what is inbound selling and how does it help my strategy?

It is clear that since the arrival of the internet and new technologies, purchasing habits and processes have changed, the consumer is taken more into account in marketing strategies as they have greater control over the entire purchasing process.

That is why the sales department is still important, but only in the transaction itself. The customer himself is the owner of his purchasing process, he does not need any third party as he can solve all his doubts and concerns on the internet.

As is logical, sales and marketing departments have had to reinvent themselves to be able to provide a solution to this change in consumer habits, how have they done it? By creating inbound sales or inbound selling. In this post we will explain what inbound sales is, how it differs from outbound sales, what benefits it has and how it helps us within our marketing strategy.

what is inbound sales?

Inbound sales is a methodology which is dedicated to adapting the sales process of a company to the customer's buying process, always with the aim of maximising sales.

We no longer need to convince our public or go after them to get them to know the solutions we provide, they already have all our information in their hands to decide for themselves whether or not our product really meets their needs. In short, the customer is not the one who must adapt to the sales processes that companies have, as we have already seen, they will not adapt, it is the companies that must adapt to the user's purchasing process. This is logical since it is the companies themselves that profit from getting a user to buy their products or services. Therefore, they must accompany them throughout the purchasing process, guiding them, advising them and helping them to decide.

how is it different from outbound sales?

Outbound sales, unlike inbound sales, focuses on the message given to the user about what the company is offering, why they should buy it, what our added value is, etc. A good example would be email marketing or telephone calls, the problem with these is that they have become obsolete and have lost effectiveness with users.

Unlike this, inbound sales are very focused on the target customer, they have a well-defined buyer persona and know perfectly what their needs are. Knowing this, they only have to investigate how to cover them and get down to work. Thanks to inbound sales we will not only be closer to our potential customers, but we will also improve our sales results by adapting to the buying processes of our buyer persona. The main objective of inbound sales is clear, maximise sales through technology.

• Inbound focuses on the consumer and their needs, while outbound focuses on the product and its characteristics.
• Inbound methodology aims to personalise interactions with users, while outbound methodology follows fixed sales guidelines.
• In inbound, customers come to the product by themselves thanks to researching the product on the internet; in outbound, the brand is the one that goes looking for them.

Phases of the inbound sales methodology

If you want to implement the inbound sales strategy in your business, read on!

1. Identify
   Logically, the first phase of inbound sales is based on identifying your ideal customer, you have to see who your buyer persona is and where they are, from there, you will find the best way to contact them. Focusing on the needs of our buyer persona is essential for the inbound strategy, from there we can monitor the entire buying process, phase by phase and decide how to communicate with them is best. What is achieved in this phase is to convert users into leads.
   
   
2. Connect
   Once we know who our target audience is and we know how to communicate with them, we are going to send them personalised messages according to their needs. Our users are still in a discovery phase, they are seeing that they have certain needs or problems and how they can solve them, it is not yet the time to send invasive advertising of our products, what we should do is, through content marketing, send them information that will make them know more about their problems. The goal is to convert the lead into a qualified lead.
   
   
3. Exploit
   This is the beginning of a conversation between the brand and the customer that allows us to explore different solutions to their problems. Here our brand begins to be introduced as a solution to the customer's problems. We must begin this conversation by proposing certain solutions but always making the customer see that they have the final decision. The objective at this point is to convert the qualified lead into a sales opportunity.
   
   
4. Orient
   In order to close the sale once and for all, the agent positions himself as an expert on the customer's needs and provides all the information on how the problem will be solved. This phase concludes with the closing of the sale, with both parties agreeing on the budget.

Benefits of inbound selling

If you are still not sure whether it is a good idea to implement inbound selling in your marketing strategy, here are a series of benefits that will make you opt for it.

1. Organisation and efficiency
   By having all the information stored and having automated most of the processes, we can dedicate more time to sales.
   
   
2. Visibility
   We will have more visibility of our database thanks to inbound sales, we can see the whole process that a user has gone through from the moment he/she becomes a lead until he/she is contacted.
   
   
3. Optimisation
   By automating tasks we are optimising our time, as carrying out certain actions in a programmed way is much more effective, which also helps to predict the actions that the user is going to carry out.

In short, including inbound selling in your strategy is not just a good idea, it is a necessity, we have to reinvent ourselves together with consumers in order to continue to succeed with our marketing strategy, so don't wait any longer and get to work.