Outside In: The Rise of the Inside Sales Team

Inside sales professionals at high-tech companies will be generating an increasing percentage of total company sales over the next two years. That’s just one of the facts we confirmed in our recent survey-based research on inside sales.

Inside Sales Research Reveals Trends

Some interesting statistics from our study include:

  • In large tech companies today, inside sales makes up only 22 percent of headcount, but 40 percent of these large companies plan to increase their inside sales headcount by 2016.
  • Smaller high-tech companies and startups already generate 55 percent of sales from inside teams.
  • 50 percent of large companies and 95 percent of small companies surveyed classify inside sales reps as exempt from overtime

Inside sales teams use virtual selling skills — the phone, e-mail, social media and a wide range of sales engagement and productivity tools — to connect with customers and prospects. The inside sales team typically does not travel, but there are some that go on the road for certain customers or opportunities. These teams are usually known as “hybrid” (combination of inside and field sales) sales.

Inside Sales Helps Grow and Launch Companies

In high-tech, inside sales is hardly new. In the mid to late 1980’s, I started up and led OracleDirect when Oracle was an emerging start-up and few believed complex products could be sold without a face-to-face visit. Oracle’s inside sales organization, which helped fuel the company’s early rapid growth, is now a thriving global multibillion-dollar sales force.  Given our early focus on hiring […]

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