To answer the question “what is inbound sales” – and more importantly, explain why you should care, we need to take a step back and look at inbound marketing. Here’s the scoop:
When it works the way it’s supposed to, inbound marketing is arguably the greatest thing to happen to businesses – and particularly small and mid-sized organizations -- since, well, the web itself. That’s because inbound marketing is the business world’s equivalent to an all-star point guard on a basketball team.
Point Guards and Inbound Marketing
Great point guards don’t typically score the most points each game for their team. But when it comes to assists, nobody else on the court comes close! They can see through defensive schemes, detect plays before they happen, and find a way help a teammate to score points when it looked like nothing was going to happen.
In the same magical way, a well-run inbound marketing program doesn’t directly score points for selling products or services, but it assists the sales team by populating the prospect pipeline with both marketing qualified leads (MQLs) and sales qualified leads (SQLs). Inbound marketing teams ensure that MQLs are strategically engaged with suitable content that ushers them along the customer journey. For SQLs, leads that are closer to a sale, it’s time for inbound sales to close them!
Inbound Sales: Nothing but Net!
Simply put, inbound sales is the process in which sales teams pick up SQLs (which were generated and cultivated through inbound marketing), and apply their skills to close the deal. That can happen through a single touch point, or in the case of most B2B transactions, can unfold over a series of several interactions through email, phone, and if practical, in-person. Increasingly, conversations between sales teams and SQLs can happen through social media platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, and even Twitter (though with the character limit, it’s typically used to coordinate a call).
Sales + Marketing = Dream Team
The above also explains why you should care about inbound sales as much as you should care about inbound marketing – because they both have to work together. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case; and it’s not because there’s anything wrong with inbound sales or inbound marketing. It’s because some businesses don’t pay enough attention to inbound sales. Going back to our basketball example, it’s like a team that either trades for or develops an amazing superstar point guard, but doesn’t bring in a center, power forward, or other complimentary piece that is going to score points – and bring home a championship.
HubSpot refers to this gap between inbound marketing and inbound sales as a chasm, which is a great analogy, because let’s face it: a chasm is a pretty scary thing to fall into and to get out of. Frankly, if your sales and marketing teams aren’t working together, you’ll find yourself in a tough spot. So how can you avoid this disastrous situation?
Connecting Inbound Marketing with Inbound Sales
Fortunately, eliminating the chasm isn’t difficult or costly. It’s simply a matter of aligning marketing with sales, so that they both understand their roles in the overall customer journey. Yes, sometimes these roles overlap – and that’s fine. What’s more, sometimes inbound marketing does directly lead to sales conversions (just as how point guards can score baskets too). But in the bigger picture, both are needed!
Learn More
To learn more about inbound marketing and inbound sales, contact the Leap Clixx team today. We know how to position and optimize both your assets and teams, so that instead of coming up empty or fouling out of the game, you’re breezing your way towards another playoff appearance, and a run at another title. As always, your consultation with us is free.
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Topics: Inbound Marketing
