the sales process is always evolv- ing. Gaither says, “It’s never perfect. Leading companies look at how the buyer’s journey changes, and that changes the sales process.” Anneke Seley, CEO of Reality


Works, stresses the variety of inside- sales roles: “There are quota-carrying reps, just like field reps, except they do not fly and drive most of the time. They fill blended roles and use technology most of the time but can have a [face-to-face] meeting when it is important. There are sales-de- velopment or business-development reps who don’t carry a quota. There are inside salespeople who manage the chat function when prospects are navigating the Website. Inside reps do inbound lead generation from the Web or phone, and they do outbound prospecting for major accounts. Inside reps assist the field team in complicated accounts. Some focus on renewals and preventing customer churn.”


New salespeople entering any of these roles may be groomed for higher responsibilities as they learn and practice sales skills. “You have the ability to bring in sales talent for a nonquota position and then set a career path that will incentivize and retain them,” Seley says. “Plus, they will have the technology skills that are going to be very important in the future.”


Combining these various inside-


sales roles well is the secret to holding costs down and speeding up sale cycles, notes Charissa Franklin, Reality Works’s vice president of cli- ent success. Smart use of inside reps means that companies utilize field reps’ (expensive) time only when nec- essary. One global client of Reality Works is reducing its field-rep head count as customers indicate they prefer to communicate using tech- nology for many steps of the buying cycle. Field reps will be reserved for critical steps in deals worth more than $1 million.


Seley says training and enablement


are essential in all sales roles, inside or out. Furthermore, technology is evolving daily and is not just for com- municating with prospects. Internally, recruitment and coaching are also becoming more data driven. “Com- panies are using more predictive profiling for hiring the right people with the right culture and the right potential,” she says. Seley continues, stressing that peer coaching is becoming more impor- tant: it is based on real-life experience and likely to be adopted by less experienced reps. Informal sharing among peers is now being enabled by technologies that formalize and boost its effectiveness, such as those that use video.


A common mistake in inside sell- ing is treating the inside reps as a second-class resource, or as Seley says, “putting handcuffs on them and letting them sell only up to a certain amount.” She recalls that salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff once worked inside sales with her at Oracle, where he closed deals above his $50,000 limit. Franklin says it can also be a mistake to pull a field rep inside and expect him or her to succeed purely on the phone or by email. The skill sets are too different. “It’s a different world from selling across a table. It’s very difficult to build a relationship over the phone.”


Some very traditional firms still


prefer to buy face-to-face, but even these organizations can still prepare and support their inside reps. Though “traditional,” these firms are growing increasingly comfortable with tech- nology and the much more efficient inside approach. Ken Thoreson, head of Acumen Management, sees inside sales increasing in two areas. First, former outside reps are using Web tools to virtually gather together selling and buying teams at much less expense and much more frequently than was


Compensation for Inside Reps


• If they conduct all sales, com- pensate inside-sales reps as you would outside reps: base pay plus performance com- pensation.


• Set quotas based on sales cycle: monthly if the cycle is short, quarterly if it’s longer.


• Base pay and potential earnings are typically lower for inside- sales reps than for outside-sales reps, but there is no rigid rule, and pay should depend on responsibilities.


• Appointment setters are usually paid less than quota-carrying reps but may be highly reward- ed for seeking meetings with C-level decision makers.


• In some locations, such as Sili- con Valley and Boston, pay for inside sales can be quite high.


• If inside reps are assigned to work with outside reps, use team compensation.


• If outside reps open an ac- count and inside reps then take it over, pay incentive based on period-over-period revenue growth.


• Overhead for travel should generally be less for inside reps, but marketing costs may be higher if inside reps depend more on marketers.


possible with in-person meetings. Second, when outside reps try to open a new territory for a complex product, inside salespeople “can populate the territory with new ideas and set up appointments,” he explains. Thoreson emphasizes that inside


reps must have a customer relation- ship management system that is easy to use, as they constantly enter and


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