Are your inside salespeople executing the front end of your company's sales process, and generating prequalified leads for the field, or are they performing the simpler, but less valuable, telemarketing job?

In today's technology buying environment, where only 10% of companies' IT budget is available for new product purchases, it's critically important for tech vendors to have an inside sales team that can create truly prequalified leads for their field sales forces and partners to convert to customers.

Earlier this year, while on the phone with a software company CEO, I asked him about any burning issues in new business generation. He replied, "We need more leads." In fact, I'd been hearing that lament from quite a number of tech company executives lately.

So I decided to investigate the problem, and interviewed a sample of inside sales managers, field sales managers, field salespeople and marketing managers, to help me evaluate the current state of high tech inside sales. Here's a brief assessment:

At most companies, marketing generates interest in the company's offerings by hosting webinars, offering downloadable white papers, product specs, and customer success stories.

Web visitors are asked to identify themselves by filling in a few (or a lot) of boxes to attend the webinar, get the white paper and so forth. Then their names and collected data are sent to the inside sales team to telephone the prospects and see which ones are potential buyers.

Often, the inside salesperson asks a prospect if they have an active or potential project, a budget, their purchasing timeframe, and whether they are a decision maker, an influencer or a user. Is this customer-centric selling behavior?

S/he also tells the prospect about their product's features and benefits, and sends the "lead" to the field via the CRM system—dividing leads into three categories: A for an imminent decision; B for decisions 60-90 days out; and C for future decisions, say six months out. In whose opinion is the prospect qualified—the seller or the buyer?

If the prospect is an A, the inside salesperson sends an e-mail to the field salesperson to contact the prospect ASAP, often recommending a demo.

Some insides sales teams use scripts or checklists, while others don't, not wanting their salespeople to sound scripted. Some companies use questionnaires, to help sellers learn about the prospect's current product usage.

My concern about this approach to inside sales is that sellers aren't learning about the current situation that caused the prospect to learn about the seller's company or offerings.

Sellers aren't asking about buyers' goals, needs or problems for which a potential new solution exists.

And sellers seem to be telling buyers about their products' features and benefits, and not helping prospects visualize how they could achieve their goal or solve their problems by using the sellers' offerings

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