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What is Inbound Sales?

You may remember a time when you would be sitting at the dinner table and the house telephone would ring, your mum would pick it up and within a matter of seconds you'd hear "no thanks" and she'd hang-up. She'd sit back down and say "cold caller" and you'd all carry on eating your dinner. 

This is what the sales world back then called the 'legacy' process, which included sales teams cold calling people from the telephone book or business directory hoping that at least one person would be interested in what they had to say and sell. 

Unfortunately the outbound legacy sales process is still around but thankfully, more and more sales teams are adopting the 'inbound sales' approach. 

The internet has allowed people to easily access vasts amounts of information, with buyers rarely making a high valued purchase decision without downloading an eBook, watching a YouTube video or reading some reviews. 

It is because of this that sales teams must focus on the individual needs, goals and situations of the buyer they are trying to target. For a salesperson to seal the deal, they must position themselves as a knowledgeable and trusted leader in the industry who is 'here to help' as opposed to 'here to sell'. 

How do you adopt the inbound sales methodology?

Implementing the inbound sales methodology can take a bit of time to get right, but it regularly pays off and is definitely worth your while. 

For the approach to work you must invest time in researching your buyer after you have indentified who they are. 

For example, salesperson Tim from ‘Build a bridge’ - a company that specialises in team building activity workshops and weekends away - has noticed that Sally, a team manager from ‘Recruit Now’ - a recruitment company - has filled out a form on Build a bridge’s website to access an eBook on ‘Why team building helps drive motivation’. 

Armed with the name of the company Sally works for, he carries out some research on Recruit Now. For example, he looks up the company website and social media channels and sees that there is a high employee turnover. 

Tim then contacts Sally informing her that he has seen she has downloaded the eBook and asks if he can be of anymore help to her. He may even send her over a recent blog post he wrote on ‘Why it’s important for your team to be motivated’. 

As the conversation progresses Tom will gather more and more useful information that will help him create a personalised sales presentation to Sally. The presentation may include things like specific team building activities that will cater to Sally’s team that is mostly made up of 22-34 year olds. 

Hopefully with this personalised sales approach Tim will close the deal, turning Sally from a lead into a customer. Tim knows that the sale is not the end of the relationship with Sally and he will contact her on her return from her team building weekend. On doing this, he manages to set up an annual weekend of team building exercises to ensure the team’s new found motivation doesn’t drop like before. 

Why should I adopt HubSpot’s Inbound Sales methodology? 

As you can see, the personalised sales approach helps to create a lasting relationship and oftens increases the chance of a repeat purchase. 

The inbound sales methodology helps your company to be viewed as thought leaders in the industry and also helps increase your company’s reputation as your customers are likely to promote you across social media channels and recommend you to others. HubSpot offers a free inbound sales certification online to help your sales team adopt this new approach.

CTI Digital has come a long way since we first adopted HubSpot in 2014. As certified gold partners, we can provide you with a range of workshops and tutorials to help bolster your inbound marketing and sales efforts.

If you are interested in the inbound methodology and would like to learn more, why not get in touch with one of our HubSpot certified partners?

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