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The Ideal Inside Sales Structure for You

  
  
  

In previous posts we discussed why you should deploy Inside Sales as part of your Go to Market Strategy.  Now we are going to discuss HOW you should structure it to maximize results.  While Inside Sales is the fastest growing sales role within organizations, it is also they least understood.  Mistakes are made with regards to role design and infrastructure development.  Why are these mistakes made?  A common misperception still exists that Inside Sales is significantly less strategic than outside sales and it is implemented hastily.

Inside

 

Here are three steps to determining which Inside Sales Structure will work best for you

  1. Ask customers, prospects, and best in class organizations 
  2. Review each option to determine if it fits in your organization
  3. Measure the expected Return on Investment (ROI) of each

1. Before you rollout inside sales it is important to do some market research.  This can be done in several ways

  • Customer/prospect survey - determine how customers and prospect would prefer to buy
  • Customer/prospect interviews - add a qualitative perspective to the survey results
  • Benchmark best in class sales organizations in your peer group - are similar organizations deploying Inside Sales successfully? How are they structured?

2. The three Inside Sales options are (Qualitative Analysis):

  • Segment Management – this configuration is typically deployed when there is a large concentration of revenue in the top 20% of the customer base.   Inside Sales focuses on growing and managing the segment(s) that require less direct contact
  • Lead Development – where leads are of extremely high value to the sales force and difficult to come by.  Typically more complex sales and not transactional 
  • Telesales – selling to new and existing accounts over the phone. Fairly low touch requirements are expressed by the customer/prospect base

3. Download the Inside Sales Structure ROI CalculatorThis tool will provide direction on how to get the best Return on Investment by deploying the right Inside Sales Structure for your organization.

Inside Sales ROI calculator (Quantitative Analysis)

inside sales roi calculator

The calculator identifies the estimated ROI for each Inside Sale method based on the role compensation and target revenue contribution

Call to Action:

Determine the Inside Sales structure that will yield the greatest results by following the steps we covered.

Attend our next Webinar around Generating Leads inside your current key customers.  This may help you determine the correct Inside Sales Structure to deploy.

april_webinar_cta

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Comments

Scott, 
 
 
 
Good quick assessment of Inside Sales channel potential. I would add that the three "options" are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Particularly in larger organizations, a multi-pronged Inside Sales strategy can be launched that accomplishes all three objectives. Lead dev for all channels,segment mgmt for National, and Telesales for smaller customers/low value sales.
Posted @ Monday, March 26, 2012 12:17 PM by Christopher fris
Check it out
Posted @ Tuesday, March 27, 2012 11:45 AM by Rusty Jones
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