Improve Your Inside and Outside Selling Skills

One of the greatest joys of the selling profession is the extraordinary responsibility one takes on as THE company representative to the outside world. More often than not the company sales representative IS the company to so many people they interact with on a daily basis.

To many customers the vendors sales representative is the relationship and the continued justification that drives the business commerce between the parties. No one knows, or should know, the customers product or service requirements better than the sales representative. No one should know the customers business challenges, decision makers, financial status and history of use of the companys product or services better than the sales rep.

Often an effective sales representative can make or break a critical business conflict resolution among the customer and his company. A strategic company will always leverage the developed relationship between their representative and the customer to maintain the business. If the company cannot utilize their representative in this capacity, they have the wrong person on the account!

The Inside and Outside Selling Functions

A sales person is ultimately responsible for retaining and ideally increasing, sales revenues from his or her existing customers. They are also charged with finding, qualifying or disqualifying and eventually securing new business from alternative revenue sources. This is called outside selling.

A sales representative is also required to represent his or her customer to or within his company for the betterment of the customer/ company relationship. Betterment of the customer/ company relationship equates to more sales from that customer. This is called inside selling.

For a professional sales representative to maximize their sales revenues he or she must constantly strive to improve both their outside and inside selling skills. Hundreds of books have been written about how to improve ones outside selling skills, but little has been written about the inside selling skills concept. Depending on the sales representative employers propensities or resource levels to service their customers the sales reps inside selling skills must be better honed than their outside selling skills.

Customers consistently demand more value from their vendors for product or services provided. Competition among suppliers of same products and services has traditionally increased along with an unsettling trend of reduced customer purchase loyalty due their cost reduction priorities, often driven by their own competitive market environment.

When there are finite resources within the sales representatives employer or limited customer service focus coming from senior management, all intensified with competing demands for same resources and attention among other company sales representatives, an inside sale success can make or break the outside selling success for any given account.

Fundamental Inside Selling Tactics

Given the above circumstances of a sales representative needing to grow his or her outside business via successful persuasion of inside the company decision makers, one should focus on the following tactics to improve their odds of overall selling success:

1) Strive to get your company management to interact with your customers management, professionally or socially

2) Eliminate any propensity on your part to totally control the customer yourself, the more people who have relationships with your customer from your company the greater the probability business will increase over time

3) Hold people within your company accountable for their actions or in-actions relative to your customer you are the voice of the customer never forget this!

4) Be fair and honest at all times representing both your customer to your employer and vice versa. There is no exception to this rule!

5) Whenever prudent, document successes to both the customer and to your company. Copy everybody on the success in both directions and give credit to BOTH parties for the success. In many cases, the written document is the ONLY means an executive from either your customer or employer has to appreciate the relationship in hand.

6) Effectively and continuously enhance the mutual perception that both parties have of each other to maximize their own profitability

In conclusion, there effectively is nowhere for a sales representative to hide if a customer decides to take their business elsewhere. The sale representative ultimately is responsible for either mismanaging his companys resources and support of the customer or not effectively communicating or exhibiting the value of his product or services to the customer.

Hopefully this article gives another perspective as to how to balance outside and inside selling skills for maximum sales success.

About the Author:

Mark Smock is 30+ year veteran of business leadership and is President of http://www.business-buyer-directory.com, the FIRST International business buyer directory of its kind. Business Buyer Directory provides a non-traditional means for proactive business buyers to locate businesses for sale worldwide that meet their exact registered purchase criteria.

Sales Skills are Life Skills
I love the art of selling. LOVE IT. When I first entered the field of sales, the one thing I quickly grew to appreciate was the fact that anything I did to increase my ability in selling also increased my ability in life. Sales skills are life skills...

Improve the Efficiency of Your Business with Sales Training Programs
Proper sales training is crucial for the success of any business! The efficiency of your sales depends on various interrelated factors such as the efficiency and the skills of your business members, the ability of your company to create and explore n...

Consultative Selling - Getting to Yes with the Least Resistance
Consultative Selling: Last year I went to the dentist for my regular exam. The first thing they did was x-ray all my teeth. Then the dental assistant came in and checked something in my mouth. Then the dentist came in.He was a pleasant guy and expla...

The 10-80-10 Selling Rule
Mike came to my office one day looking very discouraged. He had been selling for about two months. He was doing significantly above average so his discouraged look surprised me.I asked him what was wrong and he said, I dont understand it. With my las...

Shifting Your Mindset for Sales Success
How do you feel about selling? Ouch!! Do you want to stop reading now?Many of you reading this will probably admit (if only to yourself) that you do not enjoy it. You probably wonder why you have to do it its not what you trained for or why you s...

Examining Problems in Guided Meditation for Self Development
Sometimes we have to examine our problems by probing into our past. We can successfully discover something new by meditating often. Guided meditation is an aid to our self-development that benefits us in many ways.Knowledge is the key that unlocks th...

Negotiation Skills Training - How to Double Dose the Sense of Urgency
As Jakes prospects were leaving Eric the sales manager over heard Jake say to them, Dont forget the big sale is over this Saturday. The prospects were all smiles as they left without the new car.As Jake slowly walked back to his desk he looked a litt...

Effective Sales Training Begins By Defining Your Desired Results
Are you unhappy with your sales training? Possibly, you are not getting the results that you want because you failed to define those before you began? Read why this should be your first step if you desire effective sales training that delivers a pos...

How Pencil Drawings Help In Developing Skills In Creativity?
How pencil drawing help in developing skills in creativity?When major artists failed with pencil drawing, they switch themselves to paint with colors, and when they realized that in painting also they find the same basic drawing problems, which give ...

The 16 Biggest Mistakes New Salespeople Make
There are only three ways to sell more. Do more right. Do less wrong. Do both.Here is a list I have compiled during my 35 year sales training career. that will help you understand the most frequent mistakes new salespeople make.Selling can be a dif...

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 10:27 am and is filed under Sales Training . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.