Inbound Has Been Around for Ages – It’s Sounds Like Selling to Me

Inbound Marketing is relatively new – at least the name is – but the concept has been around for much longer than me.

For those of you who aren’t old enough to remember, those postcards that are still inserted in magazines used to be the primary source of inbound leads.  They were called bingo cards and when a reader found a product of interest, they circled the advertisers’ number on the card and returned it to the magazine.  A month later, the magazine would mail a report to the advertiser with the names and addresses of all of the leads from the prior month.  Then the advertiser would send sales literature, a brochure or catalog and perhaps follow up with a letter.

Later, phone numbers were provided and inside salespeople or marketers would call the leads by phone. As you might imagine, by the time a salesperson followed up on those bingo leads, 4-6 weeks may have passed since the ad had piqued the reader’s interest. Often, they had completely forgotten about it.

As I see it, there are three big differences between then and now:

1. Size of the Audience – depending on your perspective, the audience is either larger – the globe – or smaller – your niche – and it’s easier than ever before to target and/or get found by the audience you wish to reach.
2. Speed to the Audience – decades ago, ad copy had to be submitted a month prior to publishing and it could have taken another month for the agency to create the ad.  A company with a new message may have had to wait 90 days before they could get the word out.  Today, savvy marketers can change their messages or add a new one in as little as 90 seconds!
3. Speed to the Reader – As mentioned above, 6 weeks may have passed before a salesperson of some kind was able to follow up on a bingo lead.  Today, an inbound marketer can follow up within 6 minutes of a reader showing interest.

Of course, there is one more significant difference:

It wasn’t just magazines as newspapers, infomercials, catalogs, coupons by mail, the phone book and other direct mail campaigns were all popular and effective ways to generate inbound leads.  Those leads were what kept salespeople going.  Without them, they would have to make cold calls!  But so much time went by that the calls were, for the most part, cold, and salespeople needed to be very aggressive, persistent and effective. 

That brings us to the other big difference.  The salesperson or inbound marketer that follows up on today’s instant leads must be a kinder, gentler, more helpful, and consultative seller.  Arm wrestling not allowed!

Instead of product features and benefits and pushing for a sale or appointment, today’s inbound lead professional must nurture the prospect along by asking questions.

In order to ask the kind of questions that would nurture a prospect along, the key skill for anyone following up on inbound leads must be their ability to listen.  If not for listening, how could they ever ask a relevant question?

And the two key pieces of necessary Sales DNA are No Need for Approval and being Rejection Proof.

Rejection isn’t the same as it used to be when people would slam down the phone and say, “I’m not interested.”  No way.  Today, rejection sounds more like “I’m not interested quite yet” or, “I’m not the right person.” And the new rejection, passive rejection, occurs when prospects don’t return calls.  Recent statistics suggest that it can take up to 10 attempts to reach an interested prospect.

Need for Approval is the need to be liked.  There is nothing wrong with that except when an individual is engaged in the act of selling.  Their need to be liked can and will prevent them from asking good, tough, timely questions, gently pushing back, and challenging a prospect’s logic or timing. 

So it would seem that unless an inbound marketer possesses a subset of the very same DNA that makes salespeople effective, and the very same skills that differentiate great salespeople from mediocre salespeople, we will have mediocre, at best, inbound marketers.

If inbound has been around, and inbound marketers need to have the same skills and sales DNA as salespeople, then it sure sounds like selling to me.