What makes inbound sales different?

I have been a software engineering freelancer for quite some time, and I believe most of the things I have been doing were basically inbound sale. After identifying and connecting with potential prospects I could sell my services to, I followed a client-centric approach by default during the negotiation phase in order to allow me to better understand their specific requirements from their perspective so that I can provide solid solution. I am pretty sure an actual sales team of any product might use a different approach.