and quality control. Predictive dialer software can help your team review interactions with customers and identify any areas for improvement, which helps with training and quality control.
• The best applications have built-in reporting tools for real-time visibility into sales performance, so you can see what’s working - and what’s not - to maximize your agents’ productivity.

5. Stay Compliant

Compliance is key to building trust: it’s not just a legal box to check. Sales teams must follow regulations for cold calling, emailing, and texting, such as the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) and data privacy and storage laws.

The increasing use of call-blocking technology by carriers adds another layer of difficulty. Calls from unknown numbers are more likely to be flagged as spam, further reducing the likelihood of making a successful connection.

Breaking the rules can lead to hefty fines. The Federal Trade Commission’s Telemarketing Sales Rule and other federal and state regulations apply.

Key points to follow compliance rules:

• Avoid Do Not Call Registry numbers.
• Call only within legal hours (usually 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekdays, with different rules for weekends and holidays).
• Identify yourself clearly on Caller ID.
• Honor opt-out requests immediately.

The Future of Outbound Calling

Despite the growing challenges, outbound calling remains a valuable tool for customer engagement. However, success now requires a more thoughtful and strategic approach.

Call centers that integrate personalization, multi-channel outreach, caller ID reputation, predictive dialing, and compliance-driven best practices will have the best chance of maintaining strong connection rates.

By adapting to changing technologies and consumer preferences, outbound teams can continue to drive meaningful conversations and business growth in an increasingly digital world.