How to Identify Active Buyers Over Passive Buyers

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Inbound Sales Certification Brought to you by HubSpot Academy

CLASS 02

Identify: Prioritizing Active Buyers Over Passive Buyers Professor: Jill Fratianne

1 WHAT IS THE IDENTIFY STAGE AND WHY IS IT IMPORTANT?

Identifying the right business opportunities from the start can be the difference of your business thriving or failing.

Listen to the market to identify the buyers that are active in a buying journey

INBOUND

Purchase lists and search online networks, then

aimlessly call these leads

LEGACY

IDENTIFY

Practice social selling to proactively identify more buyers

entering the buying journey

INBOUND

Fail to identify which buyers have started their journey and fail to engage with these buyers first

LEGACY

IDENTIFY

The majority of buyers have already started their buying journey before engaging with salespeople.

Listen to the market to identify the buyers that are active in a buying journey

INBOUND

Purchase lists and search online networks, then

aimlessly call these leads

LEGACY

IDENTIFY

Practice social selling to proactively identify more buyers

entering the buying journey

INBOUND

Fail to identify which buyers have started their journey and fail to engage with these buyers first

LEGACY

IDENTIFY

If inbound salespeople choose to reach out to passive buyers who haven’t started their journey, they identify context for the buyer before moving to the Connect stage.

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2 HOW DO INOUND SALESPEOPLE IDENTIFY LEADS?

1.  Define your Ideal Buyer Profile.

2.  Identify leads that match your Ideal Buyer Profile.

3.  Enrich the lead with buyer context.

INBOUND IDENTIFY PROCESS

•  Are there company sizes that are ideal or not ideal? Do you define size as employees, revenue, customers, or another metric?

•  Are there industries/verticals that are ideal or not ideal?

•  Are there geographic locations that are ideal or not ideal?

•  Are there other attributes of your buyer’s customer that make the buyer ideal or not ideal?

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER WHEN DEFINING YOUR IDEAL BUYER PROFILE

Ideal Buyer Profile: Technology and healthcare companies with less than 10,000 employees

Buyer Personas: Various roles involved in the buying decision at those companies

EXAMPLE BUYER PROFILE VS. BUYER PERSONA

STEP 1 Listen for active buyers

•  Inbound leads

•  Inbound companies

•  Trigger events

FORMS OF ACTIVE BUYERS

An important aspect of buyer context is timing.

1.  Configure your website to send inbound leads to your CRM in real-time.

2.  Create a view in your CRM to view all new inbound leads. Have the CRM alert you via email or other mediums when a new inbound lead is generated.

3.  If the inbound lead fits your Ideal Buyer Profile, move the lead to the enrichment step of the Identify process and then to the Connect stage immediately.

4.  If the inbound lead does not fit your Ideal Buyer Profile, move the lead to “unqualified” status. These leads should no longer exist in the new inbound lead view.

HOW TO IDENTIFY INBOUND LEADS

Modern technology enables you to identify the company from which an anonymous visitor originates.

1.  Find the contact at the company that is the most likely buyer of your solution.

2.  Create a new lead in your CRM with this contact and company.

3.  Move the lead to the enrichment step of the Identify process and then to the Connect stage immediately.

IF A COMPANY FITS YOUR IDEAL BUYER PROFILE:

In the same way that the internet has empowered buyers with more information, it has also empowered salespeople with more information.

•  A mention by a potential buyer in social media of your company or a competitor’s company

•  A mention in social media by a potential buyer of a keyword or hashtag aligned with your value proposition

•  A social media post or blog post by a potential buyer

•  A press release about the buyer (i.e. raising capital, expanding offices, earning results, etc.)

•  A job ad by the buyer relevant to your solution area

•  A new role or new executive hired by the company

EXAMPLE TRIGGER EVENTS

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STEP 2 Practice social selling

Not only will you develop your personal brand with your buyers, but you will also identify additional leads to pursue.

•  Find the people on Twitter that your prospects follow and share their content to your followers.

•  Find the LinkedIn groups in which your prospects are active and engage in these groups.

•  Find the blogs that your prospects read. Share these posts on Twitter, LinkedIn, and other sites where your prospects are.

•  Publish to your company’s blog.

SOCIAL SELLING TECHNIQUES

STEP 3 Proactively identify passive buyers

Inbound sales is not limited to inbound leads. Inbound sales is about basing the entire sales process on the buying journey and personalizing the sales experience to the buyer’s context.

1.  Conduct an advanced search in LinkedIn filtering on the attributes of your Ideal Buyer Profile.

2.  Sort through the results. Look for contacts at companies that match your Ideal Buyer Profile that you are connected to through a person you know reasonably well.

3.  Once you find a contact that meets this criteria, add the contact and company to your CRM. Note the common connection.

4.  Move the lead to the enrichment step of the Identify process and then to the Connect stage.

HOW TO LEVERAGE COMMON CONNECTIONS

Enriching the lead with both demographics as well as

interest data is critical toward understanding the

lead’s context and personalizing the sales

experience accordingly.

•  Information provided by the buyer in the lead form

•  The content the buyer has consumed from your company

•  The conversion event of the lead

•  The lead nurturing emails the buyer has received and which emails were opened

•  The source through which the buyer found your website

•  Relevant commentary observed in the buyer’s social media presence, or content they’ve produced or was produced about them

•  Public information you can find about the company from 3rd parties

•  Relevant information you can find about the company by speaking with their employees, customers, vendors, or partners

COMMON ENRICHMENT DATA AROUND THE BUYER’S INTERESTS

•  Title or role

•  Industry

•  Size of company

•  Geographic location

•  Longevity of the contact with the company

COMMON ENRICHMENT DATA AROUND THE BUYER’S DEMOGRAPHICS

Learn how HubSpot Grew the Business from $0 - $100M

EXAMPLE COMPANY #1 3

1.  Have a sales team

2.  In the technology and healthcare industries

3.  Based in the U.S.

4.  Less than $100 million in revenue

TYRE RECRUITING IDEAL BUYER PROFILE

CHECK FOR NEW INBOUND LEADS

CHECK FOR INBOUND COMPANIES

CHECK FOR TRIGGER EVENTS •  Search the major job boards

•  Indeed •  LinkedIn •  CareerBuilder •  Monster •  The Ladders

•  Skim through TechCrunch for news

about new funding

CONDUCT AN ADVANCED SEARCH IN LINKEDIN FOR COMMON CONNECTIONS

IDENTIFY PASSIVE COMPANIES •  Third-party data source

•  Location •  Revenue •  Industry

•  Industry •  Number of employees •  Revenue •  City •  State •  Company Twitter handle •  URL of company blog •  Company LinkedIn page

DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION ABOUT THE LEAD’S COMPANY

•  Head of Sales

•  CEO/President

•  Head of Recruiting

IDENTIFY CONTACTS FOR EACH COMPANY

•  Visit source

•  Lead conversion form data

•  Conversion event(s)

•  Web pages visited

•  Blog articles visited

•  Emails received

•  Emails opened

INTEREST DATA ABOUT THE LEAD AND COMPANY

•  Regularly read a few sales hiring blogs in their target industries and comment on new articles - Selling Power Magazine blog at http://blog.sellingpower.com/ looking for articles on sales hiring and recruiting.

•  Belong to and monitor LinkedIn Groups related to sales recruiting - Sales Gravy LinkedIn group, which has over 30,000 members, looking for conversations about sales recruiting they can add value to.

•  Follow thought leaders in their space in Twitter and retweet interesting comments - they follow @cafepharma, a content aggregator for pharmaceutical and medical sales professionals.

•  Set a goal to submit one guest post per quarter to their company’s blog.

IDENTIFY STAGE FOR TYRE RECRUITERS 15 hours per week identifying and connecting with leads 5 hours per week social selling

EXAMPLE COMPANY #2 4

•  B2B professional services firms only

•  Law, accounting or other specialized firms (excluding insurance, real estate and design/marketing firms)

•  Mid sized: 10 to 200 employees

•  Northeastern United States

COGROW IDEAL BUYER PROFILE

They not only generate 350 new inbound leads per month, they’ve built up a database of about 8,000 opt-in contacts. Using marketing automation software to nurture contacts via email, their website and online retargeting advertising, they also generate 50 marketing qualified leads each month.

NEW INBOUND LEADS VIEW

RECENTLY REVISITED LEADS VIEW

CoGrow Marketing is actively involved in very targeted marketing efforts.

•  LinkedIn

•  Website visitors

HOW COGROW IDENTIFIES COMPANIES WHO FIT THEIR IDEAL BUYER PROFILES

HUBSPOT’S PROSPECTS VIEW

•  LinkedIn

•  Website visitors

•  Trigger events (Newsle)

•  Blog subscription (feedly)

HOW COGROW IDENTIFIES COMPANIES WHO FIT THEIR IDEAL BUYER PROFILES

•  New hires

•  The promotion of associates to new partners

•  Opening of new offices

•  Expansion of the new practice into speciality areas

COGROW SCANS BLOGS LOOKING FOR:

Because CoGrow Marketing is always giving referrals, they are in a very good position to ask for them.

1.  Find demographic information about the company and add it to the CRM

2.  Identify contacts for each company and add them to the CRM

3.  Add demographic information to the CRM for each contact

HOW COGROW ENRICHES THE LEAD

•  Industry

•  Number of employees

•  City

•  State

•  Company Twitter handle

•  URL of company blog

•  URL of company LinkedIn page

COMPANY DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

•  Name

•  Phone number and extension

•  Email address

•  Title

•  Years with the company

•  Twitter handle

•  LinkedIn profile

CONTACT DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION

•  Visit source

•  Lead conversion form data

•  Conversion event(s)

•  Web pages visited

•  Blog articles visited

•  Emails received

•  Emails opened

DATA AUTOMATICALLY ADDED TO THE CRM FOR CONVERTED CONTACTS

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