The hottest addition to the sales world right now is something called ‘Inside Sales’ or ‘Sales 2.0’, a process of selling that involves the sales team to never leave their desk and go through the entire sales cycle behind the phone, computer and other tech. Sounds perfect, right?
The inevitable shift to Inside Selling has been welcomed by many businesses out there – the costs are minimal, the tools out there create little friction and the customer is respective of the remote sales process. I’m certainly in favour of the whole ‘revolution’ but it comes with a number of issues and headaches that inevitably have driven companies back to the old process of selling or hurt them in the long run.
What I’ve decided to do is create an incredibly simple list that pin-points the problem areas of Inside Sales and gives you a way to overcome the hurdle or if you happen to have a different way you’ve overcome the problem then drop a comment, I’d love to hear it!
Firstly – setting one of these fully functioning Inside Sales teams isn’t easy, it’s actually a lot of trial and error to find out what works and what doesn’t or more specifically what processes create the least amount of friction when your sales team is dealing with a customer. This very simple mishap is usually the reason why the Inside Sales focused business fails, the management is in fact setting up the team for failure.
1. No Leadership or Training
Straight away we’re looking failure square in the eyes because the management team has decided that the Inside Sales team can do it on their own and really don’t need much training. It’s all online and we all certainly know how to use the internet these days, sure but the entire process needs to be looked into and understood by both the management team and sales team.
The only real way anyone can do this is through the process of training and learning from an individual with experience, if the company doesn’t offer this to the Inside team then they’ve got to just go through the motions and learn from their mistakes. Mistakes are great for learning but in small amounts, without leadership or training these mistakes tend to grow and build up leading to a disfunctional sales team that sit there looking at their screen blankly.
It’s relatively simple to get over this hurdle.
Get someone on the team that’s had experience of Inside Sales and ask them to provide the needed training or if you want it done in a crash course style of training outsource the training initially and build on it internally afterwards. Don’t leave the training out of the equation, it is needed as the process is vastly different to a traditional sales role.
2. Lack of Structure
Inside Sales teams still need to have the same style of structure as a traditional sales team does. So that means that:
- There needs to be departments or separation within the team that controls and holds certain parts of the sales cycle (lead generation, closers etc)
- The team needs to know when leads get handed off, when deals get signed off etc
- Who’s in charge of account management?
- What is the sales process?
The list isn’t huge here but the basics are highlighted however with every company the needs of the team can vary so use your expertise and knowledge to answer any queries and questions yourself.
Once the structure is clearly defined the Inside Sales team will know what they’re doing with little guess work being needed.
3. Sales Cycles Are Longer
Inside sales people spend the entire day behind the desk pounding out calls and getting endless rejection. This comes with the territory but everyone needs a quick and easy win sometimes to refresh their ego and boost morale.
So if you happen to be selling products at £1000 a pop it might be worth considering creating a product or offering something of less value to initially get the customer on board and ultimately give your sales team an easy morale booster.
4. Inside Vs Outside Sales Battles
Lets face it, most sales people are incredibly competitive with an ego to match which means that in a lot of cases there will be an initial lack of respect from the outside sales team towards the inside sales team. Sounds childish but understandably the outside sales team will question the work ethic and everything else of the inside sales team.
Minor things like handing off tepid leads, cancel appointments that are well qualified or ask the inside sales team to do general admin tasks. Consider it the ‘apprenticeship’ phase but in the end a well run team needs to have no in-fighting at all.
This is where the importance of structure comes into play – define everything clearly and early, both the inside and outside sales teams need to understand what a hot lead is, when to hand it over and so on.
5. Marketing Is Disconnected
Sales & Marketing are considered to be the same thing in many cases so it’s hard to understand why there always seems to be such a disconnect between the two when put into practice. Inside selling involves the process of using social media to promote and generate leads, it also involves various other online marketing ideas.
In order to create effective marketing campaigns the sales team should be speaking with everyone, not just the marketing/inside sales team. They are at the front of the business, promoting it and learning from the people they contact. These are details that need to be shared which also brings me to the lack of co-working on marketing campaigns. When an inside sales team works on social media marketing, the outside sales team should be paying attention to what is being said and how it’s being said.
To get over this issue ensure that the sales (inside and outside) and marketing teams have meetings and consistently communicate with each other. Initially it’ll be hard but in the long run they’ll see the results too, eliminating and fear or doubts.
6. Unrealistic Goals
Management teams seem to assume that an inside sales team, because of its work style, can achieve more and ultimately should have higher/harder goals. It might be true that they can achieve more that a field sales person BUT that doesn’t mean they should be forced to work in a different manner.
Inside sales is still about generating hot leads, arranging meetings for the field sales people and ultimately moving the sales cycle along – all of these take time and patience. Setting goals that are impossible to reach without the sales team comprising their ethics and your company’s name is always a road leading to failure.
Set specific goals for each member of the team, ensure everyone is happy with them and create a desire to achieve these goals. Again setting up products and offers that the sales team can get quick wins and morale boosters will also take the team further.
7. Having a New Message
Sometimes a product will end up having a complete overhaul with the messaging which (back to the disconnect between marketing and sales teams) somehow always ends up confusing the sales teams and this includes both the inside and outside teams too.
If you happen to change the messaging of a product ensure that every single department and team understands what it is that has changed and where the positioning and messaging is now focused.
8. Endless Apps & Tools
To grow alongside the demand and growth of inside selling there has been an increase in inside sales focused or compatible apps and tools created. Which is great as we get to try out various new shiny tools and apps learning what works well and what doesn’t but the time spent trying out these things is where inside sales teams get hurt the most.
Look to minimise or at least centralise the entire list of tools everyone uses and ensure everyone has the correct training and understanding of it. In most cases people fail to adopt this new tech because they simply don’t understand it or don’t want to understand it as it tends to waste time going through a trial and error process.
