You can’t have a successful business without sales. And, in almost all cases, you can’t have sales without a sales strategy. But with so many methods of selling to your customers, how do you know which is the right way to go? While there are many different selling techniques, they can mostly be boiled down to two categories – inbound sales and outbound sales.
What’s the difference between inbound and outbound sales?
Simply put, inbound sales is all about customers coming into your business to buy from you, while outbound sales is all about you and your team going out to find customers to buy from you.
If you have an outbound sales team, they might be making calls to potential customers, sending out letters, emailing people, or going to business conventions and trade shows to meet people face-to-face. You may be reaching out to completely new people – à la cold calling – or it might be a lead you’ve researched and know might be interested in your product or service.
With inbound sales, you wait for the customer to come to you. An inbound customer might call you, visit your website, or come straight into your store. To increase the chances of inbound sales, businesses typically create content and focus on their online presence and SEO to make it easier for potential customers to find them online.
Which is best for your business?
Both inbound and outbound sales can be beneficial strategies for your business. As you can imagine, outbound sales is a more time-intensive technique, which could mean more time wasted. This is because it involves spending time on outreach. However, some companies prefer this method because they have control over the prospecting and outreach processes, rather than sitting back and waiting.
Some prospects can also be put off by outbound sales techniques. Just think of how you react when you get an unwanted sales call. Whereas inbound customers engage with a company because they want to; because they are interested in their offering. However, this can be improved with effective outbound sales strategies and research, where warm calls can be more effective than cold calls, for example.
The real answer is that most companies should use a combination of both inbound and outbound sales to maximize their opportunities. However, it also depends on your business; the size of your team, what you’re selling, who you’re selling to, etc.
For example, if you’re a one-man-band or small team, you probably won’t have much time for cold calling and other outbound strategies, unlike larger companies with a team dedicated to outbound sales. Then again, you may not have the time or resources to create the necessary content to encourage inbound sales, either.
If you need an expert team to help increase your inbound or outbound sales, then get in touch with us at Hallen Media to find out how our services can benefit you.