Why You Need an Inbound Sales Strategy

Equally important as your Inbound Marketing Strategy, is your Inbound Sales Strategy. It allows you to leverage the full benefit of your brand building and the lead generation deliverables produced by your marketing team. Before you can tap into the value from the marketing team's performance, you'll need a well-defined, repeatable process for your sales team to enable them to properly intercept prospective buyers based on where they are in their journey. An inbound sales strategy helps address typical sales problems:

·        Not enough opportunities or leads

·        Poor lead follow up

·        Efficient use of sales tool technology

The plan I develop for clients includes four steps: Identify, Connect, Explore and Advise. This can be followed for all of the leads your reps work not just the inbound leads generated by your marketing activities. Your inbound sales strategy will address the three components needed to achieve sales success:

1.      People

2.      Process

3.      Technology

People - We begin with an assessment of the current sales skills and identify strengths and gaps in the current team.

1.      The will to sell

2.      Sales DNA

3.      Tactical skills – reaching qualifying and closing

4.      Systems and strategies in place

Future activities could include: Building out a sales hiring process, documenting first 90 day on-boarding process for new salespeople or developing a sales management program.

Process - The internet has change the way people buy and few companies have changed the way they sell to match these new buyer behaviors. The sales process your team follows needs to support new buyer actions and engage the buyer as earlier as possible. The right sales process enables your sales team to close more deals.

Map your sales process and existing sales assets to the stages of today’s buyer journey

1.      Identify – Establishing a public authoritative voice

2.      Connect – Progressively qualifying your lead

3.      Explore – Engaging the prospect in collective decision making

4.      Advise – Closing and continuing your relationship

Mapping the process to the buyer’s journey will identify strengths and weaknesses in your process and identify any missing assets needed to connect, nurture, qualify and convert leads in your pipeline.

Ignoring a buyer’s digital footprint (his/her activity on your website) is
the equivalent to not showing up for a scheduled meeting.

Technology – With some buyers getting 60-75% of the way through their buying journey before wanting to connect with a salespersons, leverage digital lead intelligence is a key part of a sales success. Ignoring a buyer’s digital footprint (his/her activity on your website) is the equivalent to not showing up for a scheduled meeting. Today’s sales tools go far beyond “social selling” and enable:

1.      Successful prospecting in a digital marketplace

2.      The automation of personalized communication

3.      Context-Based engagement

4.      Sequencing of lead nurturing

Leveraging sales technology improves sales efficiency allows salespeople to spend more time with qualified prospects. 

The final benefit of your inbound sales strategy will be better alignment between your sales and marketing teams. Their mutual shared understandings, improved collaboration and growth.