If some of your top challenges are enhancing your sales effectiveness, maximizing customer advocacy, or optimizing your revenue strategy, then the “Nearbound Sales” section from Jared Fuller’s NEARBOUND and the Rise of the Who Economy is for you.
This chapter defines:
What nearbound sales is
How modern selling really works, and
The blueprint you need to get started in your nearbound sales motion
And Jared centers it all around with one goal:
To help you decrease your time to close, and increase your win rate, deal size, and pipeline with nearbound.
“What will set you apart is your network of successful customers and partners who trust you.”—Jared Fuller, Chief Partnerships and Ecosystem Officer at Reveal and Co-founder of nearbound.com
Here’s a sneak peek at the “Nearbound Sales” section and how it can help.
What is nearbound sales?
Nearbound sales is a strategy focused on leveraging trust and influence to connect with the right people to close bigger deals 35% faster. It involves tapping into your ecosystem for intel, influence, and introductions to build relationships with buyers.
Unlike traditional outbound and inbound methods, nearbound sales aims to avoid adding to the noise and competition in the market by threading the right individuals into the sales process, enhancing sales productivity, and strengthening customer relationships.
By integrating nearbound sales into your revenue strategy, you can access untapped revenue potential and achieve better sales outcomes.
“Partnerships are not merely confined to a single department, they are a strategic element that should be integrated across all departments and phases of the customer journey.”—Jared Fuller
Now, let’s dive into the 5 key takeaways of the Sales chapter of the NEARBOUND book.
Takeaway #1: The sales game has changed
If you cold call your buyer or send cold emails multiple times in a very short period, you’re only going to achieve one thing: being ignored.
Your buyer has more important things to do than opening an email or answering a phone call from someone they don’t know or trust.
Ask yourself this: If you don’t answer or reply to unknown calls/emails, why should your customers?
To reach your buyers effectively, you need to leverage the contacts they know and trust.
“The world of cold calls and emails has an expiration date, and the only way to prepare for it is by nurturing trust in your ecosystem.”—Scott Leese, Founder and CEO of Scott Leese Consulting
With nearbound sales, the leads provided to your Sales teams are already warm due to their relationship with your partners. Engaging in partner-hosted webinars, or co-creating content with trusted partners, provides valuable context for your outreach, and—even better—if your partner recommends your product to them, they’ll be more likely to respond.
Nearbound sales amplifies your inbound and outbound plays by leveraging existing trust and connections.
Takeaway #2: Your happy customers are your best advocates
Inbound and outbound are in decline, and breaking through the noise makes going to market difficult. We’re not saying you can’t do some activities alone; we’re just saying that if you want to arrive first, faster, and better, you should partner.
Your customers and partners already have credibility, experience, results, and trust. They speak the language of your buyers, and they have achieved your buyers’ promised land.
By finding champions within your customers’ companies, you can turn their advocacy into pipeline and revenue.
Sellers have the power to help your customers achieve the promised land; you have the power to make them win, and in return, they can help you get a foot in the door of other companies.
What’s better? Knocking on random doors until someone answers? Or being invited inside to the conversation by a trusted source?
“Connecting customers to a partner not only helps pre-sale, it helps get customers to value faster post-sale. Salespeople don’t need to be altruists to care about customer success. Happy, successful customers are your best advocates.”—Jill Rowley, Strategy and Evangelism at nearbound.com and Reveal
AEs focused solely on revenue will lose. Instead, by facilitating the buying process and adding value through partnerships, you’ll create happier customers and win more deals.
Takeaway #3: Driving more revenue requires a shift in your revenue mix
To increase revenue by 33%, you can’t rely solely on traditional methods. If your revenue mix is currently 50% outbound, 40% inbound, and 10% partner, you’re only tapping into ⅔ of your potential sales productivity and pipeline.
To achieve 100% revenue potential, you must rebalance your revenue mix by incorporating nearbound strategies. Start by reallocating a portion of your resources from inbound and outbound efforts to leverage nearbound and partnerships.
We’re not suggesting an equal split of 33% outbound, 33% inbound, and 33% nearbound. However, aiming for a 33% increase in revenue sets a benchmark. This entails ensuring that at least one-third of your open opportunities are associated with a partner to drive 2-3x higher win rates.
“The Sales team uses the nearbound target account list to strategically tap into trust and influence from partners to surround and shorten their sales cycles, and to close more deals.”—Jared Fuller
And the best way to build your nearbound target account list is by following these steps:
Leverage a Nearbound Revenue Platform like Reveal to identify accounts with influential partner overlap.
Examine each partner relationship to gather relevant intelligence, influence, or potential introductions.
Identify the personas involved in the account, including deal influencers and key decision-makers.
To maximize these steps, ensure a seamless integration between your CRM and the intel from your nearbound target account list. Leverage Reveal’s integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce to automate notifications, request intros, monitor pipeline, and capitalize on partnerships.
Takeaway #4: Intel, influence, and intros are your way to drive more pipeline
The 3 I’s of nearbound sales—intel, influence, and intros—are the secret sauce for unlocking sales success with ease. To increase open opportunities by 33%, boost win rates by 41%, or slash time-to-close by 43%, these strategies must become your standard operating procedure.
“Master the 3 I’s of nearbound sales (intel, influence, and intros) to accelerate your pipeline by leveraging your partners’ trust and access.”—Jared Fuller
Intel
This entails leveraging partner-provided information about an opportunity. Accessing nearbound intel through platforms like Reveal yields valuable insights such as:
Deal influencers: Key contacts within your prospect’s company who can sway decisions or champion your cause.
Technographic data: Insight into the technologies and integrations your prospect utilizes.
Pain points and goals: Understanding your prospect’s challenges and aspirations.
“It’s much wiser to get the answer to the test, or “intel”, from your partner on why there is a disconnect in your approach.” —Jared Fuller
Influence
This involves leveraging relationships to advance through the buyer’s journey by instilling trust. Partners already have established credibility with your buyers, facilitating:
Surrounding prospects with influence from trusted service providers and community members.
Providing nudges to help indecisive buyers move forward.
Understanding procurement processes to forecast deals accurately.
“Use your partner to influence their contacts to take your solution evaluation seriously, and to schedule that meeting they have been postponing.” —Jared Fuller
Intros
An intro is not a referral, it’s a high-level intentioned message that not only drops your name into a conversation, but actually gives context, and reasons why the introduction is relevant to your prospect.
Asking for an intro means that you’re leveraging your partner’s trust at the highest level. When done correctly, it can drive double the revenue, but misuse can harm reputations.
“With the right introduction, your partner’s trust will be transferred onto you, the seller.”—Jared Fuller
Leverage the intro play when you’ve:
Reached out to your buyer, and after a couple of meetings and emails, they just stopped responding without any explanation.
Tried to get the conversation back, but after a couple of months, you haven’t been able to reconnect.
Have made enough “trust deposits” with your partner—or given as much as you’re asking.
When seeking help with intel, influence, or intros from your partner, remember it’s a two-way street. Be ready to offer something valuable in return, such as market insights, access to exclusive resources, or expert guidance. Proactively providing reciprocal value fosters a culture of mutual benefit and trust in your partnership.
Takeaway #5: Not all partners are strategic
Even though the entire “Nearbound Sales” section is dedicated to motivating, guiding, and teaching you how to better leverage partners, this doesn’t mean that you’ll partner with every company and dedicate the same amount of effort to all.
You can’t allocate the same amount of resources and dedication to each of your partners. You have to prioritize your partners according to:
The amount of nearbound signals, and the relationships and trust they have with your prospects and customers.
The time and commitment both parties have to activate the nearbound sales play.
The material impact (revenue) on some of your most important accounts.
Once you find your strategic partners, you have to make sure you and your partner share your 5 top target accounts that are customers of your partner, 5 top target accounts that are your customers, and 5 top target accounts that are common prospects.
This will help your Sales leadership, Partner Managers, and Partner Marketers develop succinct messaging, honed-in value propositions, pitch scripts, etc, to help you drive more sales.
For you to leverage a strategic partner, you have to include AE-to-AE and VP-to-VP collaboration.
“Strategic partners require joint responsibility between sales and partnerships to drive sales impact.”—Jared Fuller
TL;DR
Embracing nearbound sales is not just an option; it’s a necessity. By prioritizing strategic partnerships, focusing on customer advocacy, and redefining revenue strategies, businesses can unlock untapped potential and drive better sales outcomes.
It’s time to shift gears, collaborate effectively, and leverage the power of trust and influence to thrive in the modern sales environment.
“Nearbound is the augmentation of who you work with into your sales process, not just how you sell to them.”—Jared Fuller
If you want to access all the step-by-step tactics, examples, workflows, email templates, and success stories from Jill Rowley and Bobby Napiltonia, get your copy of NEARBOUND and the Rise of the Who Economy.
