Build Inside Sales Now – Before Your Growth Strategy Stalls
In my work with lower mid-market PE-backed companies, I’ve seen a clear shift: building an inside sales function is no longer just a cost-saving move, it has become an essential lever for driving revenue growth.
With more than 80% of B2B sales interactions now taking place through digital channels, traditional field-only models are losing ground. For private equity firms pursuing bolt-on strategies or expanding into new verticals, the ability to generate, qualify, and close leads remotely is not just efficient – it is essential.
The challenge is that most portfolio companies are not set up to do this well. In this article, we break down when inside sales works, where it often fails, and how to build a structure that actually delivers results.
The Challenge: New Verticals, New Sales Realities
A common playbook in private equity involves acquiring companies to expand a platform’s reach across new industries. What often gets overlooked is how different those industries actually sell.
Relationship-based sales teams that thrived in legacy markets are often a poor fit when the target vertical is more transactional. Field reps who’ve spent years working long-cycle, referral-driven deals may hit a wall trying to prospect into fast-paced sectors where buyers expect same-day follow-up and short buying cycles.
That mismatch was exactly what a $90M power rental company experienced when it entered the industrial space. With Craig Group’s support, they created a segmented go-to-market plan, doubled the sales team, and launched their first inside sales role. Within 90 days, they were generating 2 to 3 new qualified opportunities per week in the new market.
What Inside Sales Really Means
Inside sales typically refers to a sales function that connects with customers remotely – by phone, email, video, or chat. These reps don’t travel to visit prospects. Instead, they focus on the early stages of the sales process:
- Prospecting and outbound outreach
- Inbound lead follow-up and qualification
- Setting meetings or demos for field AEs
- In some cases, full-cycle selling for transactional or B2C deals
These roles are sometimes labeled BDRs (Business Development Reps), SDRs (Sales Development Reps), or ISRs (Inside Sales Reps). Their toolkits usually include LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, sequencing tools, and CRM-integrated workflows.
Inside sales can also extend into customer success – renewing smaller accounts, identifying upsell opportunities, or offloading lower-complexity tasks from field reps. And it’s growing fast. As of Q1 2025, inside sales reps make up over 40% of high-growth B2B sales teams, according to Spotio’s 2025 Sales Statistics report (Spotio, 2025).
Why Field Reps Struggle to Shift
When PE firms decide it’s time to “do inside sales,” they often start by asking the existing sales team to take on new duties. But that’s rarely effective.
In many industrial and manufacturing companies, reps haven’t prospected in years. They’ve relied on referrals, bid boards, or repeat buyers. Expecting them to jump into a 50-dials-per-day motion overnight isn’t realistic.That’s exactly what we saw at a sanitation services company serving municipalities and job sites. Craig Group restructured their field-only model into a hybrid structure with defined inside roles, qualification processes, and tech enablement. The result? A 31% lift in closed deals within the first year.
What Makes Inside Sales Work
We’ve led transitions across sectors – from manufacturing to utilities to SaaS. Every successful inside sales build shares five elements:
1. Role Clarity
Lack of clear role definition causes confusion and friction. In one case with a $78M manufacturer, we stood up an outbound inside team from scratch. Prospecting, qualification, and follow-up were clearly mapped to avoid overlap with field reps. That clarity drove a 64% increase in qualified opportunities in just six months.
2. Metrics That Drive Accountability
Inside sales is a metrics-driven game. Call volume, connect rate, conversion rate, and pipeline coverage all matter. Without dashboards and coaching cadences, activity declines and ROI suffers. Companies with clearly tracked KPIs are more likely to exceed sales targets, especially when CRM data quality is high (CRM.org, 2025).
3. CRM and Workflow Discipline
A CRM isn’t optional for firms starting inside sales (or for any sales team in 2025 in my opinion!) Teams that use CRM effectively see higher conversion rates and shorter sales cycles. In fact, CRM adoption among inside reps reached 73% in 2025, driven by better UX and integration with call and email tools (WeShare, 2025).
4. The Right Talent
The best inside reps are coachable, digitally fluent, and resilient. They’re not necessarily former field sellers. In a recent Craig Group engagement with a parking infrastructure firm, building a clear inside sales hiring profile and onboarding plan laid the groundwork for scalable growth.
5. Alignment Across Functions
Inside sales can’t succeed in a silo. Marketing must deliver qualified leads, and field reps need to trust handoffs. We embed feedback loops between SDRs, AEs, and marketing in every engagement we run.
Why Inside Sales Is a PE-Backed Advantage
It’s not just about cost savings. Though the economics are compelling—an inside sales call costs roughly $50, compared to $308 for a field visit (Spotio, 2025)—the real value is in speed, scalability, and visibility. At an electrical distributor we supported, optimizing the inside sales function increased net-new customer growth by 45% and lifted average deal size by over 20%. That level of growth is critical in a hold period where every quarter matters.
Final Word: It’s Not Just a Role, It’s a System
Too often, companies treat inside sales as a set of tasks. In reality, it’s a system. One that touches talent, process, tech, and culture. If built right, it becomes a launchpad for efficient, scalable growth, and a magnet for PE value creation.
If you’re an operating partner or portfolio executive looking to expand into new markets, shorten the sales cycle, or increase pipeline velocity, it’s time to consider whether you’ve built that system or just assigned someone a headset and a quota. Craig Group can help you design and scale a revenue engine that actually delivers. Let’s talk.
Craig Group Partner Ajay Joshi is a seasoned revenue operations consultant with over 20 years of experience enhancing operational and financial performance across sales, marketing, operations, and technology. His expertise spans over 20 industries, with a strong focus on private equity-backed firms in the SaaS, manufacturing, and industrial services sectors. Connect with him on LinkedIn.