One of the things I love about Nectafy is our founder Lance’s willingness (OK, eagerness) to constantly break the mold and think outside the box, no matter what we’re doing. So when I asked Lance to fill me in on his current inbound sales methodology, I had a feeling that his response would be anything but ordinary.
And sure enough, I was right. To grow our inbound sales, Lance has been lately trying a combination of techniques, implementing everything from personalized videos (a current “must” in today’s inbound world) to sales tactics that have previously been pronounced “dead.”
While we may not be able to guarantee the success rate of these tactics (since they’re new to us, too), we can promise you one thing: Your prospects will appreciate a reprieve from the same old boring sales approach. So if your usual inbound sales techniques are feeling a bit stale as of late, it’s time to check out these five strategies.
5 Inbound Sales Strategies We’re Currently Trying
1. Contact every promising lead who fills out an offer form.
Each time someone fills out a form on our website to download an offer, they get added to a list in HubSpot. Lance makes a point to review this list on a daily basis, and if the contact appears to be a strong lead (after reviewing their website and company information), he sends them a personal email—never automated.
Here are some tips that Lance adheres to when executing this strategy:
- This isn’t an automated mail—so don’t make it sound like one!
- Use a goofy or eye-catching subject line to encourage leads to open the email.
- Keep the contents of the email short and sweet; limit it to a just a few lines.
- Make the email about them, not you. For example, compliment them on their company’s website or call out something they are doing well that you’d like to hear more about.
Below is an example of this strategy in action:
Once this initial email is sent, the contact is enrolled in a HubSpot CRM Sequence. (For those without HubSpot Sales Pro, a timed workflow can be utilized instead.) A perk of the sequence is that it allows you to pull all the emails up on one screen and insert the contact’s personal tokens, allowing you to customize each email and adjust the dates/times that the email(s) should send. Lance triggers the sequence for a good lead, and it will stop once they have responded to him.
2. Send video emails with BombBomb.
Instead of sending a traditional email, Lance has recently started experimenting with BombBomb, video email software that allows you to easily record and send a video email. (A full list of the tools BombBomb integrates with can be found here.) He says it’s a lot of fun to use, and super easy—all you have to do is hit “go” on the camera, and it records and then embeds an animated GIF right into an email (Lance uses the Gmail integration). The verdict is still out on whether leads think this is seriously cool, or if they’re saying to themselves, “OMG, this guy is really weird!”
What do you think?
3. Cold email target customers.
I know, I know… your face probably looks a little something like this right now: 😱.
We get it—cold emailing is the opposite of inbound marketing (more on exactly what inbound marketing is here). But while inbound sales is a great strategy because sales come to you, you need to simultaneously work on your outbound sales to ensure leads are coming in from all angles. (Heck, even HubSpot, the company that coined the term "inbound" little more than a decade ago, relies heavily on outbound sales.)
Lance has executed this inbound sales process with companies in the Internet of Things (IoT) industry. Since IoT companies are a target client of ours, Lance has been keeping his eye on reputable IoT conferences throughout the country. From there, he follows these steps:
- Examine the conference exhibitor list and search for companies that are trying to sell into the IoT space.
- Explore their website and if they seem like a strong lead, use LinkedIn to find someone who works for the company and has the word “marketing” or “sales” in their job title.
- Take their first and last name and website domain and utilize LinkedIn’s Rapportive application to determine the contact’s email address.
Since starting this strategy less than two months ago, Lance has received an average of two replies out of every 10 cold emails he sends—a pretty decent response rate for cold emailing!
4. Reach out to bottom-of-funnel (BOF) leads immediately.
When someone submits a BOF form on our website (for example, on our Free Evaluation landing page), Lance immediately gets a text to his cell phone notifying him of the BOF activity.
Read more: Why Bottom-Of-Funnel Content Doesn’t Work By Itself
Although a BOF prospect is often prompted to schedule a call directly from the thank you page, Lance strives to reach out to them directly with a personal email to get the call scheduled as soon as possible.
5. Send a personalized video with ViewedIt.
Another one of those “cool or just plain crazy?” tactics, Lance has been utilizing ViewedIt to send personalized videos in his follow-up emails. Not only do these videos allow him to speak directly to the client’s personal experience and interaction with our website (for example, “I know that you recently spent some time on our Inbound Marketing Results Calculator…”) but he also kicks off each video by holding up a piece of paper with the prospect’s name on it.
By doing this, Lance theorizes that he is able to grab the attention of the prospect from the very beginning of the video, immediately showing them this is a completely customized video intended just for them. At the very least, this strategy is sure to bring a smile to their day (we hope!).
You can also check out exactly how Lance creates a ViewedIt video in his post, The Software Tools We Use For Sales [Video] (at minute 9:27).
What Sales Strategies Are You Trying?
We clearly love trying new things, and you can bet we’ll soon be providing an update on which of these strategies were a hit and which were a miss, once we have the data.
In the meantime, leave a comment or tweet us @nectafy with your inbound sales tips and strategies. (Chances are if it’s a good one, Lance will want to give it a shot!)
