It’s time to call

Recently, Outreach alerted their companies about the impending 2024 Google and Yahoo bulk email restrictions. For those unfamiliar with these changes, new spam-prevention policies will begin being enforced on February 1, 2024. These restrictions will change the way many organizations think about outbound prospecting.

What are the new Google & Yahoo email restrictions?

These policies apply to organizations sending 5,000 or more messages each day to Google or Yahoo email addresses. This includes marketing and sales automation emails, newsletters, password reset emails, and more.

These restrictions will change the way organizations need to think about outbound prospecting. As an integration partner with Outreach and several other tech stack tools, we strongly believe in omnichannel outreach. We also know that, even before these changes were announced, the majority of all pipeline came from the phone. As we learn more about these changes to bulk email, we’re confident that the trend will continue to rise.

What do the new email restrictions mean for outbound prospecting?

The short answer is that you must be more strategic and direct with your outbound efforts. The ultimate goal of prospecting, regardless of your preferred channel, is to have a conversation. This may come as a discovery call or demo, but for Orum and Orum users, the prospecting process often starts and ends with phone calls.

Conversations establish trust, build relationships, and empower sales reps to listen more than they talk. Conversations generate opportunities to pick up on context clues, create sales champions, and cut through the convulsion of the email inbox.

When people think of cold calling, it’s possible that they put it into the same category as mass emailing, where it’s considered a spray-and-pray method. Using a platform like Orum empowers your reps to be more tactical and strategic.

What can you do to overcome these new restrictions?

To start, establish a calling culture. The new restrictions make it clear that an email-led sales approach will not only be ineffective but, in many cases, lead to your organization getting flagged as spam moving forward. The good news is that the best approach to growing pipeline has always been phone-first.

Orum’s Live Conversation Platform creates more connection opportunities than other channels. Phone-centric sales reps report 6.8 quality conversations daily, and email-centric only 3.3. When you use Orum, you create more opportunities in less time.

Yes, our power and parallel dialing options enable SDRs and AEs to get through call tasks much faster than standard dialing, but the time saved because of our platform means your reps have more hours in the day to research prospects and offer better context while pitching. Becoming a phone-first sales organization that uses Orum means reps have more time to role-play, practice objection handling, and improve team culture on the virtual Salesfloor.

How you can create modern omnichannel sales reps

The changes brought about by these updates from Google and Yahoo create challenges and opportunities. Omnichannel selling will never go away. Still, your organization must ensure your reps have the proper tools to connect with compliant and impactful prospects.

This announcement, coming in the year's final quarter, offers an opportunity to put an outreach plan in place that sets your organization up for success in the year to come. Sales reps need a platform to help them close those last deals before the fiscal year closes. Leaders need to set their teams up for success in the new year. This new update to the way email is managed continues to prove that the notion that “cold calling is dead” is, in fact, dead.

Q4 presents the opportunity for your team to hit your goals while also hitting the ground running into the new year. Orum’s ubiquitous integrations, virtual Salesfloor, and AI-powered platform drive efficiency while creating a culture where reps want to call.

Email, social selling, gifting, and direct mailing options will all continue to exist, but the best way in the future to connect with prospects will be the same as it is in the present–the phone. If you’re asking a question like, “How can our organization overcome these challenges?” then Orum is the answer.