Sales Prospecting Perspectives

I believe one of the most challenging aspects of sales teleprospecting is the first conversation.

You have less than a minute to prove yourself as a trustworthy sales rep. You only have your phone, your research, and your CRM to back you up. You can get bogged down by administrators or frustrated by curt replies. I’ve seen firsthand how extremely difficult it can be to build trust with a prospect on a first meeting.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing.

It starts with a hesitation.

It becomes an objection.

It festers into a doubt.

And it costs your company leads.

What I’m talking about is sales call reluctance. It doesn’t come from the prospects; it comes from the sales reps themselves. Whether you’re a new teleprospector or a seasoned inside sales rep, everyone experiences varying levels of call reluctance when B2B prospecting.

I have the opportunity to join calls with our inside sales team during the sales process frequently. It is exciting to speak with executives at companies who are in the beginning stages of creating an inside sales team themselves or are entertaining the idea of outsourcing. Choosing to outsource the function is often the result of these conversations, usually because these companies haven’t quite mastered best practices yet and need support. I really enjoy the task of taking on engagements to help develop the inside sales function, whether we continue our efforts after the first few months once up to altitude, or whether we hand off the inside sales processes to them once they’re running at full capacity.

Nothing can kill an inside sales opportunity quite like time. Even the most enthusiastic customers and prospects can turn away from a deal if something else catches their eye. The longer a deal sits and does not move through the pipeline, the more apt a prospect will be to lose interest. Below are a few ways to ensure that you’re not losing opportunities due to bad timing or poor follow up.

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.

Have you been struggling to get traction with your prospects lately? When was the last time you changed up your email templates or updated your voicemails? Maybe it’s time to take a look at your messaging strategy.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a post from Evan O'Toole, a Business Development Representative and social media team member at AG Salesworks.

The power of face-to-face interaction in sales should never be undermined. The experience gained while speaking with prospects on a one-to-one basis can be crucial in the skill development of inside sales reps, who will eventually strive to close deals. Getting in-person experience early on is invaluable.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Cari Zoch, Marketing Manager at Avention, a company that offers real-time, actionable B2B data to deliver 21st century business info, solutions for sales, marketing and research. 

It’s no secret that the buyer’s journey has changed.  Whether you’re looking at Google’s ZMOT theory or some other evaluation of the change in the process, it’s clear that customers are doing more research and talking to sales people later and later in the process.  There have been countless articles written in attempts to coach organizations on how to get into the decision-making process earlier and earlier.  There have probably been equally as many articles written on getting to the right buyer at the right time.   But once you get to that buyer, are you presenting the right message and offering true solutions to their business problems, or are you pushing a set of product features trying to fit their needs into your product specs?

Let's start off by saying that the B in "B2B" does not stand for boring. B2B companies often have a stigma of being boring and a bit drab compared to B2C businesses. Newsflash: it doesn't have to be that way! 

There are a many, many key reasons why I believe that B2B companies can greatly benefit from having a company Facebook page. I'll highlight just a few main points.

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt of a chapter from our recently published eBook, The Ultimate Inside Sales Prospecting and Management Success eBook. If you're interested in reading the 35-page handbook, click the link above.  

There are 5 important categories to measure from a reporting standpoint to ensure top performance from your inside sales team. The goal is to push your reps to excel in all 5 categories to guarantee their optimal success. The most important categories to pay close attention to are: