6 steps to get started with inbound sales and become profitable

To begin, what is inbound sales? Well, an inbound sale is when a prospect reaches out to your business to inquire about a product or service. For example, an inbound sale can be when a prospect visits your landing page and enters their information to get more emails about your product/service. An inbound sale can also be when a prospect walks into your guitar shop asking about a specific guitar. These prospects are interested in what you have to offer. 

As a business owner, you want to constantly increase the sales of your company. Unfortunately, you can’t just count on a traditional, outbound sales strategy these days. Consumer behavior has changed dramatically and is constantly changing. As a society, our collective attention span has decreased due to the luxury of technology that we enjoy every day. Thus, you must adapt to the times and update your marketing strategies. 

Inbound sales marketing can help your company combat plateauing sales. Here, we’ve outlined 6 steps to get started with Inbound Sales and become profitable. 

1. Define Your Buyer’s Journey

To begin with inbound sales, you have to understand your customer’s journey, which breaks down the buying process into 3 separate stages.

Awareness Stage

In this stage, the buyer identifies problems, challenges, and goals (or lack thereof) in their business and determines whether it is something notable of fixing and if your business can do that for them. 

Consideration Stage

In this stage, the buyer defines the previously identified problems, challenges, and goals and wants to address them. During this stage of the buyer’s journey, find out which category your prospect is investigating and what makes your business service unique in their eyes. 

Decision Stage

In this stage, a buyer is seeking out a solution. They compile a list of possible products or services that offer said solution and decide which product or service best fits their needs. During this stage, you have to identify which products/ services your prospect has been searching for and make sure that your product stands out compared to the competitor’s offers. 

2. Develop a Sales Process that Supports Your Buyer’s Journey

Once you define your prospect's buyer’s journey, you have the basics covered. Now it’s time to create a sales process that corresponds with the buyer journey stages. The ideal inbound sales process looks like this:

Identify: Identify the potential buyers who are facing a problem that your company can solve.

Connect: Connect with those buyers who are deciding whether or not it is feasible to pursue and fix the problem. 

Explore: Explore a buyer’s problems or goals to find out if your company can provide the solution.

Advise: Advise the buyer about how your company can solve their problem/achieve their goal. 

If your sales reps are having trouble developing a sales process, try Attention. Attention helps sales leaders identify problem areas, gives sales reps instant feedback, and tracks team growth using AI technology. 

3. Prioritize Your Leads

Once you understand your buyer’s journey and have an established process, you can now start to prioritize your leads based on where the buyer is in their sales journey. A business should pay close attention to buyers that have a connection with your company, have mentioned your company on social media, have visited your company’s website, or have provided you with contact information on your site/landing page. 

These are considered warm leads and should be nurtured and prioritized because they have already shown interest in your business. You can also use lead scoring to best optimize your leads in your sales pipeline. ‍

4. Get to Know Your Leads

Part of the explore stage, mentioned in Step 2, is researching to learn more about your prospects, their goals, and their challenges to determine if your product/service is the right fit for them. 

When you are getting to know your leads, you should look into their business and ask yourself “Have they been promoted?”, “Have they launched a new product?”. These are all great ways to connect with them. You can also look into their industry and competition to see what is going on in their industry so that you are able to better understand who they are and, most importantly, what their needs are and be able to connect with them organically.

5. Personalize Your Approach

When reaching out to a buyer, it is important that every message is personalized and that the language is tailored to the particular stage that they are in during their journey. Communicate through the buyer’s preferred method of communication, use the right language, and understand the buyer’s challenges. This is where researching well in advance will help you and benefit your company. By personalizing your approach, you have a higher chance of converting your prospect into a customer. 

Your sales messaging is always about the prospect. Try to avoid talking about yourself as much as possible. This is where you highlight all the findings from the steps above. ‍

6. Be A Problem Solver

One of the most important roles of salespeople is to be a problem solver. The buyer comes with a problem and the salesperson is expected to provide a solution. This role is correspondent to the advise stage, from Step 2, of the sales process. This is where you can take all the knowledge you have gathered about the buyer and use it to explain how your product/service will help them solve their problem, overcome a specific challenge, or achieve their goal. 

Inbound sales can be difficult to begin. It is different from traditional sales because inbound sales is much more focused on tailoring the buyer’s experience to where they are in their journey, focusing on their specific challenges, and personalizing communication. This type of sales takes time and dedication but well worth it when the buyer is turned into a customer. However, using the steps outlined above, you can be well on your way to doing inbound sales and becoming a more profitable business. In addition, using tools like Attention can help your sales reps improve their inbound sales process. Attention is a software that helps sales reps identify problems that they are having, provides instant feedback to train the sales rep, and tracks the reps’ progress. Try Attention today.