What tangible expectations have been changed as "Outside Sellers" have become "Inside Sellers"?
The vast majority of our Services salesforce are "outside" sellers -- who are quickly learning the ways of the "internal seller" world. We've been working to rapidly evolve expectations (and processes) without changing the core of the role. Looking for tangible practices being deployed by others in similar situations.
Answers
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Alex, let me post your question to Martin Dove, our head of Subscription Sales research. He may have some insight for you.
Steve
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Hey Alex, thanks for the question! As you can imagine, you are not alone in trying to figure this one out. The lines are blurring between "inside" and "outside" sales at the moment and we're seeing many of our member companies building out various scenarios for what the sales organization is going to look like if the lines are to be permanently redrawn. The most fundamental issue is going to be around territory management and whether you are going to redesign the organization and move responsibility for certain accounts and groups of accounts to an inside sales function (or even to digital channels). If this is a permanent shift for you then expectations around quota and income have to be reset at some point (we know that outside sellers are typically paid 12-18% more than inside sellers but also that their quotas are higher). Other differences to think about between inside and outside sales roles are: sales cycles are expected to be shorter, inside sellers have typically way more focus on quantitative metrics, inside sellers will require a higher spec of technology. The most common action we're seeing at the moment is that outside sellers are being set up to do their current job (performance expectations, metrics, etc all remain the same) but their Managers are having honest expectation conversations around the fact that business travel and the ability to meet face-to-face are going to be severely impacted for the next 6 months (at least) and that there is a possibility that roles may need to be redefined if the impact looks like it might last longer. We asked a question in our recent R3 poll around whether participants expected existing work-from-home policies to change in the long-term, 75% said that they expect working from home to increase ongoing, 23% said they think it will remain the same and 2% said they thought it would reduce (???). I hope this has been helpful. Cheers, Martin
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Thanks, Martin. Certainly a couple of helpful insights - appreciate it. As you note (and I agree), fundamentally, the sales job doesn't change, but there are clear changes to expectations of both sales motions and outcome expectations that need to be set. We've been trying to use the "shock to the system" of the grounding of our outside sellers as a way to evaluate many of our processes, and using the situation to accelerate the digital transformation among our outside team. Still early days -- but we're finding the shift to be less traumatic than maybe we initially expected. Hoping for more engagement on the topic among the membership!
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The other, slightly broader, consideration here is the role of services staff on expand selling in light of the importance, particularly during the Covid-19 recovery "Pitstop" phase, of focusing on existing customers vs new logos. We don't have a formal Customer Success team (although we have experimental pockets) but the closest we have are Service Delivery Managers who serve a similar function. They are customer-facing and, particularly for MS customers, better engaged with customers in the day to day than our outside or inside reps. There has been resistance however from these SDMs to "sell". This comes from a fear that it will dilute their value to the customer. They are quite willing to listen for new opportunities and then alert the Account Exec but reticent to proactively engage in anything that could be perceived by the customer as selling. It's important that we help them realize two realities: 1. customers expect their SDMs to spot and call out opportunities where we can improve their operations, whether with new tools, processes, or services. In fact, when we don't do it we are dropping the ball; 2. To consider selling to be a business skill, not only something done by a colleague in the Sales department. In professional services (consultants, lawyers, accountants, etc) those with the ability to sell themselves and their ideas rise rapidly in their careers. And besides, the best sales people are those who do NOT appear to be selling.
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@Stephen Spence you raise an excellent point for our current business climate and the headwinds that Sales Professionals are undoubtedly facing. This idea of Services Teams using their interactions with customers to drive customer growth is covered in depth in TSIA's Expand Selling research practice. @Steve Frost's recent webinar the A New Approach to Customer Growth: The State of Expand Selling 2020 provides a lot of insights and data on Services Professionals owning and driving growth with existing customers. I'd recommend sharing the webinar with your Service Delivery Managers. And after they watched that webinar here's a Research Paper Steve published that would help as well - How Support Services Can Safely Help Sales.
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