Step by step guide to the basics of Inside Sales Roles and Responsibilities:

Step by step guide to the basics of Inside Sales Roles and Responsibilities: 

Inside Sales Training

Thinking & Planning is necessary to increase the efficiency of any person. 

“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe” – Abraham Lincoln.  

Imagine the performance of a person who has never sharpened his axe because he considers sharpening of axe a waste of time. It's always better to think and plan how and what you want to achieve.    

Step One: Knowing you Company, Product, and competitors: 

Product knowledge (Your product is your world). We should try to gain as much as possible knowledge from our company website and from product presentation documents. We should find out the product videos that are available on YouTube and watch them to have a clear understanding of the product and solution. 

Its a must to go through the case study documents and point out the lesson

learned from it. You have to memorize as much possible because you

can refer those case studies to your prospects.   

Regular competitors analysis is important to get insight into there strength  

and weakness and you will have the understanding of whom you are

competing with. This will enable to focus on your Unique Selling

Proposition (USP) on the market. 

 Step Two: Identifying your target audience: 

  It's important to understand that your product and services have a target audience that can be defined so to convey the right message to the right person at right time. Likewise, you may target Pharmacuitacles companies in pan India, then you can focus on other industries such as Aviation, Automobile, BFSI, Cement, Chemical, Import-export, IT, ITES Ect. Then you have to find out the concerned person to position your solution on those companies likewise, IT, HR, Marketing, Sales, Admin, Purchase, Finance, CEO or MD level. The primary source of reaching those people is by the phone call.  Now, you have to create an excel sheet create a list of target companies, concern person on those companies, their board line number, and email ids. This will become your sales database.  

  If you do not have a ready-made database then can create one by using websites like LinkedIn/ Fundoodata/ Dataguru (This is a preferable way to create your own database).

   Naukri.com is not only a website for job seekers or HR's to hire but an excellent source to identify your target organization, decision makers within the organization and able to create a database out of it. The link for Naukri Search is:  https://freesearch.naukri.com/search/ezSearch

 Step Three: Script is required to initiate a call but, a conversation is compulsory: 

        

      Preparation of a script is required to initiate a Cold Call with the prospect

      

      We should understand that having a script is required to initiate a human connection but a conversation will help you in building a rapport with your prospect. 

         

      We understand that Cold Calling is not an optional still. it's must do for an Inside sales person to fills up their sales funnel and to achieve your target every quarter. Cold calling is when the person you are calling is having no idea of you and your organization. Now, you position your product and solution to the prospect over the phone to make him/her interested in your solution.  We will see an example of how to initiate a call with the prospect: 

   Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening Mr. XYZ.

    

    This is ...., Calling from.......

     

    Can I speak with Mr. XYZ (Prospect's name)?

    

    If the reply is " He/She is not available on his/her desk" 

    

    Then say, "can you please share his/her number?" or " What would be the 

    best time to call him/her". 

    

   and, if the reply is "Yes speaking"

   then, Can I speak with you for 2 minutes? 

If the reply is "I am busy right now"

   then say, " what would be the best time to call you?"

  If Yes, then start with your script and conversation, 

     
     Smart Calling: Cold Calling + Personalized Emails = Less Rejection rate

   

   Cold calling becomes smart calling when it combines with Calls + Personalized Emails +  Regular Follow-up. 

    

  To improve the quality of your calls you must research your prospect before making a call. when we make a cold call we should not only focus on the product and solution that you offer, you must mention what's in it for them (preference should be to the benefits rather than features). In this stage, we can approach the prospect for an online demo over TeamViewer or AnyDesk software. The impact is always better when you show something to the prospects rather than just telling over the phone. 

    Keep a log of common questions and concerns raised by the prospect and try to provide a solution to those concern and answer the queries effectively. It's always advisable to listen to the prospect carefully and acknowledge by saying Okay. Your answer to the queries should be the focus of their existing problems or to achieve the future organizational goal. Now, its time to take the telephonic discussion to the next level by scheduling a meeting with the field sales team, else do regular follow up on calls and emails to know when the requirements come up. 

    In this cold calling step try to ask commitment based questions like,

    Is this is what you are looking for? 

    Is the solution fits your organizational need? 

    Any other feature you are looking for?  

    Is the project is for this quarter? 

    What is the timeline for this project? 

    and try to answer their objections effectively. 

    Some email Etiquette need to be followed like, 

   sharing a courtesy email with your prospecting customers after a telephonic discussion.

    If a meeting is scheduled then, send a calendar invite to the prospect as well as your sales team, and share a reminder email to your prospect before one day of the scheduled meeting date. Your emails should be neat and clean and easy to read and understood. 

    Step Four: Keep your sales funnel updated:

Keep a track on the progress of all the leads/meetings that you have generated to the closer. Ask your sales team about the progress of your leads/meeting and update those on your excel document. You can use HubSpot CRM to monitor and track all the leads/meetings that you have forwarded to your sales team. but, keeping all the records on your excel datasheet is compulsory to provide to the seniors whom you report about your activity. 

    Reward yourself for every closer to motivate yourself. 

By following this process you can achieve success and feel happy with your work. By doing this you can set a standard for others to follow. which is beautifully mentioned in Bhagvad Gita, 

    

    "Yad Yad acarati sresthas tad tad evetaro janah

    sa yet pramanam kurute lokas tad anuvartate". 

                    Meaning, 

    

 " Whatever action a great man performs, common men follow. And whatever standards he sets by exemplary acts, all the world pursues". 

Thanks for reading!!!!😊