article |
September 5, 2017
The Fine Line Between Field Sales and Inside Sales
By:
As a sales leader your gut may know that your expensive outside sales team is going after relatively small deals. This is frustrating because it means you are paying too much for too little revenue. In other words, your Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) is too high and your Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV) is too low.
As you finalize your 2018 plan, self-assess your approach to inside sales. This is an area across our client base where buyer shifts in preferences are favoring remote engagement over face-to-face. Check for blind spots by assessing your inside sales approach. Leverage the new Inside Sales phase on pages 381 – 385 within the How to Make Your Number in 2018 . Take your team through the exercise to evaluate emerging best practices for your unique business.
Why is this important? The buyer is changing, and the sales channels we go to market with must do the same. Buyers are more comfortable than ever purchasing virtually. Inside Sales organizations are handling larger deals than ever before. As companies seek to increase their coverage, they continue to invest in lower cost sale channels. Whether to scale a young organization or restructure a mature organization, Inside Sales can be an innovative route to market.
You want to require outside sales to call on larger accounts. But too many companies merely guess where the line between field sales and inside sales should be drawn, leaving the sales channels up to their own devices. As a result, both channels call on the same accounts, or each channel gravitates to the easiest wins. To determine where the line should be, begin by answering these questions:
Understanding how customers prefer to buy from you is an often overlooked but critical consideration. Just because you want certain businesses to go through inside sales does not mean they want to.
The number of employees or end-customer revenue is often used to determine where the line should be drawn. But will this suffice? The ideal solution is to create a propensity to buy formula or determine potential revenue. One or both of these approaches in combination can then be used to set the line of demarcation.
Once the line is determined, you need to decide how it will be enforced. For example, will reps be compensated if they sell to the wrong account? More importantly, think about what will happen if revenue is coming in low. Will you keep enforcing the line or will you break down and let salespeople go after any revenue they can? Will your sales reps be successful in the new environment? Most likely 10 to 20 percent will not succeed, so think carefully about ways to handle the turnover.
Finally, make sure you roll out the changes clearly and effectively. Consider multiple ways of communicating expectations. And make sure sales operations are prepared to support the change by loading assignments into your CRM or through other methods. Then enjoy watching revenue increase while costs decrease.
Have expectations gone up and left you wondering if you can make your number? Here is an that will help you understand if you have a chance at success. Take the Revenue Growth Diagnostic test and rate yourself against SBI’s sales and marketing strategy to find out if:
As a newly hired sales leader, it’s tempting to sit back and enjoy the honeymoon phase of the ...
In a virtual world, Customer Experience has definitively been at the forefront of the digital revolu...
In a world of uncertainty, market leaders are sure which customer touchpoints require prioritization...
While every industry has been impacted by the ongoing pandemic, private equity professionals have ha...
Traditionally, B2B sales teams are mostly dominated by men. Though female sales reps earn a base pay...
Marketing leaders have faced numerous difficulties over the past year, but one challenge is not excl...
As a sales leader, you view the revenue planning process as a tug-of-war between reality and board e...
Any CEO can attest to the current level of difficulty in closing deals. Customer sentiment and indiv...
SBI TV episodes bring you Sales and Marketing insights from B2B industry thought leaders and growth experts, on topics like product, pricing, customer experience and success, and go to market. Catch up on new and previous episodes here.