Consider the importance and structure of inside sales to grow your B2B business

I work at a company called DM Solutions, where I am in charge of promoting the business, including marketing and sales support, for our “Ullogi” logistics agency service aimed at e-commerce businesses.

It’s already been four years since the service began, and I feel like we’ve entered a new phase.

Market outlook for EC logistics agency services

E-commerce logistics agency services are phone number data a solution for the specialized industry of e-commerce. Furthermore, if a logistics company does not have the “functions and equipment” that are suited to the products, storage conditions, and system operation conditions, they will not even consider introducing the service. An easy-to-understand example of “functions and equipment” here is “temperature control.” If they do not have equipment for refrigeration or freezing, they cannot even propose the service to customers. Although Ullogi does not have such equipment, we have been able to collaborate with external warehouses, which has expanded the range of proposals we can make.

However, there are cases where we cannot five recommendations from yc to b2b startups accept requests due to physical constraints such as area issues and capacity.

Unlike services based on thinking such as “marketing support,” “sales support,” or “consulting,” there are many cases where we are unable to make proposals due to circumstances like those described above.

In this way, unless an e-commerce logistics agency service can meet the functions and facilities required by the customer, it will not lead to negotiations or projects.

Fortunately, Ullogi has accumulated sales and profits from other divisions of DM Solutions, and has invested not only in advertising and human resources, but also in warehouse facilities. This allows us to offer a wide range of proposals. It is often difficult for ordinary logistics companies to make similar investments, but we are able to do so, which is why we have been able to grow our business.

Slowing business growth

The resolution of things that were not clear at the beginning
, such as our own assets and situation
, understanding of our customers and the market,
and the competitive situation,
has improved, and we are now able to see an overall policy of what a good strategy would be. In reality, we have not yet fully implemented a strategy, but through four years of providing services, we have accumulated assets and know-how in marketing and sales, and our knowledge of center operation has also improved. We are currently working on these things while making minor changes.

Although the company has been increasing  investment in the business, including the opening of a warehouse in a property purchased by the company in June 2024, I realized that the growth rate has not changed significantly.
Therefore, I feel that it is time to review the way things are done so far, especially to restructure our sales strategy (marketing and sales).

Timing when lead generation increased

Although lead acquisition has progressed smoothly over the past year, the number of companies adopting the service has not increased significantly. There are various reasons for this, but one of the major reasons is that there is an increase in leads whose issues (≒ needs) have not yet been identified.

I won’t go into details here, but our current challenge is that we don’t have a system in place to follow up on those leads.

In other businesses of DM Solutions, sales are in charge of a series of tasks from lead handling to negotiations, contracts, and existing handling. Based on this flow, Ullogi also has a flow of acquiring leads ⇒ handing them over to sales, and then handling the sales.

If a business has issues with logistics, it is enough to approach them for a business negotiation and then turn it into a project. However, there are cases where they do not feel that there are any issues with logistics, or it is not their area of ​​expertise. In that case, it is meaningless to force an approach for a business negotiation. If you try to make a pushy sales pitch to a lead who has no interest in our services, you will ruin the opportunity.

Organizing this follow-up system is the challenge for inside sales.

About Inside Sales

Some of our departments employ inside sales, where the main activities are BDRs (Business Development Representatives), which are more like telemarketing.

Although BDR is an important sales method, Ullogi, a specialized industry solution, has had a difficult time with telemarketing in the past. We now believe that approaching house lists is the most important thing.

Sales generally handles SDR-like activities, but basically, most of the time they deal with leads with obvious issues. For leads with no obvious issues, marketing only makes contact with them through email newsletters. When it comes to contacting those leads, it is necessary to have not only knowledge of logistics, but also knowledge about EC as a whole, especially hypotheses about marketing and product categories. However, if there are no issues with EC logistics, it is necessary to build trust through communication with customers. At the moment, it is difficult for busy salespeople to respond flexibly to such requests.

The challenge is to create a model for inside sales

In particular, rather than creating KPIs and organizing the team, the short-term goal is to collect and classify specific case studies and organize the implementation methods. First, we aim to maximize the number of business negotiations, and then we want to create a flow to shift to quality after increasing the number.

We hope that these types of activities central african leads will increase the variety of points of contact and, as a result, increase the number of people who become interested in Ullogi.