What is Inbound Sales and why should you implement it now?
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Let’s do a quick exercise. Try to remember a famous TV commercial from your childhood. Surely he was talking about the benefits and characteristics of an extraordinary service that no one could not have. If we think about it, the promotion of products and services has changed completely.
Today the messages that are successful are not those that tell you how wonderful a service is, but those that really know the pains, behaviors and motivations of their customers, and that is where they point.
Here’s a perfect example: cold calling (a common strategy in traditional sales) is only 2.5% effective today. And 77% of B2B buyers say they don’t speak to sales reps until they’ve done their own research.
This is when we start talking about inbound sales or inbound sales.
What is inbound sales?
Unlike traditional sales in which any prospect was sought to adapt to the sales processes of companies, inbound sales focuses on previously studying the buyer person, on knowing their buying behavior and on adapting their communication to solve them. some need.
It is a modern and personalized methodology that focuses on the pain points of your ideal client, invites you to act as a trusted advisor and adjusts the sales process to the buyer’s journey.
Why? Thanks to internet access, your client has the freedom to find out about the solution he needs and does it more and more frequently. Your role now goes beyond a simple sale. It is time to advise your prospects during their research and decision, guide them, accompany them and be an active part of solving their needs.
It’s about selling the way your customers buy
But how?
Here are some steps you must follow to guide your sales to the needs and demands of your ideal client:
1. Define your buyer’s journey
Maybe you have a list of everything you want to say about your brand, but this list may not be compatible with what your customer really needs to know. The information itself can be found by your client, so this step will help you go further. Identify it in 3 stages:
- Knowledge. Learn how your buyers describe the challenges related to your offer, how they investigate them (what media they use, how often) and how they decide whether or not they should prioritize i
- Consideration. Focus on what category of solutions your buyer persona investigates, how buyers perceive the pros and cons of each category, and how your category is different from the point of view of your prospects.
- Decision. Identify the offers that your buyer person evaluates, what criteria they use to do it, what is your differentiator in the buyer’s eyes and who has the decision in their hands (for example, financial manager or commercial manager).
2. Tailor your sales process to the buyer’s journey
Unlike the traditional method, in inbound sales the sales process is created only after knowing the buyer’s journey, which helps sellers and buyers to be aligned. Take a look at these steps:
- Marketers identify strangers which challenges are compatible with the help your brand can offer. They become leads.
- Salespeople connect with these leads to help them prioritize their goals. If the lead is interested, it becomes a qualified lead.
- Sellers explore the challenges of their qualified leads to see if your offer fits what they need. If so, they become opportunities.
- Sellers advise these opportunities on how your offering is the best fit to help them overcome their challenges. If you accept, you become a customer.
Each of these 4 steps must be clearly defined, so that there is a perfect alignment between your marketing and sales team that not only attracts your ideal client, but also allows them to convince themselves that your option is superior to that of your competition.
Think like a buyer: more than a company that offers you a sale, you want a company that offers you a solution, an extraordinary advice, a unique experience. Your company can become this model that will not only help you to be perceived in a better way by your customers, but will increase your sales, your authority, your recognition, your profitability and more.
The Inbound sales methodology is here to stay, but worry if you are not putting it into practice yet. At Innova Marketing Solutions we are already helping businesses like yours to sell more, implementing this strategy. Schedule a 30 minute call to find out how.