The industry is evolving, and it is on a rampage. You see new companies coming up in the market every month. There is so much to learn for everyone, and it does not matter if you are a professional with years of experience or a rookie who just started with sales.
These new companies make life of every inside sales teams easier by A) Automating the process B) Helping you know the customer better.
Now before we start talking about the best practices of inside sales, we should understand what inside sales is and how it is different from outside sales.
Inside sales and outside sales difference
Inside sales is a way of selling your product/service remotely. Every organization has a set of sales methodologies, software, and technology, to help them sell.
On the other hand, outside Local sales Network can be considered as Field Sales, where you sell your product/service, by meeting the prospects physically
These reps use inside sales tools to outreach and make relationships with the prospects and also helps to automate their sales process and save time.
We would not compare the two processes here and discuss if inside sales is better or outside sales is better. As per this report, inside sales roles are growing 15X faster than outside sales. So it's pretty clear what the results are.
To master these inside sales processes, it takes years of hard work, sending millions of emails, and talking to people for years. So we have taken 9 best practices for inside sales reps that are useful and will scale your teams.
So let’s discuss these inside sales best practices in detail.
1. Understand your product/service to the core
When you are going to reach out to people and sell them your product/service, you should be ready to answer all the questions that they ask. So take your time out and listen to the calls that the sales teams make. Use a conversation Intelligence tool like Convin that will help you to get more insights from the sales conversations.
It will help you recognize the problems the customer is addressing. Talk to the customer support department. After talking to them, you will learn to solve the problem that these users have.
Role-play with your team will increase your confidence and improve your knowledge of the product/service that you will sell.
2. Make ideal customer profile aka ICP
You need to understand the use case for what you sell. Creating an ICP will help you know your customers well.
It will also help in prioritizing your customers.
You can ask questions like -
- What are the tools that they have used in the past?
- What problems does your product/service have?
- What is the size of their company?
3. Don’t shoot cold emails- Make relationships and build rapport
Personalization. Learn this word if you want to ace at inside sales. At the end of the day, you are going to shoot a cold email to the prospect. But what matters is the way you have personalized it.
Connect with these prospects on LinkedIn and other social platforms. Understand their likes and dislikes. Look at the articles they prefer to read and share, and then include these things in the email and then reach out to them.
In this way, they will know that the email has come from you and not some machine who is shooting emails in the dark.
Use these cold email templates which will increase your open rates.
4. Understand first, solve later
The most effective sales strategy is to be quiet. This does not sound true because salespeople have a history of never shutting up. But if you want to sell your product/service you need to understand the customer’s problem.
Let them talk. Listen to the issues that they have with the existing product/service. Learn how they operate and then show them how you can help.
This will show that you genuinely want to help and can be a shoulder for them to lean on by building trust. If you ace this part, the customer is never going to move out.
5. Use your inbound leads efficiently
Align with your marketing team because they are doing a superb job in bringing traffic to your website. This can be through blogs, social media, submitting a form, etc.
The beauty of these inbound leads is that it is already qualified. When someone visits your website and submits their details into an online form, it means that they already know your solution and are interested. You never want to lose them.
Get in touch with them via email, phone call, etc, and talk to these people.
If you nail these tasks, it won’t take long to see these strangers become customers. Even if they turn out not to be quite right for what you offer, you never know, they might point you in the right direction to a friend.
6. The importance of following up
Most of the sales reps stop after sending the initial email hoping that their prospect is so cold that they won’t land in your funnel at all. But you don’t want to sit idle until the customer says so.
That’s why, when you commit to never stop following up things may fall into your plate. The key with your follow up is to keep it short and sweet, yet remain persistent.
Use the best follow up email templates, personalize them, understand the time zone where they are, and then send the email.
7. Leave no stone unturned
How much time do you spend on social media every day? Don’t say it, we know, you spend a lot !!. Even your prospects are humans. They surely spend time on social media too.
When you reach out to them over emails and phone calls, and there is no response, connect with them on LinkedIn as it is widely used by professionals.
Send your prospects a connection request on LinkedIn. Talk to them there and understand their problems. Know what are the things they like and what they dislike. All this starts with a personalized template that you can use.
Once you have a rapport with them, only then throw your pitch.
8. After-sales service
Selling your solution is 80% of your job done. But you don’t want to get away with 80%, right? As an inside sales rep, your work doesn’t end once your prospect becomes a customer. It continues throughout the journey with your company.
This doesn’t mean to hound around them to make sure they’re happy, but you can send a polite email to see how they’re getting on. Sharing company news, market updates, or offering a free sample of your latest solution will ensure your company is front of mind and you’ll be the ones they come to when they’re looking to re-order. Even better, they might even recommend you to their friends.
9. Ask for references
References are the low hanging fruits that people do not touch. Why? Because it is awkward and looks desperate. Well, if you are into sales, these words are not in the dictionary.
If you have played well, with the entire customer journey, there are high chances that your customer will refer you to their connections. These references are highly qualified leads that have a high conversion ratio.
Talk to your customers, ask them if they have someone from their connection and they will be happy to share details.
As said by Dale Carnegie, the famous author, 91% of customers say they are happy to share referrals, but only 11% of salespeople ask for one. You can send personalized referral emails to your customer to increase your sale.
Conclusion
Inside sales can be a tough job for someone who just started with sales and is going through the learning phase.
Inside sales rep starts from reaching out to potential customers, Sending cold emails and dialing numbers for hours at stretch, Following up your leads, Tracking them, and finally ends after adding them into your sales pipeline.
Make use of the right technology, proper sales training, and essential tools you need to get the job done.
Utilize the resources and keep a track of your activities and then you will easily succeed in your inside sales job.
Results first, payment later
