In sales, there is such a thing as "distance selling" - professional sales carried out remotely. Recently, they are increasingly referred to as "virtual sales", in contrast to traditional sales, carried out face to face with the buyer. What is "domestic sales" as a type of professional remote sales? And what is “Inside Sales” and why is it not “domestic sales”, but “sales with soul”?
What is a traditional and virtual sale?
The traditional direct sale is common for the seller’s practice; it is a direct and personal contact with the buyer, presenting the offer to him, working with his objection, promptly reacting to his emotions and doubts, correcting the offer: concessions and (or) expanding the offer.
Telemarketing (inbound telemarketing is the result of advertising, sales marketing and outbound telemarketing), sales by catalogs, and internet trading are traditionally referred to as virtual distance sales. All of them are carried out without direct (eye-to-eye) contact with the buyer. Such sales have been developing very actively over the past forty years, so much so that the leaders of companies and trading structures often do not know what to do in order to resolve the destructive conflict between young, technically savvy upstarts selling by phone, via the Internet, and their older colleagues who have political power in their companies still generate substantial income by making direct outward sales to large regular customers.
What is Inside Sales?
The term Inside Sales, which for some reason is here translated as "internal sales", originally appeared in late 1980 - as an attempt to isolate, into a separate management (differentiate) "telemarketing" - sales by phone from more complex sales:
phased sales (telephone – presentation – direct contact) in B2B;
direct sales (telephone - presentation - persuasion) in B2C.
The term Inside Sales can be easily translated as "sale from the inside", "sale with soul" and this term can be used to designate the work of a sales representative, field sales manager, partner. By 1990, the term "Inside Sales" was used to refer to the practice of traditional on-site sales, carried out face-to-face, when sellers went to a customer’s business location to engage in the sales process. In 2004, Dave Elkington and Ken Krog founded InsideSales.com - the first company to provide out-sales services for a large number of companies interested in training their own or hiring third-party sales representatives.
So the term "insider seiz" began to denote NOT telemarketing. Later, the concept of "insider seiz" (sales from the soul, from myself) began to denote virtual and ordinary sales, but not telemarketing.
What makes telemarketing different from inside sales?
First, let's define the term telemarketing. Telemarketing, at the moment of conception, is the direct sale of goods or services by telephone. Telemarketing is either a "telephone drone" (from the English. Drone is a drone), which does not end until the telephone "terrorist" hears from the client "no" seven times, or smart sales using knowledge of psychology, NLP.
The use of the phone as a means for setting up meetings by insider specialists has nothing to do with telemarketing. Sellers of the direct sales department also resort to remote sales with the establishment of telephone contact in the case when the buyer is a regular and purchases goods in a planned and systematic manner. In this case, for example, a phone call is made with a reminder of the need for a planned purchase, a story about new products and (or) existing special offers (special conditions). If the buyer did not put forward any doubts about the expediency of the purchase, the seller may not make direct contact with him.
What is "domestic sales" and how are they different from InsideSales, InsideSales.com?
The term Inside Sales, according to the founders of InsideSales.com, is not telemarketing;
Inside Sales is a sale coming from the inside, with a soul.
We have separated sales management from telemarketers. But all the same, sales management remains too broad a concept. Judge for yourself, a little higher, we settled on the task of planned sales to regular customers, but there are also new customers who need to be “hunted”, it is necessary to conduct an active search for new customers.
So, distance selling to "your" regular customer with the tasks of regular sales, increasing the number of such sales and increasing the amount of these sales is called "domestic selling."
Finding customers with a sale for sale to a customer is called active sales. “Active sales” and “Domestic sales” are “inside sales” (sales with a soul, from yourself) and this is not telemarketing.
What is domestic sales?
So, the domestic sale is:
sale within the framework of the company's current sales policy (without the principle ofretreats); the sale made to the buyer (client) located in the customer base (in the database, inside the database); planned sales (planned sales volumes in the planned terms). This is how the marketing specialist’s vocabulary says: "Internal sales (inside sales, sales from the office) - a type of sales management that precludes searching for customers, in which the seller communicates only with current clients (buyers) of the company. Domestic sales are carried out from the office, without direct contact with the buyer (client). "Why is domestic sales allocated as an important and independent sales management? If telemarketers bombard the market or cling to a client until the moment of making a deal, if active sellers, up to 80% of the time, are looking for clients (buyers), informing and persuading, trade marketing, if the call center receives incoming calls, but no more, regular customers remain in one way or another to the least poorly covered by the attention of trade management. The main goal of domestic sales is to increase the amount of the customer’s check (account) and increase the number of checks (accounts) per customer for the reporting period. The main task of domestic sales staff is to generate repeat sales, remind the client of the need to make a recurring order, and offer to expand the list of products that a regular customer traditionally buys. The second objective of domestic sales is to increase customer satisfaction. To this end, employees of domestic sales, being in constant communication with customers, form proactive recommendations necessary for customers, accurately and on time process customer operations, such as direct orders, quotes, carry out customer support. And both of these tasks are very different from tasks Telemarketing, active sales and call center specialists are focused on them. The main purpose of domestic sales is to squeeze out as much as possible from regular customers. A prototype of domestic sales service in a company. In many companies there is a call-center ("girls on phones") engaged in ordering clients. Some companies mistakenly represent such incoming call-centers as “inside sales” and as a service of “internal sales” - this is just a service for processing orders. There is nothing of “sales from the heart” and domestic sales in such services, although the benefits of such specialists are unmistakable. This kind of service is formed as a unit in the company's unified sales service, in order to offload the front-line sales staff (active sales), with the purpose of helping employees engaged in an active search for customers, "inside sels" (selling with the soul). Such management performs the duties of the back-office of the sales department: the formation and control of the statement of payment and shipping documents, control over the execution of current transactions, the provision of technical information and consulting. Such a division of the sales service into 2 groups of specialists: active sellers and a call center is reasonable the strength of a certain stage of development of sales and the stage of development of the organization (second stage). At the stage of mechanization, the principles of streamlining activities, building procedures, the internal organizational structure of the company are accepted - mechanical functions are removed from the functionality of active sellers. However, at this stage still no one consciously and systematically works with regular customers. They (regular customers) are simply there! At the stage of internal entrepreneurship, the specialists of the call-centers themselves begin to “be friends” with regular customers. They begin to actively support, advise and serve them in the first place, often without even informing the manager and lead of the client. Internal awareness that every employee of the organization should approach the implementation of their activities as an entrepreneur who represents the goods on the market to fully go within the scope of the company's development at this stage. And therefore, an employee of the call-center already knows his client well (and intra-company as well), his needs and features of communication with him. The final transformation of call-center specialists from "girls on phones" to "inside sels" of specialists (selling with soul) focused on working with regular customers (domestic sales) occurs at the 4th stage of development of the company - at the stage of quality management. At this stage, it is recognized that the orientation of all on quality is necessary. Quality involves evaluation. Quality assessment is always quantitative. What is the company's internal sales service? What are the quantitative criteria for the quality of work of internal sales staff working with regular customers? Let me remind the above: the main goal of domestic sales is to increase the amount of the customer’s check (account) and increase the number of checks (accounts) per customer for the reporting period. Thus, specialists of domestic sales, specializing in the growth of turnover attributable to regular customers, increase the level of satisfaction of regular customers from working withIn general, domestic sales are a rapidly growing management that requires sales professionals the ability to sell remotely, build relationships, know the specifics of a regular customer and their company's offers. Domestic sales are a sales model, in some cases, much more cost effective than the traditional sales model. "Internal sellers" traditionally specialize in selling new product names to "old" customers of the company, services, upgrades of previously sold goods, informing about the conditions of marketing campaigns. Often, internal sales specialists are more knowledgeable and trained in the specifics of the product, its application and maintenance features - in all aspects of the company's product line. Domestic sales specialists - front, front line for all trade marketing programs focused on the sale of new products, stock sales, loyalty programs, sales of high-tech equipment (complex sales). Is there something in the form of a result? Does your company have a domestic sales service? How does the work of your call-center differ from the work of specialists of internal sales, "inside sales" of specialists - sellers with soul for regular customers?