Every business leader knows the importance of inside sales. The teams back at base sending emails and calling prospects support the field sales team – the road warriors that catch the red-eye flights and seal the deal in person. But where is your field sales team today?

In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic it has become extremely difficult to maintain any field sales operation anywhere. Some countries are still more locked down than others, but across regions such as Europe and the US it remains difficult to cross borders and even domestic travel is problematic. This also means that there are no conferences or industry events for the foreseeable future.

Inside sales has to be your focus right now. We all know that measure are being rolled out, but it may take most of 2021 to see any normality in travel – can you wait that long to invest in your sales processes?

This is the perfect time to consider working with a sales expert – a partner that can help you to build and improve that inside sales operation. However, many executives still argue that B2B sales is personal and is focused on the relationships, so it’s impossible to outside a sales process.

This is a common reaction, but think for a moment about all the processes your sales team manages. Yes, there is some personal interaction with prospects and this is extremely valuable, but your team also needs to grind out reminders, updates, new content, and send out links to relevant information that may interest the prospect.

There is a lot of systematic support activity in most sales teams. By considering a sales partner you are not outsourcing the entire inside sales process, you are bringing a sales expert on board to help manage a proportion of the overall sales process – while you go and manage the more interactive aspect of the relationship.

Even this may be difficult at present with all the travel restrictions, so you may need to redefine how the individual salespeople, that would normally be on the road, can be more intensely supported by the inside sales team. Perhaps your field sales directors should be focused more on their LinkedIn profile? Perhaps a function of the inside sales team could be to supply the sales directors with great content they can share on LinkedIn or a company blog? What do your prospects see when they Google the name of your sales director today?

Both field and inside sales needs a rethink at present, but there are opportunities for companies that are prepared to explore Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for inside sales.

By working with a partner to build a systematic process you can benefit from their experience of building sales plans with many different companies. This can lead to new ideas for creating cross sell and up-sell strategies. You can bring more ideas and innovation into the sales process at the same time as building a standard framework for how your inside sales team can support field sales.

This systematic support from inside sales can be extremely valuable to help your field sales team raise their profile right now, but it also builds a foundation for a stronger sales process in future – when the road warriors can travel again. Outsourcing partners are measured on the strength of their customer experience (CX) processes, so they have a vested interested in creating successful customer journeys that reap strong ROI for their clients.

Get in touch with me directly if you would like further examples or case studies about companies that have dramatically improved their inside sales process thought partnership with a BPO.