Sales Prospecting Perspectives

The role of an inside sales rep at AG Salesworks is a unique experience. During my time at AG, I have had the pleasure of working for four separate clients. I’ve transitioned from balancing two half-time projects to working for just one client full time. Each of my clients differed vastly from the other, which made the transition from client to client very tedious. I had to endure an extensive amount of training in order to fully understand my new project. And at AG, our inside sales reps are expected to ramp up on a new project in a week’s time! Ramp ups may be overwhelming and stressful for inside sales reps, so here are 4 steps to help make your ramp-up week a smooth transition!

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Damian Davila, Content Marketing Consultant at idaconcpts.com.

In my experience as a marketer, I’ve only seen one way to establish yourself in the field. You have to develop a wide range of many personal connections who value what you do and to whom you provide added value.

I like to think that I have a few key tools in my prospecting toolbox. The most important one could very well be our CRM, which at AG is Salesforce.com. It allows those of us with slight OCD to breathe easier, since we can plan days and weeks of tasks and reports ahead of time while being able to sift through old campaigns and review information with a few simple clicks. I don’t know how sales firms could operate without an automated CRM. It allows prospecting to go smoothly and it allows inside sales reps to hit the phones and make touches on many companies and prospects every day.

Hello AG blog readers...I'm back!  I saw many changes in 2013, one of which was my transition to Manager of Client Operations here at AG.  Because I have been able to get my feet wet in this new role for the last few months, I thought I would take this opportunity to rejoin the AG blogging community and share the insights I have gained thus far.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a post from Tiffany Fenore, a Business Development Representative at AG Salesworks. This is her blogging debut. 

There is more to being a great inside sales rep than just passing leads. In my experience, I have found that one of the most important aspects of my job is having a strong relationship with my clients. The success of each campaign hinges on our ability to effectively manage our client relationships, and in order to do so a inside sales rep needs to demonstrate three key attributes: Confidence, Communication, and Expertise.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Damian Davila, Content Marketing Consultant at idaconcpts.com.

An online presence is essential in today’s competitive sales environment. From real estate to accounting to marketing, businesses are finding out that more and more sales leads are coming from the Internet. Still, it is not just a matter of “putting yourself out there” and launching just any site. To stand out from the competition, you need to have a site that follows best usability practices. If your site requires your visitors to use a 15-page instruction manual, then the number of people bouncing out of it will be high.

There is more to teleprospecting and B2B cold calling than a lot of people might think. There is a method to the madness; you don’t just sit down at a desk one day, pick up a phone, and make some dials. There are multiple campaigns to work on simultaneously, and in order to stay organized, we have to use lead statuses.

From a marketing and a sales point of view, this week has been extremely busy. The chatter around the office has expounded as more and more people are returning from vacation. Marketing is gearing into the fall months as well, as we just released an eBook we've been working on all summer. Team leaders are working one-on-one with sales reps, and new employees are coming in every week, eager to get their hands dirty in sales. For the first week of September, we're doing great, and it can only go up from here.

Reading the title of this blog you might think, “Why would I not want to be comfortable with my client?” Or, “I have a great relationship with my client.” These are great responses, as you should want to have a good relationship and be comfortable in terms of communicating. But I am talking about getting to that point in your relationship where you might be getting lazy. For example, you could relate this to the point in a relationship with your significant other where you start to leave your clothes on the floor, or wear sweatpants to the movies. YIKES. This should never be the case with your client.

The AG Salesworks marketing team had a busy but extremely illuminating week at HubSpot's Inbound 2013. The conference provided some excellent content, motivation, and ideas.  We heard from distinguished speakers like Seth Godin, Arianna Huffington (@ariannahuff), Nate Silver (@fivethirtyeight) , Ann Handley (@marketingprofs), Rand Fishkin (@randfish) and of course Dharmesh Shah (@dharmesh) and Brian Halligan (@bhalligan), all very unique and motivational. Mike Volpe (@mvolpe) and his team at Hubspot did a wonderful job putting on this informative conference that taught so many marketers how to think more innovatively! These conferences remind us to do a marketing and sales tune-up: are you really reaching your ideal target audience, are you closing the loop with sales, or are you efficiently nurturing leads down your sales funnel? Of course these types of questions shouldn't be brought up only as a result of attending an event or meeting, we should always be fine-tuning our processes and finding what works best, but events like this certainly spark a flood of ideas.