HAVE WE ALL BECOME TOO PASSIVE IN THE WAY WE SELL?

The Uncomfortable Reality We May All Need To Acknowledge

We can potentially break selling down into two different worlds:

• The world of inbound sales - in this world, the focus is on marketing strategies and, increasingly, online tactics designed to get the prospect to take an action.? Funnels, click throughs, lead magnets, registrations to events, calendar booking and so on.? This focus is legitimate, however it is built on requiring the prospect to take the first connection action.? This effectively puts the control of the process in their hands.
• The world of outbound sales - in this world, the focus is on outreach and it operates from a basis of intel gathering, hyper-targeting individuals, territory and account management and connection and engagement strategies.? The focus here is based on the sales person retaining responsibility for the first connection action.

In the inbound model the front end marketing is aimed at a group.? In the outbound model it is aimed at individuals.

Neither is right or wrong, however they do create a different sales posture.

In outbound selling, the process traditionally started with prospecting … an increasingly dying artform.? Prospecting started with gathering intel.? Understanding as much about the people being targeted as possible.? It may have involved cold calling and cold outreach through social media and email.

Sales people held the responsibility for both nurturing the prospect into the buying conversation as well as holding that conversation and converting the sale.

Sales people commonly hated prospecting and they would much rather be in front of the potential client and be closing.? In fact, in sales leadership roles, you spent a lot of time keeping your sales team focused on the prospecting work that needed to be done.

Unfortunately, inbound has effectively eliminated prospecting from the sales person’s role.? Responsibility for finding the leads now often sits with the company and particularly its online strategy.

Increasingly, salespeople want warm leads, who are 80% through the buying process, to talk to.? We want to use funnels and technology to position the prospect to buy so the sales conversation is effectively just a close.

Here’s my concern about this, and it may be an uncomfortable reality - Has the over-emphasis on inbound selling, over the past 15 to 20 years, created a level of sales laziness where we now expect the customer to come to us ready to buy?? Have we become too passive in how we sell?? Has the role of the sales person lost the responsibility to drive the first connection action in the process and therefore drive the sale?? Are we too dependent on the customer being responsible for taking the first connection step?

The Outbound Selling Model

?In simplistic terms the outbound model starts with an empty list and the sales person undertakes research and intel to find the very best prospects, who truly need the solution being offered, and who can and might be willing to pay at the price point desired.

It starts with identification and the creation of “the list”.

The flow looks a little like this:

In the identification phase the company might decide it wants to sell to SAAS companies between $5m and $51m in revenue, who specifically sell an enterprise level solution that cannot be bought through a simple click and purchase online website.

This will require some real intel work, however, doing that work and building that list, including the list of key people that work in those companies allows for a much more targeted marketing strategy.

Generally speaking, the more targeted to an individual the strategy, the lower the cost of acquisition.

The sales person is responsible for nurturing the list and getting the prospects to the first engagement step, which is to have the prospect willingly agree to entering into a connection with the sales person.

From there, it is all about the sales pipeline.? The success is in the pipeline.? If your pipeline is full you have more options, you can hold onto price more deliberately and your sales become predictable and reliable.

If the pipeline is empty or sporadic, there can be no certainty in the sales process.

Unfortunately, inbound selling has taught the world to replace the intel and research required for prospect identification, with marketing and then try and get the prospect to take the leap from this first stage, to to the last stage of conversion in a single digital leap.

We have allowed technology to make us lazy!

The Pipeline

There’s a saying in outbound selling promoted by Jeb Blount from Sales Gravy …

“The pipe is life!”??

What does that mean?

The key to a powerful outbound strategy is a well managed pipeline.? Remember, when the pipeline is full and there is plenty of opportunity in the pipeline, the ability to express value and hold onto price becomes easier.

The optionality a full pipeline offers gives you power.

The key to great pipeline management is great territory and account management, deliberate outreach through multiple methods and really intelligent discovery with the client.

In a busy market you must be different.? When you sell an offer you’re serving the client … the problem is, this is exactly what everyone else is doing.

When deep strategic discovery is your superpower, you’re expanding the client and in a challenge based, sense-making sales world, that makes you stand out.

We could write an entire newsletter on pipeline management, but the main message is that the critical stages of connection and conversation are an invitation process.? We must take FULL responsibility for triggering the first engagement action and then build the conversation through layers of value, so the conversion process becomes self evident.

Various statistics tell us that a typical prospect will have at least five touch points before engaging in a significant buying decision.? Unfortunately the same data suggests that sales people stop reaching out after two touch points.

The pipeline is all about managing that cycle in a conscious, clever and deliberate way so the two sets of expectations line up.

It’s the salesperson's job to establish the relationship, not the customers.

In Summary

The point is not that either inbound or outbound are better than the other.? They both serve a purpose and, depending on the business model, the volume of clients needed and the complexity and price point of the product sold, they each have strengths and weaknesses.

The main point of this newsletter is to remind us all that there is still great power in what might today be considered an older style of selling.

For those of us that see selling as an art form, the challenge is always to take the best from all approaches and create a masterpiece.

****************************************************************************

Thanks for reading -? in just under a week I’ll be running my next Monthly 20-Minute Teaching.

Outbound Versus Inbound Sales And The Birth of Lazy Selling

Outbound sales strategies are completely different to the inbound strategies that dominate the entrepreneurial world today.

Outbound selling is typically directed at large corporations and is an intel driven, highly targeted, sniper like approach to the sale.

In this month's 20-Minute Teaching, I'll be exploring the difference between outbound and inbound selling and what we can learn and transfer from the world of outbound sales, and apply to all businesses.

A strong business will have both forms of selling and it is the right time, right now, to reconnect with the best insights that decades of outbound selling can offer to any business that wants to control their own destiny.

The 20-Minute Teaching is a highly popular event and we don’t advertise it widely.? We publish a diary link the week before and from there, it’s on a first in best dressed basis until the Zoom room is full.??

There is no registration required.??

If you’d like to join me just go here to get the diary invite and add it to your calendar:

https://modelsmethod.link/20-minute-teaching