Now that we know who this modern buyer is and the new trends marketing is following with the Inbound Methodology, it’s time to examine what your sales team is currently practicing to gain new business.
Are they cold calling and leaving cold voicemails? Prospecting has changed—fewer people have phones on their desks, and every phone now has caller ID.
Are they relying on mass emails? Think of how easy it is to unsubscribe if an email has no real value to the person on the other end receiving it. And I know personally my inbox is filled with mass emails that I delete without ever even opening.
Is your sales team attending trade shows as a way to meet new prospects and gain new leads? Ask yourself, how many of the hundreds or thousands of people at trade shows can your sales reps actually meet and engage in productive, qualifying conversations?
Is your sales team giving the same generic presentations over and over?
These are all legacy sales tactics, centered around the way salespeople sell, rather than how people buy. It’s important to think about the modern buyer and evolve your sales efforts to meet and surpass expectations.
Today, buyers don’t always need a salesperson to make a purchase. They can get information about your product, competition, and price directly from your website. The salesperson has to position themselves as a trusted advisor—they need to add value, become a leader in their space, and anticipate the buyer’s next move so that they become a trusted salesperson.
The easiest way to identify who your ideal buyers are is to set up workflows that will alert sales when a stranger has visited your website, downloaded an ebook, filled out a form, or opened an email.
In inbound sales strategy, content should be used as a conversation point and should be leveraged to increase your connect rate.
You have identified leads, and now know your potential buyers. Find out what blogs they are reading, what LinkedIn groups they belong to, and who they are following on Twitter to position yourself as a thought leader in the space. And when connecting with the buyer, always lead with a message personalized to them. You can refer to the buyer’s industry, role, interests, common connections, et cetera.
The goal here is to build trust and authority. By this stage of the inbound sales methodology, you can also start to qualify leads.
Next is the explore phase—you want to leverage initial buyer interest to develop additional trust and uncover deep buyer goals through an exploratory conversation.
During this final phase of the inbound sales methodology, tailor your assets to the buyer’s persona, and leverage all of the information you have gathered from the exploratory call. Personalize presentations that align your product value with the buyer’s needs, use terminology the buyer knows and can relate to, or conduct a product demo that illustrates features you know are important to the buyer.
At this point, inbound salespeople have developed a relationship with the buyer, and after the sale, the relationship does not end. The inbound salesperson transfers all of his or her knowledge to the post-sales team, and checks regularly with the buyer assuring their continued success as a client.
The inbound sales methodology is a path for sales teams to follow to evaluate who their buyers are, what the buyer is searching for, and identify how they can add value to the buyer’s journey. I hope you found this information useful and wish you success, implementing these new practices. Thanks for watching!
Watch [Video] How The Modern Buyer Has Changed The Sales Process, Part I