The role and responsibilities of the Inside Sales team are evolving and changing faster than any role in the Industrial Channel. The distributor inside sales team usually has the most direct contact and interaction with industrial end customers.
Our friend Frank Hurtte | LinkedIn from River Heights Consulting is one of the leading Industrial and Electrical Channel voices on the role of inside sales. Frank’s long career as a Rockwell Automation manufacturer and distributor leader in a highly technical sales process compelled us to share a guest column from Frank on Inside Sales that shares some of his firm’s direct research.
Inside Sales Staff Observations from Frank Hurrte
After conducting dozens of distributor Voice of the Customer surveys and interviewing these distributor’s key customer contacts, I have come away with one eye-opening discovery. Customers place a high value on inside sales – perhaps higher than most believe. I can still remember the words of a VP of Engineering for a mid-sized OEM: “Tell your client this, despite our primary salesperson’s personality and product knowledge, we depend on the quick answers and problem-solving skills that come from [their inside salesperson] Scott.”
Comments like the one above reinforce the words of one of my colleagues many years ago. “A good outside sales guy makes the phone ring, and a good inside salesperson keeps it ringing.” In an age of instant gratification, with overflowing product information on the internet, e-commerce everywhere, and customers dealing with a fast-paced work schedule, the necessity for a strong inside sales presence has only increased.
For the sake of clarification, many knowledge-based distributors confuse inside sales with customer service (and they should know better). Over the years, I have heard the terms used nearly interchangeably. This is a mistake. Both positions are important, but realizing the difference will be critical in the future. Let’s contrast the skill set of an experienced person in both positions.
Customer Service versus Inside Sales
Relative Skill Strengths (1 low – 5 high)
| Skillset | Inside Sales | Customer Service |
|
5 | 5 |
|
5 | 5 |
|
5 | 2 |
|
5 | 2 |
|
5 | 2 |
|
3 | 1 |
|
3 | 1 |
Summarizing these differences, both the experienced customer service person and the similar inside salesperson have a firm handle on the use of the company’s ERP system. Both can enter orders, determine price, and delivery, and other routine tasks for the customer. However, the groups begin to differentiate as the customer issue focuses on product and technology.
The primary role of the customer service person is to move incoming orders from emails and occasional phone calls to the distributor’s ERP system and to answer questions based on information contained in the system. The inside salesperson provides guidance and advice based on knowledge of the products and services provided by the distributor. These “advice and guidance” issues often require a judgment call based on this understanding.
Returning to the customer service person, experts tell us that many of their duties will soon be automated. For example, many distributors are currently using an AI program which automatically converts orders sent from the customer via email into orders in the distributor’s computer system. Other organizations have developed systems that automatically provide order acknowledgments, delivery times, and other basic information back to the customer. E-commerce systems further cut into the work done by customer service departments by providing customer-specific pricing and availability whether the customer uses the buy button or handles the order in a more traditional email fashion.
Looking further at the situation, distributors struggle to find people. The automation of customer service tasks will at least, in part, solve manpower issues. Good people are hard to find. As they say in my part of the country, qualified candidates are as rare as hen’s teeth. If a distributor has good, dedicated people, there is a need for change – a need for us to develop skills for the future.
Inside salespeople add value. They help customers pick the right part, determine if there is a workable solution in the distributor’s inventory if the need is urgent or if a supply chain issue arises. In advanced cases, they assist customers with the first level troubleshooting, and they know the right questions to ask about the customer’s application. Best yet, this information is available almost instantly – which is something customers continue to desire.
For customer service teams, we should be looking for ways to move them to true inside sales positions. For inside salespeople, we must create a career path that secures their future. Quality inside salespeople appears to be a bottleneck in our industry’s growth.
The sad case with inside salespeople is many distributors are losing folks with the right inside sales skillset. In a nutshell, there are three main drivers of this loss of human capability:
- Status – Our industry often grants greater status to outside sales and similar employees. Even if this is not the case internally, most suppliers perceive it this way. Nearly all your competitors place a higher status on outside roles than inside – and they actively attempt to poach your team for, you guessed it, outside sales positions.
- Compensation – The pay scale for outside salespeople tends to be higher than those serving in an inside role. Within many organizations, a new outside seller, especially if they hold a technical degree, makes as much money as a senior inside salesperson with years of experience.
- Lifestyle – Whether right or wrong, many see an outside role as providing more freedom and flexibility than an inside position. There might also be a company car, and other perks tossed in as well.
A fourth important reason exists and should be immediately addressed. Inside sales is seen by many of our employees as a dead-end job. How do the inside sellers feel? If they do a good job for ten years, what does it get them? Ten more years as an inside salesperson. They receive slightly better pay, but no improvement in status.
Experience demonstrates that if an experienced inside sales guy isn’t moved to outside sales within their current company, they become attractive targets for the recruiters of other companies.
Harkening back to the bestseller book (which I have recommended for over two decades), First, Break All the Rules, we learn that employees who can answer the affirmative to these questions (and 10 others) are more likely to stick with their employer:
- In the last six months, has someone at work talked about my progress?
- Over the past year, have I had opportunities at work to learn and grow??
It is imperative to determine ways to create additional career paths to retain these inside salespeople. Editors Note – You can follow Frank and his teams work and contact them at The Distributor Channel.
CMG Trends Takeaways
- The difference between a Customer Service Inside Person and Inside Sales is important to note. Industry and Consultant speaker Mike Marks often uses a term that I love “Order Takers vs. Market Makers” that concisely states to me how Inside Sales is changing. You want your Inside team to spend less time entering orders, and more time serving customers that creates more orders.
- If your business has more time, people, and energy focused on your Customer Service/Customer Experience (CX) team than a team of Inside Sales technical support and selling teams than over time I suggest you find ways to swing the pendulum to the Inside Sales tech support/selling side as much as possible. Today, as Frank noted above, there are a myriad of ways to automate order entry and to create self-service digital solutions for end customers that reduce your order entry time.
- Frank has some excellent and tactical advice on how to make sure you create an environment where the inside roles are not viewed as steppingstone, or dead-end jobs.
- The ranking system has what he terms Computer Skills and Catalog Skills (Finding and Identifying Part Numbers) as key break points for an Inside Sales and Customer Service Function. I personally view Frank’s Computer Skills ranking as table stakes, that you as channel leaders should find ways to automate as much as possible. There are so many tools and approaches you can take to automate, automate, and….automate your end customer orders as much as possible today. I appreciate Frank’s perspective on this topic as we might slightly differ on this topic, we both know that there is no single right approach that works for every channel partner. e.g. Your culture, people, and market position are different for every business, and going from an old school highly human approach that has worked for you for decades to a full digital approach can be crushing for a business in our experience. It is for the majority of the channel, best accomplished with a pendulum swing that takes time, leadership, and communication.
We both agree that Technical Support (Helping identify and find the right parts for the application) Product Knowledge, Application Knowledge, and Troubleshooting is where Inside Sales can make a big-time difference today and in the future.
The Inside Sales equation is simple = Less Time Taking Orders frees up more time to serve and add value for your customers. That pendulum swing creates happier customers…. and all good things come from happy end customers.
As always, we appreciate the feedback and comments. So, feel free to reach out at jgunderson@channelmkt.com
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