Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Howard Brown, Founder and CEO of RingDNA.

There was a time not so long ago when your average B2B salesperson spent more time on the road than a major league baseball team. But now, more and more companies are hiring remote reps, also known as inside sales. These reps possess many of the same sales skills as field sales reps. They close high-ticket deals and build long-lasting customer relationships, all while racking up far fewer frequent-flyer miles. They also typically carry increasingly large quotas. According to the Bridge Group, the average inside sales rep’s quota in 2013 was $985,000.

Good morning, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! This week was an eventful one for us here in Norwood, Mass. On Monday, we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and took a day off to remember his contributions to peace in this world. On Wednesday, there was a snowstorm, and we got hit with about 7 inches of snow! Needless to say, many did not make the trek to the office that day; instead, we stayed safe at home and did our prospecting from there. Who hasn't heard of telecommuting for a teleprospecting job? We hope readers in the New England area stayed safe when the snowstorm rode through their area. And readers in the West? We're just jealous. 

To start off our weekly recap, here are our favorite marketing and sales articles from this week. 

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Lauren Weatherall, Senior Marketing Manager at TinderBox. 

For the first time, people accessed the internet on their mobile devices more than on their desktop computers in 2013 – OK, we all knew that was coming. What does this mean? It means that online, cloud-based, and internet solutions are taking over not just consumer markets, but business-to-business marketplaces. Especially when it comes to sales technology.

Technology companies create solutions that are complicated, have various levels of functionality as well as varying levels for usage.  Whether verbally or through content creation, marketers and sales professionals will run into a consistent issue: How do I explain this without rambling on and on?

It's the last Friday before Christmas, and the office is full of holiday cheer. But it's still important that sales reps' pipelines are in the clear. Sales managers should motivate their sales team in these last few days before the holidays dawn near. So take a gander at these sales and marketing articles we've curated for you to revere.

This blog post is part three of a series of video blogs about the impact of technology on sales. See part one here and part two here. 

A few weeks ago I was putting together an email campaign to send out as a follow up to my client’s sales initiative, but I was having some difficulty setting up an integration tool on my computer. However, I knew that a sales rep on my client’s team was fairly tech savvy and had done some troubleshooting before, so I reached out to him asking for help. As I sat on the web conference using a program I had downloaded for free, I wasn’t dazed in the least when my colleague took control of my screen and walked me through each step. Within 5 minutes he had shown me how to set up everything perfectly!

After our conversation, I realized how much  of the technology we were using I had taken for granted. Not only was I about to greatly improve the amount of activity I could produce within a day, but I was working with a colleague who was half way across the country as if he were sitting next to me in my cube. That got me wondering: What other changes in technology have had the biggest impact on how we communicate and operate in sales? I’ve interviewed a few of our sales veterans to see what changes in sales technology they feel have made the biggest impact within the past decade.

This blog post is part two of a series of video blogs about the impact of technology on sales. See part one here. 

A few weeks ago I was putting together an email campaign to send out as a follow up to my client’s sales initiative, but I was having some difficulty setting up an integration tool on my computer. However, I knew that a sales rep on my client’s team was fairly tech savvy and had done some troubleshooting before, so I reached out to him asking for help. As I sat on the web conference using a program I had downloaded for free, I wasn’t dazed in the least when my colleague took control of my screen and walked me through each step. Within 5 minutes he had shown me how to set up everything perfectly!

After our conversation, I realized how much  of the technology we were using I had taken for granted. Not only was I about to greatly improve the amount of activity I could produce within a day, but I was working with a colleague who was half way across the country as if he were sitting next to me in my cube. That got me wondering: What other changes in technology have had the biggest impact on how we communicate and operate in sales? I’ve interviewed a few of our sales veterans to see what changes in sales technology they feel have made the biggest impact within the past decade.

A few weeks ago I was putting together an email campaign to send out as a follow up to my client’s sales initiative, but I was having some difficulty setting up an integration tool on my computer. However, I knew that a sales rep on my client’s team was fairly tech savvy and had done some troubleshooting before, so I reached out to him asking for help. As I sat on the web conference using a program I had downloaded for free, I wasn’t dazed in the least when my colleague took control of my screen and walked me through each step. Within 5 minutes he had shown me how to set up everything perfectly!