Building a Successful Inside Sales Function: You Need More Than Reps
To reach your business and financial goals, you need an effective sales function. That means having more than just sales reps. In addition to the right people, you need effective processes, the best technology, and a supportive sales culture.
You Need the Right People & Effective Process
Sales is part science and part art. The science part of sales is that it’s a numbers game. The more qualified leads your salespeople to pursue, the more opportunities they’ll uncover. The art part of sales involves the tangible and intangible personality traits that make up a good salesperson.
Leveraging the science and art of sales to build an inside sales function requires more than hiring people who sell themselves well during an interview. It requires a specialized group of people, along with effective processes, to be successful.
At the outset, you need a recruiter on your team who is highly attuned to figuring out which candidates are going to be great salespeople. But, that’s just the beginning. Hiring isn’t an act, it’s a process. Beyond an interview, top-performing sales teams are built by conducting a range of rigorous screenings that are designed to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Once you’ve hired a salesperson, you can’t leave it to chance that they are going to succeed. If they don’t perform well, it may not be their fault. They need the type of training that will improve their product knowledge and refine their sales skills. That’s why you need someone in place who can provide both initial and ongoing sales training.
In addition to recruiting and training roles, it’s also essential to have sales managers and mentors who can guide your salespeople to success. What it all comes down to is that it takes a team to make salespeople perform at their highest ability.
You Need the Best CRM Tool
You already know that you need a CRM. And, you know that the market is flooded with complicated CRM technology. None of them come right out of the box ready to fit the precise needs of your organization. That’s the primary reason why so many salespeople stop using their company’s CRM in favor of more familiar—yet less effective—methods for managing their sales process.
To ensure adoption of your CRM, your salespeople must see value in using it. This means that you need someone on your team who has a firm understanding of how the technology works as well as a firm understanding of the sales process and methodology your organization uses. It is this person who must build the CRM technology to reflect the way your organization operates, and create real value for your salespeople.
You Need a Supportive Culture
Doing exceptionally well in sales is incredibly difficult. Except for very few individuals, salespeople perform best if they surrounded by the right environment. What they need is a supportive sales culture that helps them deal with rejection while also allowing them to fail and learn from their failures. They need a culture that fosters the type of growth that leads to lasting success.
As you can imagine, a supportive culture such as this must be carefully constructed and nurtured. That’s no easy task. This is why so many organizations don’t have the type of environment that is designed to maximize the success of their inside sales function.
Consider Outsourcing Your Inside Sales Function
Does all of this sound overwhelming? It doesn’t have to be. We’re here to help.
At Acquirent, we’ve built a comprehensive team of dedicated professionals who focus exclusively on finding, training and managing the right people for your organization’s sales function. From our 22-step recruiting process to our continual basic and advanced sales training, to our ongoing sales management processes, to our advanced CRM technology, we have the resources and sales culture in place that get the most out of the science and art of sales.
As a small company, wouldn’t it be nice to have the same caliber of an inside sales organization at your disposal as the Fortune 500?