What inside sales taught us

How B2B salesforces are shifting in a digital world 

One day back in March 2020, company cars around the world stayed parked. 4 billion people were confined by the COVID19 pandemic. Trade is based on human relationships since its origin.  How were we supposed to keep trade alive, when we couldn’t even visit each other? After some short initial confusion, companies and individuals soon began looking for solutions to stay in touch over distance. Buyers and sellers had to change habits and preferences. Remote communication in all its forms moved to the center of the business agenda. In the midst of the learning effort, the eyes of commercial organizations turned to a department that seemed to see less disruption to their working habits: Inside Sales.

The confinement has passed and the time has come to create new normalities. Companies recognize that the crisis has served to learn or develop very effective strategies. As a result, many are betting on expanding their Inside Sales departments, or creating new roles of hybrid sales. These roles combine face-to-face with digital or remote communication, with the latter growing in importance.

According to McKinsey, 90% of organizations plan to keep evolving to a hybrid model as started during the pandemic, and this will be the dominant model from 2024 – because it is more efficient.

This transformation opens up interesting questions but might also create some concerns to sales professionals. Before proposing some possible answers, let’s have a clarifying look at what was already happening before the spring of 2020. In fact, the pandemic has only accelerated the last steps of a natural learning process.

What are we talking about when we talk about Inside Sales?

As clearly summed up by Ken Krogue ten years ago, Inside Sales is the sales function when done from an office. Or a home office, I add in 2023. It should not be confused with sales support, telemarketing or customer service. Let us also not confuse it with the primitive telesales in the “Wolf of Wall Street” style, which was based on brief and aggressive campaigns, usually outsourced, with zero impact on the creation of trustworthy relationships with customers. Once integrated, the Inside Sales departments gradually built their credibility as a fundamental part of the account management function. Two factors facilitated this success story. Firstly, the unquestionable profitability of the model attracted major technology and pharmaceutical firms to embrace it. Secondly, the evolution of robust data management tools, CRM, and AI proved most impactful when skillfully employed by salespeople who remained connected to the system, according to the vision of David Elkington, founder of InsideSales.com

In the spring of 2020, for the most innovative commercial organizations Inside Sales was already a central piece in the sales process, in a world that demanded icreasingly digital solutions. 

The voice of the customer in a digital world

In a digital world, the new B2B buyer has new expectations. More informed than ever, they rely more on their professional colleagues than on the supplier. While the role of the Marketing department stayed essential to influence the public conversation, the role of Sales needed to evolve. The client wants to take the lead in their purchase decision and prefers to see us more as a coach or companion in certain phases of the process rather than as the director of it. According to a study by Gartner, a buyer speds only 17% of their total time talking to their suppliers and 70% of purchasing decisions are made before talking to the supplier. Much of the information salespeople need to know about the customer and their activity is public. The clients are aware of this and protect thir time. They no longer like a cold-door salesperson sitting in their office for an hour asking situational questions. They prefer the salesperson to have done their homework, including a good dose of Google, and come prepared to talk before the visit or call of relevant topics.

Finally, this buyer belongs to a digital native generation. They are engaged in real time remote communications with professional and leisure colleagues. If all those interactions are digital, why should commercial interactions always be analogue, long, with coffee and a booked meeting room? Clients began to ask us for a little more distance. Open door policies were reduced and an SBI study with B2B buyers showed that 70% preferred not to be visited. Good salespeople are quick to read their customers’ preferences. When experienced salespeople reduce their visit time and use email and phone to optimize preparation (often against pressure from their own sales managers, who establish KPIs based on visits or travel time), what sould we think? Don’t they understand their job, or do they simply know that Inside Sales works?

And then came 2020

And with it came the need to make the most of any form of remote communication. That unprecedented crisis forced all of us, companies and individuals, to test to which extent digital communication was effective. And it proved to be very effective. Anyone who participated in teleconferences ten years ago will remember a certain discomfort around the quality of our microphone, the bandwith or the ability of the group to use the platform correctly. Today the digital user experience flows easily. It would be difficult to find reasons not to use it in our commercial relationships, just as we use it in our family, friendship or leisure relationships.

The lockdown has not changed the paradigm; it has only accelerated what was inevitable. In a digital world, the commercial relationship needs to be supported by remote digital channels. The trend for companies to promote sales models with a large component of remote activity is unstoppable, simply because it works. The question is, how to do it?

What follows are some personal opinions about this challenge, based on my experience and multiple conversations, keeping in mind the three agents involved: the face-to-face salesperson, the Inside Salesperson, and the sales manager.

Salespeople: time to enjoy the change

If you are a Field Sales rep: no, your job is not disappearing, but it is going to change. Or rather, it is changing, you are probably changing it. In case you have not done yet, start learning new techniques you will need:

• Manage professionally your social networks to prospect and gain visibility.
• Seek formal training in telephone communication techniques and learn to speak in front of a camera. Develop your digital non-verbal language. 
• Probably the most important: optimize your time management. You will miss driving, parking and waiting room times as moments of reflection or notes review, and will need to plan other slots. Take control of your day to the minute. 

If you are in Inside Sales, beware of complacency. The fact that everyone wants to do remote sales is not going to make your life easier. If you want to be among the best, don’t stop training:

• Is the telephone still your only comfort zone? Expand your toolbox to professionally manage video and scheduled conference calls with multiple agents
• Learn how to plan and make visits. In a hybrid model you will have to go out to see your client when the opportunity requires it. Although overall reduced, visiting hasn’t died, and it offers some of the best quality moments for sellers and buyers.

Managers: define the strategy

Now that the boundaries between Inside Sales and Field Sales have become fluid, should they disappear completely from the organization? There is probably not one answer that fits all. Management will need to assess their market demands and decide their best use of the selling time  in the digital world. However, I am convinced that many leaders will decide to go down a path like this:

• Create a single job description and title for your sales reps. You can maintain a functional separation between types of sales if it makes sense in your product and sector, for example between account managers and application specialists, but not between Inside and Field. This single description is what some are calling “hybrid”, an unattractive and also unnecessary word. Now it is simply sales.

• Determine your expectation of visit time vs. call time for each individual territory, considering the clients’ characteristics and preferences. You will need a model to assess their relational expectations, open-door or pre-arranged meeting policy, need for on-site demonstrations, and physical location. Purchase volume should not be the ultimate criteria in determining how we treat a customer. It is more important to understand how they want to be treated.

• Don’t let your car policy get in the way of implementing a winning strategy. This point seems anecdotal, but it is on the minds of many business leaders,  and it may derail the project or put it on hold indefinitely. When reviewing your vehicle policy, you need look at the cost versus the expected kilometers, but also at people’s perception. Car policy had traditionally an impact on talent attraction and retention, due to its value among the commercial profession as a sign of status. However, as urban mobility is changing, so are the expectations of the new generations. This opens up alternative remuneration or motivational options open up. Geographical mobility and schedule flexibility can have stronger impact on motivation and perceived status than high-end cars. In any case, keep in mind that the purpose of this evolution is not short-term savings in the fleet, but a better use of time, our scarcest asset.

• Communicate correctly. As in any change process, this piece of advice is the most important. Language has the power to align teams or derail strategies. Whether you’re going for the consolidated position or not, include digital selling in all your communications. Also, make sure expressions like “Mary has been promoted from inside sales to field sales” or  “let’s have a meeting of Inside Sales and Sales together” disappear from the company vocabulary.

Selling has always been based on the relationship between people, and that will continue to be the case. Technology is not going to displace the human factor from the business equation. However, in a digital world, the relationship between people is largely remote and based on digital channels, and this necessarily extends to the business. If we manage this change well and with a sense of urgency, we can have a very positive impact on the profitability, well-being and carbon footprint of our commercial organization.