The pandemic has taught us how to operate virtually. It has shown businesses how remote working can save money and improve their team productivity. According to Upwork, an estimated 36 million US employees could be working remotely by 2025. It is obvious that when employees work remotely, they sell remotely or virtually. It is also known as B2B inside sales—a sale without physical interactions with the client.
B2B inside sales enables sales representatives to generate leads through digital methods. There is no physical contact or communication involved in this B2B sales. This B2B sales strategy is perfect for SaaS brands.
Do you also want to include B2B inside sales in your sales funnel? Then, follow this guide to learn all about B2B inside sales process, strategies and best practices.
What is B2B Inside Sales?
Essentially, B2B inside sales means digital sales. This B2B sales foundation is built on performing sales efforts over digital communication technology, such as a phone, email, video conferencing software, or any other channels with zero physical interaction.
Inside sales representatives follow clear sales processes, procedures, and workflows. They follow strict schedules because clear KPIs monitor and quantify their efforts. These may include the number of calls made, meeting acceptance percentage, etc.
The practice requires critical thinking skills, substantial research acumen, and being articulate, regardless of the structure. Thus, B2B inside sales reps must develop and express deep product knowledge.
These representatives need help to demonstrate the product they are selling in person. Instead, they must communicate the product value and its specifications to demonstrate using virtual selling mode.
How to Boost Your B2B Inside Sales?
- Know your product inside out
- Know your audience
- Simplify sales process
- Update your CRM
- Get the best video conferencing software
- Eliminate all distractions during the virtual meeting
- Work on your lead outreach
- Personalize your sales process
B2B inside sales is simple yet different from traditional sales strategies. Since you have a virtual wall between your potential customers, it is hard to interact with them.
But, once you redefine your old sales strategy to suit remote selling requirements, you can achieve better results than physically selling. So, let’s see what you can do to improve your B2B inside sales efforts:
1. Know Your Product Inside Out
To become a successful remote seller you can simply start by intimately familiarizing yourself with your product. Unlike in-person sales, you must answer your client’s questions without hesitation or confusion.
If you are unsure about anything related to what you are selling, your prospects can only partially trust you. And you’re probably aware that a lack of trust leads to a lack of sales.
So, take the time to learn about what you’re selling.
Businesses can help their representatives by creating a sales playbook. They can create a document including all their products’ technical features and benefits.
Representatives can go through this document whenever they get stuck somewhere. It can also help to onboard new sales reps.
2. Know Your Audience
Besides knowing your product, understanding your customers is also essential to inside sales.
You need to be more familiar with your customer’s problems and needs to provide them with the right solution. So, you must take your time to understand your targeted audience.
To do so, you can create a buyer persona. It is a fictional characterization of your potential client, including basic information like age, income, location, etc.
It can help you understand what might attract your potential customers. However, don’t stick to just one buyer persona.
You must use marketing tools to analyze your customer’s behavior across your website and during virtual meetings. It can provide you with fresh data to understand your customers. Knowing your customers is a continual process.
3. Simplify Sales Process
Make your remote sales simpler to target a larger audience base. For example, in one B2B purchase decision, 6 to 10 people are already involved. On top of it, when B2B decision-makers can’t physically connect with sales reps, it increases the sales cycle length.
Therefore, you must make a full effort to simplify your sales process for your virtual customers. You can start by optimizing your website. Add informative and engaging content on your website to help customers understand your business.
Besides this, you can publish blogs, case studies, and other informative resources to educate your potential customers. Moreover, add a clear call to action button on your website so customers know what to do next to use your services.
Partner with UnboundB2B’s Insides Sales Team to Fasten Your Sales Process!
4. Update Your CRM
CRMs that take forever to load and crash just as you’re about to save the notes from your last call are a setback for your inside sales strategy.
An up-to-date CRM system is crucial when it comes to remote selling. Sales software tools such as Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Hubspot help remote sales teams stay organized and on top of deals.
CRMs can store all your data, call history, customer contacts, and customer details in one place. They also include calendars, analytics, and productivity systems to boost your B2B inside sales efforts.
With these helpful tools at your disposal, success will come sooner than expected, regardless of where you work.
5. Get the Best Video Conferencing Software
Since we are on the topic of remote sales technology, we must remember to discuss video conferencing software.
Video calling is a powerful tool for sales agents to connect face-to-face with customers without physical interaction. In addition, it enables agents to demonstrate their products using features like screen sharing.
They can also record customer meetings for later purposes. For example, the marketing team can refer back to all customer meetings to understand what their potential customers want and how they can improve their sales proposals.
Today, you can find a variety of video conferencing software in the market. You must prefer software that is easy to use and has an integrated scheduling feature.
This way, your agent can manage their schedule within the video conferencing software regarding using two different software.
You can also add a video calling plug-in to your website to make your B2B inside sales strategy powerful and improve customer experience.
6. Eliminate all Distractions During the Virtual Meeting
Doing virtual meetings doesn’t mean that you can sit in your bedroom while your dog barks in the background.
You must follow strict meeting decorum while conducting virtual meetings with your clients. For example, sales representatives need to remove all the distractions around them before starting a meeting with clients.
They must select a secluded place in their home to properly interact with customers. They should wear proper clothes and check their virtual gadgets before the meeting.
Nothing is more annoying than disturbing network connections or weird noises in the background during virtual meetings.
Business organizations should provide training to their remote sales agents on how to prepare for virtual meetings. The training should provide insights on how to dress up, prepare for the meeting, and how to address customer questions during the meeting.
7. Work on Your Lead Outreach
Your sales outreach must be professional and structured, regardless of the product or service you’re selling or the type of call you’re on—from low-level customer support questions to strategic partnerships with other businesses.
Managers always wish to walk their team through best practices for outreach to ensure everyone is on the same page.
For example, you must have a set procedure for how you want your company’s emails to appear or what information to include in an introductory email.
Strong outreach becomes even more important when you interact face-to-face with customers over a video call.
You can block someone on the phone or by email, but there is no possibility of dodging any questions on live video conversations. Therefore, you must create a proper outreach program to educate your remote sales agent to convert leads.
8. Personalize Your Sales Process
Making things personalized during sales communication is always a good idea. Nobody likes a message that has been copied and pasted. This is especially true if you are remote and cannot establish an in-person connection.
Personalization may be a simple task, but it requires effort to ensure that you are not simply sending out one generic email or voicemail call after another.
A great way to do this is to mention things about your prospect’s business or work-related accomplishments that you might find on their LinkedIn page or elsewhere.
You can also use your potential clients’ websites and company profiles on various social media profiles to understand them better. A little stalking over the Internet can help you acquire a potential customer through inside sales.
How Can B2B Inside Sales Benefit Your Business?
Selling without a physical connection sounds absurd, especially when B2B buyers want personalized experiences from their vendors.
They want solutions tailored based on their business goals and challenges. How can it benefit your business when you have no physical contact with your customers?
Well, you are wrong here.
With B2B inside sales, you can get a deeper insight into your potential customer’s behavior and needs. It can help you better strategize your marketing and sales strategies with analytical data.
Apart from that, this sales technology can help your business in many ways, such as:
1. Saves Money
Do you know an average international business trip costs around $2,600 or more?
Also, with the air-fuel cost increasing and the global market expanding, business travel costs will only rise in the coming time. You can save all your business travel expenditures, thanks to inside sales.
Your sales representative can interact with potential clients using virtual tools right from their desktops. In addition, it reduces commute time and travel costs, leading to more profit in your pocket.
2. Global Business Reach
B2B inside sales can help you take your local business to the international market. You can sell your local product to global customers using virtual tools.
For example, a local car tire manufacturer can deal with a multinational automobile company in Japan using this sales technology.
You can grow your business without leaving your hometown with inside sales. This way, you can boost your local economy and provide new employment opportunities to local talent.
3. Instant Lead Nurturing
You can convert leads in real-time using a B2B inside sales approach. You can employ remote sales representatives from across the world. It enables you to interact with potential customers in different time zones.
Suppose a potential customer from the UK wants to connect with your US-based business during their standard business hours. In that case, you can ask your UK-based sales rep to conduct the meeting in real-time.
You can nurture leads faster and stop them from leaking through your sales pipeline. Plus, we all know how challenging it is to reduce B2B sales cycles.
Let’s Grow Your Sales Pipeline
B2B inside sales might be a new sales trend. But it is here to stay. Therefore, if your sales department is not set to adopt this approach, you should start working on it now.
However, if you are looking to generate B2B inside sales without disturbing your internal sales flow, you can always outsource it to B2B sales service providers. Outsourcing sales has become an important aspect as it helps companies to outperform their competitors, improve and fast-track the sales process through technology and realize long-term success.
UnboundB2B delivers a range of sales outsourcing services designed to enrich your sales pipeline with high-quality leads. We can help you generate sales remotely in no time. In fact, our team can even guide your sales representatives to adopt this new sales approach. So, give us a call anytime.
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