Inside sales represents a new way to connect with prospects and customers through calls, emails, or other online channels, rather than meeting them physically. Technology and the medium through which communication takes place play a vital role.
Dedicated inside sales people are the first to get in touch with potential customers, understand their needs, answer their questions, and qualify them as leads. In addition, they are the ones who review contacts from marketing and ensure that potential customers are suitable for the product offered.
Inside vs outside sales
The difference between inside and outside sales is quite obvious.
Outside sales involve the need to travel to meet customers and therefore must factor in travel, living and accommodation expenses.
Inside sales employees, on the other hand, can deal with prospects even remotely, from inside the office, via calls, emails or other means. This approach to sales therefore allows for many cost savings for the b2b business.
What are the challenges facing inside sales reps?
Dealing with insider sales is undoubtedly challenging because, in daily activities, there are several forces that hinder trades and that often make it difficult to achieve goals.
Following are some challenges that an inside sales rep might face and how to deal with them.
Outperforming a Growing Number of Competitors
Nowadays it is really easy to start a business and, as the number of companies increases, so does the competition. Businesses therefore have difficulty finding new customers and loyalty, especially when anyone in the market has something to offer.
How to overcome this challenge?
Study competitors and try to understand what they use as a competitive advantage. So, evaluate the unique selling propositions of your product (that is, what makes it unique and better) and present it in a compelling way to potential customers to attract their attention.
Not having enough time to do everything
One statement you often hear from sales reps is that they don’t have enough time. In reality, many times businesses lose many hours during the day nurturing leads, following up with prospects, making cold calls, scheduling meetings, and entering data into the system.
How to overcome this challenge?
B2b companies should invest in a CRM for their sales team, in order to reduce manual work with the help of automation and other essential tools to improve business productivity.
Ensure you get high-quality leads
Sales reps come across a large number of leads every day from marketing activities, but not all of them are aligned with the company’s goals. Selecting buy telemarketing data the right leads is one of the most tedious tasks for salespeople and sometimes becomes an obstacle to closing deals.
How to overcome this challenge?
Good communication between sales and marketing is buy b2b email material the key to getting quality leads. Regular meetings between the two departments to share concerns and needs is essential to work together towards common goals.
Staying motivated in a closed environmentUnlike canada email lead outside sales reps, who typically change work environments frequently, the work of inside sales reps can be a bit monotonous, since they have to work in the same office and with the same people every day.
In such a situation, it is often the case that salespeople lose motivation and are easily distracted.
How to overcome this challenge?
Faced with repetitive tasks, it becomes essential for salespeople to consider each customer interaction as a unique opportunity and focus on what they can do to improve the experience. This way, there will be something new to do every day!
Always have innovative ideas
You have to accept the fact that customers no longer consider personalized emails with their name as a great added value and that you have to take a step forward.
The problem is that inside sales reps often fail to find new ideas to implement personalization in customer interactions.
How to overcome this challenge?
Getting help from automation and optimizing emails and messages is the right way. You can use templates to include different types of personalization in communications with prospects and customers.
What are the most useful means for inside sales?
There are two main means used by inside sales representatives to communicate with customers:
Email
Virtual meetings
Let’s try to understand the importance of these means in today’s sales.
From marketing to customer service, email marketing has always been a useful and effective tool. Marketing runs campaigns to find potential customers, while sales contacts them to make sure they are on target.
In outside sales, customers prefer to meet only during office hours, while emails have no boundaries. This allows inside sales reps to reach potential customers at any time and from any device.
