Master Inbound Sales: All About Inbound Sales

Introduction

In this blog we’re going to discuss Inbound Sales, we’re going to share some Key Takeaways that will give you a strong grasp of Inbound Sales. Be sure to read through the whole blog as it'll give you an idea of how to implement these Key Takeaways in your Inbound Business.

The buyer now wields more power in the buying and selling process than the seller. The purchasing process has been transformed.

As a result, inbound sales is a critical foundation of any successful sales team strategy, because as the buying process evolves, so must the sales process.

Inbound sales is relevant whether your sales process relies on inbound leads or targeted outreach, whether you're a large or small company, and whether your sale is complex or simple. Because inbound sales transforms selling to meet the needs of today's empowered buyer, sales reps can sell the way people buy.

Adopting an Inbound Sales Strategy

A variety of factors influence inbound selling.

Examples include hiring salespeople, implementing an inbound sales strategy, and properly utilizing technology.

To be successful, you must understand the best practices for inbound selling.

We'll concentrate on tips you can use on your next sales call. Whether you sell daily or coach someone who does, this information is immediately applicable.

You'll need an inbound sales strategy to accomplish this.

The buying experience is distinct from the sales process.

A sales process consists of the steps you must take between receiving a new lead and closing the sale.

 Every company's sales process is unique, with the steps defined by the company's product, customer base, sales cycle, and a variety of other factors.

Inbound sales are concerned with strategy.

Regardless of how large or small, your team is, inbound sales provide a personalized experience based on the buyer's context.

There are four phases in your inbound sales strategy:

1. Identify potential buyers who could have a goal or a challenge that you can assist with.
2. Connect with leads to assist them in deciding whether to prioritize the goal or the challenge.
3. Explore the goals and challenges of a qualified lead to determine whether your offering is a good fit. If they are, they are a sales opportunity.
4. Advise a sales prospect about how your offering is uniquely positioned to meet their goals and challenges. They become a customer if they select your solution.

Each phase should center on the buyer experience.

Identify Phase

This will determine the course of your strategy. An exceptional experience requires exceptional effort at the start.

If you want to provide an excellent experience for the people you work with, you must invest significant time and effort at the start of your strategy.

Conduct preliminary research before speaking with a prospect.

Instead of trying to figure out if they're the right person to talk to, you'll be able to offer assistance and resources from the start. The important thing to remember during this stage is that many buyers enter the buyer's journey at the awareness stage before engaging with salespeople.

Attracting is heavily dependent on the behavior of the people you want to attract.

You could discover which blogs your buyers are reading and then read and comment on them. Contribute to and help promote your company's blog. Find the LinkedIn groups where your buyers ask questions, then join and answer questions in those groups.

 Using social media is an important component of Inbound Sales. Follow the thought leaders that your buyers follow and share insightful comments and content with them.

You'll need to be aware of passive buyers in your industry as an inbound salesperson.

People who are not currently looking to buy but may be in the future are considered passive buyers.

After you've identified your active buyers, you'll identify your passive buyers.

Then, before contacting these passive buyers, you'll gather as much information about them as possible online.

Connect Phase

The connect phase is where you first meet the prospective buyer. When a lead decides to prioritize the goal or challenge, they become a qualified lead.

Understand the buyer's context.

You should express your understanding of their situation. This context could include the buyer's industry, role, interests, shared connections, and other factors. Make an offer that is aligned with the buyer's journey's awareness stage — or whatever stage the buyer is in at the time — in your initial outreach.

When you get a buyer on the phone, identify his or her interests and priorities and provide guidance. Show genuine interest in their objectives and challenges. Genuine interest fosters trust.

Explore Phase

Expert consultation is the experience you want to provide here.

Don't begin with a canned presentation.

Use your buyer's initial interest, as well as your credibility as a thought leader, to delve deeper into the buyer's specific goals and challenges.

You can determine whether you can assist the buyer more efficiently and thoroughly than they can themselves.

You will guide your prospects to the right conclusions by asking the right questions during the explore phase. Sometimes the correct conclusion is not to purchase from you.

However, by employing a consultative, inbound approach, you will be able to quickly identify unqualified leads, allowing you to avoid wasting time working with people who will never buy from you.

Finally, you will have more time to devote to those who need your assistance.

Advise Phase

This is the culmination of the experience you've been offering.

Your assistance is required for the exploratory conversation.

You'll confirm that the buyer is prioritizing the objectives for which you're uniquely qualified to assist. So, when it comes time to advise, you'll have a personalized presentation ready to explain why you're uniquely positioned to help.

Here are examples of tailored presentations:

1. Using the buyer's terminology, create a PowerPoint deck that emphasizes only the value propositions that are aligned with the buyer's needs.
2. A product demonstration that only shows the features that are important to the buyer, in the order that they are important to the buyer.
3. An ROI analysis tailored to the buyer's metrics and business.
4. A proposal or contract that specifies a client's objectives, the agreed-upon scope of work, and success metrics.

Finding out about the buyer's context and tailoring your presentation.

Beyond the information available online, you will add tremendous value to the buyer's journey. You'll act as a liaison between the general messaging on your company's website and the buyer's specific situation.

Determining a Good Fit Prospect

You must comprehend what constitutes a good fit for your organization.

Before you can identify potential leads, you must first define what your company can and cannot assist them with.

There are two steps to this process.

1. Create a profile of your ideal customer.
2. Create personas based on that profile.

Ideal Customer Profiles

Your target market is defined by the ideal customer profile. If you're a B2B salesperson, your ideal customer profile will be at the company level. As a B2C salesperson, you will be targeting a specific segment of the general population.

Creating buyer personas

Once you've determined your ideal customer profile, you can begin to define buyer personas.

A persona represents the various types of people in your ideal customer profile.

If you're in B2B sales, your ideal customer profile will define which companies are a good fit for your offering, and your buyer personas will define who you need to work with at those companies.

Consider the case of a recruiting firm that focuses on healthcare companies with fewer than 10,000 employees. If your firm specializes in recruiting salespeople, you would most likely target the VP of sales, the Director of Recruiting, and the CEO of those healthcare organizations.

You would then create a persona for each of the three roles: vice president of sales, director of recruiting, and CEO.

If you work in B2C, you may be wondering how this relates to you.

Don't be concerned — it most emphatically does. Your ideal customer profile will be a broad group of people, such as home buyers.

 Then, within that category, your personas will describe specific types of people, such as first-time homebuyers, downsizers, upsizers, and investors looking to buy rental properties.

 Regardless of whether you're selling B2B or B2C, the needs and behaviors represented by each persona will be very different.

Lower-level Inbound Leads

If the contact is a lower-level employee with no purchasing power, that's fine. Based on the ideal customer profile, this remains a good lead.

There is most likely something going on at the company that has prompted the lower-level employee to conduct research, which you can assist them with. Most likely, this person was delegated the research by a higher-level employee.

If an inbound lead does not match your ideal customer profile, mark it as "unqualified." The lead should then be removed from your CRM's list of inbound leads.

 Marketing can then work this lead on your behalf by utilizing their marketing automation platform or other marketing technology.

Personalized Outreach

As an inbound salesperson, you will uniquely approach buyers.

You'll start with a message tailored to the buyer's situation.

You will make an offer that corresponds to the buyer's journey's awareness stage. When you get a prospective buyer on the phone, you'll try to understand his or her interests and needs, and you'll offer to assist where possible.

It's critical to remember that inbound is a philosophy.

Inbound marketing encourages businesses to be human, helpful, and holistic.

Being "human" means approaching business in an empathetic, personable manner.

At each stage of the buyer's journey, provide people with the information and guidance they require.

Give people the same level of human, helpful service at every stage of their lifecycle, whether they're strangers, prospects, or customers.

Connecting Call

Planning your connect calls will be easier if you map your persona's interests.

You should have a good idea of the issue your prospect is attempting to solve. It may be difficult to connect specific buyer actions to your interest categories at first.

However, as you gain experience with your buyers, this link will become clearer. When you observe buyer behavior and associate it with interest categories, you can use interest-specific content in your outreach efforts.

 You'll be ready to connect in a helpful, inbound way if you've prepared relevant content to address your inbound lead's specific problems.

Connect with inbound leads in real-time.

Calling is unquestionably worthwhile.

Inbound calling differs from cold calling in several ways.

Cold calling is more detrimental than beneficial. Calling inbound leads increases their chances of becoming customers significantly.

Leveraging Common Connections

It could be a friend, a coworker, or a family member. During the connect phase, common connections are extremely effective because they elevate you from stranger to acquaintance.

To use common connections, first, define their categories.

Here are some common connection categories:

• A potential buyer may be referred by one of your customers.
• One of your coworkers knows a potential buyer.
• A potential buyer is known to an acquaintance outside of your organization.

Your connections may differ, and that's fine!

Unable to Help

If you can identify a need for which you can provide a solution, it's time to move on to the explore phase of your inbound sales strategy. Don't press if you can't identify a need for which you can assist.

Continue by sharing any relevant content.

Don't press if you can't identify a need for which you can assist.

Pressing them will only make things worse.

Qualification Framework

An inbound salesperson investigates the challenges and objectives of qualified leads.

You must decide whether your solution is the best fit for their situation. If it is a good fit, these leads are converted into opportunities. This requires the use of a qualification framework.

Qualification techniques such as BANT are probably familiar to you.

While these can be useful for identifying ready-to-buy prospects, they are less effective at assisting prospects in understanding the value of a differentiated offering.

BANT-like Qualification techniques are ineffective in persuading a prospect to switch providers.

These strategies are also ineffective for prospects who are unaware of a problem. CGP, TCI, and BA is a much better approach. This acronym can assist you in defining the challenges and goals, establishing a timeline, and determining the impact on a prospect.

CGP, TCI, BA

C: The CHALLENGE your prospect is attempting to overcome.

G: The GOAL that your prospect is attempting to achieve.

P: The prospect's PLAN for overcoming their obstacle.

T: TIMELINE for achieving the prospect's goal.

C: The negative CONSEQUENCES of failure.

I: The positive IMPLICATIONS of success.

B: The prospect's BUDGET. 

A: The AUTHORITY needed to proceed with your solution.

You require a framework that will be beneficial to the prospect.

Your framework should look like this:

1. Understanding: You can ensure that you don't overlook details critical to understanding your buyer's context.
2. Effective communication: You can create a structure for relaying your prospect's story back to them, letting them know that they were heard.
3. Advising: You can position your products and services as a solution to your buyer's problems.

CGP: Challenge, Goal, Plan

Once you understand their challenge, determine the prospect's goal.

You must comprehend the financial implications.

You'll be better prepared to budget for your prospect. Your solution should assist your prospect in avoiding financial pitfalls. Then approach the Planning Phase.

Use CGP:

C: The CHALLENGE your prospect is attempting to overcome.

G: The GOAL that your prospect is attempting to achieve.

P: The prospect's PLAN for overcoming their obstacle.

Remember, it is critical to use active listening when probing for issues.

Active listening ensures that your prospect is heard and understood.

Active listening consists of four steps:

1. Pay close attention to the prospect.
2. Restate the prospect's words in their entirety.
3. Verify that you heard the prospect correctly.
4. Finally, ask a pertinent follow-up question to clarify your understanding of their situation.

TCI: Timeline, Consequences, Implications

The next step is TCI.

T: TIMELINE for achieving the prospect's goal.

C: The negative CONSEQUENCES of failure.

I: The positive IMPLICATIONS of success.

Concentrate on the impact of decisions during the TCI portion of the conversation.

You should cover three topics: the prospect's timeline and urgency, the negative consequences of inaction, and the positive implications of the action.

BA: Budget, Authority

The Final Step is BA.

B: The prospect's BUDGET. 

A: The AUTHORITY needed to proceed with your solution.

It is up to the prospect to pay your price or continue dealing with their problems.

It makes no sense to start with authority questions.

Purchasing has evolved dramatically over the last decade.

Everyone has access to information at their fingertips.

More junior employees are tasked with conducting research, which means they are important but not the decision-makers.

People are empowered to share company priorities in more transparent workplaces, which means you can learn about what's going on inside a company from more people.

With executives busier and more risk-averse than ever before, decisions must be approved by an increasing number of people, implying that many people are likely involved in making a decision. The best time to inquire about decision-making processes is later.

The CGP, TCI, and BA framework is excellent for guiding exploratory sales calls.

Set the tone and trajectory of the call at the outset, and then get into CGP: your prospect's challenges, goals, and plans.

 Once you understand what your prospect is trying to accomplish and what is holding them back, talk about TCI: their timeline for taking action, the negative consequences of not taking action, and the positive implications of moving forward.

The call will then be concluded with BA: budget and authority.

After you've gone over everything, use CGP, TCI, and BA to recap your conversation and ensure that you and your prospect have a shared understanding of their situation and what needs to happen next.

If you do this, you'll be in a great position to move on to the next phase of your inbound sales strategy and advise your prospect on the best next steps.

Conclusion

Inbound Sale is a crucial part of Inbound Business, if you master these strategies you’ll be able to get more leads, customers, clients, etc. Inbound Sale is a way to grow your Inbound business!