6 Tips to Get Started with Inbound Sales

Whereas buyers once relied solely on salespeople to educate and inform them about different products, today’s buyers can simply check the internet to find out everything they need to know. From that change has risen the new marketing and sales strategy of inbound, and here are six tips you can use to get started with inbound sales today.

1. Understand the Buyer Journey

Deliver more relevant and engaging content to your target audiences.

The first step in getting started with inbound sales is understanding the buyer journey, which breaks the purchasing process down into separate stages. No matter what company you work for or what industry you're in, the buying process essentially looks the same:

Awareness: At this stage, the buyer identifies a problem, challenge, goal, or lack in their own life or business, and determines if solving that problem or achieving that goal is an undertaking they want to pursue.

Consideration: This is the time when a buyer decides that the previously identified challenge or goal is worth the time and dedication it will take to solve the problem or achieve the goal.

Decision: The decision stage is when a buyer seeks a solution, compiles a list of possible products and vendors who offer said solution, and determines the product/vendor that best fits the bill.

2. Create a Sales Process to Guide the Buyer Journey

When you understand the journey your buyers go on before purchasing your product or service; you can create a sales process that corresponds with buyer journey stages. Your sales process will likely look something like this:

• Identifying potential buyers who are facing a problem
• Connecting with buyers who are at the stage where they're deciding whether or not to pursue the problem
• Exploring a buyer’s problems or goals to see if you can provide a solution
• Advising a buyer about how you can help solve a problem

3. Prioritize Your Leads

Once you understand the buyer journey and have your own sales process established, you can set out to prioritize leads based on where specific buyers are in the sales journey. Buyers to pay the most attention to include ones who have a connection to your company, have mentioned you on social media, have visited your website, or have visited your site and provided you with contact information.

4. Get to Know Your Leads

Part of the explore phase of your sales process is researching to learn more about your buyers, their goals, and their challenges, so you can determine if your product or service is the right fit for them, and so that you can personalize your messages.

5. Personalize Your Approach

Tailor your content in every message to the wants and needs of the people who are viewing it. 

Any time you connect with or reach out to a buyer, it’s crucial that every message is personalized, and that the language is tailored to a particular stage in the buyer’s journey. This includes communicating via the buyer’s preferred method, using the right language, and understanding the buyer’s challenges. This is where well-researched buyer personas can help.

6. Be a Problem Solver

One of the main roles modern salespeople play in the lives of buyers is the role of problem solver. This role corresponds to the advise phase of the sales process, and this is where you take all the knowledge you’ve gathered about a buyer and put it to use to explain how your product or service can help solve a specific problem, overcome a particular challenge, or reach a goal.

Inbound sales is quite different from traditional sales because it’s much more focused on buyers, the buyer journey, the buyer’s specific challenges, and personalized communication that takes into account the buyer’s stage in the buying journey. Inbound sales and marketing is an art that takes time and dedication, but these six tips will get you started on mastering this new skill.