Finding the right social media platform should not be based on a CEO’s opinion -- or any opinion for that matter. Finding the right medium entails researching to determine where your buyers are or whomever you are trying to attract. It’s about figuring out where potential clients, channel partners, students, donors, or whomever the stakeholders you are trying to attract are.

There is a lot of data on the optimal number of times to connect with a buyer, but the answer is not clear-cut. The number of times you decide to connect with a buyer depends on what you are looking to do, which could be to optimize for a certain buyer persona in the relative economic value of your company.

When people think of the differences between legacy sales people and inbound sales people, many times, people generalize based on the age of the person.

They will think something along the lines of, “This person has been in sales for thirty years. They must be old school, and their playbook must not have been updated in decades.” However, there are plenty of people who are boomers and understand inbound sales and inbound marketing. There are also plenty of millennials that get up in the morning, make sixty cold calls, and hope one person will not hang up and actually talk with them. 

A business is not done once it generates a client or revenue source.

We live in a world where what you say about your brand is no longer what your brand is. Google coined this instance the ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth).

In the final phase of the Inbound Sales Methodology--the Advise Stage--you want to make sure you have a way to advise your opportunities, so it is not perceived as a pitch.

Trusted advisors must have a very different way of advising. Trusted advisors: 

If you want to think of some parallels between Spotify, Netflix, and Sirius Radio versus where most of the SMBs are, the one thing they all have in common is their recurring revenue business models.

The super important aspect of a recurring revenue business model is making sure when a prospect jumps over from an opportunity to a new client; you continue delighting the heck out of them. 

If you are sick of wasting time placing dozens of cold calls, emails, and scanning lists, it is time for your business to consider its sales productivity.  

If you are focused on revenue growth like most SMB companies, industry trends and analysts will tell you: change is necessary. Forbes and Brainshark found C-Level executives, in particular, to know that sales productivity is paramount to enabling a company to grow; around 70% ranked it as critically important. 

Sales has changed. It is important to be realistic about this and address it head on. Resources such as the new Inbound Sales Methodology help SMBs remain relevant in their modern buyer’s journey and keep ahead of other competitors.

The Inbound Sales Methodology accounts for all the changing factors in the modern buyer’s journey. The methodology is all about transforming the way sales professionals sell to align with today’s empowered buyer. 

Consider: Your business is holding an event for sales directors, and a CFO walked in.

Conversely: Your business is holding a conference for CFOs, and a sales director wandered in.

In each of these scenarios, the outsider is not going to understand a word you are saying and will feel like an alien on a foreign planet. It is not a pleasant experience for either outsider of the event.

It is important to realize the game has changed. The modern buyer does not need a salesperson to make a purchase; this is a massive shift in the way buyers buy.

However, businesses need to account for this change in their selling; they must evolve their efforts accordingly or risk being left behind and overshadowed by competitors.