Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Let’s face it: Not every cold call campaign is created equal. Data integrity and relevance vary with each purchased list, and these new lists are far from free. In a sales world that’s becoming more social, it’s more important to target and personalize your messages to prospects, setting yourself apart from the rest and refusing to provide "another sales pitch." Below are 4 ways to quickly find and engage more relevant contacts, building a warmer pipeline for prospecting. 

With a family background in sales, it’s no wonder I love competition, organization, and numbers. I like that every month your slate is wiped clean and you have another 30 days to crush your numbers. But not only is sales a month-to-month game; it's also quarterly and yearly. The cycle in which we work in inside sales is organized and allows you to plan your time accordingly.

Happy Friday, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! We hope you had a productive week; we sure did, and this afternoon we'll be having a contest between inside sales reps who passed leads this week. Despite the consistent snow storms in the Northeast (and there seems to be another on the way), we've continued calling across the country for leads. It's important to stay vigorous even through equally vigorous weather conditions.

Having the know-how to find the right contact could be one of the most underrated functions of the prospecting process. This ability separates someone who is average and someone who excels. It sounds easy enough until you actually sit down and try calling into a company like Microsoft or IBM to see who handles some niche area of technology operations.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Jamie Shanks, Social Selling Expert at Sales for Life.

We are about to close out an incredible year.  Whether my understanding of Social Selling’s capabilities has hit Dali Lama levels, or the buyer has changed that much… Social is now a force!

As a sales professional, you can’t deny the changes.  Whether or not you’ve embraced Social for sales, the world interacted at a staggering pace online in 2013.  What I want to share with you are tips, tidbits and insights I’ve learned from training thousands of sales reps around the world this year.

One of the first things we train new hires on is how to navigate a list in Salesforce. The reasoning behind doing this in the beginning of training is because Salesforce is something inside sales reps use every day. Knowing how to work a list will help you pass qualified leads easier than calling straight down a list of hundreds of names.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Craig Rosenberg, the Funnelholic and a co-founder of TOPO. Follow him on Google+ or Twitter.

Whenever we think of sales and marketing efficiency, we typically focus on what we can do internally. Don’t get me wrong, you have to optimize your sales and marketing processes for efficiency. However, it is absolutely critical that you optimize the buying experience you are delivering so it is as efficient and easy for your buyer as possible. At my day job with TOPO, I have interviewed hundreds of buyers. They typically mention efficiency and ease of use as the top requirements for their preferred buying experience with a vendor. If you don’t believe me, then here's Homayoun Hatami, co-leader of the Sales Growth practice at McKinsey: “Sophisticated customers are not interested in traditional sales models. They demand faster, more seamless, and even enjoyable sales experiences.” Time is the enemy for everyone in today’s crazy-busy world. Your goal should be to make every interaction with your buyers easy and quick.

Happy Thanksgiving Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! We thought it would be fitting to highlight what inside sales reps here are thankful for:

Happy November 1, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! How was your Halloween? At AG Salesworks, we celebrated by dressing up on Tuesday and having a potluck party. You can see pictures of the fun that we had on our Instagram, and look forward to a blog post on Monday about how to plan these types of events so everyone stays productive. As most of us are Boston Red Sox fans, we also celebrated their win of the 2013 World Series! It was an excellent last week of the month for us here at AG Salesworks, and we hope it was for you, too. Here are some of our favorite posts about marketing and sales from our favorite blogs. Some of them even decided to get into the Halloween spirit!

Halloween! Thanksgiving! Christmas and Hanukkah! All of these events are great in Q4… but in sales and teleprospecting, it seems like Q4 is everyone’s least favorite time of year. Everyone is focused on closing business rather than building new business. But once the holidays are over and it’s back to work in 2014… Uh oh! Where’s the pipeline?