Sales Prospecting Perspective Weekly Recap - Week of October 1, 2023
It's the time of year when most of us can finally retire the lawnmower and gardening tools for the winter. Waking up to temperatures in the 30's is a sure sign that it is time to change our tools out and get the snowblowers, shovels and salt ready for use. Knowing you have the right tools to handle the challenges of a two foot snow storm can be extremely reassuring. There are some tools, like a snowblower, that enable you to be more productive and help accomplish your goals a little faster and easier than if you resorted to using a shovel. There are tools that inside sales reps can utilize too that can increase their productivity. Instead of sharing an article today, I wanted to share some newer prospecting tools that will make life a little easier for your inside reps.
First, if you haven’t used an email verifier, start. I recommendhttp://www.verifyemailaddress.org/, it really takes out a lot of the guess work. Our reps use this to confirm email addresses any time they bring in a new company. It isn't 100% foolproof, but it works a lot of the time and keeps reps from wasting their time guessing at the appropriate combination of first name last name email addresses. Here are some other prospecting tools I would recommend: http://rapportive.com/ it links with your gmail account and gives you an update on your contacts right in your email. If a prospect just tweeted about a subject, you can use the same subject in an email subject line to increase your open and response rate. We had a rep use the tool and noticed one of his prospects tweeted about a Chipper Jones home run. The rep used the subject line “Chipper Jones is Awesome” and emailed the prospect right away. The prospect got back to him within minutes and they set up a time to speak the following week. https://www.ghostery.com/ - this tool allows you to detect, learn and control how companies could be tracking your activity. It also gives you visibility into the ad networks, behavioral data providers, web publishers, and other companies interested in your activity. http://www.yesware.com/ - this is a free add-on tool for chrome and firefox users. If you are not using email automation software programs, this tool provides some of the features the more expensive options provide, but for free. Find out who opens your emails or clicks on your links. Create templates and it syncs with most CRM’s. It also has reporting features allowing you to optimize your email strategies.
Now on to the recap of our blog posts for the week.
Monday, October 1, 2023
Last week I wrote an article on what some of your options may be to spend that remaining marketing budget as the end of year approaches and how those campaigns will effect your sales pipeline. In the post 4 Marketing Options For The End Of Year Budget And Their Sales Pipeline Impact I discuss spending on Trade Shows/Conferences, Webinars, Email Campaigns, and Teleprospecting Campaigns. Each have their own benefits and will have a different level of impact on your sales pipeling. If you are looking for an immediate impact, Email and Teleprospecting campaigns offer the best value for a return. Email will get you in front of the highest number of prospects, while teleprospecting campaigns will generally impact your sales pipeline first. If you don't need to show a ROI within the final quarter, then Trade Shows and webinars may be the best approach for your organization.
Tuesday, October 2, 2023
Craig brought us another great post on Tuesday, honoring the late Steve Jobs close to the one year anniversary of his passing. In his post Cold Call Like You Don't Have Anything To Lose Craig discusses a very popular quote from Steve Jobs and relates it to the cold calling industry. Cold calling is not for the weak of heart and most who endure the daily rigors of the job realize that hearing "no" more often then "yes" is par for the industry. You must take the approach of having nothing to lose in order to be successful and not allow all the "no's" to effect the rest of your outbound dials.
Thursday, October 4, 2023
We had a debut post on Thursday as one of our Director's of Client Operations, Ed O'Neil joined the blogging world. Ed had a great post discussing the basics of teleprospecting and provided a great analogy of learning to ride a motorcycle and the need to know the basics before you can get on the open road. In Do You Train Your Inside Sales Reps To Know The Basics First? Ed discusses some of the basic skills inside sales reps need to possess in order for them to be successful. Inside sales managers tend to assume their new hires have some of these skills and overlook training in these areas, which usually leads to a higher employee turnover rate.
Friday, October 5, 2023
We closed out the week with a great post from Maegan discussing the importance of having honest conversations with your clients and being specific in what is expected. In her post In Sales, Are You And Your Clients On The Same Page? Maegan provides three examples in which she notices a disconnect between teams and their clients in how they define some key industry terms: Marketing Qualified Leads, Sales Qualified Leads, and Success. If you are not on the same page as your clients, your chances for having a successful engagement decline greatly.
Thanks for reading our recap of last weeks blogs and we'll have more great posts coming throughout the week.