Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Sales Prospecting Perspectives Weekly Recap - Week of January 24, 2024

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. 

• One infographic stood out to us this week: Contact forms for the marketing ninja (Minja) from SingleHop. This fun and informative infographic explained how number of fields (friction), specific form fields, building trust, and focusing on your call to action copy is important in contact forms. For example, did you know one company had a 90% conversion increase by changing their copy tense from secont person to first person? 
• Often, teleprospectors face rudeness from prospects. They may hang up on you. They may treat you like a telemarketer. The question is: Are you willing to court the rude? Are you willing to continually be politely persistent? Paul Castain raises the question at his blog. What do you think? How long does it take for you to drop a rude prospect?
• If you build it, they will come. That's the phrase used about a baseball field in the movie Field of Dreams. However, it doesn't apply to content marketing. Much of B2B content is stuck in purgatory, where no prospects or customers will read it. Ardath Albee's post shows how to effectively get your content out of that "between" state and into the open. 
• A lot of marketing tends to focus on the positive, touting "bigger," "better," and "faster" products or services. However, Sirius Decisions found that misery marketing, or focusing on a specific pain or need and offering a solution through messaging, is more effective. 
• S. Anthony Iannarino over at The Sales Blog has noticed a lot about leadership over the years. Here are his thoughts on leadership in sales.

Tuesday: On Tuesday, Mike Ricciardelli posted How Can Videos Enhance Your Sales and Marketing Efforts? New ways of attracting prospects' attention are constantly being developed. One is to introduce yourself via a YouTube video, enhancing the personal, human sphere of the sales interaction. Marketers may find more success with a 3-minute video than a 10-page whitepaper. What do you think? Would you ignore these videos, or would they be helpful for you? 

Wednesday: Guest blogger Lauren Weatherall from TinderBox wrote If Sales Technology is the Future, How Do We Keep B2B Sales Interactions Human? on Wednesday. Sales technology and human sales interactions are not mutually exclusive. Enable your technology to help your personalized sales interactions. This blog precedes our webinar on the same topic, which will be published for all to view soon. TinderBox's blog offers ideas such as how to use data to make better decisions, and how to enable your inside sales team to sell more than 41% of the time. Check it out!

Thursday: Finally, on Thursday, previous blogger Kim Staib returned to us. She was once a Business Development Representative at AG Salesworks, but has recently been promoted to a Manager of Client Operations. In her post, Top Contributors to a Successful Client Engagement, she shares what she learned from both positions. She shares the most important steps to creating a smooth ramp process, a smooth handoff process of qualified leads, and a smooth feedback prospect between inside and outside sales teams. Check out her thoughts at the link above!

Have a great week, readers, and we'll see you Monday. What were your favorite articles?