How to Choose the Best CRM for Outbound Sales

When it comes to driving growth, outbound sales teams need the right tools to connect effectively with potential clients, and this is where CRMs come in. A CRM, or Customer Relationship Management, software is central to helping sales teams streamline and automate their outreach. 

While there are many CRMs designed for general sales workflows, outbound sales often require specialized tools due to the unique focus on cold calling, cold emailing, and prospecting. This guide explores the key features and top CRM software tailored specifically for outbound sales, helping you choose the best fit for your team.

In this article, we’ll cover the following:

1. Outbound sales: what is it?

2. The importance of cold email deliverability in sales

3. Challenges of using general CRM software for outbound sales

4. Key outbound sales metrics a CRM should track

5. Essential integrations for outbound CRM software

6. Top CRM software for outbound sales

7. Other factors to consider

8. How to choose the best CRM software for outbound sales

Outbound sales: what is it?

Outbound sales is a proactive approach to selling, where sales reps initiate contact with potential customers rather than waiting for inbound inquiries. This approach involves activities like cold calling, cold emailing, and personalized outreach through various channels.

A CRM designed for outbound sales should streamline these activities, allowing sales teams to efficiently manage outreach efforts, track responses, and improve engagement. 

The importance of cold email deliverability in sales

With the rise of email-based outreach, email deliverability is a key factor in outbound sales success. High deliverability rates increase the chances of your emails reaching your prospects' inboxes instead of getting caught in spam filters.

CRMs with integrated email deliverability features or integrations with email deliverability tools can significantly improve the outcomes of email campaigns.

Challenges of using general CRM software for outbound sales

Traditional CRMs are often designed to support inbound sales, customer support, or overall relationship management, which may lack features needed specifically for outbound sales. Here are a few general challenges you and your team are likely to run into, if you are just working with a CRMs:

• Limited support for high-volume cold outreach, or expensive add-ons where these are available
• Lack of automated sequences and personalization options for cold emails
• Difficulty tracking specific outbound sales metrics, like connect rate and response rate

If you are running in to any of these challenges, you might actually be looking for something that's not specifically a CRM. Let me explain...

CRM vs SEP?

Now, while CRMs are essential for managing prospect/customer relationships and tracking interactions, what you might actually be looking for is a sales engagement platform (SEP).

Unlike traditional CRMs, SEPs are designed specifically for outbound sales activities, offering advanced tools for automating, personalizing, and scaling cold outreach.

SEPs typically include features like multi-channel sequencing (email, calls, social touches), real-time activity tracking, and integrated analytics that focus on engagement metrics rather than just data storage.

By using an SEP, sales teams can focus on building and maintaining momentum with prospects, which as you know, is crucial for hitting sales targets.

The good news is that SEPs often integrate with CRMs, as well as other essential outbound tools, combining the best of both worlds: robust engagement capabilities and long-term relationship management. More on this below.

Key outbound sales metrics a CRM should track

To maximize effectiveness, outbound sales CRMs (or an SEP perhaps) should track specific metrics that provide insights into engagement and success rates, also offering robust reporting capabilities. Some of the key metrics you need to be able to track include:

• Connect rate: Reflects the success rate of calls connecting with the intended person.
• Meeting set rate: Measures the number of meetings scheduled as a result of outreach.
• Response rate: Tracks the number of responses from outreach attempts.

Sales teams have typically focused on email open rate, to measure how often prospects open initial email outreach. However, recent updates to Google spam filters mean that teams should focus on other engagement metrics to measure cold email performance.

These metrics help sales leaders understand the impact of their team’s outreach efforts, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions to optimize future campaigns.

Essential integrations for outbound CRM software

A robust CRM for outbound sales should integrate with other tools to support the entire sales cycle. Important integrations include:

• Email deliverability software: Ensures outreach emails reach prospects’ inboxes and avoid spam folders.
• Email list prospecting tools: While some CRMs have this built in, you may want to integrate other tools like Apollo or ZoomInfo to further source high-quality contacts for your campaigns.
• Email verification & risk analysis tools: Before sending outreach, it's important to verify prospect email addresses, to reduce bounce rates and improve deliverability. Overtime however, prospects may leave a company or become disengaged, so it's important to constantly carry out risk analysis on your contact lists.
• Calendar and meeting scheduling tools: Also most CRMs will have scheduling capabilities, you may have multiple, or more advanced, booking pages serving different purposes which will need to be connected to your CRM to simplify the process of booking or tracking calls and meetings with leads.

These integrations enable sales teams to create seamless workflows that are essential for managing and scaling outbound sales efforts.

Top CRM software for outbound sales

Here’s a look at three popular solutions optimized for outbound sales teams. Although, as mentioned above, these tools would actually be considered more Sales Engagement Platforms, as they cover all of the essentials outbound sales teams would need to carry out successful outreach activities:

1. Close

Close is a powerful CRM with a strong focus on outbound sales for smaller teams. It offers features like built-in calling, SMS, and email sequences, making it easy to manage high-volume outreach from a single platform.

Close also provides detailed tracking of key metrics and supports integrations with other tools essential for outbound sales.

2. SalesLoft

SalesLoft is a comprehensive sales engagement platform that offers advanced automation and sequencing capabilities, enabling teams to structure personalized, multi-touch outreach at scale. Its CRM includes performance analytics, call recording, AI-based engagement tools, and advanced reporting.

SalesLoft is ideal for advanced outbound sales teams looking to refine and scale up their existing strategies.

3. Outreach

Outreach provides an all-in-one sales engagement platform with tools for automating and scaling email and call outreach. It has built-in analytics, detailed activity tracking, and integrations with email and calendar tools, Outreach is well-suited for teams focused on outbound sales who need a scalable solution for managing their workflows.

Allegrow’s email deliverability software integrates with SalesLoft, Outreach, and Close, allowing you to prevent risky and low-engaging contacts from receiving your cadences.

Other factors to consider when choosing CRM software

When choosing the best CRM software for outbound sales, it’s also worth considering additional factors, such as:

Scalability: Look for a CRM that can grow with your team and handle increasing volumes of outreach

Ease of use: A user-friendly interface helps minimize onboarding time and maximizes productivity

Customization options: Custom fields and workflows allow you to tailor the CRM to your team’s specific needs

Buyer intent signals: These signals will allow you to prioritize which leads are more likely to close, and faster

Support and resources: Quality customer support and available resources, like training and community forums, can help teams get the most out of their CRM

How to choose the best CRM software for outbound sales

Selecting the right CRM for outbound sales requires a focus on key features and integrations that support high-volume outreach. 

Look for CRM software with advanced sequencing capabilities, tracking for outbound-specific metrics, and seamless integrations with tools in your sales stack. 

Close, Salesloft, and Outreach are among the top options, each with unique strengths for outbound sales teams. Consider your team’s size, goals, and specific needs to find the best CRM that will empower your outbound sales strategy.

By selecting the best CRM for outbound sales, your team can streamline its outreach, improve efficiency, and boost the overall success of your outbound efforts.

If you want to talk about how your CRM software can integrate with Allegrow, feel free to book a quick audit call here.

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