Better…stronger…faster. No, it won’t turn them all into the Six Million Dollar Man but as the character Oscar Goldman said, “We have the technology. We have the capability to make him (or her!) better than he was before.” Inbound Marketing won’t give your sales team bionics but it may seem like it.
We define Inbound Marketing as a strategy and associated tools and processes focused on buyer search behavior, content creation, and social media, engineered to drive awareness and attraction of your business and feed your sales funnel with the best prospects. Those best, most qualified prospects will become the focus of your sales team, ultimately eliminating much of the time they’re currently spending on prospecting, cold calls, educating, guessing and starting over.
How? By simply providing your sales team with better inputs to do their jobs.
Better prospect understanding: Any sales person will tell you the better they understand what makes their prospects tick, the more likely they are to make a sale. Identifying prospect personas is the first step to a successful Inbound Marketing program. What demographics can you identify? What roles do they play? What are they challenged by? What do they need? What are their most pressing questions? The better picture created narrows down the audience pool and increases the likelihood of a profitable sale.
Qualified leads: Cold calling, data mining, list buying – sigh. Imagine your sales team able to completely cut these time-consuming and mostly unproductive activities from their day. Now, couple that with a funnel full of hand-raisers that have identified themselves as interested in your message. See the potential? That’s the goal of Inbound Marketing.
Tailored sales pitch: Now that the sales team has a clearer picture of what the prospects need, what they’re individually interested in and how close they are to buying, the team can to do what they do best – sell! Closing rates skyrocket when the right message hits the right ears at the right time.
Better forecasting: Accurate forecasting is vitally important when company cash flow and team commissions are at stake. Having a healthy funnel of qualified contacts clearly identified by purchase phase makes planning a less painful process.
Inbound Marketing is not just for marketers. Sales, operations, accounting and C-level decisions are all impacted by this strategy. Ready to learn more? Download our Step-by-Step Guide to Inbound Marketing.
Topics: Inbound Marketing, Inbound Sales
