Inside Sales: Why is it important, and how should you implement it?

Inside sales

Inside sales is the practice of finalizing the deals within an office space environment or remotely, rather than relying on in-person sales. The sales representatives responsible for inside sales use phones, emails, video conferencing, and other online channels to conduct a business. The inside sales process is popular, particularly in the B2B space, including SaaS and tech industries.

It is different from outside sales in which the sales representatives travel and finalize deals face-to-face with potential clients at conferences, shows, and other industry events. 

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Structure of an inside sales strategy

Inside-Sales-Process

Courtesy(Image): UpLead

The sales representatives have the objective to connect with the prospects and nurture these leads using digital channels. It is popular in the B2B space or specifically in the tech and SaaS space, as these professional prospects are generally tech-savvy.

You must understand what your customers want and how they prefer to be contacted. In the service niche, it is seen that inside sales have become an optimal sales model in the market. Digital marketing strategies like SEO could be of great help.

The sales representatives aim to acquire leads and complete the sales cycle within 90 days. And as it saves a considerable amount of time and resources, the inside sales model is more scalable and costs less. 

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Inside Sales VS Outside Sales

Inside Sales VS> Outside Sales

The inside sales representatives tend to connect with the prospects right from their office or home desk; the outside sales representatives have to travel, contact the prospect face to face, and close the deal. Approximately 45.5% of the 5.7 million professional salespeople in the US work as inside sales representatives, while approximately 52.8% of sales professionals represent outside sales models [HubSpot]. You could work with CodeDesign to improve your marketing campaign and improve sales. Codedesign has a physical presence in Lisbon, Zurich and Manchester, but we consider anywhere there's WiFi to be our digital office space.

However, when paired together, inside and outside sales could bring greater efficiency in certain tasks like lead generation and increasing sales.

What are the advantages of inside sales?

inside sales advantages(Credits: snov.io)

The inside sales model involves remote selling, high touch sales, and highly trained representatives. The best part of the evolution of inside sales is that it allows managers to provide the representatives with better data, track their performance in real-time, and help them be more successful.

1. Saves money and resources for the organization

As per the report from PointClear, an average outside sales call would bring a cost to the company around six times more than the average inside sales call. Also, the traveling part drastically reduces the productivity and time available for a representative. At the same time, the inside sales representatives could dial more leads, connect with more potential customers or decision-makers, and be a part of far more meetings in a single day than the outside sales representatives.

2. The decision-makers prefer the inside sales model.

As per the sales benchmark index report, approximately 70% of the decision-makers or prospects don't prefer an in-person meeting and are quite receptive to doing business remotely. A face-to-face meeting has several perquisites, like getting ready for the meeting, reaching the avenue at the time, and taking care of other smaller amenities. The world is moving faster, and the most powerful currency is time. In such a scenario, no professional would want their time wasted only to attend a meeting with the sales representative. You would also be assured about this fact with the data from DiscoveryOrg, which says that 78% of decision-makers polled into an online survey suggesting that they would prefer to attend an event that came from an email or cold call.

3. Sales acceleration tools have proven their worth to enhance overall productivity.

The automation tools have allowed the sales representatives to connect with prospects seamlessly and easily. If you have the right technology at the tip of your fingerprints, the right sales technology stack would allow the team to send more emails, dial more calls, and have more conversations. The sales acceleration process allows your team to shorten the sales cycle, engage the serious prospects, close more deals quickly, and refine the leads from a list. The success formula for sales acceleration includes social networking technology, AI, data pipelines, and visualization platforms. Some of the tools to consider are CRM, predictive analytics, email tracking and automation, data visualization, company research tools and lead databases.

4. Increased teamwork and easier to scale the team

The inside sales process could easily be structured to encourage collaboration, meaning that one of the team members could focus on introductory calls. Once they have determined the customer's needs, they could easily pass them to an account representative. The biggest problem with outside sales is that you have to be very location-specific. The sales representatives may be reluctant to change the territory, as location expertise matters. On the other hand, inside sales teams could easily be scaled as they don't have to spend time traveling, and that time can be put towards prospecting and following up with more leads.

How to excel in implementing an inside sales strategy?

1. Understand your product or service and which pain point does it solve.

You must understand your product or service and the pain points it solves for the buyer. Once you decide to make a phone call to your client, you must be very sure that you are fully aware of every aspect of your product or service. Sales is not a one-way channel. Instead, it happens due to the buyer and seller's mutual understanding and collaboration. As you are the seller, you must be ready to take on every question and solve your prospect's queries when they are on the phone call. Your brand reputation is at stake while you are on the call. If you fail to convey the importance of your product, the prospect would never come back and would ultimately choose your competition or alternative.

2. Create buyer personas to be laser-focused in your discovery call

Create buyer persona

In the B2B space, you need to ask the right questions to your clients so that you have a better understanding of the pain points, goals and make better strategies ultimately. You could only ask the right question if you know your customers, understand their aspirations and challenges, communicate with them in their preferred tone and channel, and convey the right message about your product and service.

Creating buyer personas would help you understand your prospects and offer the right features. Taking CodeDesign, for example, we have prospects who only want assistance in paid marketing campaigns, while others need website development and Amazon marketing services. Unless we understand our audience and their goals and aspirations, we will never be able to provide the right solutions to them. Similarly, with the help of customer personas, you can help your prospects solve their problems and save money simultaneously.

3. Focus on building relationships rather than just selling

Build relationships to excel in inside sales

The digital world is competitive, and every brand aspires to connect with the customers and sell their products or services to them as soon as possible to improve recurring revenue. However, due to the increase in competition and a decrease in people's attention span, most people don't pay attention to sales representatives if they try to sell too hard to them. Let's consider a scenario where a SaaS company helps its B2B clients to manage and track their data. If we consider the seriousness of the matter, we will find that choosing the right company is crucial for the buyer, as they would continue with this service for a long time. The reason is that it is difficult to migrate data of a medium or large organization.

If the sales representative of the seller company, try to sell this service from the beginning of the sales call, it would distract the attention of the prospect and indulge them in the thought of choosing an alternative because the SaaS company doesn't even understand the problem but is trying to solve this problem. Read this guide on PPC campaign strategy.

On the other hand, as the seriousness of choosing the right vendor is very high, they would also look for other services with a better customer representative and customer service. Hence, you must try to build relationships with the company's decision-makers, try to understand their pain points, ask them the right questions, and earn their confidence meanwhile. After the stage, it is quite easier to sell the service. Find this complete guide on digital marketing funnel.

4. Use CRM, LinkedIn Automators, Video Conferencing and other needed tools to smoothen the process.

inside sales tools

A customer relationship management tool or CRM is necessary to manage prospects' data. At the same time, CRM could also help in contact management, pipeline management, deal management and ultimately helps you identify where do prospects lie in the process. LinkedIn is the world's largest platform for professionals and is responsible for 80% of B2B leads from social media. If you have a LinkedIn outreach strategy, you could bring fresh leads with LinkedIn automated tools to your CRM. Video conferencing tools enable you to make calls, share screens, and chat with prospects to explain your product or service. Here is a complete guide on CRM implementation. Go with the leading SEO agency to see the unprecedented growth of your website. We have a winning culture, bespoke expert team that together are the perfect recipe for a successful digital presence. These are the digital marketing trends in 2022.

You could also use business proposal tools to send a proposal to the prospects who the sales rep might have almost convinced with the offerings. You could also keep track of your proposals, taylor pricing, design beautiful templates, and save yourself from manual entries. 

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5. Personalize your cold email to turn the conversation around real needs

email marketing strategies for-business growth

The decision-makers generally get a dozen or more cold emails each day. If you lose the personalization factor in your conversation, you almost have no chance to stand and make the prospect interested in your offer. Your sales calls should highlight the offer's benefit to the customers' lives and how you could either multiply the revenue or save their considerate amount of time. Do sufficient research about the person you were trying to reach out to and the company to develop a baseline that would ultimately help you better assess their needs. Don't forget to follow up with your prospects to remind them about your product or service until they have a clear jurisdiction of either having a partnership or not. You could reach out to them at a fixed time interval, for example, weekly, if they missed your email.

Once you have successfully brought your prospect on the call or meeting, it is your job to ask the right question, actively listen, and make the prospect feel valued. It would help if you did complete research about your customer persona, as it would help you look more professional and engaged in the conversation.

In sales, it is mandatory to have a mindset of persistence and commitment. You can't get discouraged or disheartened after listening to a NO from your prospect, even if you have spent a sufficient amount of time trying to onboard them. Even though it's important to value your prospect's time, you must also avoid prospects who are potentially showing a red flag from the first day. 

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6. A motivated team to celebrate the wins and learn from the failures

Inside sales team

The sales career is not full of roses. Instead, there are many instances when you would have to deal with difficult clients and maintain recurring sales, which could ultimately affect the team's motivation. However, you must understand that it is part of the sales cycle. Instead, you must be ready to motivate yourself and your team to learn from the rejection, take the best format, celebrate small wins, and figure out the best ways for your sales representatives to visualize their sales rejection.

Conclusion

Inside sales allow both businesses and customers to finalize a deal but within the comfort of the office space. Inside sales save time and resources for the representatives and gift in the extra time to focus more on the research and closing the deal. The inside sales team is responsible for connecting with prospects, understanding their needs, answering their questions, and qualifying them as a leads. Customer onboarding is yet another important aspect of inside sales.

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