Our popular What’s Out and What’s In 2007 Hot List is here with lots of fresh insights and new trends happening in Inside Sales today. The big news is that Inside Sales is finally getting the recognition it deserves, which makes this one of the most exciting times to be this industry.
Think Big because across the board lots of emerging trends are changing the rules of how we sell today. Team headcount continues to grow and the average deal size is increasing which means more money and a wider variety of communications tools are being integrated into the sales process. Inside Sales is no longer a transactional sales group; it’s the engine that gets things going. And our Hot List is loaded with cool ideas, as well as a splash of pop culture, to get you revved up for 2007!
| What’s Out | What’s In |
|---|---|
| Individual inside rep | The divide-and-conquer approach-integrated team of specialists and consultants providing customers with more solutions. |
| Inside roles as non-revenue producing telemarketers. | Quota carrying Inside Sales rep chartered with account management, mining the installed based and providing qualified leads to the field. |
| Phone activity. | Integrating tools into the sales process such as instant messaging, chat, Web conferencing, email and texting. |
| Yahoo search. | Stronger pre-call search tools such as Google, Before the Call, Jigsaw and Genius integrated into the CRM tool. |
| Outsourcing of lead generation. | Salesforce.com “add-ons.” |
| Calling people aligned to time zones. | Tracking when people are reviewing your email and calling them live. |
| Static web sites. | Small business and corporate blogs. |
| Broad marketing strokes that draw little response. | Personalization and greater customer segmentation. |
| Inside Sales teams based in corporate offices. | Telecommuting and remote workers. |
| SMB. | Fortune 1000. |
| Putting out fires and being in reactive mode. | Being proactive by keeping to your sacred hour of uninterrupted calls. |
| Teams getting skills training. | Managers getting skills training with their teams. |
| Local community. | Social media. |
| 80/20 rule. | The Long Tail. |
| Motoroal RAZR. | Apple’s iPhone. |
| eBay. | 1stdibs.com |
| Champion cocktails. | Wine slushies. |
| Fantasy football. | Fantasy bass fishing. |
| NBA. | NHL. |
| Danity Kane. | Dreamgirls. |
| Anderson Cooper. | Keith Olbermann. |
| Hilary Clinton. | Nancy Pelosi. |
| “Keep A Child Alive” I AM AFRICAN Campaign. | Project Red. |
| Bringing sexy back. | Bringing soldiers back. |
