My first real job out of college was as a supervisor at the front desk of a business hotel just outside of Boston. It was not the most glamorous position but it did teach me the importance of open communication from department to department, as this particular hotel was quite chaotic.
When I “stepped up” into my first Jr. Inside Sales role I thought things would be different, but within a week I was struck by the lack of communication I had with the sales team. My cube was placed smack dab in the middle of the marketing department with 5 other Jr. Inside Sales reps that were lacking as much direction as I was. We were tasked with following up on web hits, attendees to webinars and any other cold lists of target companies that marketing felt fit the profile of company we should be calling on. Anything that needed to be communicated to sales from the inside sales reps usually went through our sales operations manager or through marketing. Since our salaries were funded through marketing budgets, and we were perceived as "telemarketers", we were only allowed communication with marketing. Another challenge was that the sales team didn't have time to do any hand holding since they were too busy traveling and attempting to close business.
It seemed so foreign to me to not be allowed to communicate directly with the outside sales reps. At the hotel we would simply call or walk down to the department we needed answers from. Even if it wasn't the most pleasant conversation, we eventually found some common ground which allowed the team to work more seamlessly from that point forward.
Over the next few months we were able to pull down meetings with some of the low hanging fruit, but we struggled mightily to navigate through the target accounts. Having no direct access to the outside sales team, we were not provided with the subtle tips and compelling statements that could have increased our chances of uncovering a pain. The marketing material was always very helpful to send when we actually got a prospect live, but if we didn't define the pain we usually never sent the appropriate collateral to get them interested.
After a few quarters of banging ours heads against the wall, we were eventually able to convince management that we needed full access to the outside reps. We aligned 1 inside reps with 3 reps in the field and had regular weekly check-ins to review questions and progress made on our target list. This helped to accomplish a few goals for us:
1) Allowed the inside reps a much better sense of how to navigate through an organization
2) What to actually say when you do get a prospect live
3) The best collateral to be sending out post conversation
4) Outside reps developed more confidence in the opportunities the inside team uncovered
5) Allowed us to be more forward thinking about how to attack the territory quarter after quarter
Running an inside team I've found that I have become relatively adept at playing the role of peacemaker. It could have much to do with trying to corral the wide range of colorful personalities that I worked with in the hotel industry. While I know marketing and sales may not always have the best relationship, they need to put their egos aside and recognize that we are all working together toward a collective goal. Let us put down those egos, find some common ground and make the company a boatload of money working as a unit.
How about in your organization - do your Inside and Outside Sales teams communicate well? Would be interested to hear how others have helped bring these teams together.
So, you have set your next years goals. You know what revenue numbers you need to hit and you have established the campaigns and marketing events that are going to get you there. Now you need to execute and follow up on your leads. Whether you are planning on outsourcing your teleprospecting team or not, put yourself in the shoes of the sales team and make sure that you are providing the components needed for your efforts, and theirs, to be successful. I have had the opportunity to work for a variety of clients. Some coming right out of the gates with little to no name recognition (some with products still in Beta!), companies with cutting edge technology, others part of the Fortune 500. From my experience, I know what I need to be successful. I am going to share with you some of the preliminary homework that you need to do in order to make your time and investment as successful as possible.
- Product Knowledge: I know this seems obvious, and it is. Of course we need to know what you have in order to sell it. Yet keep in mind that [our] goal is not to “sell the product” but to uncover the pains and establish the needs in support of your solution. Therefore, what helps the calling efforts is a clear understanding of which capabilities resonate with whom within the company.
- Competitors/Differentiators – The number one reason that a company is not interested in your solution is because they are using something or someone else. It is extremely important to have as much information on your competitors as there is on your solution and what differentiates you in the market. This knowledge provides us with the ability to speak specific to inefficiencies of your competitors and extract pain points that the prospect may not have been aware of in the past.
- List – Whether you outsource, or have an Inside Sales Team, there is nothing better than being provided a targeted list of contacts that are involved, someway or another with what your product addresses. It becomes extremely time consuming when Inside Sales folks are provided lists with no contact names, email addresses and/or phone numbers. That’s not to say they can’t find that information but it significantly impacts the number of dials that they are able to make.
- Marketing – Sadly, the phrase “can’t judge a book by its cover” does not always apply. It is important to make sure that your first impression counts. Is your website up to date? Do you have case studies? What is your marketing material? Very often an Inside Sales Rep is asked to send additional information and there are times that I am reluctant to send something, because I feel that it demeans the quality of my clients’ product. Prospects want to see comparisons, specifics, and testimonials (i.e. case studies). Have PDFs that speak specific to the top 3 or 5 highlights of your solution, and make sure these are marketed towards the CEO, CIO and Director level contact.
These are a few of the key areas that I find to be most useful when building a successful teleprospecting campaign. When all of these areas are addressed, I can go into my calling efforts with the confidence of knowing what the value proposition is and the value that we can provide. That leaves only the hardest part left, catching the prospect live….but we have tricks for that too :D
How did everyone’s week go? We had some great blogs this week by Laney Pilpel, Craig Ferrara, Peter Gracey and Chris Lang.
As always I would like to point out a particular article I found this week that’s worth noting. Paul Castain wrote a blog titled: The 7.5 Deadly Sins Of Prospecting!. It listed 7 (and a half) things that you should not be doing while prospecting. It’s a great way to see if you are indeed guilty of these “deadly sins” and how to keep from committing them!
Monday August 23rd
Polite Persistence Pays Off For Inside Sales – Laney Pilpel offers some great pointers as to how and why being polite but yet persistent can pay off.
“The theme here boils down to this: Persistence, or what we like to call at AG, “Polite Persistence.” I think that sales people tend to get a bad reputation for being too forward, which is why we train our reps to be persistent in the nicest way possible. We accomplish this in many ways, from our tone and messaging to the amount of times we contact prospects throughout our call plan. There are two examples that really stand out in my mind and exemplify how we really go above and beyond to get the most meaningful conversations and quality opportunities possible without giving up.”
Tuesday August 24th
A Call Plan Can Help To Fix The Gap Between Sales and Marketing – Craig Ferrara touches on an article that he read this past week that discussed how to best deliver “sales ready leads”. He went on to explain how building an effective lead nurturing process was important.
“The last thing we want is that gap between your sales and marketing team to become a place where sales leads go to die. To prevent this from happening I suggest start by putting a call plan in front of your inside sales team. Step one should involve following up on any inquiry (assuming it's been scrubbed in some way) within 48 hours. As we all know, the longer a lead ages it becomes less and less likely the lead will convert to an opportunity for your sales team.”
Wednesday August 25h
0#, The Oldest And Still Most Effective Move An Inside Sales Rep Can Use – Peter Gracey discusses the oldest trick in the book, hitting 0# and how important it can be when getting key pieces of information in your calls.
”By requiring that you speak to someone live on every call you end up casting a wider net within your target organization and most importantly you get yourself a sales ready lead faster than your competition.”
Thursday August 26th
3 Ways To Shorten Sales Cycle – Chris Lang offers some great points on how to shorten the sales cycle.
“I certainly encourage all sales and marketing executives to find new ways to increase their forecast. However, you should not turn your back on the proven methods that work just because they are “old school” and in many cases tougher to do. Roll up your sleeves, do the dirty work and close some deals.”
That covers it! We hope you all have a great weekend! See you Monday!
You pick up the phone, dial the number, get their voicemail....and hang up. Log the call and move onto the next activity right? NO!!! Rewind and think for a second. Get yourself in the right mindset. An outbound dial that doesn't result in a conversation with someone at your target company is a failure to some degree. If you think about it, our job is to speak to people live. It doesn't always have to be the most appropriate contact in the organization. Almost anyone you catch live can give you some valuable information to help you progress that target company through your qualification process.
My message to you and your reps is simple. Don't hang up until you've spoken to someone live. At the end of the target contacts voicemail message, hit 0# and get sent back to the operator. Depending on the current status of the account in question (where they are in your qualification process) will determine what you do next when the operator answers the phone. I've had some lively debate on this concept as many on my team feel that once you find the most appropriate person to speak with you should only contact that person. My response to that is simple, if they are truly the best person to speak to about your technology and it's benefits to the their company then why don't they pick up your call. Go lower or higher, it doesn't matter. Even if you end up at the admin level you can ask that person if they know of a better time to reach your contact live?
This isn't about being pushy, nor is it about carpet bombing a target company by phone. The process of generating a fully qualified lead requires a great deal of information gathering. All of that critical information doesn't just reside within the mind of one individual. For that very reason, it is logical to speak to as many people as possible within each company as you paint the picture of a fully qualified opp. By requiring that you speak to someone live on every call you end up casting a wider net within your target organization and most importantly you get yourself a sales ready lead faster than your competition.
Happy Friday Everyone!
We had some great topics discussed this week by Nicole Puddester, Craig Ferrara and Chris Lang.
I’d like to highlight a great blog that I found last week by Kendra Lee, President of KLA Group. She offers some great tips on how to Create Opportunities in our tough Economy.
Monday, August 16thth
Organized Tasking for High Outbound Inside Sales Activity – Nicole offers some great tips on how to streamline your daily tasks to get the most efficiency out of your outbound activities.
“I’m sure you are all familiar with Salesforce. If you are not, reps using this tool have this great homepage everyday that has all the tasks for the day pulled up. After completing them, you can go ahead and create a new task for the following days. This is a refreshing way for inside sales reps to keep their day organized. That being said, with the number of outbound activity and quality conversations we have, it is important for our BDRs to further organize their day and keep it as efficient as possible.”
Tuesday August 17th
Do You Know How Many Calls Your Inside Sales Team Should Be Making? – Craig offers a great food for thought, when it comes to knowing and understanding what your inside sales team does, needs to do and ultimately, can do.
“One of the bigger points of contention that existed between each team was the amount of daily activity they felt was required in order to attain the campaign lead goals. The numbers seemed to vary wildly.”
Thursday August 26th
Are Your Prospects Qualified For A Face To Face Sales Meeting? – Chris Lang discusses the importance of qualifying the appointments, and how in the end that’s always the key to closed business.
“I still love to have face to face meetings. But in my experience there is no way that you can form a predictable sales forecast when meeting with unqualified prospects. That stays the same whether they are in the same room as you or on a phone thousands of miles away.”
That’s it for this week! Have a great weekend everyone, see you Monday!
I’m sure you are all familiar with Salesforce. If you are not, reps using this tool have this great homepage everyday that has all the tasks for the day pulled up. After completing them, you can go ahead and create a new task for the following days. This is a refreshing way for inside sales reps to keep their day organized. That being said, with the number of outbound activity and quality conversations we have, it is important for our BDRs to further organize their day and keep it as efficient as possible.
When setting up a new task that will appear on your homepage, we have found that there are 3 important labels to help streamline your teleprospecting campaign. It is important to label the prospect status, next task, and time zone. Meaning, before opening a new task you should be able to identify it with these labels. The prospect status will identify the urgency of the task and help the rep to prioritize. A prospect can still be in prospect (P), contact identified (CI), or even interested (I) mode. The next task will prepare you for your next activity with the prospect and this might be a voicemail 2 (VM 2) or no contact (NC). Labeling the time zone (ET, CT, MT PT) will help to map your day out and will ensure you won’t waste unnecessary time opening west coast contacts at 9:30am in Boston!
Labeling tasks also helps from a management perspective. I would much prefer to have “contact identified” on my home page rather than a majority of tasks still in “prospecting” mode. By glancing at your homepage, it is easy to identify if more work needs to be done to uncover the best person to speak with in your rep’s accounts. The same holds true for labeling the next task. If I see a magnitude of tasks in voicemail 4, 5, or 6 it is clear that there needs to be attention focused around the messaging for that particular campaign. If majority of prospects are not responding at the beginning of the call plan, some additional work around scripting and emailing is most likely necessary.
This is just a small sample of how we help keep our days organized and efficient with such high outbound activity. Do you have any ways to keep your day busy days more structured?
Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you another guest entry from one of our BDRs, Jill Ryan.
Recently I was getting extremely frustrated with the concept of “maintenance mode.” How long can some one “maintain” contact with a person that has never answered before? I can’t stand calling someone for 6-12 months and leaving them voicemail after email, getting nothing in return. Part of this job is to gather market research on why someone isn’t answering so we can make the best use of our time. Personally, I pick up and hang up every time I see a surveyor on my caller ID. That person could be giving away the hope diamond and I would have no clue because I don’t feel like listening. Even after being in this business for a while and having countless conversations about the difficulties of cold calling, I still never throw the receiving end a bone.
So that leads me to this thought- why do I have no interest? I think the reason why people have no interest is because we are constantly on the defensive. “What are you trying to sell me? I have no money!” We are all guilty of assuming that the person on the line is on a mission to cram product down our throats. In my case, I’m not, hell I couldn’t sell you a CRM if I tried. All I want to do is see if you have a problem and if I can help solve it. So why not just say that directly? An email or a voicemail is not a close, an info commercial, or an opportunity to recite the year your company was most profitable. It is an opportunity to invite a person to have a quick conversation, point you in the best direction or tell you when to follow up. In the business of “Business Development”, we need to open the gates to new business in order to do our jobs.
Here are some ways I conquer my “maintenance mode” and get more people qualified in or out:
- Write new “maintenance mode” emails: Send your prospects a quick note with an updated case study, or some interesting new literature on your company.
- Call them during a holiday season or the summer and see how everything is going. The more memorable you make yourself, the better chance you have of building a relationship with that person.
I have had an outstanding response rate to this new email and I think it’s worth a shot to send it out to those people that declined your invitation 3-6 months back. Let’s face it, these people are not thinking about our products as much as we are. It’s our job to drop in and say hello and not lose to opportunity to share our story. Working on new personable attempts to make contact with your prospects will keep them out of the dreaded “maintenance mode” and place them into your pipeline.
Try this email:
Following up on information from XYZ Company—Jill Ryan
Mr Prospect,
I wanted to follow up on some information I have sent you over the past couple of months. I understood at the time, it did not make sense to connect. I wanted to touch base and see if you had any active goals regarding ____________ and ___________ at this time.
My role is at the very front end of the sales process; I just want to engage you early on with information regarding how we enhance ______________________.
Please let me know the best time to follow up, as I certainly do not want to bother you unnecessarily.
Hope all is well,
Jill Ryan
XYZ
000-0000-0000
Fill in the blanks with the problems you are looking to solve and see if you can conquer “maintenance mode”.
After writing my last blog entry on the introduction debates of cold calling, it got me thinking about other debates in the world of teleprospecting. Something that inside sales teams struggle with is deciding whether or not their call plan should include leaving voicemails for prospects. Some companies believe that they should call through lists and “no contact” prospects until they reach someone live. My question is, what if the people you are “no contacting” are in fact interested, but maybe they left their desks for a moment to get a cup of coffee? If this is the case for some prospects out there, isn’t leaving a voicemail necessary? I think it’s pretty clear what my argument is and I am interested in hearing what others have to say.
The key to leaving an effective voicemail comes down to the content of the voicemail. If you call someone and product dump, that will never catch their attention – at least that is what I have found in my experience. So what does work? Here are some of my tips for leaving an effective voicemail that will get you a call back:
Make it personal. Think about how many calls your prospect receives a day. Do you really think they want to hear you sound scripted when they listen to you? Sounding like a robot will result in your prospect immediately deleting your voicemail before they hear it in its entirety. Be your personable self while clearly stating the purpose of your call at the same time.
Avoid product dumping. This goes back to my robot theory – make your voicemail about your product without telling them every detail. Try another method like mentioning a pain or challenge that many other companies are experiencing within their industry that your product alleviates. Let them know that you don’t want to waste their time, but you would like to help them if this is a challenge they are experiencing as well.
Clearly state your contact information. Have you ever received a voicemail where someone left their phone number once, and you had to keep repeating the message until you were able to jot down the entire number? I know I have, and not only is it frustrating, but it takes time. With this idea in mind, a C-level contact certainly does not have the time or patience for this, and will be that much more inclined to delete the message instead of listening to it. As a result, I always make sure to leave my name and number once at the beginning of my message and then again at the end even if it sounds repetitive.
Call to action. This is the key to make sure you hear back from a prospect. Let the prospect know what you are going to do on your end if they don’t get back to you. For instance, a lot of us here at AG end our messages with, “I will follow up this voicemail with an email. If I should not hear back, I will follow up in two days.” This way the prospect knows that if they don’t want to hear from you again, they really need to reach out and give you a valid reason as to why.
So what is more effective: only reaching prospects live by “no contacting” or leaving voicemails in hopes of sparking some interest if they’ve stepped away from their desks?
Over the last 5 years or so I’ve interviewed a wide range of candidates for our business development role here at AG. They all have a variety of backgrounds from 10+ years of inside sales experience on down to a recent college graduates anxious to get their feet wet in the sales world. What I’ve discovered is that nothing surprises me anymore.
Now I wouldn't consider myself to be the toughest person to interview for. I usually try to play the role of good cop and allow the other folks I work with make the candidate squirm with the extra tough questions. My goal is to get a true understanding of whether or not the person is interested in working on my team. And are they someone that I can see myself spending 40-50 hrs a week working with. I recognize that I can't expect every solid candidate I interview to be someone that I want to head out and grab a beer with, but at the very least will they add value to AG? Could they challenge me to be better at my job? My president made a good point recently ..."If I'm thinking at any point during an interview that I want to "help" this person, then I probably shouldn't hire them. We’re not offering charity here; we're trying to bring in people that will help to grow the business."
Usually I try to set the scene by being relatively laid back in an attempt to draw out the interviewee's personality. Our culture is extremely important so I want to bring in people that I know can add to our work-place and co-exist peacefully with others. After a little small talk like ... any trouble finding the office? where are you from? ..I'll start with my first softball question to get them comfortable... So what interested in you the Business Development Representative role here at AG? Well apparently that isn't the easiest question for some candidates. A couple of my favorite responses include.. "Well if you worked at my current company then you would probably be looking for a new job too" or another beauty "The summer was over and I figured it was time to look for a job. Your company just happened to be the first company to call me back." Both true stories.
C'mon people since this is a sales job you need do a better job on selling ME on why YOU want to work at my organization.
Here are 6 warning signs to look for when a candidate comes in to interview for your company. Yes they may seem like interviewing 101 to some of us...but I've been unpleasantly surprised.
1) They trash their current or previous employer:
My first thought when people get into this is “ hmmm well golly, what will they say about me if they don’t agree with a decision I make?”
2) No research has been done on the company or the role they’re applying for:
If I’m going to spend a half hour of my time with you …then come PREPARED! I’ve fielded some interesting responses to my question asking them to explain to me what they understand that the job will entail. My favorite was “I’ll be selling office furniture here, right?” Nope sorry buddy…you might be confusing us with your last interview. Another true story.
3) They have little to no questions regarding the role they are applying for or on the company itself:
As with #2 above come prepared, surely there are a few things you would like to know about the role and the company.
4) They make their first or second question about the sales compensation plan or better yet vacation time:
I can respect that people are interested in what their compensation will look like, especially since they are applying for a sales job and all….but at least butter me up with questions about the job and AG Salesworks. And the vacation time question speaks for itself.
5) They never look you in eye:
At this point I’m thinking..”You got something to hide partner?” I understand they may be applying for a teleprospecting job that doesn’t require eye contact, but quite simply I’m not going to hire someone that I feel I can’t trust off the bat.
6) No follow-up email is sent after the interview thanking the company for their time:
Seems to me that this is common courtesy these days, if they want the job badly enough, they should go through the effort of typing up a simple thank you email.
From my experience as a hiring manager this has been a great way to identify a legitimate candidate from the rest of the field. It can at least be a better way of weeding out the folks that you are on the fence with. If they exhibit any of the warning signs above it may be time to remove them from the pool.
Happy Friday Everyone!
Hope you all had a great week. We had some great blogs this week from Chris Lang, Craig Ferrara, Peter Gracey and Ilona Jazdowska. Find out whether your Sales Executives have the “IT” factor, how blogging has made Craig a better Inside Sales Manager, interesting points on good subject lines, and the importance of making sure your prospecting efforts are geared toward your target audience!
Before I get started, as always I’d like to note a great article I found this week:
Ron Karr’s Business Development Blog talks about voicemail messaging and how to leave Voice Mail Messages that Generate Call Backs. It’s a great piece as it discusses the importance of being aggressive, to the point, and mixing it up when leaving those messages. Each voicemail is different so make sure you are letting them know that you truly WANT them to call you back.
Monday, July 26th
Do Your Sales Executives Have The "IT" Factor?– Chris Lang as always, manages to relate his sales experience to that of his personal life. He offers a great analogy on how even at the age of three his nephew exhibits the “IT” factor, and how that character trait is important in a Sales Executive.
“I’ve been reading a lot of discussions on LinkedIn about what makes a great sales person. I see most of the same words time and time again to describe good sales executives, “Hard working, money motivated, honest, direct, and personable”, to name a few. While all of these are undeniable characteristics of a good sales person, I feel that the biggest factor is often left out, the “IT” factor. “IT” is what the best sales reps have in them and “IT” is hard to find. “IT” is the difference between a rep that makes quota and a rep that crushes the number quarter after quarter.”
Tuesday June 27th
Blogging Has Made Me A Better Inside Sales Team Manager! – Craig Ferrara discusses how despite his original thought of blogging being more for the Marketing team, it’s helped him grow as a Sales Team Manager.
“As I was looking back at all of the AG blogs over the past year, there were a few concepts discussed that are not always being put into action as regularly as I would like. This process, I’ve discovered, has also been a great way to self police myself and others I work with. Again, it’s great to talk about all of this in theory but if you are not putting it to practice then what’s the point? Practice what you preach baby!”
Thursday July 28th
The Best Email Subject Line For Teleprospecting I've Seen Yet. - Pete Gracey came across a great email subject line this week which triggered his inspiration in this week’s blog on how critical something as simple as a subject line can really be…
“I'm a big believer in subject lines driving the success of your emails. Your content means NOTHING if you don't first get the prospect to open the email. One of my old school favorites was "follow up: Pete from AG Salesworks". That one always seemed to at least peak people's interest in terms of "what is this guy following up on"? or "do I know Pete"? Either way, they opened it more often than not. Hopefully my content was up the task and they became opportunities for us, but that is a blog for another day.”
Friday July 29th
Are Your Teleprospecting Efforts Targeted To Your Audience? – Ilona Jazdowska discusses the importance of making sure you’re not sending out the same kind of messaging for every prospect.
“We all play the sales game, and we all acknowledge that a lot of the success comes from reaching out to as many people as possible. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by sending a generic email with no relevance to the role of your prospect. Taking the time to customize your messaging to the specific needs of that department demonstrates the research done on your part and your sincere interest in making their job easier.”
That about covers it! I hope you all have a great weekend! See you Monday!