Why (Even) Hubspot Makes Outbound Prospecting Calls

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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Inside Sales Managers: Don’t Waste Your Time Cutting the Pie (Make it Bigger)

In a previous blog post Jonathan Miller, Sales Manager at InsideSales.com, described the impossible sales trinity: equal distribution, defined parameters, and lead priority. In this post he stated that it is impossible for sales teams to attain all three criteria without sacrificing sales productivity. I couldn’t agree with him more.

Sadly most sales manager spend far too many resources figuring out how to divide the “pie.” Typically, they try to settle situations in which one sales rep encroaches on the other’s territory after it was divided or two business development associates unknowingly call the same company. Instead managers should be focusing their efforts on value added activities for their sales teams, that is: How can I make the pie bigger? Here are a few ideas:

• Track Key Metrics such as lead source and close rates. Track major metrics that influence buying. These may include local, size of company and lead source. Compile lots of data. More is better to start.

• Begin to mine this data. Run probabilities such as: Given the company is a Boston based real estate company and has 20 brokers, what is the probability that Erik will close this deal versus John? If Erik’s close rate is only 5% and John’s is 10% for this lead profile the lead will be routed to John. In actuality the algorithm used at InsideSales.com is much more complex.

This is what I mean when I say it is the obligation of sales managers to make the pie bigger. It is their jobs to not merely “deal the deck of cards” but to “stack it the deck” for their sales reps.