Numerous articles have been written in the past few years of the growing importance of inside sales in the overall sales strategy that best of breed companies are adopting. Obviously as an inside sales organization this is a positive trend one we write about frequently on our blog.
We think this line function is growing can be attributed the four common reasons below;
- Speed to ramp up and recruit the team. With all our sales people in one place and recruiting in that one location we are able to focus our recruiting engine and always be in the market for top talent. As a result we have a pipeline of skilled sales professionals and can quickly ramp up a team and get them on board to start training. Focusing on inside sales and only inside sales also allows for a set process to be followed and our recruiters are not diversified across roles, markets and line functions within a company.
- Decreased time to being sales ready. Being sales ready to hit the phones or make sales calls is a process. With outside sales, it can take weeks and months to align schedules, ride along meetings, training and other functions to get someone ramped up and ready to sell. With inside sales teams, everyone is in one place and so the training and market intelligence (as well as those seasoned veterans) all sit and breathe the same air as they call.
- Focus on training and messaging. Ongoing training and grooming your reps or a team of them into a well-oiled and high producing engine takes a lot of ongoing training, changing the message and feedback on the pitch and approach. With a disparaged sales force, this can take months or even quarters to do. With an inside sales team, the ability to hold meaningful ongoing training sessions is streamlined and constant. Want to change an intro line or make sure that the features you highlight and turn into benefit statements are working? It is as easy as listening on the sales floor, pulling the team together to address a change, practice it as a group and get back on the phones. With this type of high touch and interactive sales coaching, an inside sales team shortens the sales cycle and spin up time to higher productivity much faster.
- Repeatable sales process and infrastructure. When you hire a team of outside sales people or a remote workforce, each time you have to recreate the sales infrastructure from phone and calling systems, reporting, office infrastructure and culture. A great and motivating sales culture is extremely hard to build let alone replicate. On top of that, try building it when your team all works from home or remotely. Sales is hard, so having a prebuilt and controlled environment with support teams, sales engineers, demo rooms and other key elements at your disposal will greatly shorten the time it takes to make a new rep produce like a veteran.
In the end, there will always be a role for and industries where outside sales, face to face meetings and other traditional go to market strategies will need to be employed. Hopefully the bullets above highlight a few ways in which using inside sales can shorten the time it takes to get your product to market. In this fast paced and ever evolving economy, speed to market often separates the iPad from the ordinary tablet and a new idea from the followers. If nothing else, an inside sales team and their nimble ability to address your serviceable market will make all your other sales channels more effective.
Happy Selling![/fusion_text][/fullwidth]