As I reflect back on client hurdles from last week, the popular challenge of how to successfully align inside and outside sales reps comes to mind. This is an obstacle that never seems to go away, and all sales and marketing VPs seem to face it again and again. The key to bridging this gap is to put some best practices in place so that a mutual trust is established and everyone is working towards the ultimate goal of bringing in more sales pipeline and revenue for the company.
When reviewing how we’ve overcome this challenge throughout many client engagements in the past, three best practices stand out as being the starting point towards strengthening the relationships. Below I’ve listed three ways to bridge the gap and included ways to accomplish them:
Establish a mutual understanding on the definition of a qualified lead.Outside reps often get frustrated and lose faith in their inside sales reps when they aren’t getting the quality of leads they are looking for. The number one goal for an inside rep should be to get excited about passing qualified opportunities and to get the outside reps psyched about following up with these opps. The first step in achieving this is to determine the qualification information needed to be a solid lead. The best way to get there is to have the outside sales reps provide the inside reps with all the necessary qualification questions that need to be answered before the initial meeting is scheduled. For example, if an outside rep feels they should only follow up with active opportunities that will buy within 6 months, then the inside rep needs to uncover this information ahead of time and nurture that lead until it is ready. If inside reps are sending over unqualified leads, the outside reps won’t even bother to follow up on their leads, and as a result, the qualified ones will end up slipping through the cracks because they will have lost trust.
Implement a realistic rep to rep ratio.
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