The Power of Indirect Marketing and Indirect Selling

Marketing generally takes one of two paths: directly approaching buyers or influencing them before they are approached. Both are important, but in a crowded marketplace, indirect marketing is a powerful, but underutilized way to generate qualified sales opportunities. And its power doesn't stop with marketing. Indirect marketing can create the conditions that make indirect selling possible.

Direct Marketing Interrupts

Direct marketing interrupts someone by asking them to take the next step toward buying a product or service. Techniques include sales approaches, along with text messaging, email and direct mail campaigns, online and social media advertising, and TV, radio, newspaper and billboard advertising. When done well, direct marketing can quickly generate sales from people who are ready to be approached. But it requires the right message, delivered at the right time, to someone who is willing to pay attention and share their ideas and needs with you. Some buyers welcome the interruption. Others reject it. When direct marketing is in sync with your audience's expectations, it can be highly effective without damaging your brand's reputation. When it isn't, it will be ignored—or worse, create a negative impression.

Indirect Marketing Influences

Indirect marketing takes a different approach. Rather than interrupting someone and asking for their attention, it earns attention and builds influence before the sales conversation begins.

Buyers discover your company through content, people, and experiences that establish familiarity and credibility. They may discover you through videos, website SEO, success stories, articles, publicity, blog posts, social media, product placements, referrals, introductions and online reviews. Association participation, speaking engagements, sponsorships and community involvement are also powerful indirect marketing vehicles.

Manufacturers have long understood the power of indirect marketing. By pushing products through their distribution channels, a manufacturer doesn't solely rely on pulling demand from every potential customer. It creates awareness and preference that influence the buying decision downstream. The same principle applies to all B2B companies involved in complex, relationship-oriented sales.

Indirect Marketing Pre-Sells You

One of the greatest benefits of indirect marketing is that it can pre-sell your company before a salesperson ever enters the conversation.

Consider what happens when a suspect has already:

• Read one of your articles
• Seen your website
• Watched one of your videos
• Heard about you from a trusted colleague
• Read a customer's success story
• Seen positive online reviews
• Encountered you at an industry association
• Heard you speak
• Been referred by someone they respect

When you finally approach that suspect, you're not starting from zero. They may already know who you are, understand what you do and have formed an opinion about your credibility. Your sales conversation begins with a foundation that direct marketing alone may take much longer to establish. The selling process may have already begun before the salesperson arrives.

Influence Doesn't Always Come from the Decision Maker

This is particularly important in complex B2B selling. The person who ultimately signs the contract isn't necessarily the person who influences the decision. A buyer may rely on a consultant, colleague, employee, peer, board member, industry association, trusted vendor, architect, or engineer before making a decision. These people may never purchase from you. But they can influence someone who does. This creates an invisible audience around every important prospect. Successful companies recognize that they don't always have to market directly to the decision maker to influence the decision. Sometimes the best route to a buyer is through the people who influence that buyer.

Indirect Selling Influences the Buying Process

Indirect selling takes this concept one step further. It is the deliberate use of relationships, information and influence to affect a buying decision without relying exclusively on direct access to the person who ultimately makes the decision. In complex B2B sales, the salesperson may be selling to a company, but the decision is often influenced by many people who fulfill Strategic Selling roles of economic buyer, user buyer, technical buyer, fox and coach.

• The operations executive may define the requirements.
• The engineer may evaluate the solution.
• The consultant may recommend alternatives.
• The CFO may evaluate the financial impact.
• An employee may influence whether the proposed solution will actually work for the organization.

None of these people may have the authority to sign the contract. Yet each can influence the person who does. This is where indirect selling becomes powerful.

Instead of asking “How do I get to the decision maker?” the salesperson should also ask:

“Who influences the decision maker, and what role can each of those people play in helping us win?”

The objective isn't to manipulate the buying process. It is to understand how the customer actually makes decisions and to build legitimate relationships with the people who participate in that process. In complex sales, the path to the buyer is often not a straight line. It is a network of relationships and influence.

Indirect Marketing and Selling Compound

Direct marketing may produce a relatively immediate response: Approach → Response → Conversation → Sales Opportunity

That response can be positive—or it can be a turned-off prospect.

Indirect marketing and selling can work differently. An article, video, presentation, customer success story, referral relationship or conversation with an industry influencer can influence many prospects over an extended period of time.

Its effect can compound: Content → Credibility → Recognition → Trust → Influence → Conversation → Sales Opportunity

That makes indirect marketing particularly valuable for companies selling products or services that require significant consideration before a purchase. The results may not always be as immediately measurable as a direct-response campaign, but the cumulative effect can be substantial.

Indirect Doesn't Mean Passive

There is an important distinction here. Indirect marketing and indirect selling are not excuses for sitting back and waiting for prospects to find you. They require creativity, patience and consistency. A company has to deliberately create useful content, develop relationships with influencers, participate in relevant organizations, collect customer stories, encourage reviews and make its expertise visible to the marketplace.

Salespeople have to deliberately identify the people who influence important buying decisions, develop relationships with them and understand how they contribute to the customer's decision-making process.

In other words:

• Indirect marketing is active work designed to produce an indirect response.
• Indirect selling is active work designed to build influence within the buying process.

The Best Companies Use Both

The choice isn't really between direct and indirect marketing—or between direct and indirect selling. The most effective companies integrate them.

Indirect marketing creates awareness, credibility and preference. Direct marketing capitalizes on that awareness by creating a specific opportunity to engage.

Indirect selling builds relationships with the people who influence the buying decision. Direct selling can then advance the opportunity toward a decision.

And the relationship works in both directions. A direct sales conversation can introduce someone to your content, customer stories, referral network and other forms of credibility that reinforce the relationship. Likewise, an indirect relationship can make a future direct approach more welcome and more productive. The two approaches can work together to make each other more effective.

Think of it this way:



Direct marketing asks for attention.
Indirect marketing earns attention.

Direct selling asks for the opportunity.
Indirect selling earns influence.

Direct marketing creates action.
Indirect marketing creates preference.

Direct selling advances the opportunity.
Indirect selling helps create the conditions for the opportunity to exist.

The power of indirect marketing and indirect selling is that both can influence a buyer before you ever approach them—and sometimes through people who will never buy from you. And when the time finally comes to make the approach, you may discover something very powerful: The selling process has already begun.