Inside sales is outperforming field sales

B2B sales organisations are going through changes as we speak. Internet, digitalisation, changes in customer’s buying behaviour, growing competition and so on are putting pressure on the traditional b2b sales organisations.

Well, not quite accurate.

These changes are putting pressure on field sales. Yes, that’s the “real” sales people, closers and heavy hitters, right? Field sales and the traditional sales model are under scrutiny and for a good reason. At the same time inside sales organisations are growing. Why is this?

Inside sales is becoming more important

Inside sales has been typically considered as telephone sales, sales support, sales administration and so on. Field sales are the “real sales people”. This is very narrow and false view on what inside sales is capable of. Inside sales is well positioned to tackle many issues that field sales can deliver only partially.

New customer acquisition requires capabilities that inside teams can develop

Winning new customers requires customer selection, account planning, analytical capabilities, tight synchronisation between marketing outreach and sales activities and effective execution. Selection of target customers, engaging by email, engaging by phone, sharing white papers, explaining our value proposition and what our company could do for the potential customer – all of these activities can be done really well by inside sales teams. With high quality and high productivity.

Inside sales teams are also logical places for building analytical capabilities. Marketing and sales processes do need to collect more data to support continuous performance improvement. Analytical capability is also helpful in case you are deploying new sales method in your company. Inside sales as an analytical team can help implementation.

Inside sales team can add more value to customers

Inside sales teams can add more value to potential customers and engage customers into valuable and relevant conversations. Customers are reluctant to meet sales people because field sales can no longer provide as much value to customers as they used to. Customers search for offerings online.

Inside sales teams, on the other hand, are very well positioned for important capability build up including analytical capabilities, planning and coordination of call center activities, analysis of website traffic and lead validation and forwarding to field sales at the right time.

Inside sales is also able to improve overall sales efficiency by running centralised scheduling for daily marketing and sales activities.

Compensation is critical

One very important aspect is respect, appreciation and compensation of sales people. I claim that inside sales people should be paid in similar fashion to field sales. It is not a secondary class of sales people.

Finally

In case your organisation is improving the early part of sales process, consider what inside sales team could do for you. I am willing to bet that it is more than what field sales can contribute. It’s not a silver bullet but it is definitely something to consider.

Cheers,

Tapio

Take a look at my latest book on Amazon.com (titled Lean Sales) to learn how B2B companies can create breakthrough results in sales and marketing based on Lean principles and 20 case studies of implementation. Join the Lean Sales movement.

P.s. I am very interested to hear learnings and experiences from other companies applying Lean in sales.