What Happens in the Exploratory Phase of Inbound Sales Strategy" loading="lazy">
The thing about implementing an inbound approach to your marketing, sales, and customer service processes is that you have an entire list of principles and fundamentals to guide you, ones that you can use to craft your strategies and harmonize them for all of your teams so you can have that overall seamless and effective inbound system work for you even as you sleep.
In implementing an Inbound Sales Strategy for example, you have a series of phases that you know you will have to go through, so you can create strategies that are aligned with these phases. And when zooming out a bit and viewing things from a wider perspective, you will see that each phase allows you to nurture leads and guide them into that desired sale.
There are four phases in an inbound sales strategy. In this article, we are taking it piece by piece, the third phase is referred to as the explore phase. Here, you will learn what is the exploratory phase of an inbound sales strategy and what is an exploratory call. At the same time, you will be able to grasp how an entire exploratory process is done.
Ready? Let’s dive!
The Exploratory Phase of an Inbound Sales Strategy
As we’ve mentioned a while back, going inbound is great because you have the principles and fundamentals of the inbound methodology to guide you.
The structure and phases imposed by inbound methods make the steps you have to take much simpler and easier. An inbound sales strategy is practically run by the inbound methodology. The exploratory process is where you conduct your exploratory call as part of your exploratory process.
But before we go any further, what is the exploratory phase of an inbound sales strategy?
The exploratory phase of an inbound sales strategy is where you explore your lead’s goals and challenges, it is where you gently guide them towards a conclusion that resolves their particular pain-points. Keep in mind however that sometimes, just sometimes, the right conclusion is that they purchase another product from another company because it is a better fit for their situation.
Now, you might wonder, why help a lead purchase a product from another company?
The answer is simple: because inbound is all about helping.
Moreover, the exploratory phase is where you position yourself as an expert who can guide them and help them resolve the challenges they are facing.
The exploratory phase is the most important part of any good sales strategy. Why is this so? Because it is where you can truly learn the needs of your leads. From mere strangers who landed on your websites or social media channels, they have transitioned into being leads, and then they have been qualified as leads during the connect phase. Now in the exploratory phase, as you continue to delve into your prospects’ challenges, you have delicately placed yourself in the position to turn a qualified lead into a possible sales opportunity by uncovering your lead’s goals and challenges.
How is the Exploratory Process Done?
This is basically where your exploratory call comes in as an exploratory conversation will be necessary.
You will also need a qualification framework to work within. This is where you can utilize the CGP, TCI, and BA frameworks for your conversation. They will enable you to guide your prospects into realizing the type of solution that they truly need.
CGP stands for Challenge, Goals, Plans. You need to gain a deeper understanding of their CGP so you may also ascertain the best path for them to take moving forward.
TCI stands for Timeline, Consequences, Implication. You must nudge your prospect into defining their timeline in implementing their plans. You must also help them recognize the negative consequences of their inaction and the positive implications that will arise should they take heart and take action in relation to their plans.
BA stands for Budget and Authority. this is necessary so you may know if the lead you are talking to is actually the one who has the authority to make decisions and has the power over budget allocation and distribution within their organization. These are crucial pieces of information as you need to be speaking with someone who has the authority, since it is the only way that you can move forward with a solution.
All of these frameworks, you can implement in a one-on-one call with the lead. This is essentially how an exploratory process is conducted.
Things You Can Do in the Exploratory Phase
The exploratory phase basically calls for an exploratory call.
Within that exploratory call, you must endeavor to build a rapport with your qualified lead and answer the questions with the use of the CGP, TCI, and BA frameworks within your conversation.
Those frameworks will let you know if the qualified lead is a good fit to your business.
Final Take: Why is the Exploratory Process Vital?
The Exploratory phase is where an inbound sales person must discern whether their company’s offering is in fact a good fit with the qualified lead.
It is a crucial point within your inbound sales strategy as it allows you to either move forward with your qualified leads who will then become opportunities, or realize that they need some other solutions that you don’t offer, and in these instances you must let them go and point them towards the direction they must take while also remaining faithful to the inbound mantra of extending help and guidance at every step of the buyer’s journey, with selling only as an afterthought.
The exploratory process answers a question that you already have right from the initial stages of your inbound sales process: will this lead turn into a sale?
If revenue and ROI is the goal of a sales process, the exploratory phase gives us a look-see into our chances.
