Weekly Recap Sales Prospecting Perspectives Week of October 4th
Well it’s that time of the week again! I found a great blog today that I’d like to mention. In his blog - Increase Sales: 5 Reasons Why The “Zombie” Phone Call Does Not Work, Jeff Bittner offers some tips on what not to do when prospecting. It’s something that we’ve touched on many times here, but I thought given the time of year, the analogy was perfect. Take a look and make sure you’re not one of the “undead”!
Monday October 4th
Learning From Experience: A Reflection From An AG Inside Sales Rep – Ilona Jazdowska writes about her own experience on how AG has come to be the company we are today.
“All of us at AG continuously share our ideas and successes at the job; insights that one can only develop through experience as well as trial and error. If what we know now, was something that everyone knew right out of the gates, AG would not be as unique nor as successful in helping its customers achieve their goals as they tell us we have been.”
Tuesday October 5th
Is It Possible To Over-Qualify A Sales Lead? – Craig Ferrara also talks about how he feels over qualification can occur and how to stay away from it.
“The level of detail I was looking to pull out of an introductory call would have been something he would have been better suited to ask. Not only that, but it got me into a position where I was being asked questions that required my sales engineer to answer. Secondly, with the amount of questions I had to ask, many of the prospects that may have been interested at the beginning seemed to quickly lose interest as I got to question number 10. -"Don't worry buddy, we only have 5 to go!"
Wednesday October 6th
Building A Better Teleprospecting Rep - Step #1 – Pete Gracey introduces his first blog in a three part series that discusses how AG has built the great BDR’s that we have today.
“We’ve found through the years that in order to have the highest level of talent in our space we’ve got to go well beyond simply hiring the best. They aren’t the best when you first sit them down. You’ve got to train them, coach them, reward them, and promote them. Over the years, we’ve broken the teleprospecting job into three main disciplines. In order for a rep to be optimal, they must excel in each. Once we established the three main areas of skill that must be optimized, it became much easier for us to identify areas of opportunity and attack them.”
Thursday October 7th
How To Use Fully Qualified Leads To Recruit/Retain Top Sales Talent – Another great blog by Chris Lang, if you haven’t read any of his yet, check it out. He has a great way of bringing his point across, but in a matter that is not only humorous, but adds personality as well. This week he discusses how in order to keep your top performers, and acquire new ones, you have to offer quality leads for them to follow up on so that they can do what they do best.
“To retain talent, provide your top performing reps with a certain amount of leads depending on how well they close deals. It will benefit you to keep that rep working on fully qualified sales ready opportunities even if it means having to bring on an inside team or hire a teleprospecting firm to help. In our organization, the higher your close rate, the more fully qualified sales ready leads you will get. If you are at the top of your game, you rarely make any cold calls. The company turns a healthy profit off of the closed business from the rep and the rep is happy to work for a company that essentially sets the table for them to do the part of the job they like the most, close business and make money.”
Well that wraps it up! I hope everyone has a great weekend! Enjoy it and get yourself recharged for next week!