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Are you searching for an inside sales manager job description? Get to know about the duties, responsibilities, qualifications, and skills requirements of an inside sales manager. Feel free to use our inside sales manager job description template to produce your own inside sales manager job description. We also provide you with information about the salary you can earn as an inside sales manager.

 

Who is an Inside Sales Manager?

Inside Sales Manager is a sales professional who coordinates a sales team who reaches customers by phone or online, rather than traveling to meet them in person. They are office workers who sell goods over the phone, via email, or online, either by pursuing leads or making cold calls.

How does inside sales work?

Inside sales managers frequently collaborate with a group of other inside sales associates in a shared office setting.

Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) and Business Development Representatives are typically the two groups that make up the inside sales department (BDRs). SDRs concentrate on inbound sales, such as warm leads from prospective customers who have downloaded content, requested a demo, used live chat, or registered for a webinar.

These warm leads often come from commercial sectors and small businesses. SDRs get in touch with these prospects and enter their data into a CRM platform so that an Account Executive (AE), a more experienced salesperson, may start nurturing these opportunities in the sales pipeline.

Cold callers are business development representatives. These field sales representatives concentrate on more exclusive business and commercial opportunities. A qualified lead is then forwarded to an Account Executive.

Through the use of these sales process steps, SDRs and BDRs can continuously supply leads from the small business/small commercial and large business/enterprise market segments. The sales pipeline is followed by account executives as these opportunities develop.

 

Inside Sales Manager Job Description

What is an inside sales manager job description? an inside sales manager job description is simply a list of duties and responsibilities of an inside sales manager in an organization. Below are the inside sales manager job description examples you can use to develop your resume or write an inside sales manager job description for your employee. Employers can also use it to sieve out job seekers when choosing candidates for interviews.

The duties and responsibilities of an inside sales manager include the following:

• Oversee and manage the inside sales manager reps team’s job.
• Coach, train, assess, and keep an eye on the performance of salespeople.
• Establish and monitor key performance indicators for sales.
• Maintain control over sales projects to achieve deadlines.
• Conduct sales analysis, create sales reports, and make improvement suggestions.
• Create revenue predictions for the coming months, quarters, and years.
• Consider user input to come up with concepts for new features or goods.
• Investigate and learn how to improve customer engagement.
• Make sure the rules and regulations for sales, finances and law are followed.
• Create a culture of open communication within the sales team.
• Teach inside sales representatives how to successfully respond to typical client inquiries.
• Make sure that the inside sales team receives qualified leads to pursue by working with the marketing department.
• Keep thorough records of all leads and transactions.
• Create realistic sales estimates to help the firm make informed decisions.
• Analyze the inside sales team’s performance.
• Suggest and put into action changes to the present sales methods and procedures if needed.
• Deal with and address client complaints.

 

Qualifications

• A bachelor’s degree in marketing, business management, business administration, or a comparable field.
• Certification as a Certified Inside Sales Professional (CISP) and an Accredited Inside Sales Manager (AISM).
• A track record of success as an inside sales manager.
• Excel and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software expertise

 

Essential Skills

1. Outstanding Listening Skills: Active listening abilities are essential for an inside sales manager representative. This is particularly crucial while speaking to a client on the phone because they can’t observe your body language or eye contact. You can establish a rapport with your consumers by using active listening techniques to comprehend their needs and show them that you care about them.
2. People Skills: In this industry, being able to connect with your clients is a crucial skill to possess. They are more likely to buy from you if you have a good relationship with them. Sales and your career as a whole will benefit from your knowledge of your target market and their points of origin. You must interact with a wide range of personalities and ages as an inside sales manager representative. To establish a rapport with your consumer, it’s critical to comprehend them.
3. Ability to Manage Time Effectively: All inside sales manager reps would benefit greatly from having strong time management abilities. Your ability to effectively manage your time will determine how much time you have to speak with other clients and perhaps close more deals. Your revenues will increase, but so will your productivity.
4. Outstanding Organizational Skills: It’s crucial to possess strong organizational abilities if you’re managing several accounts. You are less likely to forget about a client or customer the more organized you are. Being structured in this position will also help you feel less stressed.
5. Social media Management Skills: Even though not all inside sales positions may require the use of social media, it’s crucial to be proficient in it just in case. A working understanding of the various social media channels can be quite helpful when prospecting. Nowadays, there are a lot of platforms being used, therefore it’s crucial to be aware of the best strategies and techniques for making use of them.
6. Efficiency in Customer Relationship Management Tools: You must be familiar with the CRM you use as an inside sales manager representative. Your workplace productivity will significantly increase if you know how to use it appropriately. You may use several CRM services to simplify your daily life, such as mass email sending and task reminders.
7. IT Proficiency Skills: You will need to be familiar with several different types of technology to perform your duties as an inside sales manager representative. You need to be knowledgeable about the software and technology your business uses given the rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.
8. Research Skills: You must be an excellent researcher with the capacity to gather precise information on rivals, market trends, existing vendors, and your various potential clients if you want to succeed as an inside sales manager representative. When it comes to marketing the many items your business produces, the data and knowledge you collect will enable you to make wiser choices.
9. Collaborative Abilities: A very useful skill in this position is the ability to work well with others as a team and effectively collaborate with other sales reps. You’ll probably collaborate with sales leaders on bigger clients as well. Empathy and working well with others will help you both close a sale for your business.
10. Ability to Manage Conflict: As an inside sales management representative, you will undoubtedly encounter a variety of rejections and grievances. The stronger your sales performance, the better you will be at handling disputes and maintaining a positive attitude.
11. Prospecting skills: Prospecting skills are essential for inside sales manager representatives. A prospect is a potential customer for the goods your business is marketing. Prospecting successfully ensures that you’ll make sales to customers in the future.
12. Closing skills: Your ability to develop the aforementioned skills will have a significant impact on your closing abilities, or more simply put, the likelihood that you will close more deals. This ability essentially represents the effectiveness of all the other abilities.
13. Problem Solving Skills: One of the most essential qualities for the position is the ability to naturally solve problems, given that an inside sales manager’s primary responsibility is to increase the efficiency of systems and procedures. Successful inside sales managers possess this skill, which allows them to identify a variety of problems, determine their nature and causes, come up with solutions, and put those solutions into practice. A specific collection of sub-skills, including critical thinking and focus, are needed for this process.

 

There are four fundamental phases to solving any issue:

• • Definition of a problem: Although this may be the simplest step in fixing a problem, it is the most important and frequently missed one. Why? You must be completely confident, though, that you’re dealing with the actual issue at hand and not simply one of its symptoms. For instance, if you’re not completing enough sales during a certain quarter, your initial thought might be that the quantity or caliber of leads arriving at your desk is the issue. But if you dig deeper and are honest with yourself, you might find that the true problem is something like inadequate training or an excessive workload.
  • Generation of alternatives: When faced with fresh challenges, another temptation is to jump to the first new answer that occurs to you rather than purposefully slowing down for a moment (when time is on your side) to explore a variety of options. Starting with your own (and your organization’s) basic convictions to identify what the ideal conclusion should ultimately look like is the finest way to generate different options. When you’re ready, it’s time to move on to more focused brainstorming exercises that can assist produce original ideas that can later be put to the test.
  • Evaluation and selection of alternatives: The finest problem solvers can tell the difference between the first workable answer and the best one that can be found, thus it’s critical to apply a variety of factors while deciding how to proceed. Think about things like whether or not everyone on your team accepts the current alternative, how a particular alternative can lead to additional unanticipated problems, and whether or not the proposed solution can be implemented within the parameters of your job function and corporate standards.
  • Implementation of solutions: Your job isn’t complete until you’ve established feedback channels to assure monitoring and testing of the future results versus your pre-experiment expectations. This happens after you’ve selected the best option to test out. Realize that changes in the future are unavoidable (since selling is a constantly expanding and changing activity), and plan to upgrade even your tried-and-true solution over time to stay adaptable.

14. Effective Communication Skills: Inside sales managers require great written and verbal communication skills to efficiently coordinate and implement their plans and procedures because the majority of industrial operations involve several personnel and departments. The capacity to keep in touch with several departments at once and persuade management and staff that the approaches you wish to use can boost industrial efficiency is necessary for successfully carrying out the function. Higher productivity is often the outcome of effective relationship management with everyone involved in the development and manufacturing processes.
15. Project planning: Inside sales managers need to be adept in project planning because they must organize people and equipment to guarantee that tasks are done on schedule and to specifications. Inside sales managers must choose the right number of personnel and technological resources for each project without using up too many or too few of the company’s resources. This entails setting up rigid schedules for the operation of the machinery as well as scheduling employees according to their knowledge and availability.
16. Quality management: Inside sales managers’ primary responsibility is streamlining procedures, thus they must be able to spot opportunities for improvement. As a result, they must oversee quality-control operations and constantly monitor the development and manufacturing processes for any subpar components. They must maintain good working relationships with suppliers and guarantee that all raw materials meet a set of quality criteria as part of the quality control process.
17. Critical Thinking Skills: Inside sales managers frequently have to use reasoning and logic to weigh the benefits and drawbacks of each suggested solution. They are also better able to handle complicated issues and put solutions into action that make the best use of the resources available to the organization. They must exercise critical judgment while choosing which course of action to take in light of the constrained time and resources at their disposal.
18. Management Skills: An inside sales manager’s duties include overseeing both staff and resources. They must choose the most qualified workers for each job, inspire them to uphold strict professional standards, and manage their work. When it comes to resource management, they must make sure that all tools, infrastructure, and raw materials are available and being used properly.
19. Product knowledge: The most crucial ability you’ll need as an inside sales manager representative is probably product expertise. In other words, you need to be very familiar with the goods you’re selling. Customers will inevitably ask you a variety of questions, so it’s crucial to learn as much as you can about every facet of the product—from its advantages to its drawbacks—since you can never be sure what they’ll ask. This will assist you in making a compelling argument to both clients and customers, which should result in a sale. Gaining the trust of your clients and consumers will also be facilitated by your knowledge of the product and its applications.
20. Storytelling Skills: Almost all excellent salespeople are skilled at weaving their pitch into a gripping tale that accomplishes more than simply explaining why a client should buy. In addition to helping prospects make the dots between a product’s or service’s potential benefits and their particular circumstances, storytelling also helps to forge deeper connections that go beyond the frequently transactional nature of a sales engagement.

Why are stories so effective at selling? The answer is because we often remember them. The truth is that by framing facts, data, and examples inside the context of an engaging story, you are much more likely to hold your prospect’s attention and help them make connections between the main ideas in your story and their reality.

Better memory is the ideal byproduct of imbuing your prospect with a memorable story. When you succeed in doing this, prospects will think of you when they find themselves in a circumstance similar to the one you portrayed in your tale or are about to do so.

 

How to Become an Inside Sales Manager

1. Obtain a Bachelor’s Degree: Aspiring inside sales managers must complete a bachelor’s degree after high school. Management, marketing, accounting, finance, economics, or statistics are all good major options.
2. Obtain Early Work Experience: It’s highly uncommon for a recent college graduate to be hired for inside sales management because the position isn’t entry-level. Therefore, prospective inside sales managers must have some practical experience after graduating from college. Employers typically look for applicants with one to five years of sales experience. On-the-job training is some of the best education money can buy, thus this period is frequently incredibly formative. Aspiring inside sales managers will not only gain an understanding of how a salesforce operates daily and what it takes to manage one, but they will also discover which market segment they are most at ease in. Additionally, some firms will pay for a worker to pursue graduate-level study.
3. Obtain a Master’s Degree: Not all inside sales managers must hold a graduate degree, but those in the highest positions are more and more likely to do so. Graduates of an MBA program have a thorough understanding of business principles and the leadership abilities required to inspire teams to achieve short-, mid-, and long-term operational goals. Various factors, including a strong undergraduate GPA (of at least 3.0), GMAT or GRE scores, work experience, letters of recommendation, and a personal statement, may be required for admission, depending on the school.
4. Consider Professional Certification (Optional): Many inside sales managers pursue professional certification as a means of advancing their education and showcasing their competence after receiving their Master’s degree. These certificates, which are provided by professional societies, are a peer-reviewed mark of distinction that can propel a resume to the top of the pile and persuade employers of a candidate’s dedication to best practices.

• • The National Association of Sales Professionals (NASP) offers certification as a Certified Professional Sales Leader(CPSL). The CPSL improves the strategic leadership process and integrates the emotional and psychological drivers of team action. It was created for sales managers and other sales professionals pursuing senior leadership roles.
  • Sales & Marketing Executives International (SMEI) offers certification as a Certified Sales Executive(CSE). This program, which consists of an online self-study course, is intended for sales professionals who are now in or who aspire to be in management roles. It covers the theoretical underpinnings and practical implementations of directing a salesforce that is globally focused.

 

Where to Work as an Inside Sales Manager

• Sales Department
• E-Commerce
• Physical Stores
• Advertising Agencies
• Individual Companies
• B2B Industries
• SaaS Companies
• B2C Industries

 

Inside Sales Manager Salary Scale

Inside Sales Managers in the US receive a total annual salary of $125,168. The UK average income for an inside sales manager is £26811 per year, with a range of £23000 to £37500.

Sales, Marketing and Communications

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