Smashmouth B2B Blog: Sales & Marketing Demand Gen

Inside Sales, SiriusDecisions Sees Increased Acceptance of Inside Sales

This past week Joe Galvin of SiriusDecisions released a study titled "The Rapid Rise of Inside Sales." It shows that Inside Sales teams are overcoming the stigma of a support team and becoming more of a front-line, quota-bearing piece of critical sales strategies.

Although buyers are used to traditional relationships with a field rep, the study says, "Some customers initially perceived the coverage change to an inside rep as being relegated to a lesser status. However, after exposure to inside sales reps for the variety of products/solutions they use, many of these customers have come to realize the benefits of having someone readily available with access to and knowledge of all pertinent internal resources and information systems."

Operating in the world of phone prospecting and sales activity, we've seen three things in the market that support this trend:

• The experience of the average inside rep is far more than it was even 5 years ago
  
• Companies are investing in the line item of inside sales/telemarketing as more of a strategy than a support activity
  
• Accountability for performance, be it quota or deliverables, is the measure of performance; not dials or talk time (old school)

Joe says to expect more about inside sales' increasingly critical involvement in demand gen and contributions to the sales pipeline.

As buyers become savvier and inbound marketing demands increase, he said, "We see our clients' outbound demand generation initiatives augmenting the process to provide sales with intelligent leads that fully meet the criteria for direct sales involvement."

This combination of the increased activity of inbound marketing incrementally impacting outbound efforts is a growing dynamic. As we observed in our recent article on inbound marketing becoming the uber list to be used for outbound prospecting, these leads come with a higher value and are further along in the buying process.

What are your thoughts regarding increased investment in inside sales? The impact on demand gen?