Inbound and outbound: what’s the difference and how to sell in each model

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Inbound and outbound refer to two different strategies for generating leads and sales for a business.

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Key takeaways from this article:
Inbound is a lead generation strategy whose objective is to attract potential customers and keep them engaged with the company.
The most notable advantages of an inbound strategy involve reducing the sales cycle , generating more qualified leads for sales, increasing credibility with the target audience and improving brand positioning.
Outbound is a traditional sales model where the salesperson actively approaches potential customers and makes a sales pitch.
The outbound strategy helps a company start to insert its name in the market, increase its customer base and obtain sales results more quickly.
It is necessary to recruit a team of experts and build the right cadence flows and strategies so that inbound and outbound prospecting bring the expected results. Find out more in: Guide: how to prospect new customers and generate qualified leads
While one strategy aims to attract and convert people interested in a company's products and services through content and campaigns on social media, the other is more traditional, focusing on making the first contact in the commercial relationship and actively approaching potential customers to present their sales pitch.

In the B2B universe, the rule is clear: the best strategy is the one that is most profitable and most consistent with your business model and your audience .

In this sense, it is necessary to have broad knowledge about inbound and outbound.

And to help you with this, we have prepared comprehensive content so that you can learn more about the differences between inbound and outbound in sales, prospecting and marketing.

Ready to understand, once and for all, everything about this topic?

So, continue reading the article!

What is inbound?
Inbound , in Portuguese, means entry. Roughly speaking, inbound could be defined as a way of stimulating the entry of customers into your company, “from the inside out”, like a magnet. An effort that takes place internally to attract customers.

In a more technical definition, inbound is a demand generation and sales strategy whose goal is to get your potential customers to come to you and stay engaged with your company .

To this end, it is necessary to be present on the channels where your potential customers are.

Considering that we are dealing with a highly connected universe, the best way to have a greater reach and attract the largest number of people possible, marketing campaigns, relevant content published on social media are the most coherent ways to achieve these results.

In other words: inbound is nothing more than the essence of digital marketing. Therefore, the main channels for inbound lead entry are:

content marketing ;
SEO;
paid media;
social media.
How does it work in practice?
The mindset your company should have is to help its audience become better, before anything list of turkey cell phone numbers else. Sales, in this context, are just a consequence.

When your audience is looking for ways to solve a problem or learn more about a certain subject, you must be ready to be found and help them become aware of their needs.

In this scenario, therefore, it is the customer who makes the first contact with the company, whether when they are consuming content from the brand, or when they are in the purchase consideration stage, and seek out a company's sales team to obtain more information.

See the infographic below for the stages of the customer purchase decision process. In inbound, it is essential that your company reaches customers at the first stage to achieve better sales results:


The advantages of inbound sales
The main advantages of inbound selling are:

reduces advertising costs;
increases credibility with the target audience;
generates more qualified leads for the sales team;
shortens the sales cycle;
helps to learn more about customers’ needs and expectations ;
improves brand positioning and visibility;
promotes greater synergy between marketing and sales teams;
attracts less resistant leads.
What is outbound?
The translation of outbound in Portuguese is “exit”. This is a strategy that seeks to generate sales “from the outside in”, that is, going to customers so that they can learn more about a product or service.

You can already understand that outbound is the most traditional sales model we know, right?

How does it work in practice?
In outbound marketing, the company's salespeople are the ones who make the first contact with potential customers. Using a segmented contact list, they initiate calls or visits to customers who can benefit from your solution.

This first contact is crucial for the evolution of the business, after all, if the potential customer is upset by an unexpected call, they may have the wrong impression of the company, which could tarnish its reputation.

For this reason, persuasion and good communication are vital skills for a salesperson who works with the outbound model.

As this model has been improving, even though it is traditional, new specialties have been required. Hunters are an example of a position that emerged with the evolution of outbound marketing, and are dedicated to the first contact with leads and qualifying the customer profile.

Thus, hunters only convert opportunities that really have purchasing potential for sellers, who in turn focus on converting these opportunities into completed sales, which makes the team, as a whole, more productive.

Advantages of outbound:
uncomplicated implementation;
immediate results;
easily measurable;
greater simplicity in converting sales with a high average ticket;
great channel to validate personas ;
allows the creation of strategic messages;
targeted reach for ideal customer profile
What is the difference between inbound and outbound?
As you have seen, inbound and outbound are completely opposite strategies. Therefore, it is particularly difficult to choose the model that best fits your operation and your strategic planning .

This choice depends on your customers, your business model and, most importantly, your budget and investment capacity.

Keep the following in mind:

Inbound marketing can help you reduce your marketing expenses in the future, but it’s not that easy to implement. You’ll need a good marketing automation platform to measure results and execute your digital marketing activities.

Furthermore, the results, depending on the chosen strategy, may also take a while to appear.

Outbound marketing, on the other hand, is important for new businesses or companies in the growth stage. In these cases, it is much more likely that most people do not yet know about your company. Therefore, actively reaching out to them is a way to start introducing your name to the market, increase your customer base, achieve sales results faster and generate revenue.

How to make inbound and outbound sales?
Still having trouble understanding the difference between inbound and outbound?

How about learning more about how each sales model works?

Inbound sales
The inbound sales strategy prioritizes the needs, challenges and interests of the company's persona. The focus here is to become relevant, educate your audience, and then become a supplier.