MarketStar Blog | Best Practices (6)

Inside sales has grown immensely over the past decade; research shows that 800,000 jobs were projected in inside sales from 2009 to 2012. It hasn’t showed any signs of slowing down. According to 2016 data, inside sales personnel held a 54.4 percent majority over a 45.5 percent field sales minority. By 2020, it’s projected that there will be more than 6 million inside and field salespeople in the US, with a vast majority dealing in inside sales. 

You and your team of salespeople likely excel at closing sales. You likely have a firm grasp of managing your top enterprise accounts. However, managing a funnel of leads and prospecting and qualifying them for growth are also likely consistent challenges.

You aren’t alone. As data shows, 25 percent of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales, but 79 percent of marketing leads never convert. What’s more, 73 percent of leads are not sales-ready, and 50 percent are qualified but not yet ready to buy.

Implementing and maintaining a partner program requires a bit more effort than blind luck. In today’s channel sales environment, attracting qualified prospects—and putting in the work to retain them—isn’t as simple as it once was. With a myriad of options available, partners now have more power than ever to select vendors that appeal to their needs. 

Before the internet, there were two sales channels: indirect and direct. If you were a brick-and-mortar business, you sold your products directly in your store. If you were a wholesaler, you sold through resellers or distributors.

In today’s world, things are a bit more complex. And choosing sales channels to reach your targeted customers takes more effort. While the internet has certainly simplified many aspects of selling, it’s also created new demands for teams to learn and utilize disparate marketing channels.

It’s no surprise that an effective, efficient sales process is a huge driver behind hitting revenue targets. In fact, 79 percent of the top sales and marketing executives said that improving productivity of existing reps is a primary concern, according to recent research.

Sure, every manager strives to operate a well-oiled sales machine. However, implementing a high-performing sales culture depends on your ability to create a productive work environment. 

“Big Data” is gathered from every corner of our digital life, including demographics, geography, spending habits and even lifestyle.  There are thousands of data points collected and used to market and sell goods to us as consumers and this data has spawned entire industries and software companies. 

Channel partners have become more diverse than ever, making it hard to rely on one or two profiles to build an effective support and coverage model. This diversity only grows as you move further down the list of channel partners until you reach the bottom tier, where most vendors see the mix of high diversity and low revenue potential as a reason to write off any support beyond a portal or website. If you want to capture significant long tail revenue, you need to avoid generic messaging and give partners effective communication that fits their specific needs.

Lead nurturing is arguably more important with partners, with whom you’re trying to establish a long-term business relationship, than it is with individual end-users. And much like end-users, partners without a deep, existing relationship already established with your company will likely fall in and out of favor with your product and service offerings as their customers’ demands change.

More is better! That’s been the mantra of indirect channel programs within the IT industry for decades. Why? Because as high-tech products and services have continued on their break-neck pace of innovation, product lifecycles continue to shorten.

After 28 years in the world of Sales as a Service™, MarketStar has forged many lasting relationships with leaders in our field. We’ve asked Claudio Ayub, a 20-year channel veteran and Chief Channel Strategist of Perks, to discuss his view on improving sales performance through his experience as a loyalty marketing expert with broad knowledge in strategy development, market management, and channel sales planning.