Over the past few years, there has been a significant increase of companies utilizing inside sales strategies. Basically, inside sales are done by professionals who handle selling to customers remotely. You may think that inside sales professionals are equivalent to telemarketers, but the main difference is that the former are highly skilled and have deep product knowledge.
The growing popularity of engaging in inside sales began with advances in communications. The internet has allowed sales people to connect with prospects all over the world through phone, email or social media. They can readily give presentations or do demos through webinars, Skype calls or live events on social platforms.
Outside sales people, on the other hand, engage in high touch, face-to-face interactions. They often need to travel to meet clients at their respective offices, over lunch or at trade shows.
There are various pros and cons to both types of selling and to succeed most companies engage in a mix of both to complement their sales strategies. In this article we look into useful B2B inside sales strategies that can help boost sales.
1. Develop Buyer Personas
To make the most out of your inside sales strategies, developing buyer personas are imperative to ensure that your messaging resonates with the appropriate type of buyer. In B2C companies, most organizations focus on demographics and behavioral motivations. But in B2B, we are often targeting the decision makers in the purchasing process.
To create buyer personas, you must develop profiles of your ideal customers. Often you have to define the person’s job role, skills, professional background, business challenges in the organization, goals and motivations and biggest fears.
LinkedIn is a very helpful platform to do your initial research. You can learn a lot about your prospect through their profile, the content they share or comment on and even the articles they write themselves. It can reveal a lot about the problems these professionals face every day.
The purpose of creating buyer persons is to help you segment your target audience and create customized content or messaging that will be relevant to them. This will allow you to rise above the marketing noise and capture the attention of your prospect.
2. Utilize a CRM Platform
Customer relationship management (CRM) is a tool for managing all your company’s relationships and interactions with prospects and customers. The aim is to enhance business relationships by staying connected, make processes more efficient thereby resulting in more sales.
A CRM provides you information about the customer product preferences and buying patterns, records communications with your customers, and gives you analytics on which accounts are further in the sales funnel.
Some CRM platforms can be linked to your website so you can see which prospects have interacted with what content. This insight helps you tailor your messaging and strike a conversation at the right time.
Another benefit of CRM is that it becomes a common platform where the entire team, not just sales, can track customer communications and interactions and then take proper actions on customer requests or inquiries. Without CRM there will be many missed opportunities for your company.
3. Listen to Feedback
Gathering feedback is very important for any business. Not only does it show customers that their opinions matter, but you are getting valuable insights can help you improve your products and services. Nobody is fond of negative comments, but dissatisfied customers can teach you valuable lessons about gaps in your business. The manner with which you deal with complaints will make or break your relationship with your clients.
Customer surveys are useful tools to gather information. You can create questionnaires using Google Forms or Survey Monkey and email them to your existing client base. You should think carefully when formulating the questions. Make sure they align with your goals and what information you want to collect. Open-ended questions that are not loaded are best to gather in depth opinions and insights. Use this data to make better informed decisions in matters such as marketing strategies, pricing, after sales support, etc.
Inside sales can be a boon to your business. But you must to be willing to embrace new technology and invest in mastering them for your own advantage.
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