Many proponents of inbound marketing see outbound marketing as an obsolete way to attract prospects. As a digital marketer myself, I believe inbound marketing has many benefits including, the ability to not only attract leads but also keep those leads much more engaged throughout the sales cycle. It also makes it easier to track and improve results. While inbound marketing comes with its benefits, for most industries and businesses, having a versatile approach to marketing goes a long way in creating a true multi-touch approach to marketing and closing sales. So instead of viewing inbound and outbound marketing as competing strategies, both inbound and outbound strategies can be used conjunctionally to create a truly effective marketing and sales strategy.
Here are 3 Ways inbound marketing can help improve your outbound sales calls:
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Make Outbound Calls With Inbound Call-To-Actions:
Many prospects find sales people to be “too-pushy” but that’s usually because those prospects may not be well informed about the benefits of your products or services. Using an inbound call-to-action at the end of an outbound call sometimes takes off the pressure and makes the prospect on the other side of the line, more receptive to a sales person if they are not at the decision stages of the buying cycle. Here an example of a way to close outbound sales calls with inbound call to action: “I understand that you may not be ready to take the next step now, but we have an eBook that dives into the problems that you are experiencing and provides practical solutions. I would like to send you a copy, what is the appropriate email address to reach you at?”
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Gather keywords used from conversations for next Followup Emails and Blogs
Effective communication is usually based on one main component – the other person that you are talking to feeling like you understand what they are saying. Sometimes the ability to effectively communicate with others is a simple as using the same vocabulary that they are using. Since certain phrases and words mean different things other people, when you are able to use similar words to describe what you took out of a conversation, it sometimes makes the other party more convinced that you understand them. The foundation of SEO is built on this concept. When you use keywords in your blogs that prospects also use to describe their pain on webpages and nurture emails, the prospect is more likely to feel understood. Sales outbound calls can help you discover more keywords that can be used not only when you are communicating with the prospect but also in your inbound campaigns to attract others who have similar issues.
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Continuously use Inbound email marketing to nurture leads
Using a multi-touch integrated approach to your sales calls makes it more likely for you to convert prospects who may be ready to make a sale today into a sale sometime in the future. Things to remember when adding contacts from your outbound sales calls to your inbound emails:
- Always send a follow-up email reminding the contact of the conversation that you had and send the information that you promised.
- Add contacts only to the email marketing lists that they need to be a part of; do not add the contacts to every email marketing lists that you have. Relevance is key if you want to reduce the chance of lost subscriptions.
- Monitor activities from your emails for your contacts, to determine when it’s right to reach out to your contact with another followup phone call. The timing with this has to be perfect. If you reach out too early without the lead wanting you to do so, you may start to become bothersome and the prospect could start avoiding your phone calls in the future. Set thresholds based on past activity with leads and continue to refine this threshold. For instance if looking in your database, you discover that most leads tend to be interested in talking to a sales person after clicking emails about 5 times then you can reach out the contact to follow up to answer any questions after the 5-email threshold.
Integrating sales and marketing strategies comes with countless benefits. The same can be said for inbound and outbound approaches. Although these two methodologies seem to be on opposite ends of the marketing and sales spectrum, they tend to compliment each other when used effectively.
This article was syndicated from Business 2 Community: 3 Ways Inbound Marketing Can Supercharge Your Outbound Sales Calls
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