Sales Prospecting Perspectives

According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be an 8.9 percent employment growth for sales representatives between 2012 and 2022. They project that an additional 132,000 jobs will need to be filled within that time period.

At AG Salesworks, we hire new teleprospectors with varying experience levels every month. On-the-job training is offered, as well as mentoring from other reps and managers. While many inside sales teams such as our own do have a training process in place, inside sales reps also hear many nuggets of advice along the way that may not be explicitly written in their training documents.

There’s an old adage in sales about sales encounters. It goes something like this:  

You should always go into a sales situation prepared for a no but hoping for a yes.

It’s important to remember that each new opportunity you come across will have its own unique challenges and advantages. Though it’s hard to stay optimistic when objections crop up, bringing baggage from one sales call to another will not help you close. The longer you work with a product or solution, the the more confident you feel in your abilities to sell it, and the more assumptions you may make in regards to the outcome of each business engagement.

Working in a sales-oriented job, inside sales reps have numerous goals to hit on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis. But there are other goals to set besides the money-based ones. What personal goals can you set as an inside sales rep? One of the many things I love about AG is that we have various people with whom to discuss how to improve our prospecting skills in order to achieve our targets.

Let’s just get this out of the way first and foremost: You don’t really need a college degree to get into sales.  It absolutely goes a long way if you have one but I know plenty of people who don’t have degrees and are in sales.  I went to an all business school and sales wasn’t an option as a Major concentration, and just recently it’s been added to the curriculum as a Minor.

I'll admit it: I never liked role plays. I wouldn't say that I'm necessarily in the minority here. Remembering back to my first few sales jobs, role plays were inevitably part of the training and were what I always dreaded the most. Don't get me wrong: I saw the value in going through the exercise, but I never felt that I put my best foot forward. How can you when you haven't fully absorbed the service/technology you were tasked with calling on?

Happy Friday, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! We had a busy week here. We celebrated a few birthdays and an awesome week for sports, all while continuing to converse with prospects throughout the week. We also found blog posts we liked:  

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a post fromTiffany Fenore, a Business Development Representative at AG Salesworks.

Something that everyone in the sales profession can relate to is rejection! Most of us in business development roles experience rejection early, on a day-to-day basis, and it often starts as an objection. Objections can be viewed as a roadblock to the untrained rep and even some seasoned prospectors forget to view the response as a gateway to further the conversation. Objections are the perfect “in” to engage and challenge prospects. They have opened up the discussion and have unknowingly allowed you to cater your message to their pains and needs to see if they are a fit for your product and/or service.

There are 4 common objections we typically see: