Target versus surround

When you hear ‘outbound’ what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Intrusive, cold, impersonal...?

Outbound is about targeting customers directly. The challenge today is that there’s a lot of noise and competition.

Where in the past, you might’ve been one of five sellers calling a customer’s cell phone directly, today you’re one of one hundred...and in some cases even one in one thousand.

Nearbound is about surrounding customers with the voices they trust.

So instead of targeting them and catching them off-guard, you’re tapping into the people they trust for intel, influence, and intros.

Here’s a side-by-side comparison of an outbound email and a nearbound email.

3 ways to layer nearbound into Sales 

The best part about nearbound is that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel.

Instead, you can layer nearbound into the motions your Sales team is already running. Keep reading to learn how you can help your Sellers tap into their nearbound revenue potential.

Enhance pitches with nearbound intel

Intel is any information that your ecosystem can provide you about an opportunity. Your partners, your stakeholders, and even your customers know information you don’t. 

Ask your Partner team or look into Reveal for intel like:  

• Who is the best point of contact in your buyer’s company (including champions and decision-makers) 
• What are your buyer’s pains and blockers
• What technology is your buyer already using
• New initiatives and goals in the prospect’s organization
• Partner presence 

Sellers should use nearbound intel to draft pitches, enhance their messaging, and to bridge trust gaps.

Send these nearbound sales email templates to your Sellers.

Tap into networks on LinkedIn

Social media like LinkedIn is one great way to warm up buyers even when you don’t know them that well.

How?

On LinkedIn, you can see your mutual connections, you can learn more about your buyer’s pain points, and it can help you to easily jump into other people’s conversations. 

Sellers can leverage mutual connections to establish initial rapport over LinkedIn in two ways:

• Ask a connection to facilitate the warm intro. Do this sparingly.
• Use ecosystem intel to hyper-personalize LinkedIn messages.

Here’s an example DM Sellers can make their own.

Initial connection: “Hey [buyer’s name], I see we’re both connected with [partner’s name]. I’ve been told you might be struggling with [pain point], and I might be able to help. I’m curious, how’s [related to pain point].”

Community-led mindset

Communities provide an opportunity to network, establish a reputation of trust, and turn trust into revenue.

They’re a long-term play, but by identifying your buyers’ watering holes and participating in them, Sellers make the whole selling process easier; from outreach to demoing to pitching, when you’ve already established yourself someone who adds value to an ecosystem, others are willing to listen.

Encourage your team to participate in communities, create value for their connections, and you might even want to consider implementing referral programs to incentivize network-driven opportunities.

Some KPIs to measure nearbound sales

To know if your nearbound sales motion is heading in the right direction, monitor the following KPIs:

• Number of pipeline activities that involved partner influence
• Average deal size (with and without partner involvement) 
• Average close rate (with and without partner involvement)

Tip for Reveal users: The best place to track those numbers is in Reveal’s collaborate feature. 

Just keep building the bridge to Sales

When your sellers don’t want to adopt nearbound, you might be tempted to give up trying.

Don’t.

Simon Bouchez explained in his open letter to Partnerships from Sales,

It’s time for partner pros to take ownership of the pipeline, which includes fostering a healthy relationship with your Sales team. 

Sales agrees with Partnerships. They know that outbound and inbound are weaker every day. But they aren’t taking advantage of it at scale yet because before they put their performance (and livelihood) on the line—they need to see it to believe it.

Sellers will start to believe when you show them the partners they’re surrounded by, and the different ways to tap into them to close bigger deals, faster.

Shoutout to Sean Murray for the graphic!

A quick nearbound sales reminder

Getting sellers on board with nearbound is crucial. Share this with a partner pro who needs the reminder.