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Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Inbound Sales

A few high-growth sales teams who adhere to buyer-centric selling concepts have spent 2022 honing their inbound sales workbook and overall B2B sales process. An increase in incoming sales is a dream for any business.

Prospects who come to you, sign up, and go through your sales process in the hopes of becoming long-term, satisfied customers are what they represent.

In addition to being a solid indication of a company’s success, sales may also be a valuable prediction for the health of your organization. You may get a sense of how many sales you can anticipate completing, whose firms you’re recruiting, and how much income you can expect to generate in any given month by monitoring the number of inbound leads you get.

But how can you maximize the value of these leads? Here are some inbound sales strategies and tactics you can use to bring in over 1,000 leads a month.

What are Inbound Sales

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Inbound Sales

Over time, there has been a significant change in marketing and sales. Consumers now have more influence over the purchase process and increased purchasing power, information access, and information control.

Because of this, salespeople also need to adjust their strategies. Trying to make a quick sale to an uninterested customer will no longer be adequate. Instead, it would help if you educated yourself on the ins and outs of inbound marketing and sales.

Inbound sales is a type of sales methodology that places individual customers’ requirements, difficulties, aspirations, and interests at the forefront of the selling process.

Inbound salespeople try to meet customers where they are and then lead them through the decision-making process rather than pressuring them to make a choice immediately. This is in contrast to traditional salespeople, who concentrate on completing the sale as quickly as possible.

A savvy inbound salesperson can design a valuable and individualized sales strategy for each individual by evaluating a customer’s digital activity throughout the awareness and consideration phases of the buyer’s journey.

Your chances of converting leads into successful, long-term clients will rise directly to the additional time and attention you invest in educating potential customers.

Inbound sales strategy

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Inbound sales methodology

An inbound sales strategy consists of four distinct components, which are:

1. IDENTIFY
2. CONNECT
3. EXPLORE
4. ADVISE

Let’s look more closely at each of these strategies.

Strategy 1- IDENTIFY

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Identify

Setting up workflows that alert the sales department whenever a visitor access a web, completes a form, or opens an email is the most straightforward tool to recognize suitable buyers (prospects). These activities indicate that the visitor is interested in purchasing the product or service offered.

This does not replace a different sales method that is already being used. Sales need to take the initiative. However, within an inbound sales strategy, content must be used as a conversation starter and should be leveraged to boost the connect rate.

What to do in the identify phase:

Find out who is interested in buying: LinkedIn is an excellent place to look for individuals who share your interests. 

Begin by making a list of potential customers: You can recognize them based on what they’ve done on your website or what they’ve said through a contact form or live chat. Have they looked at the price page on your website? Are they often visiting your site? These indicate that a lead is interested in your product but needs guidance on purchasing.

Strategy 2- CONNECT

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Connect

You have discovered your leads and are familiar with your prospective customers. Always begin your interactions with the customer by sending them an individualized message. You may provide recommendations on the buyer’s objectives and ambitions, and you can allude to the buyer’s industry, job, hobbies, and mutual connections.

The aim is to win over people’s confidence and earn their respect. At this level, you may also begin the process of qualifying leads.

What to do during the connect phase:

Your personalities should match the customers: It’s impossible to predict how each lead will turn out. Their requirements, issues, team sizes, and budgets will be distinct. Each of these possibilities must be compared to your ICP to be considered (if at all.) 

Create personas for your product’s potential customers and divide them into smaller groups. 

Prospects that initiate chat with your company will be assigned to a specific department or sales representative depending on the content they enter throughout the session.

A strategy for following up with prospects who have shown interest in your product or service based on their buyer personas: What is the preferred method of communication for your target audience? When it comes to reaching out, do they prefer phone calls or emails? 

As a starting point, you may use methods and resources such as:

– Live chat software
– Personalized presentations
– Warm outreach
– Email campaigns/sequences

Make a list of the things you want to teach or demonstrate to them: Your goal here is to educate, not sell. Make a list of the kinds of materials that can assist you in educating your customers about your product, such as your blog or case studies.

Strategy 3- EXPLORE

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Explore

During this phase, you evaluate potential customers to assess whether or not they would be a suitable fit for your business. Through exploratory dialogue, leverage early customer interest to build greater trust and identify profound buyer objectives.

You will need to construct experimental call guidelines based on your buyer personas for your sales team to utilize, and after you have done so, your sales team will be able to use the guides while they are in the explore phase.

During the explore phase, you have the chance to work with a unique product or service differentiator to assist the buyer in understanding how your service or product may assist them in resolving their issue and achieving their objectives.

Only when all three of the following criteria are met should an opportunity be considered for the next stage:

1. Your offering satisfies their demands.
2. They are financially able to purchase your merchandise.
3. Their purchase patterns correspond to your sales cycle.

Steps to take during the explore phase include:

Please pay attention to the issues your potential customer is facing: Discover what issue or issue(s) prompted them to contact you first. It can affect their team, resources, time, or finances. Then, request a detailed explanation from the prospect. It will be simpler to provide a remedy the more you are aware of their problems.

Figure out what they want to accomplish with your offering: What objectives does your potential customer want to accomplish using your product? You may now debate if their goals are even feasible with your product at this stage.

Plan and discuss their budget: You are responsible for putting the purchasing jigsaw together and creating a strategy for your prospect. Please explain how your product will help them achieve their objectives and solve their difficulties. It’s crucial to talk about the prospect’s budget at this point. You must be open and honest about your pricing strategies and what they will require if they decide to proceed with their purchase.

Strategy 4- ADVISE

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Advise

When you reach this stage of the inbound sales strategy, you will need to personalize your assets to the buyer’s persona and use the knowledge you acquired during the exploratory conversation. This entails either customizing presentations so that the product’s value is aligned with the demands of the buyer or carrying out a product demo highlighting characteristics relevant to the customer.

Steps to do during the advice phase include:

Continue to teach: Your prospect might need more time to decide whether or not to buy from you. Use case studies, webinars, and demo teasers to keep teaching them and answering any questions they might have.

Bring up their problems and make them a personalized offer: At this point, you will know a lot about the issues your prospect is having. Go over where they are and how your product will help them reach their goals again. Use this part of their path to purchase to make a personalized offer demonstrating how your product will help them.

Check the minor details: Their budget, how they buy things, and when they put things in place. Once they say, “let’s do this,” make a straightforward onboarding and contract signing timeline.

Inbound Sales Tactics

Target your inbound leads with care

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Tactics

Identifying your target consumer before creating any content or message for your inbound marketing initiatives is very important. Making detailed buyer personas is a great place to start.

Rather than focusing just on demographics, you should also consider psychographics. Could you find out more about their lives? What’s the most challenging thing they face? What isn’t a worry to them, on the other hand?

Find out what’s on their mind by getting them to talk. Ask them to describe how your product or service has benefited them and why they picked you over your competition.

It’s much simpler to generate content and deploy language that appeals to your target audience when you know who you’re talking to.

Create Compelling Contents

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Content

To attract customers, you need to produce high-quality content and spread it widely around the internet and via as many channels as possible, paying particular attention to those that bring in the most visitors.

You may make a blog article, a lead magnet, a video, or a podcast, and then create social media posts in which you provide a link to your YouTube channel or blog. Other options include taking a video or recording a podcast.

You will need to optimize your words to raise your content’s visibility and move it closer to the top of search results. You will need the assistance of an SEO professional to put this inbound marketing strategy into full effect. This specialist will determine the most appropriate keywords for your content to improve its ranking in search engines.

Maximize the value of your data

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Data

Understanding that there is more to inbound sales than prospects appearing suddenly, all eager and ready to purchase, is a critical idea that underlies many of these inbound sales methods. It takes effort to get and convert inbound leads; inbound sales aren’t magical.

To begin with, you’ll need all the pertinent information you can gather about a lead when they arrive through a landing page. Long and complicated forms, however, are likely to turn away potential clients. Consequently, many individuals unwillingly accept less information and limit themselves to providing just their name and email address.

Your campaign should be personalized and made more relevant by using personal data.

Reviews

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Review

Your brand is more than just what you think it is. What others say about your brand defines it. You must ensure that your product is excellent enough that others recognize its value and share their positive impressions. Reviews and comments are also crucial in inbound sales.

There are dozens of excellent platforms where anyone can learn 

about you. Make sure they are positive and correct something if it is necessary and someone mentions it. Also, don’t overlook social media and specialized groups and channels where specialists from all over your country or even the entire web communicate and can say nice things about you.

Create the Best Inbound Sales Team Possible

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Team

If you’re starting a new inbound sales team, you’ll need to fill several specialized roles: 

– A writer to produce engaging material that will appeal to prospects
– Someone with design skills who can take the material and make it attractive visually
– Sales representatives who can develop and close those incoming leads. 

Additionally, you may want someone to oversee your inbound marketing initiatives; this person should be able to take the industry, establish objectives, develop a winning plan, and analyze the results of previous campaigns to improve current and future campaigns.

You’ll need to extend your staff to include additional professionals who can concentrate on making the most of each stage as you increase your efforts and enter new channels.

Make the prospect’s life simple

Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics
Simple VS Complicated

The entire buyer’ journey should be as straightforward and intuitive as possible for your potential customer. That implies there will be no stumbling blocks in the way of your customer making a choice. 

This information should then lead to an easy transaction once they have it.

Keeping track of your buyer’s journey might help you figure out what content you need to provide. Ensure you have the answers to your prospect’s queries at each level of the sales process.

How a prospect engages with your website is the best method to ensure you answer the proper queries. This is possible with tools like Hotjar and Lucky Orange, which provide heat maps showing where the traffic is slackening. Then, using methods like deep linking, you can assist clients through the process by directing them to the proper sites and resources.

Search phrases that attract visitors to your site and those that visitors use while on your site tell you what information people are searching for on your website. Conforming immediately with prospects through live chat or prompted surveys is invaluable.

Conclusion

Now it’s the buyers’ turn.

Selling to customers is a thing of the past. For them, it’s all about seizing the reins and figuring out what works for them and what doesn’t. Instead of hearing yet another rehashed sales presentation, customers want to have a meaningful discussion about their problems (and be provided actual answers).

Inbound sales is a novel approach to selling that relies on attracting customers rather than attempting to complete as many deals as possible. Salespeople may position themselves as trustworthy consultants by tailoring each presentation to the specific needs of each prospect.

Signing a contract is much simpler if your customers believe your solution can address their issues.

RELATED: Inbound and Outbound Marketing Tools and Software for Marketers

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Inbound Sales WorkBook: The How, Strategy, and Tactics - Adilo Blog
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Temidayo is a graduate of the Federal University of Technology, Akure. Apart from writing, his passion and hobbies include nature, environmental sustainability, insects, and surfing the net.

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