Preparation: A Key to Success for Inside Sales and Customer Service

Have you prepared properly for your inside sales project? Whether it's a new assignment for the team or whether you've tasked your customer support personnel with revenue responsibilities beyond up-sells and cross sells, preparation is key of a successful endeavor. 

I was once tasked with the assignment to start an outbound lead generating  team for a small company. On my first day of work, the company owner gave me a list of customers and told me to call them "to see how they are doing". At least I had tons of experience doing similar projects. But how often do we do the same thing to brand new, relatively untrained inside sales personnel?

Let's make sure that we increase our odds of success by doing some planning first. This is important whether you are creating a framework and process for a team of 10 or whether this is your solo show.

Here are some tips for getting started:

• Make sure you know exactly what you want to accomplish. Too many people decide to add inside sales to their business mix and then tell their customer service people to "call and see if you can get them to reorder". 
• Your objective should be well thought out, measurable and specific.
• Break every thing out. No detail is too small. 
• Visualize what you want the results to look like and work back from there. 
• Consider the optimum style of selling. Is this a prospect effort or repeat customer sales? 
• Metrics are important. You can't improve if you don't measure. Consider tracking the following: How many orders will you expect - hourly, daily, weekly? What dollar amount? How many dials per day? How many contacts? What products should be suggested? How much of each do you want to sell? 

Without doing this type of thought process up-front, you will be running a muddled mess within 3 months.Taking the time to prepare thoroughly may push your implimentation date back, it will be worth it in order for the project to succeed.