Pivoting the Inbound Sales Process to Inbound Sales Training for Clients
Spot On was built on a fallacy. For the past five years all of us at Spot On, a digital strategy growth agency, believed that implementing inbound marketing meant that outbound sales or cold calling were no longer needed. Last month, I learned just how wrong I was during the HubSpot Pipeline Generation Bootcamp, taught by Dan Tyre.
Dan is an energetic, self-proclaimed “old sales” guy. But what he taught us wasn’t old at all. Dan taught us how to make warm outbound calls the “inbound” way to prospect and cold call.
Here’s what I learned:
- You can help anyone
- You never have to make a “cold” call
- Prospecting must be a priority
- There’s a RIGHT way to leave a voicemail
- Remember H2H
- Use a little Sales Automation
- Four is a magic number
- What motivates you matters
Let’s look at each one:
- You can help anyone. Today, sales people should be starting their calls with thinking about how they can help the prospect before they ever begin to “sell their wares”. It’s important to begin the conversation first by building rapport and, second, asking questions to discover what pain points the prospect may have. This will help you understand how you can become a true partner that will help them grow their business. Besides, making calls with helping in mind is much more fun than making calls with selling in mind.
- Never make a cold call. There is so much information online about people and companies that there should be no such thing as a cold call. Before picking up the phone, take 10 minutes do a little research and find some point of commonality. What school did they go to? Any recent press releases? What about a personal blog? Come on – surely you can find something. Use that info early in your calls. Make the call about them, not about you and what your company does.
- Make prospecting a priority. We’re all busy and it’s so easy for a million things to get in the way of picking up the phone and making that warm call (especially when it’s something you’re not comfortable with anyway). Block out time early in the morning or late in the afternoon. Those are the best times for reaching prospects. Don’t let anything interrupt. It will be the most important time of your day. Even if it means you have to call from your car before you go into your office or make calls before you leave for work – just do it!
- There’s a right way (and a wrong way) to leave a voicemail. Don’t start the call with “I’m Susie with Spot On. We’re a digital marketing company.” Prospects don’t care who you are or what you do. They get tons of these kinds of calls every day. Instead, use the research you did, that point of commonality, and start the voicemail with that. Then tell them how you can help and lastly leave your name and number. Here’s an example: Hello Joe, I came across your website with I was researching SaaS companies in Alabama. I saw your article, The Next Wave of Software Trends, you posted on LinkedIn. I really liked it so I shared it both on LinkedIn and Twitter. I have some ideas of ways to make your website work a bit harder for you. Please give me a call at 125-346-7890. This is Susie from Spot On. Thank you very much!
- Remember H2H. It’s hard at first, but keep practicing. There’s so much to keep in mind when calling – the right voice tone, excitement level, pausing when you need to let the prospect talk. It’s difficult. At first, you’ll do it wrong - but with each call you do, you’ll get better. Learning to focus on conversions that are Human-to-Human (H2H). You want to create connections. Think of them as a person NOT as a prospect. Once you can do that, it really will become fun.
- Marketing automation? How about some Sales Automation? You must get organized and Stay organized. The HubSpot CRM and Sales Pro tools are incredibly important for organization. They are so easy to use your sales team will love them. One of the new hacks I’ve implemented is setting up a Prospecting Pipeline separate from our Sales Pipeline. I include automatic tasks for each deal stage and email reminders of where the prospect is in my pipeline, and when to make calls and send emails.
- Four is a magic number. It takes more than one call. There is a specific cadence for calls and emails that needs to be implemented to get best results from your prospecting. For most companies, it’s call and email every two days for a series of four touches. If you end the series with the “break-up” email, you’ll be surprised how well they work. More often than not, you’ll get a reply. The answer may not always be a “yes” but even a “no” is better than no response at all. You’ll know not to waste any more of your valuable prospecting time with someone who will never buy.
- Motivation matters. One of the first exercises Dan had us do was creating a motivation board. Since I’ve been in sales for a very long time, I’ve created these before, but it’s been many years. It was beneficial to actually stop and think about what is motivating me, personally and professionally. It was a good reminder that I love what I do. I love our clients and our ability to help their business grow – helping marketing departments get more leads to the sales teams, and sales teams convert those leads to customers.
The story continues...
As a result of becoming a HubSpot Sales Lion, I’m now conducting Inbound Sales Training for companies using HubSpot Sales and CRM. I’ve taken what I learned and created a program for sales teams that want/need to learn to sell the inbound way.
So far, I have three teams in training...Thank you, Dan Tyre, I think it’s only the beginning.
