You are sitting on your chair in your office cubicle, ready to pick up the phone and dial Edward, the sales manager of that one large company you want to so dearly close. You find his phone by rigorously surfing the internet and are ready to initiate your first contact with him.
After persistently calling him 3x a day, 7x a week without any luck, Edward picks up the phone.
“Hello?” Says the contact person.
It took only 5 seconds, and you lost one of your biggest fish in your sales channel. He had no interest in what you were selling, he did not have enough time to listen to you and frankly, you kind of pissed him off with your calling endurance.
“Pick up the phone and stat dialing”
In the business world, traditional sales consisted of picking up the phone and dialling numbers – also known as ‘cold calling’. Companies often divided the customer buying cycle into two phases – Awareness and Purchase. If you have seen Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall street, you are definitely familiar with this topic. In many companies, the tasks of a salesperson was to dial as many numbers as possible and sell a product to a person who as usually had no idea he or she would be called by a salesman and offered such a product. Most probably the person never even heard of the company or the product. The game was simple: Call as many numbers as you can, and surely some you will close a deal at some point.
Things have changed since the 90s. Quantity over Quality is not sexy anymore. Customers are more selective than ever before. Why? Because the internet has made things immensely transparent. Customers can now compare products and services more simply than ever.
The new way of doing business online.
The new trend is leaning towards delivering content to potential customer at every point of the buying cycle. How? By using inbound marketing.
Probably the best example of a company offering an inbound marketing solution is Hubspot. Hubspot is an inbound marketing and sales platform that supports companies in attracting new visitors and converting leads. The platform consists of multiple components including a CRM, Sales and Marketing system.
Hubspot allows companies to create value at every stage of the customer buying cycle. It splits up the cycle into the following 4 categories:
- Attract
- Convert
- Close
- Delight
How does one create value at each stage? By delivering content that the customer wants specifically at that stage. This means that while a potential customer in the lead stage might receive a “free template for 5 business infographics,” a customer in the close stage will be offered a product demo with someone from the sales team. Hubspot is essentially turning sales upside down – Customers come to you, instead of you going to the customers.
Inbound marketing is a fairly new, however, it has proven itself to be one of the most effective marketing strategies for doing business online. Instead of cold calling, sending out generic newsletters, buying ads and hoping for leads, inbound marketing focuses on attracting the customer to content that attracts people to your product.
No more annoying phone calls. No more unnecessary spam. No more generic marketing campaigns. The future of sales lies in the hands of serving customers with what they want. Only by attracting customers this way can you guarantee, that they will be willing to listen to what you have to say once they answer your phone call.
