Glossary
What is outbound sales?
Outbound sales is when the seller starts the conversation: you pick the people you want as customers and contact them first by email, LinkedIn, phone or message. Inbound sales is the opposite, where the buyer makes the first move and you respond.
Published by Sellinger AI. Numbers and settings checked on 19 October 2026 against the fact register. Report an error.
How do outbound and inbound differ?
| Outbound | Inbound | |
|---|---|---|
| Who starts | Seller | Buyer |
| Control over volume | High | Low |
| Speed to start | Days | Months of content |
| Main risk | Irrelevance | Slow growth |
Most teams run both. Outbound fills the gap while inbound builds.
What is a simple outbound model?
Meetings = people contacted × reply rate × share of replies that book. Example with made up numbers: 1,000 × 0.30 × 0.10 = 30 meetings. Improve one factor at a time. See reply rate. A shortfall in any one factor limits the result: thirty percent replies on a list of the wrong people still gives few meetings.
How Sellinger handles it
Sellinger runs outbound as its own sales motion. The owner statement is over 1,500 calls booked in the last 12 months, using on average 7.5 LinkedIn accounts. The reproducible subset from the database is 351 showcase meetings booked through the agents, 10,978 of 27,737 people messaged replied (40%).
The first number counts every call booked, the second is only showcase meetings booked through the agents' booking link, one per person, on LinkedIn. The case study also notes where something did not help: faster replies did not lift meetings, and the list mix mattered more. Outbound results depend on the list, the offer and the sender, so read these figures as one company's record, not a forecast. See the case study, AI SDR vs human SDR and cold outreach.
Common questions
Is outbound sales dead?
What is the difference between outbound and cold outreach?
Do I need an SDR for outbound?
Sources and method
Sellinger case study and fact register (owner statement 19 October 2026; production data snapshot 9 October 2026).
Related: Cold outreach, Sales prospecting, Sellinger case study, AI SDR vs human SDR.
