Sales Prospecting Perspective Weekly Recap - Week of November 19, 2023
I hope everyone enjoyed their time with family and friends yesterday and nobody over did it too much with their turkey dinner. Today marks one of the busiest shopping days of the year, so avoid the stampedes and squabbling over this years "must have" toys.
Before we dive into this weeks recap, I first wanted to share a post on a topic that is generating a lot of discussion recently; who should oversee outbound lead generation efforts, sales or marketing? Ori Yankelev wrote about this topic on the Openview Partners Blogin his post Should Outbound Lead Generation Teams Report to Marketing or Sales? Ori uses data supplied from The Bridge Group, Inc for some of the statistics he shared and he provides three different organization charts on what is most commonplace in the industry. It's an interesting topic that will continue generating discussions and it's a great read and worth the few minutes of your time.
Now, on to this week's recap.
Monday, November 19, 2023
I kicked off the week with a holiday inspired post discussing some of the marketing tools I use and am most thankful for. I list five tools that are able to save me time and increase my productivity. Our marketing automation software was the first tool I mention, giving me the ability to manage our blog, web traffic/analytics, lead conversion, and CTA's from the same portal (we use HubSpot). Hootsuite was my second mention. I manage multiple twitter and social accounts and Hootsuite saves me hours per week. I especially enjoy using their bulk scheduling application, Hootlet. Most marketers will agree that having an email marketing software is vital to their demand generation efforts and it makes my list at number three. Google Analytics is another tool I use frequently as it provide more granular reporting and feedback on the quality of web traffic we see. The last tool I mention often gets overlooked, but no sales organization can be truly successful and streamlined without having a CRM in place.
Tuesday, November 20, 2023
Our next post of the week discussed a topic that you don't often see talked about, but is vital to the success of your inside sales team: Call Shadowing. Mike Ricciardelli provided this post entitled 5 Things To Focus On When Call Shadowing Inside Sales Reps. It is extremely important for manager to take the time to sit with their reps and listen in on the calls they are making, but what should you be focusing on during this training session? List management is the first thing on Mike's list, discovering how the reps organize their campaigns. Resourcefulness is his second suggestion, seeing how the reps are able to find/navigate organizations for the appropriate contacts. The third topic on his checklist is transition questions, listening to how the reps try and engage the prospect once the reps knows they are the appropriate person to speak with. CRM management is his next item, taking notice as to how reps update records, accounts and the quality of the data they are inputting into the system. His last recommendation on what to observe while call shadowing is the personality and character of the reps.
Wednesday, November 21, 2023
In our final post of this holiday shortened week, Matt Fitts provided three keys for managing and measuring success with your inside sales team. His first point is one that most organizations use to measure the success of their reps: attainment of goal. This point is pretty self explanatory, if your reps aren't hitting their quota, they won't be deemed successful. In his next point, Matt discusses outbound activity number and says you also need to factor in the results of these activities. With his final point, Matt looks at providing coaching and strategy sessions for your team/individuals and has found a direct relation to implementing these sessions and the success of the reps on his team.
I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday and it was full of family, food and football.
