Inbound Marketing in B2B Consultative Sales: Step by Step
Posted: Sat Jan 25, 2025 8:52 am
In consultative sales, it is very rare that we receive a lead in a decision state through digital channels (these are usually few, some will call by phone and many others will contact us directly by email, because someone recommended them to us).
What is very common is that leads arrive through digital channels in the discovery phase, and that is where we tend to make a mistake: we start sending commercial messages to those who have just downloaded an ebook or participated in a webinar, treating them as if they were interested in purchasing a product or service, when perhaps they don't even know exactly what they are looking for.
At this stage - crucial to continue generating points of contact with the lead and thus obtain more data to qualify it correctly - we must help them understand what problems they need to solve and what the cost of not achieving this is.
Let's take an example: Our company offers an Account Based Marketing solution, and the Buyer Persona I'm interested in is a sales manager at a consultative sales company. I need to understand that:
The discovery phase begins when this manager reads or hears one of his colleagues talking general manager email list about ABM and wants to learn more about the topic, as it may solve his problem of getting more leads in new accounts in a pandemic context.
Search on Google: Can you find me? Go to YouTube, can you see me? Check LinkedIn, am I there? The way we capitalize on that question is to have a presence with useful and well-positioned content on the different channels.
Then they go to our landing page, where they leave us the first piece of information (their email): they are giving us permission to contact them in exchange for the valuable content they found in our brand.
Here it is very important -and it depends on Marketing- to enter the cultivation or nutrition stage: a sequence of communications that seeks to help the lead understand what their problem is and how they can solve it without selling to them and without commercial messages!
Only when we identify that it actually matches the profile of the client we want to attract and that we can help them solve their need, do we deliver a bit of commercial content.
Once we know that the manager is an SQL - because he has informed us that the company is making a purchasing decision - we refer him to the sales team so that they can contact him and advise him on his needs.
This is the general idea of lead capture on digital channels with the Inbound methodology: focusing on attracting and nurturing our buyer personas in the discovery and consideration stages.
What is very common is that leads arrive through digital channels in the discovery phase, and that is where we tend to make a mistake: we start sending commercial messages to those who have just downloaded an ebook or participated in a webinar, treating them as if they were interested in purchasing a product or service, when perhaps they don't even know exactly what they are looking for.
At this stage - crucial to continue generating points of contact with the lead and thus obtain more data to qualify it correctly - we must help them understand what problems they need to solve and what the cost of not achieving this is.
Let's take an example: Our company offers an Account Based Marketing solution, and the Buyer Persona I'm interested in is a sales manager at a consultative sales company. I need to understand that:
The discovery phase begins when this manager reads or hears one of his colleagues talking general manager email list about ABM and wants to learn more about the topic, as it may solve his problem of getting more leads in new accounts in a pandemic context.
Search on Google: Can you find me? Go to YouTube, can you see me? Check LinkedIn, am I there? The way we capitalize on that question is to have a presence with useful and well-positioned content on the different channels.
Then they go to our landing page, where they leave us the first piece of information (their email): they are giving us permission to contact them in exchange for the valuable content they found in our brand.
Here it is very important -and it depends on Marketing- to enter the cultivation or nutrition stage: a sequence of communications that seeks to help the lead understand what their problem is and how they can solve it without selling to them and without commercial messages!
Only when we identify that it actually matches the profile of the client we want to attract and that we can help them solve their need, do we deliver a bit of commercial content.
Once we know that the manager is an SQL - because he has informed us that the company is making a purchasing decision - we refer him to the sales team so that they can contact him and advise him on his needs.
This is the general idea of lead capture on digital channels with the Inbound methodology: focusing on attracting and nurturing our buyer personas in the discovery and consideration stages.