Ian Heller in the video below makes a very good argument that Customer Services Reps are not Inside Salespeople. He argues that for a company to grow you need to create two separate teams – one for customer service and one for inside sales.

While Customer Service Reps are great at answering questions and solving problems, they tend to shy away from making sales calls or up-selling. Inside Salespeople, on the other hand, love making sales calls because they earning commissions and bonuses, and have a greater incentive to be more assertive than Customer Service reps.

I once worked for a company that tried to encourage their customer service team to do sales. The results were dismal. The company eventually created a separate sales team.

Now with that said, that doesn’t mean you should discourage Customer Service Reps from not selling. On the contrary, by all means, encourage it because some Customer Service Reps may develop a knack for selling, and decide to switch teams. I’ve actually seen Customer Service Reps transfer to an Inside Sales Team because they discover they had the talent and skills to sell. They also loved the potential of earning more money.

On the flip side, don’t discourage your Inside Salespeople from doing customer service work either. Nothing makes a customer more angry than being told that “it’s not my job, let me switch you over to customer service.” Bad move. If a salesperson can solve a customer service problem, let him do it. If the issue is too complex, the salesperson should admit it, and then transfer the call to customer service.

My point is this – while I agree with Mr. Heller that there should be two separate teams, each team needs to work together.

Here is his video below –