For a hundred years of the sales industry, we were taught to follow the statues that made a trillion-dollar empire, like Top Hopkins.
The sales formulas and know-how we learned from our first-class learners, veteran salesperson are still really valuable.
But to adopt the tactics that you have learned from the seniors, you must change!
One of the most popular methods is Inbound Selling
Inbound Sales
The sales industry itself has changed a lot since the era of technology – the internet and the web started to explode.
Easily owning devices that can connect to the internet, consumers can freely search and choose the products they want without any obstacles.
This gradually forms a habit of self-control when shopping. This is a far cry from the past, buying and getting information, everything you want to know must be through a salesperson.
What most changes are noticeable is the way we approach customers.
Instead of leaving the leaflets where you can, repeating the consultant transcripts day by day, now you will be the one that listens to your customer problem.
Listens to Customer’s Problem
The basic idea of inbound sales is to put yourself in customer position and start thinking like them, understand their problem. Focus everything on the customer to solve their problem.
Listening will help you understand customer workflow, what they really want and don’t.
So, instead of talking about what you are having, try to ask about the customer’s problem, make your customer talk.
Ask the right question
Imagine you are about to meet 10 customers today, each of whom is in a different career.
Although your product can solve the problems of all 10 of them, no one will hear you talking about the problems of the other 9.
So put yourself in the shoes of each customer, learn about how they work every day, and make a list of relevant questions about what their customers are doing.
The list doesn’t need to be too long, but make sure you have good preparation.
Having these questions in hand shows:
- You truly care about your customer’s problems.
- It will make the customer feel more comfortable for the first meet and easy to share their story and problems.
- It’s easier to close the deal in the first meet as the customer will feel you’re the expert, or you know really well about their problem
Kind of question you should ask
The following will be the types of questions you can ask your customer and from that, you can get more and more feedback.
Example questions
The example might vary from niche to niche, but overall, it will show you the core idea and how you should ask.
✅ DO: What’s the most painful task in your daily workflow?
✅ DO: What’s the revenue target for the next quarter?
✅ DO: Does your website create enough lead with your investment?
✅ DO: How do you import the products to your website?
Such questions will be easy to start an effective meeting when your customers gradually believe you through the questions.
They will share more and tend to choose you more than other salespeople because you are the one who understands the problem.
Inbound Content
Imagine, you know Mr. T goes by your house every day, now you will put a banner in the front of your house, so Mr. T might see the banner and know you are doing business here.
We will use a specific term, called “User Story”.
User story: I want to import products from Aliexpress to my WooCommerce website easily.
User path: From Google to search keyword “Aliexpress to Woocommerce”.
Question: How to get the searchers to visit our website, page?
We already know the customer’s starting point. Now, we need to trace the places where they might visits.
User Behaviors: From the first search result page, the user will click Top 1 to 5 results, and read the information, except that the top 5 will solve their problem.
If the top 5 can not satisfy the user, they will go around and search for the other channels to solve the problem.
Or they might change the keyword to search.
Now we understood how the behaviors work, we will create the content that solves the problem, to serve the customer.
That’s called inbound content or content marketing, both true.
Conclusion
Above is what I have summarized, bringing together the core and quintessence of inbound selling – inbound content.
You can learn more about the process of each method by searching around, or if you have something to share, please share your experiences using the comment section below.