Practical guide to internal sales

Internal sales are a very challenging field to engage in. One would think that the internet has done wonders to simplify the process. Instead, it has just made it even more important to know exactly what you’re doing. To help you master this field, here’s a practical guide to internal sales.

What are internal sales?

It may seem odd for a guide to internal sales to contain the definition of what they are. However, it’s still best to be clear on the subject before moving on. Internal sales, sometimes also called inside sales, are a method of doing business that relies on contacting customers through email, phone calls, video calls, or any other means of engaging with a customer without face-to-face meetings. This means that online stores and attempts to boost website sales are also part of internal sales. While internal sales have an overwhelming advantage in outreach, they are also less personal and can be more difficult to pull off when compared to meeting a customer in person.

Start by investing in a good CRM system

Of course, the difficulty of dealing with a lot of customers at once is not small. Since internal sales value outreach, this is something that no internal salesman can avoid. And if you are trying to scale up your business, it’s especially easy for your employees to get overwhelmed by the influx of customers. The best way to avoid this is by investing in CRM software. This way, your correspondence with customers, tracking their info, and even collecting and analyzing sales data, would all be simplified and made much more manageable.

Research the needs of your customers

If you take nothing else away from our guide to internal sales, then you at least need to understand that researching your target audience always takes priority. If you want to be successful at internal sales, then you need to stay on top of demand and always offer popular and interesting products or services. Outside sales have the advantage of impulse purchases being common. However, people rarely get pulled into an internal sales funnel and just decide to do some shopping on the spot. You need to generate interest and increase your outreach yourself. And it is all based on knowing what people want and what complaints they may have about your products.

Always be mindful of phrasing

In the end, interest grows or wanes purely based on the customer’s perception of your product. And, working on internal sales, you do not have the benefit of being able to place your product into your customer’s hands and awe them with its quality. So, you are forced to present the benefits and advantages of your product yourself.

The tricky part is that you need to be really careful about how you do it. For example, if you just monotonously list out all the characteristics of your product, you will probably lose a sale. It is boring and easily overwhelming. However, if you make a comparison to another product and point out how yours beats it out, you can provide a more comprehensive and interesting insight into your offer.

Avoid coming across as a cold-call

A cold call is any unsolicited and pushy attempt to get someone to buy your product. Just think about the legions of telemarketers who ring people up and start prattling on without so much as a hello. This approach relies on calling as many people as possible and just hoping you can annoy someone into a purchase.

However, as a qualified internal salesman, this isn’t supposed to be your goal. You need to grow and maintain a healthy customer base. So, a more personal approach is needed. You can open your conversation with a value statement explaining your commitment to helping the customer and ensuring they get the best possible product that fits their needs. Similarly, take your time, and allow for several calls if they are necessary rather than pushing for a sale immediately.

Build interest and rapport

If you want to hang onto your customers in the long term, then you need to leverage their attention somehow. For this purpose, our guide to internal sales recommends leaning into website content. Especially if you build interest and rapport through blogging. A quality blog is both interesting and helpful to your customers, while at the same time subtly pushing them to consider purchasing your products. This is also an important part of how to lower website bounce rate if that is something you are struggling with.

Know how to handle complaints

When doing internal sales, you will always encounter customer complaints. Or perhaps even attempts to get a discount through badgering or arguments. So, it’s necessary that every internal salesman understands that they need to remain calm and collected. Allowing such customers to overwhelm you will always end badly. Instead of immediately reacting, it is often better to listen first. Give your upset customers time to lay out their complaints and parse through them before deciding whether they are legitimate or just a case of trying to upset you in an attempt to benefit somehow. If the complaints are in fact real, then it is essential that you do your best to resolve them.

Encourage and follow feedback

Naturally, if you want to achieve the best results possible and further improve your business and products, you will need lots of feedback. So, always encourage your customers to leave reviews, share their thoughts, and generally give some sort of comment or rating of your products and business. This will also help you learn how to convert traffic into leads, so it is an indispensable part of doing business. Of course, the only way for your efforts to gather feedback will bear fruit is if you actually listen to the feedback and follow through with improvements.

Final word

Having gone through our practical guide to internal sales, you may now have a slightly better idea of how to tackle your job. Just remember to take things slowly, and master interaction with customers to the best of your ability.