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.”

Cold calling and cold emailing requires a certain amount of finesse. On top of that, social media messaging is a whole new arena sales professionals must tap into. With the release of our new Inside Sales Messaging Toolkit, we’ve pooled our resources to help you analyze and, if necessary, overhaul your sales messaging strategy. (P.S. Want that toolkit? You can download it here.)

If you don’t think your inside sales messaging strategy needs to change, check out these important stats, and then tell us if you’re convinced.

1. The average salesperson only makes 2 attempts to reach a prospect (Sirius Decisions), but it takes approximately 7-13 touches to generate a B2B qualified sales lead (Direct Marketing Partners). Tweet this stat
   

2. 92% of buyers say they delete emails or voicemail messages from people they do not know (A Sales Guy Consulting). Tweet this stat

3. Email marketing has 2x higher ROI than cold calling, networking or tradeshows (MarketingSherpa). Tweet this stat

4. Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails (Jupiter Research). Tweet this stat

5. Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%. (Aberdeen Group). Tweet this stat

6. MailChimp analyzed more than a billion emails and found that email opens increased after 12 p.m., with the most active period being between 2 p.m. and 5 p.m. Tweet this stat

7. Tuesday emails have the highest open rate compared to other weekdays at 18% (Experian). Tweet this stat

8. 33% of email recipients open email based on subject line alone (Convinceandconvert.com). Tweet this stat
   

9. If your subject line is over 3 words, the chances of your email getting opened drop by over 60% (ContactMonkey). Tweet this stat
   

10. For B2B companies, subject lines that contained the words "alert" and "breaking" performed well. On the other hand, B2B customers have become desensitized to words such as "reports," "forecasts," and "intelligence” (Adestra 2013).  Tweet this stat
    

11. The number of conversations per passed account increased 15% year-over-year. In other words, SDRs were having more conversations per account (and across contacts) before passing the qualified opportunity (The Outbound Index). Tweet this stat
    

12. The average voicemail response rate is 4.8% (InsideSales). Tweet this stat
    

13. A team of 50 sales reps leave approximately 1277 hours of voicemails per month (RingDNA). Tweet this stat
    

14. 80% of calls go to voicemail, and 90% of first-time voicemails are never returned (RingLead). Tweet this stat
    

15. The best times to call are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6:45 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m. The worst times to call are Mondays from 6 a.m. to noon and Fridays in the afternoon (MIT Lead Management Study). Tweet this stat
    

16. 96% of sales professionals use LinkedIn at least once a week and spend an average of six hours per week on the professional networking site (The Sales Management Association). Tweet this stat
    

17. Only 5% of B2B sales teams consider social media a successful lead generation method (Ken Krogue). Tweet this stat

18. Reps who use social selling are 50% more likely to meet or exceed their sales quota. (Liz Gelb-O’Connor). Tweet this stat
    

19. 72.6% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quota 23% more often (Aberdeen Group). Tweet this stat

20. The best time to tweet is during commute times and lunch breaks, so 1 to 3 p.m. and early morning, 8 to 10 a.m. The best time to post on LinkedIn is during business hours, Monday through Friday from morning to midday. (Buffer) Tweet this stat

Want to learn how to apply these stats to your sales teams’ messaging strategies? Download our new Inside Sales Messaging Toolkit today!