Is your sales team as effective as they could be? Are you looking for ways to make your process better than it historically has been? In this article, we are going to share the 101 or getting started with Inbound Sales and the methodology & strategies that go along with this great new approach to sales.
The first question you may have is what is Inbound Sales? There is a great article by Mark Roberge that states Inbound sales is:
Inbound sales is a personalized, helpful, modern sales methodology. Inbound salespeople focus on their prospect's pain points, act as a trusted consultant, and adapt their sales process to the buyer journey. This post outlines six tactical steps to get you started.
If you want to learn more from Mark, you can read the article Inbound Sales: How to Sell the Way Prospects Buy.
We here at Impulse Creative also took time out to answer the question of what is Inbound Sales and why is it important to your business. This video will help you understand the ways that this inbound approach can impact your sales efforts.
There are many more but in this video, we talk about 4 major ways that Inbound Sales will or can impact your organization.
First thing’s first, identify the right buyers.
In the B2B space, this is called account-based marketing. Whether you’re in sales to other businesses or directly to consumers, identifying the right buyers from the start (working with marketing most likely - and teaching them about your ideal buyer) will get you off on the right inbound sales journey.
Next, connect with humans.
Anyone focused on inbound sales will connect with leads to help them decide how to progress through the buyer’s journey. This should include the communication tools they choose - it might be texting, social messaging, email… be ready to communicate in the way your prospects do.
Be ready to add value and be helpful.
Once you connect, be ready to explore.
Inbound salespeople explore their qualified leads' goals or challenges to see whether their offering is a good fit for them, the customer. Inbound sales focus on their “the lead or the customer’s” challenges, not the product or service they provide.
Show empathy and connect over those challenges, then share how your business can help. If it can’t help, have a place or resource that can help. Not everyone is a fit for your products or services.
Knowing this and leveraging it as a positive is a sales gamechanger.
Which brings us to my last point inbound sales point.
Advise those who are now in your funnel or flywheel.
Inbound salespeople advise prospects on why their solution is uniquely positioned to address the buyer's needs. Skip the script and position your product or service in a way that highlights how it solves their unique needs.
By the way, those four points are also the inbound methodology. The steps that you as an Inbound Sales professional should use as you help folks moving forward.
When it comes to implementing anything new in your business, there is a learning curve. This rings true for Inbound Sales as well. But, you can dramatically decrease the learning curve if you know where to start and where to navigate from there.
When I think about learning about Inbound Sales, the first thing that comes to mind is the slow drip learning of the HubSpot sales blog.
They send out daily sales tips and tricks that help you as an inbound professional. Some of there most popular articles are:
As you can see, all three of those might be super helpful for you right now!
While a slow drip is nice, to really get your inbound sales efforts going, you need to apply some rocket fuel.
That’s where the HubSpot Academy comes in.
You can use the HubSpot Academy Inbound Sales Certification as a launching pad for your sales teams inbound learning.
Once your team understands what inbound Sales is and how to use it in their daily sales life, next they may want to learn more about the HubSpot CRM.
This can be achieved by leveraging once again the HubSpot Academies’ amazing certifications. This time, the HubSpot Sales Software certification.
Last but not least, one of the things you and your team is going to want to do is remove any friction out of the sales process. You want your inbound sales process to be a fine-tuned well-oiled engine.
That is why you will want to go to the HubSpot Academy Certification well one more time for the Frictionless Sales Course and certification.
While the HubSpot Academy is a great start, you may find that you want to keep swimming in the Inbound Sales pool a little more or, that you may want a lifeguard to help you along the way.
If that is the case then you may want to get a free membership at Sprocket Talk and get access to all the free interviews, tutorials, HubSpot updates, and more. Past the free membership, you can also get a VIP+ membership, group coaching, 1:1 Sales Training and even on-location workshops.
At the end of the day, you want to make sure you are focused on adding value to your potential customers.
You want to make sure you are helpful even if they are a non-fit for your companies products and or services.
You want to make sure you are being a happy human that other humans like to interact with.
You want to follow a methodology and have strategies in place that help your sales team sell in a non-spammy, non-pushy way.
The real Inbound Sales strategy … Sell like you want to be sold to.
Have more questions about Inbound sales, or getting it implemented at your company? Contact us with any questions you may have or, start your journey by learning more about our Inbound Sales Strategy services.
Whiteboard Photo by You X Ventures on Unsplash
Listening photo by Mimi Thian on Unsplash