Inside sales meaning is very simple, it is the modern way of selling in which sales professionals remotely connect with leads via phone calls, WhatsApp messages or Zoom meetings instead of going out to have a face-to-face interaction. It is all about using technology and growing your business without wasting any resources on physical meetings.
You already know that inside sales involve selling remotely using digital tools, but why does it matter? Because it helps make it prevalent in the B2B and B2C sectors, especially when selling luxury goods and software services. This method works wonders as it is cost-efficient and allows representatives to reach a wider audience quickly from an office setting.
Outside sales or traditional face-to-face selling, requires sales reps to meet clients directly, often at stores, business places or events. This approach is suited to high-value transactions where personal interaction helps build trust and facilitate detailed customisation based on client needs.
Both these methods (inside and outside sales) serve distinct purposes: inside sales maximises reach and efficiency, while outside sales focuses on deepening personal connections and understanding the client’s needs.
It’s cheaper: Your team can save loads on travel costs like flights, hotels and meals since they are selling from their desks and not hitting the road.
You can reach more people: Your team can connect with leads from all over the world without leaving the office. This means you can reach out to more leads and potentially bring in more sales.
Easy to scale up: When you’re ready to grow, expanding an inside sales team is much simpler than beefing up the field sales operations. Just bring in more staff, give them the tools and they’re good to go.
Get things done faster: Your team can handle more accounts and do more in a day because they’re not stuck in traffic or travelling. Plus, tools like CRM (customer relationship management) can help them stay organised and speed things up.
Quicker sales cycles: Things move quicker in your sales cycle because your team can follow up on leads instantly with a call or an email. No need to wait for the next in-person meeting to get things moving.
Smarter selling: With all the tracking tools we have now, you can see exactly what’s working and what isn’t. This helps you make better decisions and tweak strategies that aren’t working.
Adapt in a snap: If the market changes or something new comes up, you can switch gears quickly. There’s no massive upheaval like there would be with an outside sales team.
Role | Responsibilities |
Sales Development Rep (SDR) | - Generate leads through cold calling, emailing, and social media outreach. - Qualify leads and schedule appointments for senior sales staff. |
Inside Sales Rep (ISR) | - Manage and nurture leads within the sales pipeline. - Conduct product demonstrations via video calls. - Negotiate deals and close sales. |
Account Executive | - Handle more complex deals and negotiations. - Manage key accounts and build long-term relationships. - Develop and execute upselling and cross-selling strategies. |
Customer Success Manager | - Ensure customer satisfaction and retention post-sale. - Address customer issues and concerns. - Promote renewals and upgrades. |
Sales Manager | - Oversee the inside sales team. - Set sales targets and strategies. - Provide training and support to sales staff. |
Pro tip: If you are looking to hire new inside sales professionals for your business, read our article Inside sales interview questions to help you come up with a much better and more effective questionnaire for your interview round.
The key to selling something, whether a product or a service, is to know what you’re selling and have a deep understanding of it, its need, the solutions provided by it and how it is beneficial for the buyers.
This is where the average sales representative goes wrong. They skip the part of understanding the product or service they’re selling and dive straight into approaching clients. However, without the right knowledge about your product or service, you will not be able to sell. So, understanding product management processes will improve your approach.
A prime example of this strategy would be Steve Jobs, the visionary who is now known worldwide for his creation of Apple.
Jobs knew everything about his product — Apple Computer I and that’s how he was able to sell a highly unconventional product at that time. Since he was confident about the product, he was able to convince others, even those who had little knowledge about how computers work.
This is an inside sales strategy suggested by almost every expert and even practised by every sales department. Obviously, the ultimate goal would be to increase sales but by how much?
That you can only understand by goal setting.
You set very specific goals for different inside sales representatives for a specific duration. These goals are predetermined and are based on your business vision.
Almost every company, be it your tech giants such as Apple or Samsung, or even your fast food chains such as Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, etc. work according to the targets set by the sales department beforehand. These targets are set for profits and when these targets are met by sales reps, it’s safe to say that the company is profiting and ultimately growing.
Setting your monthly/quarterly goals is just the first step, however, what is equally important is prioritising which goals are more important than others. This means while setting goals and distributing them amongst your representatives, ensure that the high-priority goals are being fulfilled first.
For example, completing the monthly target of sales would be placed as a higher priority than approaching prospective customers. Not contacting the desired number of new prospective customers but still fulfilling the monthly sales target is still better than contacting a huge number of potential buyers and ignoring the monthly sales target.
Pro Tip: If you are looking to improve overall sales tracking in your business, read our article on the sales trackers app you can start using.
Chunking is a strategy employed by people to remember lengthy and complicated information effectively and easily. For example, the number ‘194708082022’ is an unusually lengthy number for someone to memorise quickly. However, if it is broken down into ‘1947’ (the year of India’s independence), ‘0808’ and ‘2022 (the current year), it then becomes easy to remember the entire number.
In the same way, in sales, huge targets can be broken down into smaller ones and completed one by one, preferably on a priority basis. Trying to reach big targets can become overwhelming in the beginning, since there is so much to be covered.
However, breaking a big goal into several smaller ones and then completing each one individually makes it easier and less stressful.
Having a public image is one thing and sustaining that public image even when your brand is not advertising to the customers is what retains customers and ensures the company’s growth in the long run.
This is exactly what Domino’s Pizza Inc. does. While delivering their pizzas, Domino’s isn’t stingy when it comes to giving out their seasoning. They readily give out extra seasoning with each order primarily to have a sustainable brand image. Even after the customer is done with their meal, they will keep the leftover seasoning packets with them. This makes them unconsciously more drawn to Domino’s since they see those seasoning packets lying around in their kitchens.
Hence, make sure you develop such ways of making customers remember your brand even when you are not advertising. Plus, design a logo that is memorable and easily recognizable, incorporating graphic design symbols that help your brand stay in the customer’s mind long after the transaction.
Who doesn’t love offers and free trials provided by brands?
Everyone loves free items and customers often look for promotional offers from their favourite brands.
However, companies, such as Rage Coffee, don’t give out free products and put up promotional offers just because they’re feeling generous. It is a way of building healthy and sustainable client relationships and promoting a positive brand image to the masses, even those who are not buying from the company.
Rage Coffee is a fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company that operates digitally. Visitors to its website find offers and free goodies, which in turn attract more people to purchase from it, converting potential clients into actual paying customers.
Also read: Our inside sales tips blog outlines the essential tips needed to improve the skill set of any sales rep.
A flash sale is an interesting strategy generally employed by companies that produce goods on a larger scale. In a flash sale, a product is made available to the customers only for a very limited period of time and at a discounted rate.
This offer lures in a large number of buyers in haste to buy the good before it runs out since the quantity of this product is limited. Flash sales induce impulse buying, a typical consumer behaviour wherein consumers impulsively buy a product, in this case, because there is a high chance of the product going out of stock in a short period of time.
OnePlus Technology Co. Ltd. knew this trick and employed this inside sales strategy at a very early phase. Their flash sales were highly valued by customers, which further increased the brand’s popularity. It is evident by OnePlus’s prominence in India that this strategy sure did work for them.
Marketing your product or service using an emotional appeal can be incredibly powerful if done correctly. One major example of this technique is The Coca-Cola Company. The company marketed its globally popular beverage, Coca-Cola, in a very emotional way.
The campaign focused on reconnecting with your family and loved ones and the company successfully linked this with Coca-Cola and how the two can be shared at the same time. This blew up the company’s sales.
Social issues such as racism, global warming, hate crimes, poverty, sexism, etc. invoke strong feelings in the minds of the majority of the public. Knowing how to address these issues in such a way that brings forth a positive brand image of your company can help you increase your sales immensely.
This can be seen in the recent consumer behaviour trends, wherein consumers like to purchase goods and services from companies that address social issues and work towards social causes.
Airbnb, Inc. used this strategy especially well when controversy regarding discrimination by one of Airbnb’s hosts against a customer made the news. Airbnb launched an all-inclusive campaign that focused on accepting people from all genders, races, ethnicities, nationalities and socio-economic statuses.
This promoted a sense of warmth and inclusivity in the audience’s minds and helped Airbnb’s sales increase significantly.
Providing your sales reps with incentives and bonuses upon completing a set of targets can be an extremely beneficial way of motivating them to perform better and invest more time and effort in their jobs, which eventually leads to the company’s growth and profit.
McDonald’s provides their employees with incentives such as “Employee of the Month.” Whoever performs the best out of the employees in a branch gets his/her picture on the frame of this title.
This might be a small gesture by the company’s side, but it has a significant impact on the employees since it engages them to work more and have healthy competition amongst themselves in order to get that title.
Making your product or service look urgently required as if the customer needs it right now, is a great strategy to help convert potential clients into paying customers quickly and efficiently.
If there is a sense of urgency in customers regarding purchasing your products or services, your sales performance will automatically grow. Thoughts of missing out on buying the product or service make people make decisions much more quickly and without giving a second thought.
Say your company offers a range of products and/or services. This may confuse customers as to which one should they purchase and which one would fit their needs the best. This confusion may drive away many potential customers, hence reducing your efforts in sales performance management.
SkinKraft, a company that provides skin care products, uses this strategy very effectively. They personalise their shampoos to suit the needs of a customer. Customers simply answer a few questions about their scalp and after the quiz is complete, the website automatically provides them with the best-suited option for their needs, simply eliminating the effort required to choose from a number of options.
A CRM or sales management software helps you manage your sales activities and track your performance conveniently. It essentially digitises your entire sales process, providing you with the necessary information required to improve your performance.
Telecrm is the simplest Cloud-Based CRM software that not only allows you to store your data in a highly organised manner but also tracks your performance and suggests areas of improvement, which helps you recognise which area needs more attention. The software can be used to set predetermined targets and goals, which will help your sales rep follow these targets in a much more systematic way.
In order to stand out from your competitors, who may be providing similar or exactly the same product/service as yours, you still need to find your universal selling point (USP) which will help you stand out from your competitors and give you an edge over them. After all, why should the customer choose you over your competitor, when both companies offer similar services? The answer to this is your USP.
Nike Inc. and Adidas AG, the two biggest giants of the footwear industry, have been rival companies ever since their inception. Both companies focus majorly on sportswear, however, they are not restricted to just that. Even then, Nike and Adidas have their USPs which make them different from each other. Nike’s tagline “Just Do It” symbolises the company’s motto of not thinking twice and just going for it, grabbing that opportunity, give it your all, which resonates with many sportspersons.
On the other hand, Adidas’ tagline “Impossible is Nothing” gives wings to the ideas of creativity and curiosity and makes their audience feel like there is no limit to their dreams. Both taglines set the core theme of the company and differentiate them from each other.
The simplest trick to shooting up your sales tenfold and seeing some major organisational growth would be actually providing solutions to the problems your target audience faces. For that, you will first need to recognise the problem, verify if there is a need for a solution and then build a solution that will capitalise on this demand and increase sales performance significantly.
Calculate the impact this problem has on your target audience, which will help you understand how urgent the need is and the more urgent the need, the higher the demand for the solution you will build upon.
It’s also important to ensure that the sales rep and the potential buyers see the problem from the same perspective, that there is a need for a solution, only then will the solution be of any demand to the target audience.
Also read: Sales management strategies to give boost to your overall sales management
Inside sales is your ticket to doing more with less. You save money, reach more customers and close deals faster, all from your desk. And the strategies we’ve covered? They’re your toolkit for turning up the dial on your sales performance and improving sales skills for every rep.
It’s not just about cutting costs; it’s about connecting effectively with your customers wherever they are. And here’s a pro tip: to really boost your inside sales game, consider using Telecrm. This tool is a game-changer for managing your sales activities and customer relationships. It’s easy to use, helps you track your performance and ensures you’re hitting your targets.
So, if you want to streamline your sales process and keep your business agile, book a demo of Telecrm today and see it in action for yourself!
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