Inbound is the newest and most personal form of sales. Up until recently, marketers and salespeople have used a funnel-like approach, starting with sales at the top and customers at the bottom. This strategy focused on driving sales more than on helping the customer. Inbound uses a flywheel strategy that centers around the customer and their needs. At this point, older sales strategies are outdated and ineffective, so here are some tips for improving your inbound sales strategy.
Target Your Leads Properly
Interviewing current or past customers is one of the best ways to get information on what your customers need or like to see. By getting in touch with your existing customers, you can get an idea of how to better your services and sales strategy. In turn, this will ultimately up your sales prospecting game.
Segment Your Leads
Lead segmentation can help make your process much more manageable. You can choose who you want to prioritize and how you’d like to reach out. There are a few ways you can split up your leads; check out the list below for some ideas.
- Demographics
- Geographical location
- Budget
- Age of business
- Behavior
Segmenting your leads can quickly help to improve your sales strategy. However, over-segmenting will ultimately hurt you; if your segmentation gets hard to track or read, you’ve done too much. In this instance, you must clean up your records and reevaluate your leads and how/when to approach them.
Connect and Advise
It is essential for you to connect with prospects and current clients. A big mistake to avoid is trying to make a sale immediately. Your aim should always be to start a conversation from which you can get all the information you’re looking for in order to make the sale. Connect on a deeper level than just a salesperson-customer relationship, and act as a helpful advisor.
By choosing to act as an advisor before working as a salesperson, your relationships with prospects and existing customers will improve significantly. You’ve now built trust and credibility; you’re not pushing them to buy your product or service and are certainly interested in what is best for them.
Re-nurture Your Leads
Nurturing your leads is a given. However, re-nurturing isn’t common practice yet, but it is effective. Many of your leads will not convert into customers; this number ranges from about 90 to 95 percent. By re-nurturing leads, you may be able to draw them back in. Bring these leads back by sending them relevant content and a few emails asking what’s keeping them from purchasing your product or service. It also doesn’t hurt to connect with them via social media.
Do Your Best To Add Value
Whatever content you choose to provide, ensure that it delivers valuable information to your leads and prospects. Unfortunately, other salespeople are doing the same thing, so you need to be sure that your content is unique and gripping. Below is a list of ways to make your content informational and enjoyable.
- Create detailed diagrams and flow charts to help your prospects easily understand more complex or confusing concepts and techniques.
- Write guest posts online to boost your web presence and credibility.
- Create interactive videos to demonstrate how your product or service is used and how it will work for your prospect — just like you’d show them in person.
Sales and marketing are constantly growing and changing, and so are your prospects and leads. No matter how good of a salesperson you are, you will need to keep up with the ever-changing world of sales and marketing. Right now, inbound is the most effective form of sales, but who’s to say that it will stay that way. In short, inbound sales and marketing is centered around the customer, so ultimately, your goal is to cater to them and their needs. As long as you carry on providing your leads with valuable information and services that will add more value to their lives, you’re going to crush your inbound sales game.
