Inbound sales vs. outbound sales:
The key difference between inbound and outbound sales is who initiates the sale, the buyer or the seller. With inbound sales, customers approach businesses to purchase products or services. By contrast, for outbound sales, a salesperson contacts potential customers who may be unfamiliar with their products or services.
Here’s a comparison of the two sales strategies in practice:
Inbound sales
With inbound sales, customers are coming to you, either virtually or in real life. In some instances, such as online commerce, there’s often no salesperson involved. However, when customers come to you looking to talk to someone, your salespeople need to actively listen to them to close the sale.
If you’ve been in the sales space, you’re familiar with the sales funnel — the step-by-step journey to a close. With inbound sales, the funnel looks like this:
• Awareness and discovery: Prospects acknowledge a problem, start searching for a solution to that problem, become aware of your solution, and start asking questions about how your product or service can solve it.
• Interest: Prospects show interest and dive deeper into product or service research.
• Consideration: Prospects dig into the features, implementation america phone number list details, and cost of what you’re offering to see if it meets their unique needs.
• Intent: The prospective buyer shows signs of wanting to purchase, like signing up for a free webinar or trial.
• Evaluation: They evaluate your solution via hands-on use or demos and compare it to others in the market.
• Purchase: A transaction takes place, marking the transition from prospect to customer.
While your inbound customers may already be familiar with your brand, they may not know about new product offerings or services. This is why training your sales team on your brand’s innovations and updates pays off. In other words, when your team can speak with knowledge and confidence — while expertly fielding objections from customers — you’re in a better position to close sales.
Companies that frequently use inbound sales include:
Early-stage startups that spend their capital primarily on marketing and advertising (instead of more costly in-house sales reps)
Companies with products that many people search for online. This covers a wide range of consumer products, like cleaning products, dog food, and children’s toys.
Businesses that offer impulse purchases in places buyers frequent, like candy bars at the checkout line
Services with an existing audience. As an illustration, that could include pool maintenance, elder care, and accounting
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Outbound sales
Outbound sales requires a different kind of investment. Your sales team will likely need to spend time researching prospects, writing scripts for sales pitches, and traveling to trade shows or industry events, all to hook potential customers and educate them about the benefits of your offerings.