Inbound Lead Quality from a Sales Rep's Perspective

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Katharine Derum
Katharine Derum

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phone Timing is everything, especially in sales and marketing.  The difference between inbound and outbound marketing is timing.

Less than a year ago, I worked for a very large company -- a leader in its industry, a house hold name.  I carried a territory of existing clients and I was responsible for up-selling and adding new products and services.

You'd think the calls I was making into an existing book of business would produce lots of opportunities. But this wasn't the case. Although I was calling clients, I was still calling at random, not knowing if they were looking to buy the additional services or product I was selling. I was interrupting my contacts from the initiatives they currently had on their plate.

Chances are, what I was offering, wasn't what they were currently working on. It's said that for every 100 calls a sales person makes, 3 will be an actual opportunity or the "right timing."   

My last company would be considered a safer place to stay considering the state of the economy.  However, after 8 years, I packed up and came to work for HubSpot, a much smaller, venture-capital-backed company.  

Why? What if marketing were able to remove the 97 "bad timing" calls I was making and make all my calls as productive as the remaining 3?  With inbound marketing, that's what happens. 

Although HubSpot is a smaller company, I'm now calling leads who've found us. Furthermore, they found us because they're looking for help with initiatives they're dealing with  now . This means that with inbound marketing, all my calls are the quality of what it used to take 100 calls to generate. 

As a sales rep., working for a smaller company and calling a lead that is generated via inbound marketing is far more productive than calling an existing client from a huge brand name company. That's because timing is everything.

What sales rep wouldn't want to make calls to leads that found their company while looking for help with the services their company has to offer  

Inbound marketing is like a synchronized rhythm of sales, marketing and prospects.

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