Inside sales is professional sales done remotely or virtually, usually inside an office. (By comparison, outside sales takes sales reps outside, on the field, meeting with clients.)
Inside sales has become a popular system for businesses these days, especially since technology has broken down logistical and geographical boundaries. Of course, you need to build an efficient process for it to work, and you also need effective strategies for implementation. With smart tactics, inside sales can positively impact your bottom line.
Here are 20 inside sales strategies you should start applying today:
1. Hire the right talent
You have to have the right people doing your inside sales. For one, inside sales involves a lot of cold calls, which requires a special kind of talent and a lot of drive. Your sales reps should be able to function independently with minimal supervision, have excellent communication skills, and be masterful at using technology. It goes without saying that they should also possess the soft skills: confident, charming, persuasive, and highly motivated.
2. Develop product experts
Inside sales reps do a lot of talking and a lot of it involves discussing what their product offers. They should have full knowledge of their products and services so they can answer any inquiry, technical or otherwise. It would be a shame to miss out on an opportunity—something that doesn't come easily in cold calls—just because the rep fails to answer a customer’s critical product question.
3. Perform regular training
Develop a culture of constant learning within your team by conducting regular training sessions, both formal and informal. Frequent training, including bite-sized, quick ones (or microtraining) helps create a pattern of productivity and drive. Be creative when conducting these coaching sessions. Managers have a lot of sales training options for building a formidable, high-performing team.
4. Have the sales rep master the process—and automate when they can
This is one of the things the training can help develop: mastery of the process. Sales reps must fully understand the organization’s inside sales process and successfully follow it. Part of understanding the process is knowing which tasks can be automated. Automation is proven to boost sales productivity.
5. Do a sales funnel analysis
You need to know where your sales funnel is at—wining or losing—so you can strategize for your inside sales. Perform regular sales funnel analyses to see the conversion between each stage or step. A sales funnel analysis shows the buyer’s journey and how he responds to each step in the sales process or sales funnel. It determines which stages or steps convert high, and which convert low. By conducting a sales funnel analysis, you can address low churn rates, fix bottlenecks, and identify the best prospects.
6. Know your magic number
Using historical data, know the number of calls sales reps should make for creating better opportunities for conversion. If the target is to close 10 deals a week, how many calls do sales reps need to make every day? Check your data from the last quarter or year to know your win and loss rates. Your CRM should be able to provide you with these insights.
7. Discover your buyer personas
Who will you prioritize calling? That will depend on your Ideal Customer Profiles and buyer personas. This is why businesses should always set out to build their buyer personas.
Having buyer personas doesn't just help you get more high-quality leads, you also gain more in-depth knowledge on your buyers and learn what really motivates them to purchase—and use this learning in your sales enablement strategies.
8. Collect relevant prospect data
Confident, charming sales reps can only get so far in any client conversation if they don’t have enough information on the client. You need to get as much information on all prospects as you can so you can personalize your pitch and engage them more. Collect data on their company, company size and growth, industry, and competition. Try to analyze their challenges, pain points, and opportunities. This is all so when you talk to client, you know what benefits or value you can sell to them.
9. Deal with decision makers
If you’re going to research on a company, find out who the decision maker(s) is. Don’t waste your time on middlemen and/or gatekeepers. Know the names and direct contact details of these decision makers.
Should you find yourself engaging with a gatekeeper, try this script:
Prospect: “I need to discuss this with our (position here) first.”
Sales Rep: “Thanks for the advice. May I know who your (position) is?”
P: “Mr. John Smith.”
SR: “Thanks. And is Mr. Smith the person who will decide on this matter?”
P: “Yes, he is.”
SR: “Great! Perhaps I can discuss this with him and spare you the trouble of explaining everything. May I be connected to him right now?”
10. Find out the best days and times
There is no foolproof research that shares the best days and times for calling clients. They all vary depending on the prospect, the industry, even the business model. One way to get an idea on the best days and times to call is by checking the success rates of your sales cadence. You’ve probably set up a sales cadence that includes—at minimum—placing 3 phone calls, leaving 3 voicemails, sending 3 emails, and performing 3 social interactions. From these touch points, you can see which days and times you were more successful in contacting a prospect.
But you can also solve the mystery right off the bat during a qualifying call (basically your first successful phone contact), when you can ask prospect, “What days and time of day are usually best for you?” You can likewise post this question in your web sign-up or lead magnet forms.
Check out the next 10 strategies in the next post.
Photos by bruce mars from Pexels
