(Source: Corporate Executive Board)
Identify
To help paint a clearer picture, let’s use the following example for this stage and all stages following:
You are a rental agency, specializing in furnished rentals, and the target market you’ve identified is traveling home-owners, or property investors who are interested in renting out their homes or apartments for short or long-term listings.
Connect
After you have identified and prospected these early leads, your next step is to initiate a connection with them. This stage will help you to obtain additional contact information about each lead, or more information about that lead’s pain points. You can do this in a number of ways, but an easily effective method is to offer content that may present an answer to a problem your buyers are facing. In order to download this offer, and further educate themselves, your prospect will need to submit their name, or email address. You can then use this data to keep track of their journey across your website: how often are they visiting? What are they looking at while on your site?
Your goal in this phase will be to obtain enough information to qualify if this lead should move forward into the next phase of the sales process or not.
Example: In order to get your target market’s attention, you design an offer that shows average rental income in certain areas of the city and the best times of year to expect rentals, etc., and promote it — in every blog post, on social media accounts, and in email campaigns. In order to download the eGuide, users must submit their names and email addresses.
Explore
Leads at this stage should now be qualified, so it’s time to learn more about their requirements and what has led them to your website, and to download your content. Sales reps reaching out at this stage will want to explore the relationship further to try and understand all opportunities that may be available.
A great way to do this is to offer something like a free website analysis, to help uncover any additional gaps that could be addressed. This exploration phase will give your leads enough information to prove your value, and how your solution may help them or their business.
Example: Once you have the prospect’s contact details, reach out and follow up about the eGuide they have downloaded: do they have any questions? Comments? Are they interested in learning more about how much additional income they can generate from renting out their properties? Perhaps you could offer a free walk-through of their property to provide an estimate on what you think they could earn.
Advise
The final phase of the Inbound Sales Methodology is to advise your customers. This may involve a variety of activities, such as proposing solutions as a result of your free assessment offer, providing detailed quotes, presenting demos to decision-makers, etc. At this point, you are offering your best advice for the best solution to your prospect’s problems, and leaving it up to the customer to make an informed decision for their final purchase.
And if that final purchase is one of your products or services, keep in mind that just because a deal is done doesn’t mean your work is over; a happy, engaged customer will continue to recommend your products or services, as long as you continue to be a valuable partner to their business.
Example: Provide your rental income estimate, and a quote of your service fees. You could also offer free professional photography of their space, and a sample listing online for them to see what it would all look like.
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We hope this post on the Inbound Sales Methodology has been eye-opening, and will help you make some valuable changes in your sales and marketing organization. For more information on the methodology, check out HubSpot’s sales training, and you just might find a new way of selling.
What traditional sales methods are you still using for your inbound sales? Are they working for you, or are you frustrated with the process?
