Inside Sales... it's more than just call stats

Inside sales offers companies the opportunity to maximise their scale and reach whilst effectively managing their sales costs. Inside sales as a profession is growing rapidly. There are many more tools, best practices to adopt and what’s more, according to the sales benchmark index, 75% of your buyers actually prefer to meet over the phone.

Here are just a few principles that we believe make a significant contribution to today’s inside sales world:

1. People

We all know we need confident, intelligent, street-smart, coachable, articulate and results-driven people but we think clock-speed is a massively important attribute too… but how do you test for it in an interview process?

2. Enablement is King…

…but the only really effective way to become truly enabled on a value proposition is to practice role-playing religiously. Save time by employing the process of learn-teach-learn, where each team member is assigned the responsibility to learn how to position a product/solution and teaches others.

3. Campaigns

It sounds obvious, but you need targeted messaging designed with that prospect in mind. Campaigns are a great way to help the Inside Sales team think about how they identify which targets for which product/solutions. Campaigns also keep the quarter interesting, try and be spontaneous based on a press release, an event, a product launch, a change in the market….

4. Belief & Passion

Probably the most obvious thing to note, but ask yourself if your teams are genuinely passionate about the company’s purpose and value proposition to customers. It needs to be about more than just the commission. People still buy from people and passion and belief stands out!

5. Stop calling it Cold Calling

Let’s call it Smart Calling! You’ve researched the prospective customer, profiled the decision makers, sent a tailored e-mail covering the “Why now? Why us? What next?”... you may have used social selling to market yourself to your prospective customers…. NOW you’re ready to respectfully call the prospect and begin a meaningful conversation…

6. Measurement and Metrics

A balanced approach to Inside Sales should include tracking and measuring Social Media (e.g., use LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index), contacts made/tasks created/emails/number of meetings/demos/pilots all recorded in the CRM along with call stats. We’re sure there are other measures but you get the point.

7. Managers lead by example

Should managers have a small portfolio of their own customers that they manage and prospect to keep them current and help lead by example? It would build trust with the reps, allow them to create some buzz by doing, not asking and provide an opportunity to reward and recognise top performers with hot leads from the boss.

8. Gamification

Motivating a sales team can sometimes feel like a burden. Insidesales.com has made the sales process visual, competitive and fun and can help you improve the impact of (and results for) every rep across your team. Check it out… it’s abit out there but we think it won’t be long till its par for the course.

9. Winning Mentality

Winning needs to become a habit, and it’s achievable when you have a growth mindset and you believe passionately in your people and your people care about their role and the value for customers. Ultimately, we have found if your team generally cares then success comes far more easily.

We’d love to hear your thoughts, do you have a point to add, please start the discussion!

Co-authored by James Jarvis and Matthew Anson