Inside sales and outside sales positions attract different types of sales people, and these different attitudes towards sales approaches and methods can make it harder for your inside sales and outside sales teams to work together. Still, with appropriate encouragement and a firm focus on what is best for your business, it is possible to inspire these teams to work together so that they collaborate in ways that can provide greater benefits to your total sales than can occur through either team functioning alone. These tips will help you reach the goal of seeing your inside sales and outside sales teams working as a collective team.
One of the major drivers of conflict between inside sales and outside sales is a lack of clarity on who is responsible for what, which can set up scenarios in which the sales people on these teams disagree over where the lines are drawn between territories, customer types, and even commissions owed. These lines are different for every organization, but it is to your business’s benefit to ensure that the roles for inside and outside sales are clear to avoid these conflicts to the greatest extent possible.
By the same token, your business should clarify the similarities between its inside and outside sales roles. By outlining shared responsibilities and goals, you can reinforce the idea that all teams within your business should be working together.
Although fostering a team environment that incites inside and outside sales to work together is a step in the right direction, this environment alone usually will not have business results. In order to ensure that your sales teams are working together to reach business objectives, you must identify and share the ways in which inside and outside sales should be supporting one another. Depending on your industry and business model, this support might include:
Compensation can be a delicate subject for any sales team, the more so when introduced to an environment in which inside and outside sales are working closely enough to know one another’s compensation structures. Any compensation package should be designed to push performance in the key behavior areas you want to see emphasized, which means that your inside and outside sales teams should be compensated differently for different activities. In general, successful inside and outside sales compensation plans tend to:
Most organizations choose to have different sales managers for inside and outside sales teams. This move is typically more beneficial but it has one major drawback in that it can discourage inter-team sales meetings, as each sales management group is leading its own meetings on a regular basis. Yet if you want your inside and outside sales teams to work together, they should also learn and discuss business problems together on at least a semi-regular basis in a sales meeting setting. Urge the sales managers for these teams to work towards establishing a meeting schedule where inside and outside sales people can cover common ground. In this way you can further reinforce your strategies for encouraging inside and outside sales to work together.
Rhys is a tenacious, top performing Senior Sales Recruiter with 15+ years of focused experience in the Digital Media, Mobile, Software, Technology and B2B verticals. He has a successful track record of headhunting top performing sales candidates for some of the most exciting brands in North America. He is a Certified Recruitment Specialist (CRS) and has expert experience in prospecting new business, client retention/renewals and managing top performing sales and recruitment teams. Rhys enjoys spending quality time with his wife, son, and daughters, BBQing on a hot summer day and tropical vacations.