How to connect inbound and outbound sales

There is a big debate out there about inbound and outbound sales. Some companies swear by their inbound strategies while others fight for their outbound strategies. But even the diehards in both camps are coming around to a new philosophy. Called allbound by some, it involves executing both inbound and outbound sales strategies simultaneously to draw in even more customers than either could do on their own.

Allbound is not just a fringe idea. Hubspot, the great champion of inbound and coiners of the term “inbound” sales now also does outbound. And Growbots, a company built on making outbound sales work also does inbound. If both of these companies are doing it, it is pretty clear that you should make inbound and outbound sales work together.

Of course, it is not enough to simply run both an inbound and outbound sales strategy in parallel without connecting the two of them.

Why bother connecting inbound and outbound sales?

Because while both are independent sources of leads, they can compliment each other. Not only can they both bring in a separate stream of high-quality leads but also your inbound strategy will enhance your outbound strategy, causing it to perform better.

There are a few different ways that inbound and outbound sales link up to each other.

• Targeting documents like ideal customer profiles, buyer personas, and job stories

  While some of these, like buyer personas, have been mostly linked to inbound in the past, you will find that all of them can be used for targeting for both your inbound and outbound sales strategies. This means that you only have to create one set of targeting documents that you can then apply to all of your lead generation channels.

• Blog posts

  The blog posts that you use to generate inbound leads can be attached to you outbound campaign. This way you don’t just ask for something from your prospects, you give them value by providing them with useful information.

• Landing pages

  Instead of just linking your outbound campaign back to your home page, set up specific landing pages for each of the buyer personas you target. Since you know a lot about the kinds of people you are targeting, tailor your landing pages to appeal to each persona. By doing this you can increase your conversion rate.

  Important: Landing pages should be a natural extension of your emails. When creating the landing page, think about what you told your prospect in the email and what they can expect by clicking through to the landing page.

• Retargeting

  The success of outbound sales relies heavily on timing. It doesn’t matter how good your pitch is, if your prospect is too busy to deal with what you are proposing, they won’t respond to you. This doesn’t mean that you should give up on them or that they wouldn’t be receptive to what you have to say.To keep you at the top of your prospect’s mind, attach a tracking code to your landing page. You should then run retargeting ads so that they are eventually brought back to your website.

• Lead nurturing

  Like we said above, timing is important with outbound sales. Sometimes you have leads who don’t move forward in the buying process for whatever reason. To remind them of the value you provide, initiate a lead nurturing program using inbound blog posts. This has the potential to bring a number of customers back to you whom you would have lost otherwise. Moreover, nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.

Inbound and outbound sales serve to strengthen each other

A number of the materials and techniques you use for inbound will strengthen your outbound campaigns. It is easier to set up and start seeing predictable results from an outbound campaign but once that is set up, consider adopting an inbound strategy to strengthen your outbound campaign. If you are still having trouble making outbound predictable, call us first before starting anything else and we will help you get the results you are looking for. Click on the link below to schedule a demo.

Chris Zawisza

Head of Sales @ Growbots - laser-focused on the growth of Growbots’ customer base. Always eager to brainstorm and explore new ideas.