Businesses today are coming to grips with the fact that some of the most basic and reliable pre-pandemic sales and marketing tactics will never again be effective. The pandemic accelerated the shift to digital and remote, and salespeople and marketers are left with a new, hybrid business environment. The shift to digital has and will continue to require a significant change in the way businesses think about revenue generation, technology investment, and – perhaps most significantly – sales functions.
Inside and outside sales functions have changed over the last two years, and business strategies must follow suit. Tactically, this looks like prioritizing (or reconfiguring existing) technology investments that support salespeople in their path towards reaching new leads, nurturing existing ones, and closing business.
Examining Key Differences
Before companies can think about technology, they need to understand the ways that inside and outside sales have shifted.
Think of your inside sales team like farmers. They focus most of their attention on cultivating existing client relationships, addressing leads early in the funnel, and seeking opportunities within existing accounts. For many companies, inside salespeople are the account managers, maintaining connections and identifying opportunities for the business. In the wake of the pandemic, inside sales teams face a key challenge: there’s no reliable way to locate prospects, leaving digital channels as the sole method for outreach. However, digital channels aren’t without complications, as emails are often filtered out through spam and junk folders.
If inside sales tactics don’t adapt to today’s digital buyer journey, companies risk wasting money, resources, and time on tactics that don’t yield results. They’ll miss the opportunity to build a pipeline. Internally, these businesses are at risk for increased turnover in the sales organization because of a lack of results. These companies also won’t attract a more modern inside sales persona because employees come from other organizations with an expectation to be supported by digital tools vs. simply “smiling and dialing.”
Outside sales is field- and travel-oriented, focusing on the bottom funnel. As the “hunters” in the organization, they spend time prospecting and seeking opportunities with new, unfamiliar leads, and might be focused on new logo acquisition. The most obvious impact the pandemic had on outside salespeople was travel restrictions. Even today, if they’re willing to travel, many customers and prospects don’t want to meet in person for a meeting. They opt for video meetings, meaning outside salespeople’s video skills need to be very strong to communicate with the same effectiveness as in person.
For outside sales, the question is, “how can companies leverage the investments they have made in these outside sales reps?” Since sales jobs traditionally progress from inside to outside, junior to senior, these employees have received years of investment and training to perform demos and presentations, build relationships with prospects, and be effective brand advocates in the field. Today, businesses must rethink how to leverage those expensive resources in the organization.
Scaling With Technology
As a sales leader, you’ll see a stark dip in returns if you’re not providing tools to help scale and automate your sales tactics. There won’t be a significant bounce back to a “normal” sales landscape post-covid because of the adoption of hybrid work. However, there’s an opportunity for companies to scale sales reps more effectively to address a modern buying journey. That’s where technology comes in.
Data
Data is a critical component of your sales tech arsenal, aiding in personalized outreach, curated content, and team unification.
On the inside sales side, companies that can leverage intent data see higher levels of success. Data is a foundational block for personalization. For inside sales, the more personalized you can be in outreach, the more likely your message will resonate with a prospect or lead. On the flip side, outside sales teams should lean on data insights to help nurture buyers with curated content, whether in group sales or 1:1 interaction. Both sales teams benefit from data that’s compiled into a holistic view so that the entire organization can access the same information and track the buyer journey in its entirety.
Lead Scoring
Lead scoring models help teams gauge buyer intent and plan the appropriate follow-up steps. Points are assigned to actions that reflect the typical buyer journey, and behaviors that indicate more serious buyer intent warrant a higher point value, while early-stage actions might be assigned a lower value. Sales teams should work together to create a threshold score – a point value that indicates a lead is ready to buy.
For inside and outside teams, an automated workflow based on lead score can trigger a salesperson assignment at the exact moment outreach should happen. Lead scoring can also be effective earlier in the buyer journey, routing a warm contact into a nurture program and prompting sales outreach with curated content. This automation increases lead velocity through the funnel, accelerates the sales cycle and improves overall ROI for the demand generation program.
Artificial Intelligence
Artificial intelligence helps automate processes and manage large quantities of leads. At the bottom of the funnel, AI can help sales leaders understand account health, opportunity health, and pipeline based on the digital signals and responses in buyer behavior. For both inside and outside sales teams, this technology helps manage pipeline more effectively – proactively signaling next-best-action, accounts that need attention, and steps that haven’t been taken in a certain amount of time.
A tech stack that supports sales enablement is critical in today’s digital buying and selling environment. Yet many sales functions often carry organizational design legacies that are not well suited for a modern buying journey. Businesses should take the time to evaluate the changes in the industry and consider where technology can help scale and support their sales strategies. Organizations that do this will benefit from more effective sales teams, a fuller pipeline, and strengthened revenue operations.
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