How Your Inbound Marketing Website Helps Your Sales Team Close Leads

Traditionally, your website is thought of as a marketing responsibility and falls on that department’s plate. When I talk to people interested in redesigning their website they can be analysts, specialists, directors or managers, but all of them usually have the word ‘marketing’ in their title.

During my conversation I inevitably ask, “How can we design a website to support your sales team in closing leads?”

If I could see a blank stare through the phone, this is the point that it would happen. A well executed inbound website will always do a few key things:

• It will showcase your brand
• It will show what you are offering to your audience
• It will generate leads, but also help your sales team close those leads

Your website should be bringing you qualified leads. Period.

It’s at the root of inbound marketing. If you design your site and the supporting copy with the focus on your buyer personas, you will be attracting the right people. Your website will be filling your pipeline with leads that have the potential to close.

Understanding who your buyer personas are and how they want to find you online is essential for getting the right people to your sales team. If you sell to C-Suite female executives, for example, you need to tailor the design and copy to get them to your site and your sales team.

Not only does the website copy count, but so does the content.

Blogging, eBooks, white papers oh my! All these are going to help attract your buyer personas and sales qualified leads. I like to see content that shows people that we know how to solve their problem and that we are the experts they want to hire. Having this advanced content not only helps get them to my website but is also useful for during the sales process.

I can use this content to help educate the lead further, show them how we solved a problem like theirs, or relay our expertise. Of course they can take my word for it, but it’s far more effective if I can back up my pitch with thoughtful content to support it.

Your well designed website will help your sales team attract leads along with the help of your marketing team. But your website will also see what those leads are doing in real time and provide insight as to the optimal time to reach out to them.

Technology is a beautiful thing for sales.

The more robust your CRM, the more tools your sales team will have at their fingertips. HubSpot is great because it gives my marketing team a whizbang tool for getting me those leads. But once those leads are in my system, I have Signals at my side to help me close them.

With Signals I am given the real-time data on what my leads are doing on our site. Have they looked at a case study and our pricing page? Perfect! I’ll give them a call, they are likely ready to have a conversation about getting started. With HubSpot’s Signals I am no longer in the dark. I know where the lead is in the buying process and I am able to contact them appropriately (and then close the lead).

Having a website with targeted design, copy, content, and intelligence will help your sales team close more deals.

You will be reaching out to the right audience, offering them the right information, and know the right time to pick up the phone or send that email. As I’ve said before, no one likes to be given a canned sales approach. It’s alienating and is going to send your leads straight to the competition who is doing a better job at doing their homework.

With a technology forward CRM and a well executed inbound marketing website and marketing strategy, you will be doing more than bringing leads to your website. You’ll also will be arming your sales team with the tools they need to close leads and grow your business.