Sales Prospecting Perspectives

My business partner and I have been building a marketing services and teleprospecting business for the past eleven years.  As I look back, I see several things which have contributed to our success. Passion, hard work, optimism and the will to build something bigger than the individual, building something from nothing are all things that come to mind. The one thing that has ensured our companies success is hiring people who embody all of these things and empowering them to go out and make it happen.

Being a Marketing Pro ain't easy. Trying to please Sales, your CEO and CFO all at the same time, I don’t envy your position. Nowhere to hide and very difficult to prove value.

We are back from our hiatus and hope everyone enjoyed their time with friends and family over the Holiday's. We had some great blogs this week, which I'll recap for you shortly, but first I wanted to share a post that recieved a lot of interest on my social networks when shared this week. OpenView Ventures asked their Top 25 Influencers of 2012 to send their predictions for 2013 and Mike Weinberg, sales coach and bestselling author, replied by stating "Salespeople: Inbound marketing alone won't save you ass". Inbound marketing has made great strides, with the help of HubSpot of course, and should be a part of any company's marketing strategy. But as Mike points out, “the truth is that inbound marketing is not a replacement for traditional prospecting activities. It’s a supplement to them.” Salespeople have always had a distaste for prospecting, preferring to allow an inside team dedicated to uncovering new business play that role for them. In 2013 though, if salespeople want to be successful, they need to "rediscover their prospecting abilities." In order to be successful, the post offers three key things salespeople must commit themselves to: writing and executing against a personal business plan, developing a finite, strategic list of target accounts, and dedicate blocks of time to personal prospecting activity. “When salespeople discover prospects on their own, it’s likely that they’ll be the first person to the party rather than just another body on the bandwagon. As a result, they’ll stand a better chance of defining a prospect’s criteria for purchase.” 

The beginning of each New Year for me is a time to reflect and set goals to achieve my highest priorities in the coming year.  

As I look back upon 2012, as well as prior years, I have noticed one philosophy that has served our team best.  Creating a company where each and every team member can benefit at a level equal or higher to the level of effort contributed, while enjoying a fulfilling work experience is that philosophy. Not always perfect I will admit, but it sure has stood the test of time.

AG has been in business for over ten years. I thought, until recently, I knew what our Key Results were. Growth, more revenue, higher margin. Well maybe, maybe not. As it turned out, I was correct on a couple but missed a couple as well. As I wrote in my last blog, we recently sent our management team to the OZ Principle one day training. They came back energized with a lot of great ideas. The first was to take a half day off site to determine exactly what our Key Results are. At first I wondered why we were taking so much time to come up with something that surely we were already on the same page with. I could not have been more wrong. Of the seven of us, none had exactly the same ideas for what our Key Results are. All close, but close doesn't count when you are striving to drive maximum value.

There were a lot of great pieces of content worthy of sharing this week, but unfortunately I can only choose one. With that said, I wanted to share a great piece written by Adi Gaskell entitled Why are senior managers not getting social media?  In his post, Adi discusses some new research done at Stanford University suggesting that, while senior managers may be particpating more in social networking, they still fail to see the benefits. The research was conducted by surveying over 180 CEO's and senior management "in an attempt to find out what they know about social media and how it’s currently used in their business."  Some of the key findings of the research are highlighted below.

I’ve always been a planner. I like to write down goals and work toward reaching them.  This is probably as a result of being a career sales guy. Or maybe it’s just the opposite. The fact that I plan and have goals has made my sales career a forgone conclusion. Either way, I like putting together a plan and executing on that plan. Loose ends drive me crazy.

I just read an interesting blog by Mark Emond in which he discusses how the marketing role, as well as the way B2B buyers buy, is evolving.  He talked about how buyers now prefer to engage with a sales rep much later in the process than ever before. I totally agree and I have been telling my team for some time that the first, and often the second steps in the sales process take place well before the first conversation with a sales rep.

Today’s B2B buyers will research, and will likely engage with their social network prior to reaching out and engaging in a conversation with a sales rep. As a result, the sales rep needs to be prepared to engage in a discussion much farther down the sales path. The buyer will be much more educated upon first contact.

Last week was a whirlwind kind of week. I would have done anything just to have a few extra hours in each day. Along with my regular tasks, list needs and requests from clients were at an all time high. Calling on brand new lists is always exciting to anyone in inside sales because they bring a fresh audience to target. But, adding new lists to your database comes with much more work on the front end before the list is ready to call on. The lists need to be populated with new contacts and scrubbed against the existing database to avoid creating duplicates. It will also needs to be properly formatted in excel prior to importing to keep fields in your CRM clean and consistent. These tasks are ones that an inside sales rep nor an inside sales manager can accomplish alone, which is why I wanted to blog today about how appreciative I am for our internal list development team.

As I sit here with two days left in the quarter I realize what a bump in productivity we get when the pressure is on.  Sales has several new prospects who could close for the quarter, all the reps are pushing to get a few more opportunities passed, the directors are pushing for the best possible results as they look to prepare our clients quarterly reviews.