Inbound + Outbound = New Business

Unlock the full potential of your firm's ability to *create* new business by mastering both inbound and outbound revenue generation activities.

In this episode, John and Mark explore the synergy between inbound and outbound business development activities and how they can work together to produce exceptional outcomes. They discuss the importance of both approaches, how firms can effectively harness these strategies, and the potential pitfalls when they're misaligned. In this conversation, we cover:

• The core differences between a magnetic, attraction-based inbound approach and a proactive, outreach-driven approach.
• How to balance and synchronize inbound and outbound activities for maximum business development impact.
• Real-life examples demonstrating the effective use of inbound content in outbound sales efforts.
• The signs and risks of misalignment between marketing and sales teams and how to avoid them.
• Practical tips for creating a seamless feedback loop between marketing and sales to optimize lead generation and nurturing initiatives.

Connect with Mark on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markhwainwright/
Connect with John on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/johntyreman/

www.breakingbizdev.com

Transcript

John Tyreman: 0:19

Welcome business developers to another episode of breaking biz dev. And today we're going to break down and beat up inbound and outbound business development activities, what it looks like when they work well, what it looks like when they're at odds, as always, I'm joined by my trusty cohost, Mark Wainwright. Mark, how are we feeling today?

Mark Wainwright: 0:40

We are feeling great. And John, I know there's a whole bunch of people out there in the audience who you just baffled and just like, wait, what are the inbound? And are we talking about trains? What are we, what are we discussing here that this, this is, this is going to be confusing. And maybe they just, maybe they just fast forwarded to another episode. No, I kid, I kid, but, we will define this. This stuff is important, and if there are professional services firms out there who haven't gotten their heads wrapped around, first of all, why should we be doing contemporary marketing, both in an inbound fashion and kind of an outbound. Uh, if they haven't, if they haven't kind of understood that they are, they are missing out, right? If I know a lot of professional services firms believe that all of their business comes from people they know and relationships and referrals and things, and those are important tools, but there's this whole other world of new opportunities out there that can be led by both your marketing team, Team and by, you know, your sort of internal doer seller, practitioner folks. So we're going to dig into this inbound, outbound thing. And, uh, I think it's going to be a great, great topic to, to, to knock around a bit.

John Tyreman: 2:05

I would say professional services firms aren't immune to or excluded from marketing. and, and so, I like to think about inbound and outbound as one way to describe it. There are some other marketing. Thought leaders, experts out there who, who refer to this as magnetic marketing. And I, I like that description of it because there really is this kind of push and pull when it comes to what we're talking about today, inbound and outbound. you know, I was talking to my wife the other day and she kind of described it really well is like inbound is like a more of a feminine energy where you're attracting Clients to you where outbound is more of a masculine energy. So you get that like yin and yang

Mark Wainwright: 2:46

I love that. That is, that is funny and I get it. That resonates, with me immediately. So I, I appreciate that. And, as an aside here, John, just to continue to put the fine point on this, if you are a marketing individual inside of a, of a professional services firm, then you don't do any of this stuff that we're talking about. But what you do all day long is create proposals for your organization. You are, you are not doing marketing, right? You are doing proposals. You're a proposal manager or a proposal coordinator, right? You are, you are squarely in the middle of a sales function and a sales process. We're talking about marketing here. So I'm not saying you're doing it wrong or, or, but we're talking about capital M. Marketing, John, that's what we're talking about.

John Tyreman: 3:34

That's what we're talking about. And, and a little sales too,

Mark Wainwright: 3:37

Little sales. Sure. Sure. Little sales too, but definitely what we're talking about here is, generating new opportunities, this, this squarely fits in that sort of create end of things where we are being, we are creators. Yeah, absolutely.

John Tyreman: 3:51

so what I'd like to do first is just kind of like explain the, the difference between inbound and outbound. we touched on it a little bit. With some analogies there, but I would say that like outbound is really meeting buyers where they are. And so it's more of that push energy, the masculine energy, and then inbound involves again, attracting buyers to you. It's that pull energy. It's that feminine magnetic energy. I would say that's kind of the main difference between those two. So let's dig in a little bit. Let's, let's break it down. I'd like to start with inbound. And what we can do is we can use our marketing and sales continuum here, we'll start on the marketing side of things and kind of give some examples of what inbound marketing looks like. And then we can talk about kind of inbound sales and what that motion looks like.

Mark Wainwright: 4:44

Good. I think that's a great idea. And for anybody who's new to this, John and I frequently reference what we call the marketing and sales continuum. It's a scale from 1 to 5. And there are various activities. happening across this whole spectrum, marketing activities or marketing led or marketing focused activities are typically happening on the one end of things. And sales focused sales led activities are typically happening on the five and things can happen. sales and marketing activities can happen anywhere along that spectrum. What we don't want to do is just take everything and throw it in the messy middle. Right, John?

John Tyreman: 5:25

That's right.

Mark Wainwright: 5:26

So let's start with, Inbound and, John, you've got some, some stuff to say about, about the types of activities undertaken by marketing related to inbound lead generation activities.

John Tyreman: 5:44

Yeah. So I would say the goal of inbound marketing is to catch and hold the attention of your ideal clients over a long period of time. And you can do this in a couple of different ways. You can educate them. You could entertain them. there's a term out there, edutainment.

Mark Wainwright: 6:02

Oh yeah.

John Tyreman: 6:03

you can educate your audience in an entertaining way. There's a couple, Scottie Scarano from accounting high podcast does this really well. He infuses like hip hop into accounting. so that's just one example. But, what I think some examples of what that looks like, On the one end of things, kind of the more marketing side of things, editorial SEO, so search engine optimization. And what I mean by editorial SEO is, thought leadership, blog content, talking about the challenges that your buyers are encountering and you're offering your point of view, your expertise, and those, those pages on your website are optimized for search engines. There's a lot that goes into editorial SEO, but that's just one example. I would put that on the one side of our marketing and sales continuum.

Mark Wainwright: 6:48

Yeah, definitely.

John Tyreman: 6:49

Social media is another activity that would, I would put in the one side of things. And then you can wade into some of the, the twos and threes like eBooks, where you put in your email address and your name and you download a PDF, And then I would say that the three we're entering kind of like this messy middle, we're entering into that handoff, that transition from marketing to sales in an inbound motion. This is where you really need to hold the attention of your target clients over a long period of time. And you can do that with email newsletters, drip campaigns. On email, podcasts are a great way to hold attention over long sales cycles. So those are some examples that I would say of some marketing activities that happen on, in an inbound strategy on that side of the spectrum.

Mark Wainwright: 7:39

Yeah, and just to just to connect sort of how you walk from that, that on the continuum from a one then to a two to three is that as we move to the two and the three, these are potentially tools that your. Doer sellers, your practitioners can grab a hold of and use for, more targeted, maybe personal directed, proactive sort of outreach stuff. So it's, these are definitely marketing tools. They're marketing actions, but they're, they're, they're being used by your individuals that have some, some sales responsibility. Was that, is that correct?

John Tyreman: 8:17

Yeah. Yeah. I would say that that's where that transition happens. they can be set up and automated even to where your doer sellers, they don't even need to really participate a whole lot outside of the creation of those assets. And there there's, automations and systems and tools and technology that you can put into place to really kind of take that lift off of your subject matter experts, where you extract their expertise, and then you create a system to where it generates inbound. Leads in opportunities for those seller doers because those they've consumed their thought leadership up to this point. And now they're, they're in a position where they're educated to the point where they're willing to have a conversation.

Mark Wainwright: 9:01

Also on the marketing end of things, let's dig into some outbound activities that are connected to that sort of that left that one to two end of things.

John Tyreman: 9:11

Sure. Yeah. Well, let's talk about some outbound marketing activities and then we can, get into some of the sales sizes side of things. so with, when you're, when we're talking about marketing, I would say the goal is to again, meet. New prospective clients where they are And what I mean by where they are, I mean, like the, the, the channels that they use, the times that they're available. Can you reach them through direct mail? Can you reach them through print ads or sponsorships? maybe it's digital advertisements on LinkedIn. Maybe you're syndicating some of those guides or podcast episodes. channels. And so that would be a way to reach new prospective buyers on channels and in audience pockets that are outside of your typical sphere of influence.

Mark Wainwright: 10:01

Right.

John Tyreman: 10:02

so that's, that's how I would kind of describe some of those outbound activities and I would put, direct mail, print ads, sponsorships, still on that one end of the marketing. Spectrum, we're, we're going for general awareness. We're not really having sales conversations. We're building awareness of our service and our brand.

Mark Wainwright: 10:19

Yeah. Yeah. And this is stuff where we are again, like you, like you said, meeting them where they are, we're getting out in front of them with these outbound marketing. Activities makes total sense. So marketing inbound, outbound, got it. Let's shift gears a little bit and talk sales.

John Tyreman: 10:37

Yeah. Let's talk sales, for inbound sales. And this is, this is a motion that I'm very kind of used to. And a lot of the organizations that I've worked with operated on an inbound. Lead generation kind of motion. And the goal with inbound lead generation is for your, the people that are in sales seats. So do we're sellers, maybe they're the, a partner who's in charge of business development. Maybe you're the business owner. leads that are generated through inbound marketing activities. The goal is really to qualify those leads and understand their needs. do they fit our ideal client profile? would they make for a good client? And so those are the kinds of questions that you're asking in that qualification process with an inbound model. and those leads can come from hand raises from subscribers. Let's say that you have a weekly newsletter and you, you're Send out an offer for maybe it's a free audit or a free consultation or something along those lines. and you get responses to those offers. that's how leads can flow into your, your sales pipeline, and then you can qualify them into sales, qualified leads or sales, qualified opportunities, or whatever the terminology you use to describe it.

Mark Wainwright: 11:49

agreed. So there's definitely a partnership there. The inbound motion includes that one too, where it's marketing. creating content, attracting, attention, attracting engagement over a long period of time. And then hopefully some of that stuff sort of ticks over to sales activities where you are qualifying. Right. And we've talked about qualification in the past, so makes, makes total sense. When sales undertakes. Outbound activities, we've touched on this in the past as well, but

John Tyreman: 12:22

Well, I would actually love to hear your perspective on this, Mark. I think you've got a lot more experience with outbound sales than I do.

Mark Wainwright: 12:30

you, you, your, your, your humility, John is, is readily apparent there. You are, you are a pro at this, but, but right, this, this aligns with some of the stuff we talked about in the past. This is prospecting, prospecting sequences, right? So, so where your individuals who are responsible for revenue are, doing proactive outbound outreach cold calls. Sure.

John Tyreman: 12:58

Oh, shiver,

Mark Wainwright: 13:00

email, whatever, whatever outreach works and whatever they are comfortable with. And most importantly, whatever outreach enables them to connect with their prospective clients. Right? So this is your doer sellers engaging in these proactive activities to get in front. Thanks. Of prospective clients and then to create conversations, right? The whole, the whole goal of prospecting is to generate leads is to generate that conversation where you can then further qualify. Those individuals and they're all, they're, they're, they're pre qualified to a degree because you're not reaching out to individuals and organizations who aren't a good fit, at least initially, but then you have to further qualify them just to kind of make sure to make sure that you look at the world the same way that you are of like mind, and that you can be successful together. So. So, yeah, it's, it's using all those tools. we've talked about prospecting sequences in the past. We'll reference that, that episode, but yeah, that's the outbound motion, that sales undertakes and on the marketing to sales continuum, that's definitely more on sort of the four end of things. It's not completely sales because all this outbound stuff. Is very much sort of marketing supported, right? From a content standpoint, from a cadence, just from a, a support standpoint, marketing is absolutely involved because marketing tends to have a better sense of this, right? Marketing can do some good market research or some, some prospect identification. So these activities are never kind of wholly sales. Activities. They're not all the way to a, to a five. Otherwise they are potentially disconnected from what's happening from a marketing perspective. So they are for my, for my spin on this is that on our one to five, they are a solid four where they're sales led marketing supported.

John Tyreman: 14:57

and you're building familiarity with, the more dials you make, the more messages you send, you're building familiarity and trust to, which are core tenants of marketing. and I, I would say that firms that are thinking of, okay, well, how do we develop a marketing strategy? Should we do an outbound? Should we do an inbound marketing strategy? I would say that the two can really compliment. Each other, if they're set up right. And it's like this law of incrementality where one plus one is three, really. and so that's what I want to explore next with you, Mark, is let's take a look at how maybe inbound and outbound can compliment each other. And then what we'll do is we can kind of flip it over and take a look at, what happens when they're at odds, what happens when there is misalignment, when outbound and inbound aren't working well together.

Mark Wainwright: 15:47

You're listening to breaking biz dev

John Tyreman: 15:49

the podcast that beats up, breaks down, and redefines business development for the professional services firms of tomorrow. Your hosts are John Tyerman, founder of Red Cedar Marketing, the podcast marketing company for experts and professional services firms,

Mark Wainwright: 16:03

And Mark Wainwright, principal consultant and founder of Wainwright Insight, the fractional sales manager and sales consultant to professional services firms.

John Tyreman: 16:13

If you find this podcast helpful, please help us by following the show and leaving a review on Apple podcasts

Mark Wainwright: 16:19

and now back to the show. Yeah, which, which does happen, but yeah, I think the, how they compliment, cause like you said, it's a one plus one is three, situation. If it's really working well, and requires, that both be synchronized, and both kind of have a mutual level of respect and regard for one another. And, that means even in small firms, that means if you're even doing a little bit of marketing and communications work that. that individual, is tightly connected with the, the firm leaders who have revenue generation responsibility and they are, they are moving together. So that's, that's super important.

John Tyreman: 17:00

I'd like to just give some examples of, how inbound and outbound can compliment each other. And you touched on this a little bit, Mark, where, you're talking about those outbound sales activities, and they live in that four section of our marketing and sales continuum because they're sales led, but marketing supported. And the, some of the inbound content assets that you can create, they can absolutely be used as part of, some folks might call that sales enablement material. Um, I look at it as more like value deposits along the way where, you could say, Hey, we just recorded this episode on this challenge that we were just talking about. Here's a link to it. Would love for you to give it a listen. And I think this will help you kind of tackle that challenge, that's absolutely, you know, an outbound motion, but leveraging content that you may have created for, inbound opportunity nurturing. I

Mark Wainwright: 17:58

Right. So, so you're, you're outbound. Conversation that you're trying to have with a prospective client. Maybe you can't quite connect with them. So your directed outreach doesn't result in a conversation, but maybe you increase familiarity and you get that content in front of them where low and behold. They, work their way into your, into your, to your, your, your funnel from a different angle. Like they review some of your content, they listen to a podcast, they read an article and they think, Oh yeah, maybe I should have had that conversation with Mark, but the fact that I didn't, it's okay. How about if I just, kind of send an inquiry in through, through their marketing end of things. So, yeah, those are those sales led outbound activities end up driving people in through that sort of inbound marketing channel. So, yeah, great.

John Tyreman: 18:49

think research is another really great way to use that too. Where, if you develop a survey, you're, you use that as part of your outbound sequencing, Hey, we're doing research on, decision makers within firms like yours would, would love for you to take five minutes and fill out this survey and then, that, that creates. a touch point in engagement point with your prospects, but it's also, you're not only are you gathering information about them, primary data around those prospects. in aggregate, all of that data can be used to create inbound content, original research for content. So, that's another really great kind of tactic or play that I've seen.

Mark Wainwright: 19:30

outbound activities can generate hopefully great conversations with your ideal clients from those conversations, maybe, you get, a new prospective client that, heads into your sales pipeline, but the other great thing that can happen from those conversations and those interactions is you can, content. You can get their input. You can just have these great conversations that, that feeds future content development, future outreach, future conversations, that sort of stuff. So that helps, that helps build, that helps build your sort of library of, of, of content and information to use in these conversations.

John Tyreman: 20:16

the linchpin in all of that is the doer sellers who are having those conversations, the, the business developers, the salespeople that are having those conversations, relaying that information to your marketing team and creating that feedback feedback loop is just so critical for that. you could listen to gong recordings, I suppose, right. call recordings and, that's one way to do it. you can have your business development meetings where your sales team is sharing conversations. And then whoever's in a marketing seat can, take, take their notes. However you do it. I think that as long as you find a way to create that feedback loop, that's absolutely how, your outbound sales activities can influence your inbound, marketing.

Mark Wainwright: 20:58

Definitely, definitely. And, and I'm, I'm, I'm picturing as we kind of talk this through, I'm, I'm, I'm picturing as I often do that sort of two by two that we can build that matrix, where, when, marketing and sales are really key. Working well together and cooperating. We're dealing in that top right quadrant, right? We're just dealing with everything's just go. good, good cooperation, good coordination, good mutual respect. Everything else is, is kind of going well. What happens if we just go the opposite way? John, we fall into the bottom left quadrant where everything is kind of just short circuiting.

John Tyreman: 21:37

Yeah. Yeah, I've, I've been there. where marketing drives poor quality leads. but, but sales has a hard time telling marketing what good looks like. And so you get into this kind of like chicken and egg situation where, well, okay, well, I don't know what good looks like. How can, how can I generate the kinds of leads that you want?

Mark Wainwright: 21:57

yeah. Yeah. Or, I mean, worst case scenario, in some firms. And again, there's some firms out there who are kind of just trying to, trying to kind of connect the dots on this whole inbound outbound thing, because their firms don't do it at all. And one of the reasons they don't do any of this or understand it, or, or at least are kind of aware of it is that, the doer sellers, the practitioners, whoever they are, pay absolutely no regard to To, lead generation and marketing. They don't believe that marketing can, beyond going out into the world and finding some RFP that's been posted on some website, marketing is never going to create a really great client. It's all having to do with back, backslaps and handshakes and relationships. And that's not entirely true. John, Truth be told, my, my work is, is very interpersonal, very relational, but I have, sourced almost as many new potential clients leads from. Inbound stuff than I have from outbound or, referrals and things like that. So this stuff works for me and it will work for any firm that invests the time and energy in a really good sort of inbound. Marketing engine, no doubt about it

John Tyreman: 23:12

I think that there's a couple different symptoms you can look for to worry if you, let's say you try to design an inbound outbound system. And then, there, there's some risks that you need to really kind of watch out for. And one of them is what I call messaging drift and it's something to keep, keep tabs on. And this is when like sales folks. Have this like hunt and kill mentality where they go out and they want to hunt for, for new deals and they want to, they want to go out and find it themselves. And that can be great. And if you have, folks who have that mentality, that can be a huge asset. However, they can become disconnected from the pack and, they can start creating their own messaging out there when they're talking to prospects. at odds with the messaging that marketing is putting out there with the inbound stuff and what's on the website and that friction can lead to confused. Opportunities right in the pipeline, confused clients, if they ultimately become clients. and it just, it, it's, it's at the detriment of the brand too.

Mark Wainwright: 24:16

I'm picturing the, fourth quarter strategic planning session where everybody got in a room, right? And there's a person facilitating it and they've got their big, huge, sticky sheets and they've done their bullet points and they've done their brainstorming and they've posted those big posts that know things like all over the wall and there's whiteboards and everything else. And one of your practitioners goes out and finds this new perspective client in everybody's thinking. were 50 sheets of paper posted all over the wall, all over the walls, and these guys weren't on any of them. What are you doing? Right? you do retail and commercial work, and this and that, whatever else, and then, Somebody, someone, one of your partners comes into the office convinced they're going to, win this new K 5 school design project if you're an architect or, you know, something else like that. And it's just like not only wasn't, it didn't make it to the three ring binder in our plan. That's now gathering dust on the shelf. It wasn't on any of our big sticky sheets on the wall. Where did this come from? What are you doing? We're not doing any marketing to support that once this client finally scratches below the surface and finds out that we have no right to be playing in this whole world, then somebody is going to have to pay for it.

John Tyreman: 25:30

That's a great example.

Mark Wainwright: 25:31

It's so funny. So funny. Well, this is, this is good. The, the, it's critical to have. Really good sort of inbound and outbound activities happening. Those can be spread across marketing and sales. The problem arises when they all get dumped in the middle and nobody has any time for them, or they're misdirected or misinformed or out of alignment, disconnected. And they ended up in that messy middle. So, firms need to, whether you're a small firm or a large firm, You need to understand the importance of, marketing led inbound, outbound activities, sales led inbound and outbound activities and responsibilities. And that's really, I think what creates kind of a, a rich, diverse, kind of wealth of opportunity. And I use that term a lot with firms, like really what you want to do, you want to be doing everything you can to create a wealth of opportunity, a wealth of new business. A wealth of prospective clients that are in front of you that you can then pick from, right? And you want the very best. You want the best partners. You want the ones that pay what you want from the pay that work with you, how you want to work, that communicate well, all that stuff. So these activities will, if done well, will generate that wealth of opportunity for you that you can then pick and choose from.

John Tyreman: 27:02

And picking and choosing from that wealth of opportunities is how you can create the kind of firm that you want.

Mark Wainwright: 27:07

Totally. Good. Good. This is great. John. I, I, I always love these episodes where we can wander back and forth between sales and marketing and kind of reflect a little bit on how they really work well together and how all too often they might not. So this is, this has been great. Thanks for this until next time.

John Tyreman: 27:30

Until next time.