If you’re setting up or thinking of setting up an inside sales operation, then you need to figure out how to go about putting together the right team for it. Specifically, the most important question you will face is about how to hire inside sales representatives. To start with, you can outsource the entire operation so you don’t have to worry about this.
If you want to do it yourself, the key question about inside sales hires is whether you should hire fresh reps without experience and train them, or get seasoned hands who know how to handle incoming and outbound calls.
Most contact center operators go for the former option, hiring raw talent and providing them the necessary inside sales training. We’ll look into that in more detail, but before that, I want to put forward another option. It’s called the BOT, or Build, Operate and Transfer model.
It’s explained very nicely in this post on inside sales best practices provided by a senior director of the AA-ISP. The sum of it is that you outsource the set up of your inside sales operation to an experienced company, and they help you get it up and running.
Once you’re sure about how to manage it, then you take over the operation and bring it entirely in-house. If you make use of this BOT model, then you don’t have to think about what kind of reps to hire.
Hire Freshers, or Transfer Experienced Staff?
A common hiring practice while you’re setting up a new inside sales team is to move your experienced sales people into the remote sales team. This may or may not work, depending on how good they are at adapting to the unique challenges of inside sales.
The second option, also recommended in the aforementioned post, is to hire freshers and provide them the right training. This you can do through the AA-ISP’s Inside Sales Academy, which offers sales training courses for Business Development Representatives, sales executives and account managers, and for managers and leaders.
Your options include the following:
1. CSDR: The Certified Sales Development Rep certification program is for BDRs who are just entering the sales profession. It includes 4 course modules, and you can take it as a web based accreditation program in 2-4 weeks.
2. CISP: The Certified Inside Sales Professional program is for sales executives and account managers, and can be taken by mid-stage sales reps who want to progress up the ladder. This is also a web-based accreditation program with 10 course modules that can be taken in 6-8 weeks.
3. AISM: The Accredited Inside Sales Manager program is for inside sales managers and leaders. This self-paced learning program will help you learn the art of hiring inside sales reps. One of the modules in the program teaches you about everything from candidate assessment to interviewing, hiring, on-boarding, and right fitting hires into the team.
Take your pick out of these options mentioned above. You can outsource, use the BOT model, or set up your own inside sales team by hiring people from your team coupled with freshers who need the right training.
