today I'm going to talk to you about inside sales versus outside sales Pros cons examples of each inside sales you're selling to customers through the phone and the internet with your computer on your video conferencing Zoom Microsoft teams working out of your company office location or your home office location wfh work from home I know that that's what all of you guys want nowadays but if you're like me you like to turn up to your customers place of business or the residence face to face confront them hand them your business card and say I'm an
outside sales rep otherwise known as field sales and I'm here to sell to you in person I have sold millions of dollars of software as an inside sales rep and I've also sold tens of thousands of dollars in software as an in-person outside sales rep because I've gone on site to company HQ locations and today I want to outline the specific pros and cons of each so that you can come away from this video deciding which path is best for you how to start an inside sales go to outside sales and which specific jobs are
best suited to each of these career paths if you do sales for a living like I do hit the like button now as we think about inside sales I imagine that this is what a lot of you guys want to do because what I've observed is people want to work from home they don't want to be bothered with a commute with having to do all of this politicking with colleagues they just want to sit in their pajamas from the comfortable home on the couch with the dog Netflix PGA on the background sit there do enough
work to get by get your paycheck I'm here to tell you it's fine if you want to do that and I think some companies are leaning into this trend because the companies are thinking well man we can put all of our employees in these QBs or we could just let them work from home because that's what all of them want and maybe we could be more efficient as an organization and not have to pay for all this office space and that's a trend I've observed ever since 2020 companies are realizing people don't want want to
be in the office as much and we can still be efficient and productive as a company with people working remote so that's why they're investing more in these inside sales reps imagine a call center with a bunch of employees working in a big room with headsets on but just imagine each of those employees rather than going into that building they're just sitting out of their own homes and they don't have to be bothered with a lot of the the commutes and the expenses and they can be more happy satisfied as an employee so as you
think about you as the sales rep if that's where the ball is moving if that's where the trend one of the main pros of that to you is that you are more efficient as a sales rep because you can sit there in your home you don't have to worry about traveling and you can call upon 50 to 100 different companies if you look at your calendar nine to five you have dozens of call blocks where you could set up 15 30 minute calls with a different company every hour of the day so you could meet
with 10 15 different companies meanwhile an outside sales rep who has to actually sell on site in person if they have to show up to company office locations logistically there are challenges because geographically companies aren't just all sitting next to each other unless you're in a really big city or you're doing let's say door-to-door sales selling solar panels you can walk through a residential area but for B2B Sailors it's not as efficient and that is a major probe of inside sales that's what I love being an account executive sales development rep is I could just
call on all these different companies and I didn't have to really worry about going and ever meeting them in person because it was all through the phone and the internet another Pro of inside sales is that you can BS your way through a lot of meetings when you have an important meeting you can have notes up on a separate screen so if you don't really do a whole lot of preparation like I do you can sit there with your camera facing the customer your share your screen and then you got another screen with some notes
over here that has all of your prep work and it's much easier to actually take notes so being an inside sales rep you can really BS your way through a lot of meetings which is nice but the con of doing the inside sales is that it's actually going to be a bit harder to sell because it's more challenging to build authentic relationships with customers when you are just reliant on this digital communication because you can only see the face you can't really see their body and so much of communication is actually non-verbal they say 70
percent of community communication isn't even the words you say it's the body gestures the tone pitch and flexion and until we have Mark Zuckerberg and the metaverse come out where we can feel like we're in the same room as someone to the point where you can smell that they didn't put deodorant on you can smell their bad breath and still act like you don't feel it because you're trying to sell them it's going to be harder to build those relationships which is something to keep in mind and another con is that it's really easy to
fall into bad habits in 2020 when I was first forced to work fully remote I was an inside sales rep regardless I just completely I forgot about my morning routine because I woke up in my bed and walk five feet to my home office five feet to the bathroom five feet over here to the kitchen went to sleep repeated and you just get you kind of get lost from the world and I think it's it's hard to grow as a person trapped inside the four walls of your house which is inherent if you are an
inside sales rep and always work fully remote so so definitely important consideration meanwhile outside sales you got your business card which is pretty cool the main Pro is that it's easier to sell because when you were in person it's much simpler to build that relationship you can speak to that customer about the memories maybe you met up with them at an industry event maybe you took them to a sporting event maybe you just showed up to their office or took them to lunch they remember that because those in-person memories when you when you're actually it's
tangible you're there you remember the smells you remember the sounds and when you're just on the video it it it it's hard to build that connection another Pro of outside sales is that if you like to travel it could be perfect for you I knew a rep in my previous company an Enterprise sales rep based in Utah the company sent him out to New York to live on Wall Street so that he could live within a walking distance of all these big Banks so he could just show up to their office because they knew the
larger the sales cycle the larger the deal the more necessary it is to be in person because at that level it's all about trust and it's easier to build trust when you are in person on site at your customers place of residence or business so certainly things to keep in mind con of outside sales is that if you're traveling a lot it's easy to eat like trash so similar to working from home you can start to not care as much if you're always on the road selling to pharmacies for example you're eating fast food you're
living out of hotels you lose sight of those daily habits that you might have more time for if you don't have to worry about driving around or doing any sort of commutes foreign of outside sales is that you can get destroyed in real time so imagine door knocking trying to sell solar panels you have been in a house where some magazine sales are having to show up to your door you purposely shut the door you lock it and you act like you're not home because you don't even want to talk to them so imagine if
you're in that person's shoes and you have angry people that are stressed out that are like why are you here for example I did B2B sales I showed up to a customer's HQ I wanted to drop off some gift baskets to a VP I had shorts and a t-shirt on because I didn't think I was going to go on site that day and as soon as I walked in she looked at me it was like no chance you're getting in here you're not dressed appropriately so when you're in person it's much more direct confrontation than
it is if you're inside sales just calling through the phone you're not you're 100 miles away from that person rejecting you it's much easier to let that go whereas in person you feel like you know what there's actually there's actually could be a problem here if I keep at this and keep overcoming objections they're either going to call the police or they're going to try and fight me if they're bigger than me so those are overall how I think about inside sales versus outside sales the best career path for inside sales is Tech sales and
the best career path for outside sales is tax sales and let me tell you the reason why as we think about technology and software we know that Tech is the future so you're in a modern career field you don't have to worry about AI disrupting your job you don't have to worry about they're not being product Market fit unless you're at a Bad Company you don't have to worry about it in not being in demand software Tech it is here to stay it is the future it's a performance-based career and as you start as a
sales development rep like I did you are an inside sales rep my first year I made 77 000 as a sales development rep and then I promoted multiple times to an account executive and the higher up the ranks you go you start to slowly transition to more of a hybrid outside sales rep because you have fewer and fewer companies accounts you're working with and like I described earlier you got to go to New York you got to go to where your customers are because you're only working with five to ten companies and trust is super
important my final year as an account executive I made three hundred and two thousand dollars so imagine starting as an inside sales rep moving to a hybrid inside sales outside sales if I would have kept moving up I'd move to outside sales and there's so much money in it as well so if you're interested in learning more about what tech sales is why it might be right for you and how to actually get started I've linked my free intro course below I am the tech sales instructor at course careers where I have helped hundreds of
folks break into Tech sales without any degrees no experience so if you found value in today's video I promise you you'll find 10 times more value in that free intro course down below let me know what questions you have in the comments you can also go connect with me on LinkedIn I'm super receptive there if you want to have a conversation with me I'm an open door and once again hit the like button and subscribe to the channel now if you haven't already and I will talk to you in the next video
