What do inside sales mean?
People who work for a business and talk to people on the phone, email, or the internet are called “inside sales.” Inside sales can also be called “remote sales” or “virtual sales.” The term “inside” comes from these salespeople working inside, usually at a call center or company office. A third-party company may or may not conduct inside sales.
Outside sales differ from inside sales because people go out and meet possible customers in person.
How to Understand Inside Sales
Inside salespeople usually don’t move as much as outside salespeople do. Despite this, they still contact possible buyers and may even do cold calling. However, a business may also label calls from potential customers as “inside sales.” Another option is for a company to hire a third party to do its inside sales instead of doing it.
Inside and outside sales differ because of the telephone and its use as a sales tool. In the 1980s, the term “inside sales” was made up to set telemarketing or telesales apart from high-ticket phone sales that are popular in business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) sales.
Inside sales reps are highly trained and creative, unlike telemarketers, who read from scripts. They develop a sales strategy to help customers buy goods and services. By the late 1990s or early 2000s, “inside sales” were being used to tell them apart from “outside sales.”
Inside and outside salespeople and businesses sometimes work together to get more done. For instance, someone in an inside sales department might be responsible for setting up sales meetings for people outside sales, also known as lead creation. Inside salespeople may sometimes be used to sell more to existing customers by adding extra goods or services to their orders.
Inside sales is one of the areas of sales and lead creation that is growing the fastest.
Pros of working in inside sales
Buying things online or over the phone is very popular for people who want to make their lives easier. The American Association of Inside Sales Professionals (AA-ISP) is its trade group.
At the same time, most inside and outside sellers are working more or less the same way. Outside salespeople are making more and more sales from home, and inside salespeople are going out into the field more and more. New technologies that make sales easier are helping this merger happen. Customers are also changing the way they buy things and how they feel about how they are sold. Inside sales now go by the name “sales in the cloud.”
How the inside sales rep does their job
Most of the time, insider sales reps get paid a small base pay, sales commissions, and performance bonuses. Since inside sales will be done online and over the phone, reps may need to have experience with telemarketing or customer service and learn how to be polite when calling people they don’t know. You can often work from home or elsewhere in inside sales.
PayScale.com says that the average base pay for an inside sales representative in 2021 will be about $45,000, with 10% making as much as $66,000. But salary gaps can be very different from one company to the next. PayScale data shows that Oracle Corp. pays its inside sales reps an average of $50,565 a year, while State Farm Insurance Company pays its sales reps an average of $29,661 a year.
Companies often hire outside professionals for inside sales, such as call centers, telemarketers, or online sales specialists.
What’s the Difference Between Inside and Outside Sales?
Inside sales uses salespeople who work inside the company to market and sell its goods and services over the phone or online.
In-person methods used in outside sales include meeting clients, knocking on doors, or setting up booths at gatherings or conferences.
Does inside sales use cold calling?
When a salesperson or marketer calls a possible customer who has never dealt with the business or salesperson before, this is called “cold calling.” People generally don’t like cold calling because they think it’s informal and could be annoying. Because of this, cold calling doesn’t work very often, and government laws, like the National Do-Not-Call Register, now limit how many cold calls can be made.
However, cold calling can be a way for inside salespeople to reach more people and stay proactive.
Is calling people the same thing as inside sales?
One type of inside sales is telemarketing, which means selling over the phone or by email, usually with cold calls. Inside sales includes a broader range of marketing and sales tools and methods, such as search engine optimization (SEO), customer relationship management (CRM), social media marketing, and mobile marketing.
Conclusion
- An inside sale is when a worker sells a product or service to a customer over the phone or online.
- Instead, outside sales would depend on meeting people in person and talking to them.
- Inside and outside salespeople can work together to get more done. They can help each other with jobs like finding new leads to increase sales.
- More and more people are buying things and services online or over the phone.