There are three key skills for SDRs, BDRs, and inside sales professionals to cultivate that will help them exceed their goals. While there are a wide array of skills that may help inside sales professionals succeed, the continuous development of these skills is guaranteed to help your inside sales team keep improving their outreach.
First Key Skill: Coachability
We’ve said it before, but it bears repeating: coachability is the most important skill for inside sales professionals. There are constant opportunities for improvement in the sales process. To capitalize on them, your team will need to be able to quickly implement feedback.
Feedback comes in many forms. For example, tough questions and objections during conversations with prospects can provide great insight into their priorities. Your team can use that insight to adjust their introduction and pitch to get more prospects across the finish line. Learning from their peers during weekly stand-ups, roleplays, and review sessions can also surface new techniques. However, if your team members aren’t open to implementing those techniques, their sales will likely stagnate before long.
Second Key Skill: Communication
When Bandalier looks for SDRs and BDRs to join our outsourced inside sales teams, we search for great communicators. Great communication involves great listening skills. We look for folks who know how to get other people talking. Continuously honing your team’s communication skills is one of the best ways to expand your pipeline over time. Diversify your training sessions – make sure to reinforce your team’s active listening skills alongside their questioning and presentation skills.
One simple way to train all three skills simultaneously is through debates. Split your team into groups and assign each of them a topic to support. Our team prefers light-hearted topics, such as which dessert is best – this helps our team think outside the box during the discussion. Give each group time to present, take questions, rebut other teams, and share closing remarks. If possible, have a small group of judges participate to declare a winner. Engaging your team’s competitive spirit can be a great way to get everyone invested in training.
Third Key Skill: Curiosity
Natural curiosity makes sales calls a cinch. When inside sales professionals are genuinely intrigued by the challenges prospects face, they’ll ask great questions and dig deep to reach their pain points. This makes conversations more natural and will drive more engagement with your prospects.
Curiosity is one of the more challenging skills to coach team members on. You can tell your team members to ask better questions, but those changes are best accomplished through behavior modeling. Encourage your team to share their favorite questions during training or shadowing sessions.
To help your whole team practice asking questions, we recommend the ‘Question Game.’ To play, one person starts with one sentence and addresses a related question to a colleague. The respondent must answer the question and ask a new question of another person; the game only ends when every person has asked and answered a question. To add another layer of challenge, limit team members to asking open-ended questions during the game.
Assessing Key Skills for Inside Sales Professionals
Salespeople are great interviewees, and that can make it challenging to assess their skills during interviews. Maintaining a structured interview process will help close the gap. To learn more about how Bandalier evaluates and develops our team’s skills, contact us today.
