Inside sales consulting provides a more cost-effective and efficient means of improving sales team performance. Of the 5.7 million sales professionals in the United States, over 45% work on inside sales teams. Companies that ignore the improvement and development of their inside sales team risk missing sales goals and opportunities for growth.
Hiring an inside sales consultant provides the resources, tools, and strategies companies need to ensure their inside sales teams are equipped for success. With expert knowledge of the inside sales industry, pertinent experience, and relevant education, inside sales consultants help companies strengthen their sales teams’ performance while providing strategies and resolutions to their challenges.
What Is Inside Sales Consulting?
Inside B2B sales consulting refers to the use of a sales expert whose experience and expertise are leveraged to assist companies in building their sales teams and improving their team members’ performance. Having an outsider’s expert opinion helps to drive growth and generate the desired results of sales executives and management. It’s an outsourced sales service worth considering if you’re in the market for a sales consulting provider.
What Is Inside Sales?
Inside sales refer to a broad scope of selling activities found within an organization. It is not uncommon to find various definitions, roles, and responsibilities of inside sales personnel from company to company. Rather than traveling and hosting events, inside sales teams use emails, phone calls, video chats and conferences, and other remote means to sell their products and services.
Because of this approach, inside sales is also referred to as “virtual sales” or “remote sales.” This term, coined in the 1980s, was used to differentiate high-value B2B and B2C calls from common telemarketing and telesales outreach. Inside sales now include the same high-value, virtual outreach methods with partnership strategies between outside and inside sales teams. To learn more, read about inside sales vs outside sales.
What Do Inside Sales Teams Do?
Inside sales representatives (other inside sales job titles) and team members provide various services and functions to their employer. Depending on their role within a company, the inside sales team is potentially responsible for:
- Identifying new sales opportunities,
- Researching potential customers and key accounts,
- Prospecting into accounts
- Cold outreach with tools like ZoomInfo
- Run full sales cycles
- Negotiating terms and conditions for sales contracts,
- Collaborating with other members of the sales teams,
- Offering further information and presentations on products, and
- Maintaining and building relationships with customers and clients.
- Work with the Vice President of Sales to evaluate team members
What Is An Inside Sales Consultant?
Inside sales teams are an essential part of any effective and successful sales team. With 37% of companies driving successful growth using inside sales as a key strategy, it is clear that this is an essential sales approach. Inside sales consultants help an organization’s sales team accomplish its targets and goals. Inside sales consultants advise sales teams on nurturing their relationships with clients, analyzing and providing opportunities, and better preparing sales personnel to close sales.
When Should Companies Consider An Inside Sales Consultant?
Inside sales organizations and teams face many problems. As they worry about consistently and successfully supplying their pipeline and driving revenue, many obstacles lead to causes of concern. Effectively identifying and distinguishing these potential threats leads to better sales performance and results in an inside sales team that is better prepared for their responsibilities.
Common challenges experienced by inside sales teams include:
- Poor team team structure and selling processes
- Failure to engage with all-important decision-makers,
- Hiring the right talent for inside sales
- Developing and retaining top talent
- Providing quality inside sales management across the organization
Inside sales consulting effectively helps to dismantle these problems, which is why sales team leaders need to consider it as an applicable and efficient solution. Understanding when it’s appropriate to hire an inside sales consultant is crucial to the performance and success of a sales team.
Failure To Satisfy Metrics
Both insides and outside sales teams rely on initiatives, goals, and metrics to drive results and keep their sales personnel on track. Consistently falling short of these set metrics results in missed opportunities for an organization to satisfy its budget goals and causes a decrease in morale among team members.
Diagnosing Problems
Which problems cause company sales performance to decline, or fail to find its footing in the first place, are not always easy to analyze and identify. Inside sales consulting services provide an opportunity to gain an outside perspective backed by expertise and experience with inside sales functions – doctors should not diagnose themselves when they are ill. Neither should an inside sales team when their performance is lacking.
Solving An Obvious Problem
Sales executives and managers who identify their team’s challenges do not always have the answers or the correct solution. It is not uncommon for a sales professional to know what is wrong, but not how to fix an issue. Inside sales consultants provide an incredible wealth of knowledge and first-hand experience regarding problems faced by sales teams.
Building The Right Team
Inside sales, like any other profession, requires a necessary set of skills from their sales representatives. The top four skills, specific to inside sales, include:
- The ability to actively listen,
- Maintaining an organized strategy,
- Providing reliable service to clients, and
- Building and sustaining customer rapport
Inside sales consultants help companies build exceptional sales teams through effective talent acquisition. Ensuring that those hired for inside sales possess the right skills is one of the many ways inside sales consulting helps organizations increase their sales performance.
What Can An Inside Sales Consultant Help With?
Inside sales consulting provides many unique services aimed at optimizing the functions carried out by the sales team, improving performance, and resolving current and potential problems. By identifying sales opportunities, building and improving sales teams, and acting as a formidable partner to the inside sales team, inside sales consultants make achieving company goals more manageable and efficient.
When employing the services of a sales consultant, it is essential to understand the services provided. While each inside sales consultant provides unique services and skills backed by their expertise and experience, most consultants offer many standard services. Understanding how these services help inside sales teams reach their goals and improve their performance is essential.
| Service | What They Do | How It Helps |
| Training | Onboard new employees. Offer customized training for each company. Provide current training techniques, scripts, and strategies Create and implement roleplaying exercises. | Effective training equips inside sales teams with the necessary tools and skills required for success. With a properly trained sales team, companies better ensure their values and goals are upheld, and they experience positive changes in their team’s overall performance. They can even get teams up to speed using sales engagement platforms like SalesLoft competitors. |
| Coaching | Provide personalized advisement to sales teams and representatives. Observe behavior and performance. Determine effective ways to assist the inside sales teams. Analyze, identify, adjust, and clarify expectations between sales leaders and their teams. | Effective training is essential for any inside sales team, but it primarily focuses on new hires. Coaching is a more personalized approach to established sales representatives and leaders. Inside sales consultants customize coaching to address new and ongoing obstacles faced by both new employees and those more established in their roles. They can also help to create sales battlecards. |
| Building sales teams | Analyze and reconfigure structure. Consider sales budgets. Determine necessary skills and competencies required from the sales team. Establish realistic expectations and goals. | Building an effective and well-performing sales team requires more than finding the right people. Optimized structure, processes, and goals are necessary to the success of an inside sales team. Inside sales consulting provides companies with the guidance, resources, and tools necessary to develop sales teams that produce results. |
| Lead conversion | Analyze and identify current and potential challenges regarding lead conversion. Determine solutions and strategies to improve poor lead conversion. Creates trackable metrics to ensure proper data collection, analysis, and strategy implementation. | Lead conversion occurs in the middle and the bottom of a company’s funnel. These essential locations within the funnel are responsible for much of the generated revenue. Lead conversion rates range from two percent to ten percent, depending on a company’s industry. Falling below the industry average indicates that there is an issue occurring somewhere within the lead conversion process. An inside sales consultant effectively identifies and corrects these issues. |
| Increase meetings | Develop a deep understanding of company business models, tactics, strategies, and sale processes. Assist with creating effective outreach strategies. Identify and communicate value propositions and selling points. Optimize pitches, presentations, and demonstrations. | Securing meetings with potential clients and customers is necessary, especially at the top of a company’s funnel. Inside sales consulting equips sales teams with various strategies, tools, and resources to ensure they increase their number of meetings. Increasing meetings provide more opportunities for lead conversion – thus revenue generation. |
| Implement new sales technology | Provide information regarding new sales technology and programs. Determine which technology is best suited for a company based on individual needs. Train and support inside sales team members during the transition and implementation processes. | Technology plays a significant role in the success of an inside sales team. Determining the appropriate technology for a company’s sales department requires much more than finding the fastest program. Inside sales consultants dig deeply into each unique sales team’s functions, processes, and requirements to determine what technology is their best fit. They also provide up-to-date information on new and emerging technologies that present a competitive edge. |
| Determine useless technology | Analyze current technological programs, their use, and whether they are effective. Determine which technology and programs are no longer effective or helpful to the sales team. | Today’s inside sales teams require technology and programs conducive to their goals and functions. Outdated and useless technology poses many risks. Inside sales consultants identify the programs hindering the sales team’s success to create better opportunities for improvement. |
Top Benefits Of An Inside Sales Consulting
Every sales manager wants to increase the sales performance of their team. While this is the top priority, it is often easy to identify this goal but challenging to execute. A significant concern sales executives and managers have regarding inside sales consulting is whether the cost will justify the results experienced from this service.
Another common objection to inside sales consulting comes from teams that have already successfully achieved goals and hit performance metrics. While companies seeing steady growth may consider the services of an inside sales consultant unnecessary, they may not realize their full potential.
Understanding the top benefits provided by an inside sales consultant helps companies effectively determine how consultancy helps to drive success and performance. While there are many fantastic services inside sales consultants provide to the companies they work with, there are a few that top the rest. Inside sales consultants,
- Quickly solves problems,
- Provide cost-effective results,
- And offer guidance and support from an expert’s perspective.
Fractional sales management is a great way to strengthen a startup’s sales organization and outsourcing sales management for early stage companies is a great way to support sales talent..
Quick Problem Resolution
The average inside sales call costs a company just $50, while outside sales calls cost companies $308 on average. Problems within the inside sales teams pose a risk to the most cost-effective strategy companies have for generating revenue. Inside sales consultants efficiently identify and resolve any obstacles keeping the sales team from achieving goals and hitting performance metrics.
Spending valuable resources and employee time determining the cause and resolution of each challenge significantly affects a company’s bottom line. Hiring an expert whose experience and expert knowledge provide unprecedented guidance and assistance in a more timely and cost-effective option.
Cost-Effective Results
Rates for inside sales consulting vary significantly depending on their level of experience and education. While rates are subjective to each professional, hiring an inside sales consultant helps sales teams generate sales revenue while saving time, costs, and resources. Consider this, the more time a sales team spends trying to identify an issue, the more time they are stealing from prospecting, making sales calls, converting leads, and performing other functions necessary to generating revenue.
Expert Guidance And Support
As a specialist, inside sales consultants offer unmatched guidance and support. As professionals trained to identify and resolve issues while optimizing the efforts of inside sales teams, they provide a fresh perspective backed by exceptional experience and expertise. Sales managers and directors improve their sales teams with confidence by working with a specialist that provides actionable strategies and top-quality service.
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What To Look For In An Inside Sales Consultant
Identifying and understanding the qualities to look for as a company considers hiring an inside sales consultant is crucial. A manager wouldn’t hire a sales representative who did not possess the right skills and competencies, would they? The same logic applies here.
Inside sales consulting provides many great benefits and services to the companies utilizing this resource. Finding the best inside sales consultant requires taking a close look at their experience and the skills they bring to a company’s inside sales team. The qualities sales managers and executives need to look for include:
| Quality | Why It Is Important |
| Relevant sales experience | The expertise provided by an inside sales consultant stems from their experience within the inside sales industry. Ensuring that the inside sales consultant a company hires has relevant sales experience is crucial to guaranteeing sales teams are in good hands. Their experience is what equips them to improve the state of a sales team. |
| Previous experience and cases | There is no better determinant of potential success than previous jobs, experiences, and case studies. These qualitative examples provide much-needed information regarding how successful an inside sales consultant was in the past. This information offers crucial knowledge regarding the industry experience, actual results, and previously proven strategies. |
| Time-efficient | Time is always of the essence, especially if there is a problem. The longer a problem or obstacle persists, the more significant its impact. Inside sales consulting provides strategies and resolutions promptly, which is why it is an essential quality found in an effective sales consultant. |
| Expertise in cold calling and emailing practices | Because inside sales functions occur virtually, cold-calling and emailing practices require proficiency. Inside sales consultants must provide tools, resources, and strategies relevant to effectively handling these outreach tactics. |
Why Startups Should Consider An Inside Sales Consultant
Startups are particularly vulnerable to weaknesses and challenges regarding their inside sales team. Hiring a consultant helps sales leaders identify these challenges and overcome them. Leveraging an inside sales consultant results in better hiring, training, coaching, and strategies.
Remember, growth is generated by four basic processes:
- Lead generation,
- Growing margins,
- Increasing customers, and
- Increasing the frequency of sales.
Inside sales consulting provides a host of benefits to startups, including:
- Providing expertise,
- Accelerating sales learning, and
- Improving overall sales performance.
With many companies offering remote working options, inside sales take on a new role. This area of sales is crucial in a remote selling environment. Without the expertise of an inside sales consultant, companies risk not effectively preparing their sales teams – especially if a company’s founders do not possess the necessary inside sales experience.
Check out our guide on outsourced sales for startups, sales enablement consulting, b2b sales consulting, sales compensation consulting and sales process consulting if an inside sales consultant isn’t a fit for your needs.
