GTM Shift: Focusing on Outcomes Over Volume Sales Metrics Can 3X Conversion Rates

Buyers in today’s B2B market have made one thing very clear: more is not always better. Sellers are looking at their volume sales pipeline metrics and wondering why their outbound GTM strategy isn’t working. 

The problem doesn’t just lie in the quantity but in the quality of activities. In an environment that values personalization and requires efficiency, buyers expect more from their sellers than impersonal “send all” messages. Companies must move away from bulk generic messaging and focus on high-quality activities. Once this shift is made, more sellers will see an increase in what really matters: outcomes.

Sales Pipeline Metrics in the Early 2000s

Looking back, there is a very clear path that has led modern-day sellers to this quantity-over-quality mindset. In the early 2000s, emails and calls were key to any successful sales strategy. Each activity was highly customized for the buyer, and as a result, sellers saw conversions down the pipeline. It was around this time that Aaron Ross was working with the Salesforce.com sales team. He would go on to scale the business into a $100 million sales machine utilizing an outbound prospecting approach explained in his book Predictable Revenue. 

Many sellers still use Predictable Revenue to model their current GTM strategy. The problem is that the book is based on data collected before sales engagement platforms existed. These platforms allow sellers to be more efficient in their activities and send more emails faster. Sounds like a great idea, right?

These efficiency tools led many to hope that more activities would translate into more outcomes. However, the continued decrease in sales reps hitting their outbound quotas has proved the simple concept of “more” does not translate to results.

A sales pipeline that starts and ends with activities doesn’t make sense for buyers today, and bulk activities are more efficient but not effective. Sales leaders are disappointed by their sales pipeline metrics, and a change in strategy is needed to generate the desired outcome. In this article, we’ll take a closer look at why your outbound strategy may not be working. We’ll also dive into how to start focusing on outcomes instead of volume sales metrics by sticking to the following:

• Increasing relevancy and personalization
• Leverage tools and technology effectively
• Test and track your performance

Why Isn’t Outbound Working?

Volume of activities

Volume-based outbound playbooks in a modern B2B market don’t get the job done anymore. With the first generation of sales engagement platforms, sales reps still weren’t able to press “send all” on messages. However, as more email-heavy sequences were adopted, that wall was torn down, and “send all” became more common.

Sales teams relied heavily on automated and templated emails, and once the pandemic hit, this practice only accelerated.  However, companies began to see that an increase in messages did not directly translate into outcomes. Today, the data shows that even with the increase in efficiency, only 17% of reps are reporting that they hit their outbound quota. That’s because the emphasis on personalized activities has shifted to a focus on quantity. The focus on volume sales pipeline metrics led to less effective activities in creating downstream pipeline.

Quality of activities

The problem with focusing on volume sales metrics is that if the activities are low quality, they’re not accurate predictors of outcomes. Activities are labeled low-quality when they lack the personalization and customization to connect with the buyer. When companies started using templated emails, they worked okay at first. Sales teams then accelerated this practice, and there was a smaller emphasis on training for customized, relevant outreach. The results of these practices have been less personalization and customization, leading to efficient but low-quality and ineffective activities. 

Now, some outbound activities lack the quality needed to generate meetings and lead to meaningful conversations. If you want your outbound to work, you must focus on what really matters at the end of the day: outcomes. How do you produce these outcomes in today’s competitive B2B market? Shift your focus away from the volume of activities to instead an outbound playbook that focuses on efficiently creating high-quality activities. 

Related Content: How to Create a Sales Sequence That Doesn't Annoy Prospects

Adjusting Your Activities Away From A Volume Sales Pipeline Metric Focus

Increase relevancy and personalization

The most crucial way to get back to focusing on outcomes over volume is to increase relevancy and personalization. Instead of focusing on raw activities, the focus is instead put on the first outcome: a human-to-human interaction. In order for your teams to generate meaningful conversations, your activities have to be personalized and relevant to your buyer. 

Studies show that 71% of consumers expect some form of personalized interaction, so sellers have to be able to deliver. As a leader, this would be a great time to unleash your team’s creativity. Allow them to use their skills to be more flexible in personalizing their messages. Train them in doing quality outreach and then allow them to match their strengths to generate positive sales pipeline metrics. 

On the other hand, as a salesperson, you have to know what your strengths are. Figure out what you do differently from anyone else and be able to articulate how you can use it. Successful salespeople learn their skills, learn their audience, and then find ways to merge the two to create relevant and personalized messages.

Leverage tools and technology effectively

Tools that promise automation only work on a micro-scale and rarely scale for larger sales teams. However, it is still possible to leverage tools and technology to create more high-quality activities. Another way to have a successful GTM strategy is to utilize technology like custom GPTs to personalize and customize. It is a modernized tool and technique for B2B sales that is actually working.

Using ChatGPT to write emails is not best practice. Instead, custom GPTs for sales can be used to aggregate ways to speak to a persona in a specific industry about their wants and needs. Custom GPTs can help with relevancy but do not replace the need for a human-to-human feel. Leveraging tools for personalization is much different from using bulk automated messaging. You get to continue to increase the efficiency of creating activities without sacrificing the quality of the messages. 

Related Content: 5 Ways ChatGPT Can Actually Move the Needle For Your Sales Team

Test and track your metrics

Once you leverage tools and technology to help you increase relevancy and personalization, you then need to test and track. As a seller, you have to track your results for yourself to determine what’s working and what’s not working. Keeping up with these sales pipeline metrics will allow you to identify what needs optimizing.

Your strategy should always be based on data, not solely on opinion. While we are shifting away from tracking volume, there are still metrics we need to track to determine effectiveness. The goal is to track the top-of-funnel metrics relevant to hitting your numbers, not just volume.

Related Content: Three Key Revenue Metrics to Track in 2024

Combine Technology and Processes to Understand Your Sales Pipeline Metrics 

If you or your company utilize a strategy where send all is being hit more frequently than you are making things relevant, your time is not being used in the best way to generate outcomes. Without the tools we have today, seller activities of the early 2000s were effective in generating a qualified pipeline. However, each activity required meticulous manual effort. With today’s sales tech and tools, sellers must tap back into the mindset of customizing and personalizing activities. This is possible to do while appropriately taking advantage of the efficiency these tools provide them.

Combining technology and process is what it means to be an innovative seller in today’s B2B market. You have to have some level of personalization and relevancy at every step if you want to generate meaningful conversations. You need to know how to use technology to put together that relevancy quickly. All that’s left is optimization and outbound performance management, and to do that, you have to track your performance and the relevant sales pipeline metrics. Today’s world is complex, and sellers must use modern sales tools to shift away from a volume focus and instead focus on efficiently creating high-quality activities.