If you’re like most business owners, you know that sales are the lifeblood of your company. Without a steady stream of customers and clients, your business would quickly dry up and die. That’s why it’s so important to have a well-organized sales department that can efficiently bring in new business. Creating an inside sales department can be a daunting task, but with our tips it doesn’t have to be! Keep reading to learn how to get started…
Creating an Inside Sales Department: The Ultimate Guide
The process of creating an inside sales department involves a few key steps. First, you need to determine what type of products or services your company sells that could be sold through an inside sales model.
Next, you need to identify the type of customers that would be interested in purchasing these products or services. Finally, you need to develop a sales plan that outlines how your inside sales team will reach and sell to these customers.
What is inside sales?
Inside sales is the process of connecting with customers or clients via telephone calls, emails, or other online channels. In inside sales, technology and the medium of connection are important factors.
Inside sales teams play a critical role in the sales process by connecting with prospects, understanding their needs, answering their questions, and qualifying them as leads. By doing so, they help to ensure that only qualified leads are passed on to the next stage of the sales process.
The inside sales department takes the leads that are generated by the marketing department and decides whether the prospect fits the product.
Building a Successful Inside Sales Team from The Ground Up
During your interview, it might seem like a good idea to hire someone who has a lot of experience, a list of impressive skills and a wide network.
While experience, qualifications and personality are all important, your prospect’s attitude and disposition are equally important.
According to HBR, you should only hire someone who’s got the right personality and work ethic, then teach them the skills they need.
Create profiles of your ideal salespeople, including their personality, experience, and skills.
Then, create job postings based on the profiles of your ideal candidates.
Always be refining your recruiting and interviewing practices. In every business situation, it’s important to have clear, concise, and streamlined procedures, but always be looking for ways to make them better.
As you continue the recruitment process, use your current employees.
Engaging your existing sales representatives, other managers, and company executives can help you determine the best fit for a candidate as well as improve your sales hiring process overall. As your company grows, it’s important to keep recruiting so you don’t miss out on any great candidates.
Always be on the lookout for great candidates to join your sales team. You never know what talent will walk through the door, so it’s best to be as open as possible.
Continuous Recruitment strategy lets you hire experienced reps to support your sales team. This saves you money, time, and headaches.
Challenges That Inside Sales Reps Face
While being inside sales has its advantages, there are also some disadvantages. Once you get used to it, however, you realize that the challenges you face are shared by other sales representatives. In day-to-day sales activities, there are a variety of factors that act as roadblocks for salespeople that make them not meet their quotas.
But, where there is a will, there is a way!
We put together a list of challenges you may face as an inside sales rep, and what you can do to overcome them!
How to Overcome Competition
With more and more new businesses cropping up, the competition is also increasing.
With the rise of remote work, it’s becoming increasingly difficult for salespeople to find clients, especially with all the competition out there.
There are a few ways you can overcome your competition:1. Understand what sets you apart from competitors.2. Present your value propositions in a way that resonates with your prospects.3. Provide an excellent experience for customers.
Inside Sales Tips & Strategies
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s dive into some strategies for inside sales processes.
1. Make sure you understand everything about your product.
You can only understand something if you have first taught it.
Before taking any calls from customers, it is important that you have a thorough understanding of the product. Questions may be asked that you may not be able to respond to if you do not understand the product or service.
That’s awesome!
NO.
The reputation of your brand is at stake.
The odds of the prospect coming back to you after one bad experience are slim to none. He’s going to move on to another solution that better meets his needs.
He won’t care about your lack of experience.
If you want to survive at work, you need to become an expert at using your phone system. Learn everything you can about all the features. That way, you can answer questions about different scenarios and how your company’s product can solve problems.
Talk to your boss about different scenarios where your product or service could be helpful.
2. Create a Buyer Persona
Creating buyer personas is the best way to avoid having multiple sales pitches.
By assigning imaginary figures to your prospects, you can better understand who they are and what they want.
Buyer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customer. They represent who you’re selling to, what their problems are, and how your solution solves their problems.
The benefits of developing such buyer personae are to help you sell to the right audience.
Some sales organizations need a phone service but want to have the ability to store their customer’s information. Once we’ve established that, our main focus is showing how they can manage both their phone and their data from the same platform.
Other times, businesses have other needs, such as managing more than one pipeline, or keeping track of their contact list, or setting up an email sequence.
We have created our own persona to help us identify which features are right for our audience.
Personas can help you help your customers save money and solve their issues.
3. Use templates to save on time and money
This is one of the most useful tips in Inside Sales.
As an Inside Sales Agent, you’re bound to get a ton of inbound phone calls.
Sending the same response to everyone can be time-consuming. A better idea is to create a template that you can use over and over. However, be careful that the template doesn’t sound too general.
However, you don’t want to sound like a robot.
Use templates to save time when contacting new contacts. Include a greeting, name, and reason for contact.
4. Use integrations that connect your systems together to save time
Instead of entering data into CRM systems, you can use integrations that connect your systems together.
For instance:
If you want to be more productive and get the most out of your CRM, here are a few things you can do: Sync your emails to your CRM. This way, you can keep track of all your correspondence in one place and never have to worry about losing an important email again.
Bring your demo details with Calendar sync. This way, you can easily see when you have demos scheduled and make sure that you’re always prepared.
By syncing all your Google Apps with your CRM system, you’ll be able to access all your information in one central place. This will save you a lot of time, as you won’t have to switch between different programs.
Bring your financial information to your CRM system. This will make it much easier to keep track of all of your finances.
Use integrations to connect your communication channels to your CRM system. This will allow you to stay informed on team activity.
By connecting your CRM system to apps like these, you can automatically pull in data, so you don’t have to manually enter it. This saves you time, so you can focus your energy on other things.
Make sure you have all the data you need before you set up any systems.
5. Make calls the right time
According to a recent study, by Salesmate Wednesday is the best time to make phone calls.
The best time to dial is 4-5 pm.
We understand you can’t make phone calls on just a few days. But you can prioritize your most important deals and schedule them for the most productive days of the week.
6. Leave a voicemail
Most reps fail to leave a voice mail when the prospect is on the phone. And that’s obviously a disadvantage compared to competitors who leave messages.
Drop a voice mail every time you’re unable to speak to your lead. This way, when your contact becomes available again, he’ll be able to call you back.
Keep it short: Introduce yourself, mention the company, and state why you called.
Here is a sample script for leaving messages on people’s phones:
Hi, this is Katy from XYZ.
I’m reaching out to you today about a potential partnership. When would be a good time to talk for 5 minutes?
Have an awesome day!
7. Avoid selling on the first phone call.
I understand. Your job is to sell.
Your performance will be measured based on your ability to close deals and the amount of income you have brought in.
Is it ever acceptable to try and make a sale on your first sales call to a prospect?
On the first phone call you should make an attempt to build rapport.
Figure out if your product or service can really help them or not.
When you sell something to a prospect, you make it all about you and your product. When you help a potential customer, you focus on their problem and how you can solve it.
Your number one goal is to serve your clients.
8. Research on your prospect
Doing a little research on your prospects can give you the edge over other competition. Just a basic understanding of their industry and business.
When you’re first getting to know a prospect, it’s helpful to do your research and understand their specific pain points. You can also propose sharing relevant case studies with them early on in the conversation. By doing this, you’ll be able to build trust and establish yourself as a credible source of information.
When negotiating, you can mention that other competitors in your industry are using your products.
9. Keep connections
In the majority of situations, when you attempt to contact a decision-maker, you connect with their manager or a second-in-command.
They may not have the purchasing power, but they definitely have some influence with the decision-makers.
When a prospect does not answer your call, don’t give up. Instead, try to connect. You can connect with them on LinkedIn.
Once they need a product like yours, you’ll be the first person they think of.
Make sure to use this connection to follow back up with the prospect.
10. Know that selling is a hard job, and rejection is part of the game.
It’s tough to convert 100 customers per day, but that’s what we’re trying to do.
This harsh reality is very scary for many new agents.
But, if you take a closer look, mold shapes you from every direction. You learn to talk, you understand the importance of effective communication, you gain experience negotiating from the very core.
A positive attitude is a key to success.
All sales representatives face trouble at the start of their careers. But with time and experience, they learn how to overcome these challenges.
As you gain more experience selling and learning more about your market, you will become more and more successful.
Conclusion
If you follow our tips, you’ll be well on your way to creating an inside sales department successfully in no time! And remember, if you ever get stuck or need help, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. We’re always happy to assist however we can.
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