Episode #19: What Is the Inbound Sales Methodology?

Today, we’re talking about the inbound sales methodology - which is all the buzz recently. But did you know that, until now, no one made an attempt to define what the inbound sales methodology is? Not even HubSpot, the creator of inbound marketing.
This is why we started the Inbound Sales Academy as a second company. And we are excited to share with you today, in detail, what the inbound sales methodology is.

"DID YOU KNOW, UNTIL NOW, THAT NO ONE MADE AN ATTEMPT TO DEFINE WHAT THE INBOUND SALES METHODOLOGY IS?" 

WHAT IS THE INBOUND SALES METHODOLOGY?
As many of you know, we’ve been HubSpot partners for a long time, and a big supporters of inbound as a strategy for attracting visitors to your website and converting those visitors into leads. But we have seen a disconnect between visitor-to-lead and lead-to-customer conversion rates. Something is broken at the bottom of the funnel.
We’ve heard a lot of things about this - alignment between marketing and sales, etc. - so we decided to take a look traditional sales methodologies.
But first, I want to define the difference between a methodology and a sales process, as these two concepts are commonly confused by many. A methodology is a universal action plan or approach to something, whereas a process is very specialized and individualized. For example, a company may have a specific sales process - you may need to define the budget authority, timeline, the needs, etc. You also might have to do a demo before you can provide a proposal. The methodology is the approach you use in the process, which might be consultative spelling, the Challenger Sale, spin selling.
But none of those really address inbound sales well.
The Inbound Sales Methodology supports the way buyer’s like to buy. It supports their desire to self-educate and consume content. And a lot of times that’s where sales begin. Our methodology recognizes that.
WHAT MAKES THE INBOUND SALES METHODOLOGY DIFFERENT?
Most methodologies are linear, like a timeline with milestones you need to achieve, and then you close at the end of the timeline. The Inbound Sales Methodology is more like a circle. You have a beginning or entry point, then you go through the four stages of the methodology, and when you close, you actually continue the sale.
Why?
Continuing to sell to your existing customers is a big part of your pipeline and how businesses often make revenue. For example, if you buy something from Amazon one day, isn’t it remarkable how the next day you’ll have an email in your inbox with future purchase recommendations based on your order from the day prior?
In fact, Kathleen purchased a book today for work and then later purchased one of the suggested books based off of her selection - so this does work!
The other big differentiatior is that the Inbound Sales Methodology begins outside the sales department. It begins in what is typically designated as the marketing department. But what does that mean?
FIRST STAGE: THE PUBLIC AUTHORITATIVE VOICE
When you’re a consumer looking for answers, you go out online looking for solutions, companies and people who can help you solve your problem. Salespeople, however, have not developed this voice. They have the voice of their organization.
This is part of the problem. At the end of the day, people by from people. Yes, there’s been a lot of talk about, “Oh, the death of the salesman,” or “We’re not going to need field sales reps anymore, because websites will take care of everything for us.”
Well, read this year’s State of Inbound, and you’ll see that’s been thoroughly debunked.
We will always need salespeople, because at some point, any solution a consumer is considering needs to be finessed. For most companies engaged in a B2B sale, this process is completely dysfunctional. But whether you want to admit it or not, it’s the salesperson that helps the buyer navigate through that process - walking the deal through is part of their job.
This is why the salesperson needs to develop their own voice. And they should be doing that by developing their own content. The concern we hear the most in response to that call is, “I don’t want them to stop selling. They don’t have time to generate content.”
(Guess what? They’re already generating content, and there are other ways to do it.)
Most marketing departments generate content, and then it goes out under the identity of the company - giving the organization a public authoritative voice. The salesperson, due to their absence in this process, ends up not having the same voice. I predict this will change, though, as sales reps realize that the traditional way of prospecting doesn’t work anymore, and they’re going to have to be a part of the conversation and develop their own public authoritative voice if they want to enter the sales process earlier than they are now.
SECOND STAGE: PROGRESSIVE QUALIFYING
This is an interesting phase, because this is where most companies hand-off from marketing sales. This is where you hear a lot of, “We’re not aligned right.” Only 8 percent of companies feel their marketing and sales teams are properly aligned.
Progressive qualifying is really just prospecting, which many sales reps feel is the hardest part of the sales cycle.
Four out of five companies that use marketing automation do not share the interactions with or information collected on those leads - what we call their digital body language - with their sales departments.
Kathleen loves the term “digital body language,” because traditional selling was based so much on face-to-face conversations, where you would examine someone’s physical body language to determine your in. Digital body language is the same concept, except you’re looking at the number of emails read, for example.
There is a lot of activity that goes into this phase. This is where you hear you’re trying to understand the contextual-based engagement - the point where it’s the most ideal time for a salesperson to engage with that prospect. Because the needs of the prospect are equal to the value the salesperson can provide.
But to know that point, you have to understand everything you’ve been doing up to that point - you have to have the digital body language.
This is also where we say “reconnecting” happens. In today’s landscape, you’re usually reconnecting as opposed to connecting with a prospect - they’ve already downloaded something or received an email or, heck, maybe you have already met them at a networking event.
It should be noted that while we created this methodology to address how people are buying today, it is just as applicable to more traditional outbound sales environment. So if you’re in charge of working inbound and outbound leads, you can follow this same methodology. It can also be used with B2B, B2C, B2G, A2Z… pretty much anyone.
FINAL STAGES: COLLECTIVE DECISION-MAKING & CLOSE AND CONTINUE
In collective decision-making, you’re defining what mutual success is going to look like. You are in this phase until you reach the point where you have agreement. Then you’ll move into the final phase, close and continue.
The close and continue phase, we like using the term “pro-close” - a combination of “proposal and closing.” Under this methodology, you don’t deliver a proposal unless you’re sure a prospect is going to close.
But Kathleen brings up a good question. What if you’re selling something that doesn’t require a proposal, like if you’re selling a widget?
To answer that, let’s go back to our Amazon example. Amazon has a huge public authoritative voice. And then, as you’re moving through the process, you’ll hit collective decision-making, where you’re deciding what kind of shipping you’ll need - whether you’ll need your order tomorrow. In the case of Amazon, you don’t need human interaction, but you can’t checkout until all of those decisions are made.
Then you hit purchase, and the next day, you’ll have that email with your tracking number, while also making a new suggestion to you.
So how does this differ from the way people are used to selling?
Currently it starts outside of the sales department, in the marketing department. That means alignment is absolutely critical and needs to be addresses. And again, this supports the way people like to buy, much in the way HubSpot created marketing that people love. The Inbound Sales Methodology teaches people how to sell the way people like to buy.
Kathleen was working on something earlier, responding to a reporter who was asking for CRM predictions for 2016. I said, because of this alignment issue, CRMs are going to fundamentally change. For example, CRMs like Salesforce can integrate with marketing automation software like HubSpot. But what I think we’ll see moving forward is that a sales CRM and marketing automation software will become one in the same, the way HubSpot has just done.
They’re going to have to, because it’s critical to closing deals, alignment and this kind of selling.
I also think you’re going to have the same platform for marketing, sales and customer service - that’s going to be the triple threat. Because visibility into the entire customer lifecycle, they will be able to tell a much more powerful story.
We had the wonderful privilege of meeting Mari Smith at #INBOUND15 earlier this year. She is one of the best Facebook marketing experts out there. In talking with Kathleen, Mari mentioned her big focus is social customer service, and the United States is ranked somewhere around 25th in the world for social customer service. We’re not doing this well, because of all of these different platforms, where messages and information have to move from one silo to another - we’re all over the place.
So Kathleen agrees - and shout out to Mari Smith for being a thought leader in social customer service.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
We’re going to have more webinars, we’re going to share more content. You can stay up-to-date by going to inboundsalesacademy.com, where you can access and download our content and subscribe to our blog.
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