What Happens Between Cold Calling and Inbound Marketing?

On Tuesday we held our first C.H.U.G. (Client HubSpot User Group) of 2016, and we discussed the gap between cold calling and inbound marketing. In an effort to more closely align sales and marketing teams, we wanted to share a new opportunity we believe can help generate warmer prospects for sales teams to call on.

In relation to prospecting, traditional sales methods look something like this:

• Find a company or contact to (COLD) call
• Hopefully someone answers
• Hopefully it’s the right person (decision maker)
• Hopefully they’ll give you a few minutes of their time
• You introduce yourself, your organization, and your product/service/solution
• If all goes well, you set an appointment

On the other end of the spectrum, inbound marketing functions something like this:

• Prospect is attracted to your website via social media, optimized blog content, Google AdWords, etc.
• Prospect finds a resource or tool valuable enough to download, and converts into a lead by providing some personal information as “payment”
• Lead is nurtured via emails, social media and additional content; when ready to consider a purchase, lead requests to talk to a sales person
• This sales-ready (HOT) lead gets passed on to the sales team to close into a customer

Warm-er Lead Prospecting

While we believe each of these sales and marketing approaches to lead generation and nurturing are effective, there is an opportunity being missed. It is a new opportunity for sales teams – thanks to advancements in marketing software. We’ve termed this new opportunity, “warmer lead prospecting”.

So, cold calls are often targeted at prospects that know little to nothing about you or your organization. Meanwhile, inbound marketing aims to introduce your organization to prospects, and nurture them through the buying cycle. Through this effort, inbound marketing attracts MANY visitors to your website that don’t become leads right away (or maybe ever…but if that’s the case, you may have a hole in your inbound marketing plan).

What if Someone is On Your Website, But They Don’t Take Action?

These leads are warmer than those on your cold-call list, but haven’t taken action on your website and identified themselves. We like to use the analogy of tire-kickers around here. These are the people shopping on your car lot and looking in your windows, but never coming inside to start a conversation.

Sure, you can let inbound work its magic, and in time, these prospects will become leads when they are ready. But, thanks to inbound marketing software, like HubSpot, we know a little bit of information about these tire-kickers – which gives us the ability to engage them in a more aggressive selling method. And, if you have a sales team – why not put them to work nurturing warm-er prospects that know at least a little bit about who you are and what you offer? This opportunity warms up the cold call a bit.

A Cool New Tool FOr Your Sales Team

With HubSpot’s tracking code installed on your website, you can start monitoring the organizations and associated anonymous visitors spending time with your content. HubSpot provides the following information (if publicly available) to give you the context you need to host an effective sales call:

• Company Name, Website URL, Industry, Employee Quantity, Revenue, Location
• Contacts Related to the Organization
• Content Anonymous Visitor Viewed on the Website

So, rather than pulling out the phone book and starting at letter A, you could pull this out and start with organizations most recently or frequently on your website.

If you’d like to learn more about this tool or topic, let us know. We love to share our knowledge.