Sales Prospecting Perspective Weekly Recap - Week of January 7, 2024
We are back from our hiatus and hope everyone enjoyed their time with friends and family over the Holiday's. We had some great blogs this week, which I'll recap for you shortly, but first I wanted to share a post that recieved a lot of interest on my social networks when shared this week. OpenView Ventures asked their Top 25 Influencers of 2012 to send their predictions for 2013 and Mike Weinberg, sales coach and bestselling author, replied by stating "Salespeople: Inbound marketing alone won't save you ass". Inbound marketing has made great strides, with the help of HubSpot of course, and should be a part of any company's marketing strategy. But as Mike points out, “the truth is that inbound marketing is not a replacement for traditional prospecting activities. It’s a supplement to them.” Salespeople have always had a distaste for prospecting, preferring to allow an inside team dedicated to uncovering new business play that role for them. In 2013 though, if salespeople want to be successful, they need to "rediscover their prospecting abilities." In order to be successful, the post offers three key things salespeople must commit themselves to: writing and executing against a personal business plan, developing a finite, strategic list of target accounts, and dedicate blocks of time to personal prospecting activity. “When salespeople discover prospects on their own, it’s likely that they’ll be the first person to the party rather than just another body on the bandwagon. As a result, they’ll stand a better chance of defining a prospect’s criteria for purchase.”
It's a great read with some interesting comments at the end that may put a smile on your faces.
Now, on to our weekly recap.
Monday, January 7, 2024
We led off the week with a great post from one of our senior Business Development reps, Samantha Goldman. This was Samantha's third post for us and she continues to provide great content in her post 5 Common Inside Sales Roadblock's That Can Deter Productivity and Success. Samantha highlighted 5 common obstacles that inside sales reps may experience and provided some great solutions. Some of the roadblock's mentioned in her post include: when prospects state they are happy with their current solution, not having an auto-dialer in place, managing lists, sounding scripted, and getting those prospects who should interest in the past back on the phones. Samantha offers solutions for each, but you'll have to read the full post for that (is that a good teaser or what!).
Wednesday, January 9, 2024
Wednesday brought the return of Director of Client Operations Craig Ferrara with his post Inside Sales Managers: You Can't Always Be Right. Craig recounts the experiences of one of his close friends, who's New Year's resolution was to find better ways to resolve conflict in his life. The same from got off to a rough start as he ventured home to be with family for the holidays. What Craig's friend realized is that it didn't take long for the family to fall into their normal routine of arguing amongst each other over the same things they have always disagreed on. At that point, Craig's friend had his moment of clarity, in which he discovered it made more sense to look at himself first and he needed to be more objective in preventing these conversations from escalating with his family member. Craig uses this story to reflect on his managment style and what he has found works best when managing both his personal and professional relationships. Ultimately what most of us must realize is that battling back and forth to prove your're right and the other side is wrong is not likely to get you from a breakdown to a breakthrough. In order for us to resolve conflict in our lives, we must first look internally and discover what we can do to prevent conflict from occuring in the first place.
Thursday, January 10, 2024
Our final post of the week came from CEO Paul Alves, who tells us a story in his post In It For The Greater Good. Paul recounts a past experience he and his wife had when they had (mutually) agreed on opening a coffee shop. One of their regular customers came in one day so happy and this customer could not believe that he was getting paid to do something he loved doing (and would be willing to do for free). That left an impression on Paul, who since has tried to emulate that strategy when building his company. Realizing the power of how a well focused team can effect positive change at an exponential rate within an organization, Paul has since built his team on an understanding of what drives his employees. Find out what your employees love to do, get out of their way, and let them do it. Accomplish this, Pauls says, and you will truly serve the greater good, or at least what he considers the greater good.
Thanks for reading this week's recap and we look forward to a great 2013 of providing you with stellar content.