Page 115 - The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million - PDFDrive.com

described at the beginning of this chapter. In a span of six months, you have
increased the number of leads generated through your firm's website from a few
dozen per month to 500 per month. You are a hero! You are going to drive your
company to the next level of success. Your instinctive reaction is to get these
leads into the hand of the sales team as soon as possible so that the sales team
can turn the leads into customers and revenue.
There is one problem. Not all of these inbound leads are qualified for the
business. In fact, the majority are not. Let's appreciate the difference between an
inbound-generated lead and an outbound-generated lead. Figure 11.1 helps us
appreciate this difference.

Figure 11.1 Outbound Sales vs. Inbound Sales
Outbound sales is represented by the graphic on the left. Outbound sales
campaigns start with a list of leads that are presumably a good “fit” for the
business. If the company targets the Fortune 5000 telecom industry, the company
purchases a list of CEOs from the Fortune 5000 telecom industry. Then, Sales
and Marketing go to work on that list as aggressively as possible with direct
mail, email spam, targeted advertising, and cold calls hoping that 1 percent of
the purchased leads respond to these forms of interruptive, outbound selling. The
leads that indeed respond probably have some form of “pain”, which triggers the
response.
Inbound selling is represented by the graphic on the right. The inbound graphic
is an inverse representation of the outbound graphic. Most of the leads generated
from inbound marketing have a “pain” that needs to be solved. Why else would
they have conducted the Google search, read the blog article, or downloaded the
ebook? Unfortunately, not all of the inbound leads are a good “fit.” Some of the
leads are perfect prospects, because they are executives from the Fortune 5000