3 Reasons Why Every Inside Sales Team Needs an Intern
We recently hired an intern to join our list development team and I couldn’t be more thrilled! As our customer base grows, our list needs continue to grow as well. An inside sales team needs to have extra support from a list development standpoint, and adding an intern to your existing list development team can have a huge impact. We as an organization developed the position because we were finding that we could really provide more value to our clients if we had even more support solely focused on list building.
For example, I have a client that attended a tradeshow and had 500+ contacts for us to call...the only problem was that we only had a paper list of these contacts and an electronic version didn’t exist. If we didn’t have an intern to help us input the information into Excel, we probably would have to tell the client we wouldn’t be able to get through the list fast enough for what their needs were.
The list of how our internship position adds value every day goes on and on. Here are the top three reasons why I think you shouldn’t go one more quarter without developing this position.
1. You will have better Inside Sales Rep performance:
By taking on an intern to join your inside sales team, you can really improve your list quality. A lot of times, your inside reps end up adding contacts to their already existing lists on their own, or, you as a manager are responsible for pulling names from Jigsaw and other databases if your list development team is too swamped. Unfortunately, because we have so many other to-dos on a daily basis, we probably don’t spend as much time on these lists as we could, so the quality could be a lot better if you had an intern to focus on this.
2. You will have more time to manage your team and your reps will have more time to dial:
As I mentioned above, building lists is something that management and inside reps do everyday – and if you’re lucky, you have a list development team to help you. By having an intern to help you further in developing these lists, your time, and your rep’s time, can be spent doing other tasks. For example, instead of stopping their dials to filter in more contacts from Linked in or Jigsaw, your inside reps can spend that time dialing instead. If they come across a company they’d like to target, they can email the company name to the intern who can then import contacts for the rep right into the CRM system you use.
3. You will potentially have a future Inside Sales Rep:
While interning, students learn a great deal about your company – including everything from the way you run your business processes to how to utilize your CRM system. Eventually, and if it’s a fit for both the student and you, the intern can join your team and will already have a great understanding of how your company is run.
If you’ve ever thought about creating an internship position for your inside team and haven’t done so yet, I wouldn’t waste any more time thinking about it and just do it. You will be thrilled with the outcome!