Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Sales managers, how often are you evaluating your inside sales team’s messaging techniques? You may have given them the tools to get started, but are they able to craft their own templates for emails voicemails? Are you constantly training them on new social selling techniques?

Just the other day, I sat down with our sales team for a role play. After an hour-long session, they walked out of my office with a better idea of how to target our buyers with tailored messaging specific to them. You see, most sales and marketing professionals just don’t have time. “No, I don’t want to tell you the challenges in my environment and what my company does. No, I don’t want to hear about your product or service right off the bat. No, I’m not always in the mood to talk about my day with someone when I’m already late for my next meeting.”

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a post from Gillian Sontz, Business Development Representative at AG Salesworks. 

In B2B inside sales, you will often have to call lists, both warm and cold. When cold calling - which actually isn't that different than warm calling with the right preparation - it's important to make a strong first impression on new prospects. They've never heard of you before. They may have never even heard of your company before. Instead of coming off as a lazy sales rep interrupting their day's work, try out these cold calling tips to help position yourself as a trusted advisor first and foremost.  

I think it’s safe to say that nearly everyone in the sales game had humble beginnings. Some of you may have had the fake bravado on the outside when you started, but on the inside, like me, you were probably scared out of your mind. 

If you are a company just starting out with your teleprospecting strategy or you are looking to revamp your methods when it comes to questions to ask during the lead qualification process, you've come to the right place. One of my favorite aspects of my role as Director of Customer Success is working with organizations just like yours. You have a blank canvas to work with, and you might not be exactly sure where or even how to start.

Last week was my 10-year anniversary at AG. At times, 10 years seems like eons ago, but honestly most of the time it truly feels as if time has flown by. During this period, I bought a condo, got married, had a child (who is now 7), sold a condo, and bought a house... all while watching AG grow from an 8-person shop to the 60 folks we are today. 

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.

(And Call Volume is Not One of Them)

I recently wrote in my blog post 5 Most Frequently Asked Questions About Outsourcing Inside Sales that gone are the days of closely tracking the number of activities when managing your inside sales team. While I still think measuring activities is important to a degree, I don’t think it should hold as much weight as it does for many inside sales teams out there.

The problem with placing such a large emphasis on the number of activities is that doing so confuses the purpose of teleprospecting. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. With this metric as a forefront in Inside sales reps’ minds, they tend to get caught up in making a high number of dials instead of focusing on making smart dials. Smart dials lead to quality conversations which in turn result in qualified opportunities for themselves or for the outside sales team to follow up on.

AG Salesworks is pleased to bring you a guest post from Janelle Johnson, Director of Demand Generation at Act-On Software. 

In B2B marketing, sales and marketing emails play different but equally important roles in a successful communication strategy. Marketing emails lure the leads, and sales reels them in. But if nobody ever opens your messages, they won’t do your organization much good. Getting a prospect to open an email can be extremely challenging in today’s crowded marketplace. Many of us get hundreds of emails every day. Which ones make you click? Which ones make you hit delete?

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.

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. 

Salespeople are always looking for the holy grail when it comes to making cold calls. They can sort their lists, segment criteria but what’s most important?  Timing.

I’m here today to argue that timing is more than finding the best day of the week or the time of the day to pick up the phone. In fact, it varies by industry and type of prospect anyway.