Inside Sales: Everything You Need to Know

What is inside sales?

Inside sales is selling done remotely or within an office. It’s selling products or services to businesses without physically meeting them. There are various roles in inside sales, such as Sales Development Reps (SDRs), Account Executives (AEs), and Customer Success Managers (CSMs).

What is the history of inside sales?

“Inside sales” started appearing in the 1980s as a term to stand out from telemarketing. The purpose was to contrast more complicated sales against low-touch telemarketing. Furthermore, inside salespeople generally have more training and skills they’ve developed over time.

With the development of more communication methods since then, it has grown to encompass all social media channels, email, and phone.

Types of inside sales

The types of inside sales fall into two categories; inbound sales and outbound sales. Inside sales can be done through outbound in inbound channels. Outbound typically requires SDRs to do manual outreach via phone, email, and social media. Inbound is done through various marketing channels, where prospects reach out first.

When contact has been made through either channel, Account Executives will follow-up with the lead, and initiate their sales process.

What is the benefit of inside sales?

The benefit of inside sales is the ability to make meaningful connections with customers from static, but flexible locations. The implication is that your inside sales reps can have a more flexible work environment, and spend more time selling in higher volumes. Since they are at a static location when selling, they don’t have to spend time travelling and waiting for prospects at physical locations.

Furthermore, their activities are more trackable with the right inside sales tools. An example would be a well setup CRM, which helps to organize sales reps and enable more productivity with integrated tools.

What are examples of inside sales?

An example of inside sales is when a company only sells remotely. They need to build a remote or inside sales team, and provide supporting resources to do their job. The supporting resources are technology, tools, documentation, processes, and systems.

If a team of sales people never leave the office, or remote location, that would be an example of an inside sales team.

Which companies should use inside sales teams?

How people buy is changing quite rapidly depending on the industry. With an increase in access to the internet and media, more people are buying online than ever before. This also makes them more reachable with remote technologies.

Ultimately, companies should use inside sales if it makes sense for their product or service. If they can maintain a high sales conversion rate (closed deals) remotely, they will be able to make a higher volume of sales remotely. For now, some product or service complexity requires in-person sales.

Here are some common industries where inside sales is popular:

• SaaS Software Companies
• Info-product Companies (Courses, E-books, etc)
• Digital services (i.e. marketing)

These are some example, but generally industries with mid-high volume sales will use inside sales.

What is inside sales representative?

Inside sales rep is the initial contact person for the website or foot traffic you’ve received over the day. They are first point of contact with the customer on behalf of their organization. Inside sales representatives are trained to be the company’s golden advocate on the phone and on the Internet. They are motivated by three major incentives: commission, company recognition, and the prospect’s happiness.

What do inside sales representatives do?

Insides sales reps do all the sales activities required of them. That includes the following:

• Cold outreach (calling, email, social media).
• Setting up calls with leads.
• Qualifying and discovering leads needs.
• Proposal a solution for their needs.
• Closing the customer.
• Collecting payment.

It’s also important for them to follow the organization’s sales process, and track important data for their work.

How to recruit an inside sales reps

There are 3 main appeals for recruiting salespeople. First is compensation potential; how much can they earn with your company? Second is the value of your product; the more valuable your product or service is, the easier it is to sell. The third is company culture; how healthy is the work environment and learning opportunities? The more you have to offer, the easier it will be to recruit.

Then, it’s important to follow a recruitment process.

Here are the 7 steps to recruiting an inside sales rep:

1. Define the role and your ideal candidate.
2. List out the benefits of joining your company, and what they can expect to receive as base compensation and commission structure.
3. Target them on job boards, LinkedIn, advertisements, and other social channels. Also ask for referrals from trusted colleagues.
4. When you have a solid candidate pool, set up interviews.
5. Compare them against your ideal profile, and against each other.
6. Thank and remove unfit candidates.
7. Finally, make a hire.

How to build an inside sales team

Inside sales team is a group of inside sales reps. Depending on your industry, follow the same steps for recruiting sales reps detailed above.

Here are the steps for building an inside sales team:

1. Understand what your business is offering (i.e. B2B or B2C products, high or low ticket, etc).
2. Create your sales letter.
3. Build your sales process.
4. Purchase relevant software and tools.
5. Test the above to get consistent results.
6. Create a team playbook.
7. Recruit inside sales reps for the positions you need.

After those steps are complete, you can continue to build your team and adjust your process.

How do you create an inside sales process?

Inside sales process is the steps and activities a sales professional will use to close new prospects. The process will start with getting the prospect’s information, then move into negotiations and then follow up with that prospect to close the sale. Inside sales process is also the plan that the sales team has to follow to close future deals.

Here are the 9 steps for creating a good sales process:

1. Identify your channels (inbound or outbound).
2. Create prospecting and outreach guidelines.
3. Establish qualification criteria for your ideal buyer.
4. Create effective qualifying questions.
5. Create a template demo your reps can use.
6. Write down common objections and how to handle them.
7. Create a negotiation framework.
8. Define what “deal won” and “deal lost” is.
9. Tie them into a clear process your inside sales team can follow.

It’s important to test and refine the inside sales process over time. The better your lead management is, the higher conversion rate and volume you’ll get. The result will be more sales, more revenue, and more growth for the organization.

Is inside sales cold calling?

Inside sales is not cold calling. Cold calling can be a part of inside sales, but usually not the only part. Inside sales also includes a full sales process, which can involve calling, email, and social media for contact. Otherwise, inside sales is also all other supporting activities that the inside sales rep needs to perform.

What is outside vs inside sales?

While the principles and methods of selling are the same for outside and inside sales. However, outside sales (also known as field sales) is done entirely or mostly outside of the office, and in direct contact with leads. The difference is that outside sales reps involve more face to face communication with leads, which can increase their sales conversion rate. Inside sales can focus more on volume, which makes it appealing for some businesses.