3-way multichannel sales outreach with WhatsApp

Using Email & LinkedIn for cold outreach

Email outreach plays a crucial role in the sales process as it serves as the primary means of reaching out to potential customers. The ROI of doing email outreach for sales is still strong and expected to remain consistent in the future, so investing time and resources into cold email outreach campaigns it’s a safe investment.

Email is a useful channel for sales as it is versatile and can be adapted to various multichannel outreach strategies. It allows sales representatives to personalize messaging, scale efforts, and measure success using reliable metrics. 

So, it can easily be combined with other messaging channels depending on where your target audience is present. 

We’ve seen that for the B2B industry, most commonly that email outreach is combined with LinkedIn social selling and outreach.

While email remains the primary sales channel, LinkedIn is currently the top social selling platform, responsible for generating over 80% of leads for marketers and sales representatives.

LinkedIn is a useful social selling channel because of its extensive user base, filtering system focused on prospecting, and regularly updated user data, which can enhance any sales pipeline.

The reason why using both channels is a proven successful method is that both channels are highly used and adopted by people within the same industry, and they are more open to communication being done through these channels.

Using WhatsApp for sales outreach

In the past, WhatsApp was thought of as being used solely for personal messages between friends and family. However, it is quickly becoming a great resource for businesses to reach out to their customers. With the introduction of what was already known as WhatsApp Sales, now Whatsapp Business, companies can now engage with potential leads via messaging and create an interactive experience with their target audience.

Using WhatsApp in Sales offers many advantages, such as building relationships with customers before a sale has been made. It also helps to open up opportunities that would have been missed had they relied only on other channels such as email or direct messages on LinkedIn.

WhatsApp supports features like customizable experiences that would allow businesses to tailor messages specifically to a customer’s needs or interests. This makes it easier to engage and convert customers as well as increase retention rates.

And, let’s not forget that by connecting with your prospect via WhatsApp you have their direct mobile number, which can open an opportunity to pick up your phone and call them up regarding your previous communication. Not to mix this kind of calling with a cold call: You can’t just replace cold calling with WhataApp outreach, as both channels are expected to have different outcomes, but you can for sure get hold of your prospects faster during the closing stage.

All in all, WhatsApp promises to be an exciting new outbound channel filled with possibilities for businesses around the world.

Why should you include WhatsApp for Sales?

WhatsApp is a platform that can give quick reach to prospects. Its mobile convenience would help your salespeople target prospects quickly, without getting lost in cluttered emails or waiting on long phone calls. Additionally, prospects are becoming more comfortable using messaging services like WhatsApp as a means of communication for business purposes as well, which has opened up a large number of potential customer interactions.

What about negative reactions to using WhatsApp for Sales?

Thoughts are split about using WhatsApp for your outbound outreach. On one side, some wholeheartedly embrace the idea and consider it a modern approach. But on the other side, some individuals feel uneasy or even offended by such an invasive technique which can make them feel uncomfortable.

Therefore, businesses must take into account not only the potential benefits of using this medium for their outreach but also acknowledge the associated risks of opting to do so.

Implementing 3-channel outreach

Now let’s see how you can combine all 3 channels for your outreach.

1. The most accepted sales channel is email, so we advise you to start there. Plan out a sequence of emails that you want to send out to a potential client and arrange them by a timeline. Using an email automation tool is a must in these cases, as you would need to set triggers and delays for your outreach. And, of course, prospecting is not done manually these days.

2. After you plan out the chronology of the email sequence, you can drop a couple of LinkedIn actions in between. You would want to do this as it’ll give you an advantage in reaching the prospect on 2 different channels and making the impression that you are present and giving an effort to present them with a solution to a certain pain point they might be facing. Using a LinkedIn Automation method is highly recommended if you don’t want to spend 8 working hours just liking posts, sending connection requests, and writing direct messages.

An automation tool like Sales.Rocks give you the opportunity to even combine email and LinkedIn actions in the same sequence, so you don’t need to worry about timelines and reminders to do the next action.

3. Your prospect has interacted with you or showed some interest, but the “lead” went cold? It’s now time to activate the 3rd channel in the sales outreach with WhatsApp. Drop them a personalized message regarding your conversation, or just give them a ring during working hours to make sure they’ve received your offer or they’ve seen your last update. 

One note we could add here is that in this case, you would need a direct phone number of your prospect, so make sure you are working with a reliable B2B data provider that can offer direct phone numbers of your contacts, like Sales.Rocks.

Conclusion

Multi-channel outreach is an effective way to reach out to potential customers and can lead to more closed deals when compared to using a single channel. By utilizing the 3 channels: cold emailing, phoning, and LinkedIn outreach, salespeople have a better chance of closing the deal due to their customer’s response rate, and a better-established sales cycle.

With cold emailing, customers can be invited in bulk via trigger emails and automated follow-ups which allows for personalization. Cold calling has the advantage of being able to directly contact the customer via the phone making it easier to establish relationships with them, but getting reach of potential via WhatsApp can be a strategy that easily outperforms traditional cold calling, as you will be able to get hold of the person easier and faster, but transform the cold calling into a warm calling strategy. Lastly, LinkedIn outreach works best by engaging in conversations with prospects who are within the same industry.

This helps build trustworthiness as sales reps go into a deeper dialogue about their product or services.