A lot has been written about inbound marketing this year. Hubspot defined the space as earning the attention of prospects, making yourself easy to be found and drawing customers to your website. Google put an exclamation point on “inbound” with the release of Penguin algorithm that prioritizes search ranking based on social media such as Google+. This paradigm shift away from outbound marketing (cold calling, direct mail, tv advertisements) and toward inbound have left marketers and sales people left asking “Is there still a place for sales calls?”
A quick visit to Hubspot’s website reveals the answer to this question to be an unequivocal yes. Just look at the position they are hiring for:
You’ll notice Hubspot describes that their business development reps will make between 60 to 80 outbound calls per day. There still is a place for making sales phone calls in business. However, the terms in which these calls are conducted have changed.
Here’s how:
People know what they want, when they want it, and how they want it. The advent of the Internet has enabled buyers to do much more research before they ever talk to a salesperson. This is where the importance of inbound marketing comes in. Your business needs to be searchable and earn the attention of prospects. The Hubspot software suite is one of the best on the market to accomplish this goal with numerous lead scoring and content management features.
When your prospect finally makes their decision to learn more about a service you it is crucial to have a salesperson available. At this point the prospect has opted into the sales process (either by filling out a webform on a website or requesting additional information in some way). After they opt into the sales process it is appropriate 
to have a sales person call them. InsideSales.com has one of the market leading sales communication software that allows sales people to call leads within seconds of a webform being filled out or when a lead reaches a certain score.
In closing inbound marketing and outbound calling are not diametrically opposed models, but instead two different models that can compliment each other when executed correctly.
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Paul Fischer 
Nicely put, understandable and makes sense, nice to see sales processes considering the resources around them as well as the customers involvement in the sales cycle!
Certainly, a lot of it has to do with permission whether marketing or sales. No one likes to feel like they are being sold or marketed to!
I totally agree Paul. Inbound marketing is amazing when you get it right but having a team of outbound callers can just take your sales organization to the next level!
Thanks for the comment Brad. It’s funny how we think of marketing and sales as separate, but when they work properly together the results are greater than the sum of their parts.
I’ve been impressed at how HubSpot’s process with me mirrored their promise to me. My journey down the funnel, through white paper downloads, to email offers of more, to an invitation to a telephone conversation, then a GoToMeeting one-on-one, and then another…The calls may be outgoing but what made them possible was the inbound elements of the approach.
Great point David. I agree that Hubspot’s overall approach is “inbound”. However, the point I was trying to make was that you can’t wait for customers to call into you! You have to call, email, blog etc to interest them and earn their business.