Nomadic mindset become the cornerstone of modern sales.
How could it be possible whilst field sales disappear in favour of sedentary sales? Actually, the “Inside Sales” model is progressing rapidly and delivering impressive results.
I now work for Webhelp, the European BPO service provider leader, after a career in marketing and a little...inside sales. Already in 2004, our team was the marketing lab to improve the go-to-market of an accounting and payroll software editor, as a kind of continuous RT focus group.
The model in use
The initiative comes from Anglo-Saxon countries where this sales model has a special “aura” thanks to the increased support of schools, unlike in France. This is reflected in the career offered and in salaries, since a sedentary American sales representative earns an average of $61,000 per year. There, the number of Inside Sales is growing 15x faster than Field Sales*.
With my boss, we're in sync: “we went from a BtoB model where we sold products, to one where we sold service. This migration to a use-it-or-lose-it model requires us to rethink our go-to-market. Revenue recognition is no longer the same as it was before, and companies now tend to mobilize their field sales staff only for activities with very high added value,” stresses Etienne Turion, CEO of Webhelp Enterprise. It is by playing the complementarity with Inside Sales that ROI is now being optimized.
Digitization, the time is now
Whether in BtoB or BtoC, a strong trend towards the digitalization of the purchasing process has rapidly developed. Just like personal behavior, a purchase is prepared online particularly on specialized websites and social networks. The BtoB buyer no longer initially turns to a telephone relationship, as more than 60% of the purchasing process is completely digitized, it is then essential to ensure human interaction based on expertise and a good knowledge of the offer to finally conclude the sale. Otherwise, there's no point in investing in nice digital demand campaigns and this is what is expected of this new generation of sales consultants.
The model of remote sales centers
The innovation comes from bringing together a plethora of nationalities on a single platform, each is a piece of a network of excellence sales centers delivering consistant outcomes, simultaneously in several languages. Sales teams based in Barcelona, Malaga, Lisbon, Athens, Prague - or from home - address the whole of Europe. Far from the call-center cliché, these business hubs bring together natives of all countries, whose profile corresponds to a 3 to 5 year degree, multilingual, similar to a consultant. They are more efficient in handling a remote commercial relationship, as close as possible to the markets from one of our hubs.
Inside marketing...huh, what?
And it is now the marketing professions that this model serves: by setting up senior digital marketing teams, it is possible to operate campaigns for the whole world in the native language of the addressed market. It is not a question of erasing organizations by region, but of concentrating them in an unique hub to ensure the perfect alignment between marketing and commerce. By coordinating the two and creating a closed loop model, the client lives fully the brand experience through a seamless journey. That's how you generate accelerated growth: the first results come in less than eight weeks, I've always observed a RoI of at least 8:1. And with all the regions and campaigns together, you can monitor performance faithfully and compare cultural differences.
*Wanna know more about inside sales? Check the worldwide inside sales association website: https://www.aa-isp.org and also the Five Benefits of the Rise of Inside Sales from Dialsource.