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The whole concept of inbound marketing is to attract business to you. Contrast that with traditional sales, which is to go out and find business. Sales is push. Inbound is pull. Inbound marketing is the perfect synergy of sales and marketing… an alignment that can make both teams happier while bringing more money into your business.
In fact, inbound marketing will completely transform your sales team, making them happier, more productive, and WAY more successful. Here’s how:
1. Find More Prospects
A key to successful selling is a full pipeline. Most salespeople, however, hate prospecting. No matter what your age or experience, cold calling is the stuff of nightmares, but no salesperson can be successful without it. Or can they? Inbound marketing provides leads to your website that your sellers won’t ordinarily receive. Quality online content attracts interested prospects. Strategic CTAs (calls-to-action) nurture those leads, building trust with them until they are ready to talk to a salesperson, and then inviting them to request a contact by a salesperson.
2. Find Better Qualified Leads
Leads that come in via inbound marketing tend to be better qualified than those the salesperson goes after personally. Why? There’s no pressure online. When a prospect requests contact, they’re not going to do that unless they are ready. That typically doesn’t happen until or unless they’ve read multiple blogs, looked at your website, read reviews online, and made the decision that they want to take the next step. For that reason, inbound leads tend to close faster and easier than those who have been prospected via cold calling.
3. Improve Closing Ratios
For all the reasons listed above, closing ratios with inbound leads are much higher than with other leads. What’s more, when using inbound marketing software like Hubspot, a salesperson can customize a conversation with prospective customers. A prospect’s online activity is tracked. A salesperson can know what interests a prospect has by seeing what forms were filled out, what eBooks were downloaded and what blogs were viewed. This customization saves valuable time in the sales process and gives the prospect information based on their specific areas of interest.
4. Increase New Business
Inbound marketing guides interested online leads to content and information that matches the questions and keywords they’ve entered in the Google search bar. It effectively reaches leads MUCH earlier in the sales process, well before a salesperson even knows they exist. Salespeople tend to prospect businesses that fit a certain profile of being more likely to want or need their products and services. Google doesn’t discriminate. It simply matches keywords to content. You’ll get leads from inbound marketing that your salespeople wouldn’t think of cold calling.
5. Increase Wallet Share with Existing Customers
We understand this point all too well. We constantly hear clients say, “I didn’t know you guys did ____!” It can be frustrating to find out that a loyal customer hired a different company for a service you provide, simply because they didn’t know you could provide it. Inbound marketing gives you the opportunity to tell your story, and to match your solutions to people who are searching for answers. Again, Google doesn’t discriminate, doesn’t avoid cold-calling, and doesn’t hate prospecting. Google simply rewards quality content.
6. Quality Sales Collateral for Seeding Prospects
Lastly, salespeople are constantly asking their marketing departments for information, 1-sheeters, and brochures that help them tell their company story to prospects. Inbound marketing provides easy access to, over time, a database FULL of information to seed prospects. Salespeople can follow up with prospects by emailing the blog links and eBooks that can be selected based on specifically what that prospect wants or needs to see.
If your salespeople struggle with any of the above challenges… or if they simply want to sell more and sell more quickly… then it may be time for you to hire “Inbound” as your newest salesperson. The benefit to hiring “Inbound” - no vacation days, no sick leave, works 24/7/365, always fills out sales reports accurately and on time… and is an excellent team player. What’s more, inbound can start immediately.
