InsideSales.com (A) and (B)

Frank  Cespedes

Teaching Note | HBS Case Collection | April 2018

InsideSales.com (A) and (B)

Abstract

Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 817-018 and 817-042. InsideSales.com (ISC) has been successful selling its software to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB). But for various reasons, the founders see “the next stage of growth” as building a scalable sales and service organization for large enterprise customers and are evaluating three options for doing that. The case and teaching note examine a number of common challenges in scaling a venture, why inside sales models have been a fast-growing go-to-market model in the 21st century, and the impact of new customer segments with different buying processes on that sales model. The (B) case explains the decisions made at ISC and outlines the implementation issues inherent in that decision.

Keywords: Corporate Entrepreneurship; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Organizational Design; Customer Relationship Management; Growth Management; Marketing Strategy; Salesforce Management; Talent and Talent Management; Technology Industry;

Language: English

Format: Print

13 pages

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Citation:

Cespedes, Frank. "InsideSales.com (A) and (B)." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 818-122, April 2018.

Sales methodologies play an important role. A common approach in a sales force allows for consistency, dissemination of best practices, acceleration of learning, and it helps the firm to scale because management then has common metrics to monitor and evaluate. However, it’s rare that the same methodology is relevant across the buying situations encountered by salespeople in a market. This article discusses and provides examples of variables relevant to analyzing sales tasks and evaluating the relevance of a selling methodology: differences within an industry, within a category, and when target buyers change.

Common advice in sales is to provide insights to customers during sales calls. But this advice generally stays at the level of “tell people something they don’t already know” and results in sales conversations littered with many irrelevant factoids. This article provides examples of how salespeople develop and deliver resonant insights in customer conversations and why the framing of insights depends upon to whom they are talking and when in the sales cycle.

Most research and training in sales focus on acquiring new customers. But winning back previous customers is increasingly important: mergers, choice in supply chains, and uncertainty about trade wars mean that B2B customers are constantly re-evaluating relationships with suppliers and making changes. Meanwhile, large buyers account, on average, for over 25% of revenues at publicly traded firms, up from 10% in the 1980s. This article discusses how and why the process for reacquiring lost customers requires a different approach than acquiring new ones and illustrates the process and its implications via a case example.

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InsideSales.com (A) and (B)

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