Post

When should a SaaS company split inside and outside sales teams?

A friend in sales at a very early stage startup asked me this yesterday and I legit couldn't respond. Have no idea because I've only ever been in larger structured orgs.

Do any of you startup savages have experience with this?

☁️ Software Tech

🧢 Sales Management

🏢 Org Chart

7 comments

Sort by:

BmajoR

Arsonist

Account Executive

I don't know at what point you would make that distinction, but I do know my company could greatly benefit from having a small outside sales team.

CuriousFox

WR Officer

Senior Account Executive

You are all inbound?

braintank

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

Hard to answer without additional details.

Are they making any money?

Sunbunny31

Politicker

Sr Sales Executive

ISRs usually focus on the smaller deals/smaller businesses, while the field focuses on enterprise. Is your company in a position to make those distinctions?

Pachacuti

Politicker

They call me Daddy, Sales Daddy

I guess if I was running things, it would be when the funnel has a clear delineation between SMB and Enterprise opportunities. Up till then I would probably have either geographic or industry-based focuses (depending on what is being sold).

DungeonsNDemos

Big Shot

Dialing for Initiative

How many people do they have? Smallest I would ever imagine is 6 and 6 (3 sdr / 3 AE spread) on both teams.
But this would heavily depend on what type of product and market they are in.

TennisandSales

Politicker

Enterprise Account Executive

look at calendars. If the AEs calendars are slammed and they are letting things fall through, that is a good indicator they need to hire / split inside and outside.

you also have to look at the volume of inbound leads (assuming thats what inside is for)