[MUSIC] So the kinds of companies that you see lots of inside sales jobs, or you could say that are best for that, are companies that basically don't need to be going out and getting a lot of brand new customers to the company, but rather have a large customer base. But it's more about a customer service type of operation. So where you've got a company with a very large installed product base, you'll see that these are the companies that tend to have pretty large and sophisticated inside sales operations. The kinds of skills and qualifications to be a sales manager of an inside sales team, I think are pretty much the same as what you find for managing an outside sales team, with one important, I think, distinction. An inside sales team does not have to do a lot of work in terms of prospecting or gaining new customers. It's more about managing current customers, keeping current customers happy and satisfied, and so forth. So the experiences, let's say, that you've had in terms of gaining outside customers may not be as relevant to someone who's managing an inside sales team. So the kinds of companies that are best for outside sales would be companies that require a couple of different things. First is companies that require kind of a steady stream of new customers, that are new to the company and all. Secondly, I think it requires where it's important that you are meeting face-to-face with customers. So in some cases, customers are perfectly happy to just deal with people through the phone or online. And that would be well done by an inside sales operation. But there's lots and lots of situations where there is no substitute for that sort of face-to-face interaction that goes on. So in those situations, you'll see companies that put together pretty substantial outside sales organisations. So I think the sales tactics between inside and outside sales, there's a couple of distinctive differences and all. So let's recognize something that's very important. The goal of inside versus outside sales organizations is the same, to manage, to create, and grow, and manage customer relationships, right, to have a customer and to keep that customer satisfied. Now the way in which you do that inside versus outside sales is very different, right? So inside sales is going to rely on non-personal kinds of things that are done, so electronic communication, voice communication, that type of thing. Outside sales has sort of got the luxury of also being physically there, and having that one-on-one interaction with people that go on. So I think that the actual tactics for gaining sales isn't really that different. It's really about understanding what customers are looking for, what their needs, and sort of showing how your product or service best satisfies those particular needs. So the challenges in selling to a buying center are enormous, right? So a buying center, what that is, is that's not like a department in a company, rather but it's a bunch of different people who hold different types of jobs in a company, that have some influence on a product sale. So we talk about, I had some experience in the high technology arena, where there was a lot of use of buying centers. And this was a really large computer company, and sold to Fortune 500 type companies, right? So who was the buying center? Well, there were the users of the computer equipment, right? So those are people, they're not technical people, right, but they use computers as tools. So for example, it might be the marketing department who needs to have more sophisticated computers, to be able to crunch all the data that they're getting now from their customers and all. So you have the users who quite frankly don't really care about the brand of computer, or really even the reputation of the company, or how that computer works. All they want is a tool to allow them to be able to marketing for what needs to happen, right? So you had the ultimate users. And then you might have the people who are in the IT department, who have to ensure that this equipment that they're going to buy works and is compatible with all the other computer systems that can be found inside this company, that they're not, by bringing in this computer equipment, they're not going to create some other kind of problem for themselves. So that gets to be sort of a very, very technical issue that has to do with understanding of information technology and how that might work. There would be people who would be involved in the approval of that purchase of that equipment. That could be a department head, like the director of marketing. It could be, if the purchase was big enough, it might be the chief financial officer or somebody who's involved in some type of budgeting operation within the company. And then there would be the people who actually would go ahead and actually purchase the equipment, such as the purchasing department and all. Now if you are a salesperson selling computer equipment, you kind of need to talk to all four of those people. Except, do you understand that each of those people, they have very different needs? They have very different issues. In some cases, they are not necessarily that brand specific. They may care less about what particular brand of computer that you buy. But if you're going to be successful, any one of those people, they could torpedo that purchase if you don't have them on board. So the challenges that a salesperson has is trying to identify who all those people are, what is the nature of their involvement, and what exactly are their concerns? So it makes for a much more difficult selling situation. So we do talk about how there are sort of two different kinds of functions and disciplines within a company, the sales function, and then you also have the marketing operation. Now, in some companies, those could be integrated together and could possibly even be the same individual. In other companies, it can be two very separate departments. Some companies kind of put a little more importance on one of those functions over another. I've seen some companies that are more marketing oriented, but they have a sales department. Likewise, I've seen companies that are very, very sales driven. And they have a marketing department, but it's not considered as important and all. So the reality is that the task of marketing is to sort of help to identify the likely prospects for a product or service, and to kind of help to prepare that prospect to enter into a purchasing situation. Ultimately, you can think of the salesperson as the person who closes the sale. The marketing operation is the one that sort of starts the whole sales process to work. So the best opportunities come when both of those operations are working completely in sync with each other. It's really not right to think of one is more important than the other. They really are both very important to the success of the company and its organization. So as a sales manager, how do you go about motivating sales people to improve their sales performance? We've covered a number of the motivational theories, and the way that goes about it. But I think that the ultimate task of a sales manager is to establish rewards. And in some cases, I guess, you could almost look at it as punishments too. But not in a physical sense, but as establishing rewards to kind of help to motivate people to achieve the goals that you're looking to do. So the task that the sales manager has is trying to come up with the right kind of reward. Some people are highly motivated by money. Well, a lot of people are. But other people can be motivated more by recognition, by getting a larger office, by other types of things that go on. So your task is figuring out what the right combination of rewards are, to help people to achieve the goals that you're looking to do, ultimately to the extent that a person is successful. That is, getting sales and all automatically means then that you're achieving your sales goal, and you're boosting morale at the same time. Sometimes we're asked what can be some helpful tips about getting past gatekeepers, right? So we first begin by defining a gatekeeper as a person that, oftentimes, like an administrative assistant or all, who is in a position to intercept your efforts to try to reach an individual, and to deliver a selling message and all. And the challenge that you've got is really hard, right? Because in some ways you need to recognize that gatekeeper, that is part of their job is to keep people, like maybe sales people, away from contacting that individual. I think that what you need to recognize is that sometimes you have to create opportunities for you to interact with your eventual target more on an opportunistic basis. Perhaps at social events, at industry events, and whatever way you can, in a sense, bump into people, can give you the opportunity to kind of circumvent around a gatekeeper. Ultimately, one has to respect the gatekeeper and the job that they're doing, right? You're not going to do any good by trying to surreptitiously ignore the gatekeeper in your process. I think the people who are really good at creating and maintaining relationships are people who have a unique understanding of human nature, what makes people tick. I think that they have a special sensitivity towards understanding people and what motivates them, and what's desired. I think that part of the process of maintaining relationships is just making conversation, talking to people, trying to draw them out. And understanding and learning more about them ultimately helps to create those bonds that turn into a really firm relationship. I think that people who are particularly good at it are just naturally interested in learning about other people.
