Latest from the Intellegentia Blog

How do you generate quality leads?

If your first answer is email blasts to purchased lists, cold calling, trade shows, seminars, outsourced telemarketing, or advertising then you are officially an outbound marketer.

Is "Inbound Sales" just another alternative to Sandler, Holden, Miller-Heiman, SPIN, Value Selling, the Challenger Sale and other sales methodologies?  Or is it a new way of thinking?

Or both?

All the aforementioned sales methodologies teach us valuable lessons.  They teach how to seek out the "fox" (Holden), to "go for the no" (Sandler) and other techniques for qualifying out time wasters, getting control over the deal and progressing the sale faster than your competitors.  

Have you considered how you’re going to nurture leads that are/will be coming through your inbound marketing efforts onto your website, or how to target accounts through Account Based Marketing that you want to engage over a period of time. How do you move contacts further down the sales funnel? How do you deal with hot leads that need to be acted on by sales immediately. The best way is by setting up workflows with a marketing automation platform.

According to Forrester, companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads and according to Marketing2Lead, prospects nurtured in automated workflows have a 23% shorter sales cycle.

Workflows are such an important tool in the marketers toolbox, it's vital that you set them up correctly, and keep them updated ... so is the effort worth the return? You better believe it. Here are some reasons to get it right.

If you find some great content, it's worth sharing! Having read Brian Halligans inspirational blog on things inbound marketers should be considering in 2017, I wanted to share it in its entirety, adding some of my own thoughts. 

I was particually struck by Brian's thoughts on supply and demand dynamics. Increased competition means that marketing needs to work harder to engage buyers as earlier as possible which means finding different and more engaging conversion assets ... we are firmly in the "youtube age" and sales leaders need to find ways to make their sales teams more effective to beat the competition, which in some sectors means switching to a inbound sales mindset.  If buyers want a self-service experience (self-service research and self-service sales) then as Brian concluded the buying process needs to be automated and for 2017 I predict a surge in companies looking at Sales Enablement as a way to improve sales efficiency.  

Enough of me, sit back and enjoy Brian's insight.   

The term Inbound Marketing was invented by HubSpot, and is now part of the marketing landscape. In a nutshell its about attracting potential customers to you, as opposed to outbound interruptive marketing techniques. 

Once engaged, through educational and thought leadership content, a key part of the inbound methodology is to provide further relevant information to potential customers to help them progress through to a closed deal.   

This part of the methodology is not ground breaking! In the past, sales have always nurtured prospects with information and content at various stages of the sales cycle until they are closed as customers, so what has changed?  

Well the buyers still need information at all stages of their journey before making a decision, but it is the buyer’s ability to access as much information as they like through the internet which is the major shift from the past. Buyers now have the upper hand they are no longer reliant on sales to provide information and can determine when they want to engage with sales,