Inbound Sales

What is Inbound Sales?
Advantages of Inbound Sales
Disadvantages of Inbound Sales

The Inbound Sales Process
Close More Inbound Deals with LinkedIn

The easiest way to explain the significance of inbound sales is by contrasting it with outbound sales.

An outbound sales process is typically designed to interrupt the customer through cold calls, emails, or private messages to present them with a pitch.

For example, an outbound sales rep might interrupt a potential customer with a phone call in the middle of their personal life or work day. Or they might send an unsolicited email intended to interrupt the potential customer while they go through their email inbox.

The goal is for the outbound sales rep to create the initial sales conversation and then follow up until the sale is closed.

By contrast, an inbound sales process is designed to organically attract the customer by sending them specific types of content at times when they are already looking for similar content.

For example, an inbound sales system might involve publishing a blog post guide to setting up a home office so that potential customers will find the guide when searching for “how to improve my home office” and be attracted to the brand as an option for purchasing their next desk. They may also take a customer’s LinkedIn post about how great their desk is and run it as a LinkedIn ad, so that other prospects see the post while scrolling through their feed reading similar content.

The goal is for content to attract the customer initially and prompt some form of customer buy-in (usually in the form of an email signup or lead generation form), after which an inbound sales rep will attempt to follow up until the sale is closed.

Inbound sales systems are especially well suited to online environments, and so increasing internet usage over the last two decades has resulted in this sales channel rapidly rising in popularity. That said, it’s not a universal choice for every business as it comes with its own disadvantages as well as advantages.

Inbound sales systems often include a customer providing their email in exchange for a piece of valuable content and then receiving a follow up email sequence from the brand. These email sequences allow the customer to receive a wide array of trust-building content — including case studies, testimonials, how-to resources, 3rd party features, mission and values spotlights, etc. — before they ever get on a call with a sales rep. This is especially useful in situations where potential customers tend to be initially skeptical or need a longer amount of time to consider the purchase.

With outbound sales, individual sales reps or prospecting specialists are responsible for manually filling the top of the pipeline with leads. Significant manpower is expended to sort through low quality leads, find and nurture mediocre leads, and ultimately close a very small percentage of outbound leads into customers. Inbound sales systems use content and automated systems to source and pre-quality leads, allowing sales reps to spend the vast majority of their time selling to warm leads. Scaling the pipeline through content is more cost-effective on the frontend and allows for a smaller sales team on the backend.

target customers > content strategy > qualified leads > opportunities > customers. Attract > Nurture > Close.

We’ll use two examples to illustrate this.

Example 1:

Brand: A software company with a platform for independent restaurants
Target market: independent restaurant owners doing $5,000+ per month in takeout and delivery business
Content habits: active on Instagram and Facebook, subscribe to trade magazines to monitor trends, and occasionally use Google search to find helpful content.

Example 2:

Brand: A managed IT services company for SMBs
Target market: founders of SMBs with 10-50 employees and between $2-$8M in annual revenue
Content habits: active in Google search, LinkedIn and online communities; occasionally attend industry trade shows

With customer targets in place, it’s time to create a great lead generation strategy built on the following pillars:

1. Useful, interesting, relevant content
2. Scalable distribution

Since the entire goal of inbound sales is to attract the right people into the pipeline, the content needs to be designed to appeal to the target customers and nobody else. If the appeal is too broad, it will overload the pipeline with weak leads, removing many of the upsides of an inbound sales system.

How content is distributed is equally important to building a true inbound pipeline.

Let’s return to our two examples.

Example 1:

Target market: independent restaurant owners doing $5,000+ per month in takeout and delivery business
Preferred content: video testimonials, restaurant podcasts, quick tips videos, occasionally blog posts
Distribution options: social ads, paid and organic podcast marketing, youtube channel, blog, notably do NOT use email much

Example 2:

Target market: founders of SMBs with 10-50 employees and between $2-$8M in annual revenue
Preferred content: interviews, email, deep-dive blog posts, video
Distribution options: organic podcast marketing, blog post SEO into email marketing, youtube channel

Content is only valuable if it drives leads. In most cases, the goal is for content consumers to provide their email address, but it could also mean getting them to call the business or even make a small initial purchase.

The key here is to offer something immediately valuable. This is typically done through a lead generation material like an eBook, whitepaper, or guide that offers in-depth information on a specific, ideally urgent topic related to the product or service.

In some cases, it’s worthwhile to offer a small, one-off service, particularly if it sets the sales representative to pitch primary services, like audits or reviews.

Example 1:

Brand: A software company with a platform for independent restaurants
Distribution options: social ads, paid and organic podcast marketing, youtube channel, blog, notably do NOT use email much
Lead magnet ideas: downloadable guide to restaurant SEO, in-depth case study on how a restaurant doubled their delivery business in 6 months

Example 2:

Brand: A managed IT services company for SMBs
Distribution options: organic podcast marketing, blog post SEO into email marketing, youtube channel
Lead magnet ideas: checklist of critical IT concerns for SMBs and how to solve them, one-time systems security audit

If the inbound marketing efforts are doing their job correctly, leads entering the inbound sales pipeline should be fairly qualified.

That said, if inbound marketing is producing more leads than the sales team can handle, lead scoring can be used to prioritize leads for followup.

At this point, individual sales reps will take over the leads and nurture them forward in the buying process. Once the specific offer and price point are set, the lead becomes an “opportunity”.

The exact methods the sales team will use depend on the audience, and there will be some trial and error in the initial stages as leads respond to different nurturing methods.

Example 1:

Brand: A software company with a platform for independent restaurants
Target market: independent restaurant owners doing $5,000+ per month in takeout and delivery business
Nurturing method: leads only respond to calls but 45% will book a live sales demo over the phone

Example 2:

Brand: A managed IT services company for SMBs
Target market: founders of SMBs with 10-50 employees and between $2-$8M in annual revenue
Nurturing method: inbound reps proactively target the top 20% most qualified leads and follow up with another 10% who books a sales call directly via the welcome sequence

Ask great questions: provide inbound sales reps with a strategic list of questions that will help them identify the core challenges, pain points, benefits, and solutions that matter the most to prospects.
Listen: hire reps with great interpersonal skills and train them to really listen to prospects and adjust their pitch to fit the stated need rather than simply making space for the client to talk and then diving back into a cookie-cutter pitch.
Social proof: document the company’s most successful client case studies and train sales reps to reference real examples when citing features and benefits of the offer.
Create urgency: train reps with talking points that emphasize the real, tangible costs of going an additional month without the company’s solution.

Sales Navigator provides reps with high quality, first-party data to help them:

Research leads prior to outreach to identify mutual connections and interests
Identify buyer intent signals such as when prospective buyers are engaging with their content, visiting company page, etc
Identify the full buying committee and key decision makers who can be turned into allies to get the deal across the finish line

The Executive Guide To Inbound Sales

What Is Inbound Sales (vs Outbound Sales)?

The easiest way to explain the significance of inbound sales is by contrasting it with outbound sales.

Outbound Sales

- vs -

The Three Main Advantages Of Inbound Sales

1. Inbound sales tend to attract higher quality leads.

2. Inbound sales systems allow brands to build trust prior to closing the sale.

3. Inbound sales systems are more cost-effective to scale.

The Three Disadvantages Of Inbound Sales

1. Inbound sales depends on successful demand generation.

2. Inbound sales take longer to ramp up and have a much longer sales cycle.

3. Many customer bases are not reachable through inbound content.

1. Identify the target customer.

2. Create a lead generation strategy.

3. Convert content consumers into qualified leads.

4. Nurture leads into opportunities.

5. Close opportunities and create new customers