What is inside sales? A practical B2B guide

The term comes from a simple split. Outside sales reps travel to the customer. Inside sales reps stay inside the building and sell over the phone. That split made sense when a sales call meant a car, a briefcase and a day in someone's boardroom. Today most B2B buying happens on screens, so the line has blurred, but the term has stuck and it still describes a real way of organising a sales team.

In practice, inside sales means three things. The rep works remotely from the buyer. The rep runs a high number of conversations a week, because nobody is losing half a day to travel. And the work is measured, because almost every touch happens in a system that logs it: the dialler, the email tool and the CRM.

Inside sales is not the same as telemarketing. Telemarketing usually means scripted, high-volume calling with a single outcome, often a sale on the call. B2B inside sales is consultative: reps research accounts, ask questions, qualify, book meetings and manage deals over weeks or months. If you want the difference in detail, our guide to what B2B telemarketing is covers it.

Most growing B2B companies end up with both. Inside reps cover more accounts at a lower cost per conversation. Field reps earn their cost on large, complex deals where a site visit, a workshop or a dinner changes the outcome. The question is not which model is better. It is which deals justify the cost of being in the room.

A common Australian pattern is inside first, field later. A software company selling into Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane starts with inside reps who cover the whole country, then adds a field rep in one city once the deal sizes there justify the travel. Perth and Auckland stay inside for longer, because the flights cost more than the extra close rate is worth.

Inside sales teams split the work into specialist roles. The split exists because finding new buyers and closing deals need different skills, different daily rhythms and different measures of success. One rep doing both usually does the urgent part, closing, and lets prospecting slide.

• Sales development representative (SDR). Owns the top of the funnel. Calls, emails and messages target accounts, qualifies them and books meetings for account executives. Measured on qualified meetings held. Our guide to what an SDR is covers the role in depth.
• Business development representative (BDR). In many companies the same job as an SDR. Where the titles are split, BDRs usually focus on outbound to named accounts and SDRs on inbound leads, but it varies by company.
• Account executive (AE). Takes the meeting and runs the deal: discovery, demo, proposal, negotiation and close. Measured on revenue closed.
• Account manager. Looks after existing customers: renewals, expansion and the relationship. Measured on retention and growth. See our guide to upselling and cross-selling in B2B.
• Sales manager. Hires, coaches and runs the numbers. In small teams the founder often does this job. See the sales management guide.

The best inside reps protect their calling time like a meeting with a customer. Calling is the activity that creates pipeline, and it is the first thing to disappear when the day fills with admin, internal meetings and email.

Timing matters as much as discipline. In Nousu Collective's data from 218,000+ dials into Australian businesses, 10am to 11am in the prospect's local time is the peak window at a 22% connect rate, and 2pm to 3pm is second at 19%. Over the 12pm to 1:30pm lunch dip the connect rate falls to 9%, and after 5pm to 5%. So a good inside sales day is built around those two blocks.

If your buyers sit in several time zones, run the blocks in their local time, not yours. Our best time to cold call guide shows how to build a calling day across Australia, New Zealand and Singapore.

Inside sales is easy to measure and easy to measure badly. Dials are the number everyone can see, so they become the number everyone manages. But dials are an input. What you want is the conversion at each stage, so you know which stage to fix.

Work these numbers forward from your own activity with the meetings per dial calculator, which flags the weakest stage against the figures above. For the full set of SDR measures, see our SDR metrics and benchmarks.

An inside team runs on a small number of tools. Buying more tools rarely fixes a team that is not using the first three well.

• CRM. The record of every account, contact, activity and deal. If it is not in the CRM, it did not happen.
• Dialler. Logs every call and outcome against the contact, and makes calling fast. A good dialler pays for itself in time saved between calls.
• Contact data. Verified direct numbers and mobiles for named contacts. Nousu's industry figures count only dials to verified direct numbers, and their connect rates sit well above the 14% all-dials average.
• Email sequencing. Sends and tracks follow-up email from the rep's own mailbox, within the rules of the Spam Act 2003.
• LinkedIn. Research and warm-up before the call. A prospect who accepts a personalised connection request is about twice as likely to take a call from the same SDR within 30 days, in Nousu's data.

We publish the exact stack we run on our sales tools page.

The first hire decides whether inside sales works for you. Hire someone who has done the job, not someone who has managed people who did it. They need to be on the phones from week one, and you need someone who can tell you within a month whether the list and the message are working.

Expect a ramp. A new rep needs time to learn the product, the market and the objections, and the first month of meetings rarely reflects the third. Our SDR onboarding playbook sets out a 90-day plan.

Hiring for the phone

CVs and interviews reward people who present well. Inside sales rewards people who call well, take rejection without sulking and keep going on the fortieth dial. Test for that directly.

1. Phone screen first. Make the first contact a phone call, unannounced but polite. How a candidate handles an unexpected call from a stranger is the closest thing to the job you will see.
2. A prepared role play. Send a one-page brief on a real target account a day ahead and ask them to open the call, ask two questions and ask for a meeting. Play a mildly difficult buyer. You are looking for structure, curiosity and a clear ask, not polish.
3. A coaching test. Give one piece of specific feedback and run the role play again. Whether they change what they do in five minutes tells you more than anything else in the process.
4. Activity references. Ask previous managers how many conversations the candidate had in a typical week and how they responded to a bad month, not just whether they were nice to work with.

Outsourcing the SDR part of inside sales makes sense when you need pipeline faster than you can hire, train and manage a team, or when you are testing a new market before committing headcount. It makes less sense when your sale needs deep product knowledge on the first call, or when you already have a strong SDR manager with time to spare.

The cost comparison is not salary against fee. An in-house SDR needs a manager, data, tools, a desk and a ramp, and carries the risk of a bad hire. Our in-house vs outsourced SDR cost analysis works through the full numbers.

If you outsource, hold the provider to the same stage metrics you would use for your own team, and insist that every number is on your own list, in your own CRM, so the results stay yours. Our questions to ask an SDR agency covers what to check before you sign.

Most inside sales teams that underperform are not short of effort. They are short of structure. The same handful of problems shows up again and again, and each one has a straightforward fix.

The fix is almost never a new tool. It is a clearer definition, a protected calendar or a coaching habit. Diagnose the stage first with the meetings per dial calculator, then change one thing at a time so you can see what worked.

Inside sales by deal size

The shape of inside sales changes with the size of the deal. For small, fast deals, one rep can prospect, demo and close in a few calls, and speed matters more than depth. For mid-sized deals, the SDR and account executive split pays for itself, because the account executive's time is too valuable to spend on first calls. For large deals, inside sales usually handles the first stages and a field or senior rep joins for workshops and negotiation.

• Small deals. One rep, short cycle, high volume. Measure calls to close.
• Mid-sized deals. SDR books, account executive closes. Measure meetings, opportunities and win rate.
• Large deals. Inside team opens and qualifies, senior or field rep closes. Measure pipeline created and stage conversion.