Outbound Prospecting (Spears)

Jason M. Lemkin

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Aaron Ross

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Outbound Prospecting (Spears)

Spears are one-to-one campaigns, such as targeted outbound prospecting or business development initiatives for getting appointments with anyone who's not coming to you—whether customers or partners.

Advantages of Outbound Prospecting:

  • Avoid “inbound dependency” and reactive teams: When salespeople have been trained as prospectors, they develop the mindset and skills to be entrepreneurial and make things happen instead of waiting around for something to happen for them.
  • Easier to double: After you've figured out the messaging and steps, outbound prospecting is a place where you can double your results by doubling the team.
  • Increase deal sizes: Your average outbound deal could be 3x to 10x larger because you can specifically target bigger opportunities and avoid small ones.
  • Increase market coverage: Say you have 10,000 companies in your target market. How long will it take before they all call you? With outbound, you can fill in any gaps left by inbound.
  • Less competition: often you're going in to help the prospect create a vision and plan for solving their pain. More often than not, that scenario will be much less competitive than if they'd already started a project by researching the top 20 options in the space.

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