2023 Trends in B2B Sales by Belkins: The Most Comprehensive State of Outbound Report

Belkins, the #1 lead generation agency, released a State of Outbound Trends Report 2023, based on surveying 2,500 C-level respondents from software development, e-learning, marketing and advertising, financial, and other industries worldwide.

The Report offers a unique perspective on the U.S. B2B outbound landscape, common challenges, and possible room for improvement, backed up with a deep 2-year study.

Featured 2023 Outbound Trends

As businesses navigate the ever-changing landscape of outbound marketing, the trends of 2023 are emerging and taking shape. From the continued digital transformation spurred on by the pandemic, the coming year promises to bring new challenges and opportunities for companies. Here are the key 2023 outbound trends discovered during the survey:

1. Going online. Digital transformation, evoked by COVID-19, is still driving change. Companies look for software solutions to reach their customers wherever they are. The remote sales model gains the edge as well, even for businesses that used to depend on face to face interactions.
2. Scaling is a #1 priority. Most respondents name exploring new markets and targeting new people as the key point in their outbound strategy. The strongest need for expansion can be observed in marketing and advertising agencies (93%), fintech (85%), software dev (80%), e-learning (73%), and manufacturing (65%) companies.
3. Emails are a top-3 sales channel. The majority of the companies gave outbound emails first positions among their preferred marketing channels.

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Cold email outreach has all chances to become a #1 channel in 2023. Despite the positive trend in increasing marketing budgets in 2022, a decrease is expected in 2023. This makes companies look for cost-effective ways to engage with potential clients, which is exactly about outbound emails.

Read More: Mastering Sales in 2023 Will Require Masterful Outbound

How to Overcome Common Outbound Issues

Challenges companies face while launching outreach campaigns are intense competition, lack of brand awareness and in-house resources, email deliverability and spam filter issues, and no-shows to demos. Based on the Belkins report, there are several recommendations on how to overcome these challenges:

1. Update or create Ideal Customer Profile for more precise targeting.
2. Adjust services to match the needs of niche industries.
3. Hire an outsourced team to generate leads and appointments.