Inside Sales vs Front-line Sales: Whats your Success Strategy?

Often I hear people inferring making a strategic investment in your front-line sales managers always yield in higher productivity. Strange, I still find Companies cannibalizing each other’s Inside sales Reps with top-tier candidates. Undoubtedly, the Inside Sales market is still “On Fire”. 

Then the obvious question is what triggered this change. Well, a lot of factors put together. This shift from field sales to inside sales – Even in sectors that have traditionally relied heavily or exclusively on direct or front-line sales teams – has accelerated in the last few years. 

Unlike front-line sales, Inside sales is cheaper to execute. Although many companies have assumed that having field sales, leads to higher conversions. The fact that the face-time it allows in front of prospects, and based on their size or the complexity of their problems, drives greater success, differentiation and deal conversion. May be it WAS true but Jurassic .

As far as I can understand, there are a few basic but critical factors that are leading to the success of Inside Sales. I have tried to shortlist them in a few pointers, please add more if you can, may have missed out few. Here they go:

1. Changes in Buyer’s behavior : The preferences or Choices that a Buyer typically shows today are different from the Last decade. Today they are busier like never before. Thus having a Face-to-face meeting is not preferred. Indeed it calls for higher commitment. So having a quick call or a Video-Conference is more flexible, yet it gives the same result or outcome. 

2. Not so Tiring: I have a colleague who points out his days when he started in sales. Yes, it used to be tiring field sales job. With no end to travel and far from families for days use to crush the Work-Life Balance. Inside sales in its toddler days was typically looked down as the breeding ground for the future sales reps [Field sales of course]. 

But today the concept has changed, today my same colleague sits in a comfortable air-con office, interacts with his prospects in the same manner [Thanks to improved internet and VOIP connections], reaches his sales targets and still takes home a handsome pay cheque. Oh yes, he is a part of Inside Sales too.

3.  Improved Technology and lower cost to Action: Traditional phone carriers may still be pricey, but the cost of doing business all day via phone and Web (VOIP phones, Skype, WebEx and other Web-based means of prospecting and meeting) has decreased dramatically, which if nothing else has organizations re-evaluating their sales deployments. Again the accessibility to all these modern technology has also become much easier. These multimedia tools enables any sales team to do presentations and combine other sales factors to effectively engage a prospect during the sales pitch. Thats the power of “Going Live” or “Join The Meeting”. 

I think I don’t have much to say beyond this about why Inside Sales is the Success Mantra for Sales Teams today.  Its all a part of the same system of changing market trends [or should I say “Sales Trend”] and Excellent managers don’t fight the system, they make the system work – period.