Breaking into a new market is rarely easy. There are all kinds of risks and hurdles to consider when delivering sales content to new prospects, and the earlier you can address these problems, the better the outcome.

There are plenty of ways that sales leaders can enter an untapped market, and none of them are without risk. Two of the most common sales strategies used in this scenario are inbound vs outbound sales tactics.

Both inbound and outbound sales are important for market expansion, but which one is most effective?

In this article, we’ll look at inbound vs outbound sales strategies for breaking into new markets and explore how AI can serve as an important tool for both approaches, helping you generate leads in new markets with minimal investment and risk.

We’ll also examine the difference between inside sales and B2B, as well as sales plays vs motions.

Inbound vs Outbound Sales for Market Entry?

The main difference between inbound vs outbound sales is who initiates the action – the buyer or the seller.

Inbound sales is focused on targeting customers through content and communication and trying to nurture relationships by addressing their needs and pain points. In other words, you are bringing customers in, so they can initiate the sale.

Outbound sales is a more proactive, direct approach that involves contacting potential customers through sales tactics like cold calling, emailing or messaging leads.

There are benefits to using both inbound and outbound sales tactics when breaking into a new market. Although inbound marketing tends to be more cost-effective and helps to nurture long-term customer relationships, outbound marketing is faster and will help you generate leads quickly.

Inbound sales can help you nurture interest from untapped markets using high-quality, high-value content such as informational articles and posts, entertaining emails or free eBooks. Outbound sales has the advantage of providing customized outreach, which can be customized based on your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

Inbound vs Outbound Sales In Action

To provide a real-life example, inbound sales tactics might be used by a mid-size SaaS company to launch a thought leadership campaign on LinkedIn to help them reach niche markets.

Outbound marketing could be leveraged by a large enterprise through cold emailing to target leads and break into foreign markets.

Inbound vs Outbound Sales: Advantages and Disadvantages

So, inbound vs outbound sales – which should you use for new market entry?

Both approaches present different advantages for sales leaders. For example, inbound sales is a meaningful way to nurture interest in your product by generating demand and educating buyers about its USP.

Inbound marketing can be achieved through free content platforms like Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn, so it’s fairly cost-effective.

On the other hand, inbound sales campaigns are time-intensive and require specific skills. For example, email campaigns might necessitate a copywriter, while social media content is reliant on skills such as design, videography and content creation. This may present more of a challenge for smaller companies with fewer resources and who don’t want to risk losing money through unsuccessful campaigns

Outbound sales tactics give you ultimate control over who you target and when, helping you navigate your entry into an untapped market without wasting resources. However, if you want to cast your net wide, you’ll need to invest in data-driven tools that can help you identify potential leads in your target demographic – an upfront investment that may be costly.

AI can help bridge the gap between inbound and outbound sales by automating manual tasks like lead qualification, prospect scoring and timing. It can also save you time, money and resources – but more on that in a moment.

How to Analyze an Untapped Market

Here are some actionable tips to help you break into an untapped market and find your PMF.

Use Data Insights

The right AI tool will help you identify signals of market saturation vs opportunity. You want to find a market where there is high demand but low competition.

Embrace Market Research Tools

Market research tools like Google Trends and LinkedIn Insights are there to help you identify opportunities in new markets, but AI-driven tools like Topo will help you go one step further.

Topo’s AI SDRs act as digital sales representatives and can be trained for entry into new markets, helping you test and adapt to new verticals quickly and cost-effectively.

Conduct TAM Analysis

Total Addressable Market (TAM) refers to the market demand for your product. TAM analysis will help you identify unmet needs in your target market and see where your competitors are falling short. This should involve an analysis of the market size, segmentation and potential customer base, and can act as a cornerstone for your business.

Leverage Customer Feedback

Another way to identify unmet needs in your target pool is to use customer feedback when you’re conducting competitor analysis to give you the edge over others in your market.

Using AI for Market Expansion

Outbound sales in particular is primed for automation, although AI can also be used to automate the nurturing process of new inbound prospects.

AI can optimize cold emailing campaigns, scrape data for lead enrichment and provide predictive analysis to help you identify high-conversion opportunities.

In particular, Topo’s digital SDRs can simulate successful outbound strategies to test market responses quickly, saving you time and minimizing the risks of entering a new market.

Using Topo, you can also develop your ICP based on market research. This can also be refined over time using AI insights and key metrics such as conversion rates, cost per lead (CPL) and Market Penetration Rate (MPR). Continuous learning is important for all AI tools, as your sales solution needs to be able to grow with you as you scale.

What are Sales Plays vs Motions?

Different markets require specific tactical approaches rather than blanket inbound or outbound sales. Our AI SDRs are flexible and can be used for different sales motions and plays.

A sales play is a specific action designed to achieve an objective – such as re-engagement with a cold lead. This is an example of a play that can easily be automated using our AI SDRs, where leads that go cold can be delivered a re-engagement campaign through automated emails.

A sales motion is the blueprint that a sales team uses to reach prospects and move them through the sales cycle, ultimately toward closing a deal. Topo can support different sales motions across various markets, and AI SDRs can be trained to work with your particular market and ICP.

Sales motions are typically a mix of tactics and methodologies that cover how outreach will be conducted, what tools will be used and how success will be measured. They are usually a mixture of automated and manual actions, focused on strategy.

Like both inbound and outbound marketing, sales plays and motions are important cogs in a well-oiled sales machine, and both should be leveraged appropriately.

Optimize and Streamline Your Outbound Sales with Topo

Although there is much debate about inbound vs outbound sales, we know that when leveraged correctly, both strategies can work together to help you penetrate new and untapped markets.

AI can help streamline the processes involved with inbound and outbound sales, freeing up costs and resources and keeping risks to a minimum.

For cost-effective, scaleable market entry, explore our AI-driven outbound solutions and experiment with new verticals using Topo – all from just $750 per month (10 times cheaper than hiring an SDR).

Ready to learn more? Book your demo today.