Inbound Lead Generation Services

Inbound lead generation is designed specifically to get visitors to submit forms in order to put their contact information into your CRM. It follows the older model of "inbound marketing," a term coined by marketing automation software company, Hubspot. The structure is as follows:

• Attract strangers into visitors
• Convert visitors into leads
• Close leads into customers
• Delight customers into renewals and evangelism

"Inbound Marketing" has evolved into more of a growth concept, with the four stages distilling into 3: Attract, Engage, and Delight. Instead of a funnel, it's a "flywheel," where we think of inbound as the stage accelerators. 

Yes and no. It depends. 

For B2B, they sell themselves to the point of becoming willing participants in your marketing funnel, but your sales team can't "phone it in." They still need to earn trust and establish rapport and value. Inbound sales is a completely different animal from cold calling or networking. 

Outbound leads don't know anything about you. They don't know who you are, what value you provide, or why they should listen to anything you have to say. They also haven't communicated any kind of pain or interest that you can help with. Finding outbound leads with a desire or intent to buy your products requires a lot of calling, emailing, and hustling... and getting lucky.

Inbound leads are quite the opposite. They found you, gave you permission to market and sell to them, and arrived to your website trying to find answers to a problem they're trying to solve. Because of these differences, the approach you take to activating them in your sales cycle should be different as well. Instead of cold pitching, you become a warm consultant.

That means reading their data and making assumptions about their visit, so your conversations are relevant and focused (vs giving them your 30-second elevator pitch, hoping something sticks). Not only will you get farther by addressing their relevant pain, but you won't sabotage the relationship they've entrusted you with by treating them like every other person you meet on the street.

Generally, the problems with inbound lead gen stem from Sales and Marketing not working together cohesively. This is typically a strategic problem covering a lot of ground. For example:

• Your sales process is exactly the same one you use for outbound and referrals
• Sales takes took long to reach out to recently engaged leads
• The leads themselves are not very good
• They're not very good because Sales & Marketing aren't working together
• There is no cultural buy-in
• You put Sales in charge of Marketing
• Sales tech is cumbersome and doesn't connect to marketing

Inbound leads are most valuable the moment they engage with your content, but that's not the only value they provide.

• They know who you are
• They might be consuming your content when you call
• They see you as a thought leader
• You have insight to their problems based on what they engaged with
• You know exactly WHEN they are open to hearing from you

The hard and fast rule is 5 minutes or less. You want to be in their ear CALLING as soon as possible. That means your salespeople need to be able to see the form submission in real-time, and then have a baked-in process for evaluating quality, building a consultation statement, and dialing the phone in less than 300 seconds.

Lead response time is the number one reason why inbound leads go cold (number two is treating them with the same sales pitch as every other contact in your database).

You are 400% more likely to engage in meaningful conversation with a lead within 5 minutes of them consuming your content vs 10... 2,000% greater likelihood if it's 5 minutes vs 90.