This is the power of nearbound

No single sales channel is enough, and nothing is dead if you do it right. Yet.

The decline of outbound sales

People don’t use the phone as much anymore. I get it...you don’t believe me and have different experiences.

But if you have young kids, they don’t have phones; they have devices. They never talk on the phone on this device.

I spoke to a 25-year-old founder of a $3m+ business yesterday, and he doesn’t use the phone and had nearly 400 unread voicemails. These are the execs of the future. Our behavior has changed. Our approach must too.

Let’s play a game.

How many unread emails do you have in your inbox right now?

We have notification fatigue. Hell, so much so that every productivity hack explicitly tells you to turn your notifications off. Email open/reply rates are declining. Fact.

We prefer to research and make informed decisions on our own terms. Cold outreach often fails to establish the necessary trust and credibility that customers seek, resulting in lower conversion rates and wasted resources.

The prolonged sales cycle of inbound sales

Inbound sales has its own set of challenges. While inbound sales can generate higher-quality leads, they often get routed to the wrong person and are handled incorrectly, resulting in a longer sales cycle than ever before.

Tight purse strings, poor sales process and training, extensive research, and comparison-shopping before making a purchase decision—all of these are factors.

With an abundance of information available, customers have more options than ever. They take their time to evaluate multiple offerings, read reviews, and seek recommendations from peers.

As a result, closing deals through inbound sales requires a well-nurtured and patient approach, often at odds with traditional notions of closing "hard" on warm leads.

Oh, and ask a marketer; volume is hard to come by right now to feed an entire sales org.

The rise of referral and partner Nearbound Sales

Co-selling / Nearbound / whatever you wanna call it - is a go-to-network approach [NLG - network-led growth] increasingly turning to referral and partner, sales as the most welcomed way to open opportunities by all parties involved.

Nearbound capitalizes on trusted relationships and taps into existing networks of loyal customers, advisors, investors, influencers, and partners. These referrals come with built-in trust, making them highly valuable and likely to convert on a shorter sales cycle.

By leveraging the reputation and credibility of partners, you tap into a highly targeted audience, resulting in more efficient lead generation and higher conversion rates, without the costs and risk associated with FTE’s and prior GTM methodologies.

I made a living building and scaling outbound sales orgs as an SVP Sales.

I understand new ideas threaten the status quo and upset the apple cart.

I also understand that the way things have always been done is not always the best way to do things moving forward.

Thanks for contributing to the PhD Weekend Edition, Scott Leese.