Inbound + Outbound Marketing = Direct Sales Success
Traditionally, many marketers have equated Inbound Marketing to B2C and Outbound Marketing to B2B. I'm one of them. But over the past few years, I have begun to explore the relationship differently as and end-to-end solution in which each work together to create a better system. And both play a part across B2C and B2B but for today's discussion, I want to focus on the B2C Direct Sales solution.
For those of you who know me, I am a proponent of complete Sales to Marketing Alignment ... not just marketing as a sales enablement tool. And when you do this, your Outbound Marketing and Inbound Marketing efforts drive your overall marketing strategy and helps to build credibility and reputation while helping to craft your Ideal Customer Persona (ICP) and ultimately increase demand.
With Direct Sales, what you do next is CRITICAL. Your strategy needs to change. You need to outline three things. (1) How You Organize Your Leads, (2) How You Engage Your Leads, and (3) How You Sell To Your Leads.
And across all three areas, PROCESS is KEY! And DATA, DATA, DATA.
Let's look at all three.
1. Organize your leads with data.
Let's look beyond your hottest leads. That's so 2000 ...
Besides, focusing on only your TOP LEADS is the reason nearly 80% of marketing leads never convert. You're losing out on 80% of your potential business.
You need a qualification process that is backed by quantifiable data and yields appropriately scored leads to be successful. Rank your leads by fit and engagement so that your reps are empowered with the opportunity to provide custom-tailored, NOT CUSTOMIZED, sales conversations and content; all at the right time in the sales cycle.
Ultimately, a lead qualification process will remove the guesswork for your teams and identify the level of readiness of the buyer.
BUT, did you know? Boosting your lead outreach strategy with solid contact data improves sales productivity by up to 15% and sales revenue by up to 27%?
With a strategy like this you ensure consistent, Q/Q improvements that allow you to scale your business successfully.
2. Develop a customer engagement process.
You have your leads ready. You know they are target customers. But ... are they looking for you? The easier you make it for them to discover and engage with you — even before they’re in the formal buying cycle — the better. To help, here’s a basic, three-pronged customer engagement process that delivers results:
Establish objectives: Clear, concise goals are the foundation of any successful program. Focus on deepening relationships and establishing long-term sales relationships.
Target ideal customers: Identify your ideal customers where they congregate and network. A one-size-fits-all program rarely works; use profile traits to help you personalize your outreach (e.g. age, location, season, etc.). And sell them "their problem" if they are not using your service.
Outline communication efforts: Once you connect with your prospects, provide them with aligned content and information to inform and educate on their problem, not just a sales pitch. You need to build trust, drive value, and enable prospective customers to directly engage with YOU as they engage with your brand.
You may not be selling during this engagement process, but you are building a relationship and guiding contacts along the important discovery stage. In other words, you’re beginning to inform and nurture leads until they’re ready to enter the buying process.
When prospects enter this buying stage, especially on their own, sales conversations and cycles are faster, and conversion rates are higher.
3. Outline a sales process.
Once your prospects are ready to consider and buy, it’s important to have an outlined sales process that determines a prescriptive path to close. It’s also important to respond swiftly. Slow lead response time can be prohibitive. In fact, sales studies show that between 35-50% if all sales go to the first rep to contact.
Sales processes will differ across organizations, but here are some basic components you should implement:
- Lead status categories
- Lead stage conversion paths
- Status aging thresholds
- Opportunity staging
- Deal approval process
and most importantly ...
- Prospect feedback loops
You can see how with FEEDBACK LOOPS, your process goes from linear where unconverted leads fall off into the ether, to a continuous loop with endless potential and opportunity.
No matter how your sales structure is organized, it’s important to define your process and utilize tools to measure progress. A world-class direct sales strategy is one that makes it easy for organizations to forecast not only what’s working but also what can use improvement.