Sales Prospecting Perspective Weekly Recap - Week of March 4, 2024
We closed out the first week of March on our run to finish the quarter strong. So with that thinking in mind, this week's post share comes from Salesforce.com's blog written by SalesLoft CEO Kyle Porter. In 7 Sales Steps To Making Your Buyer's Decision Simple Kyle discusses the importance of understanding your customer and simplifying the steps in the sales process. "By maximizing simplicity," Kyle states "you can win more business and close deals faster." He provides seven principles to help in accomplishing this: streamline communication, answer questions in advance, make customer research a habit, turn around proposals & customer requests fast, break your sales process into simple steps, make your buyer the hero and sell with sincerity. Kyle provides a brief explanation for each and it's a great post to share as we all try to have our teams close out the quarter strong.
Now, on to this week's recap.
March 4, 2024
We led off the week with a post from senior Business Development Representative Stephen Wolff who discussed directing a conversation with your prospect when teleprospecting. The biggest problem most teleprospecting reps experience is what to do once they have a prospect live on the phone and engaged in a conversation. Stephen used a great analogy from Alice in Wonderland for how your teleprospecting reps should be engaging prospects in a meaningful conversation. He referenced a conversation between Alice and the Cheshire Cat the first time they met in which Alice was extremely vague in her questions, which led to vague responses from the Cheshire Cat. A great post from Stephen with a great analogy from a children's classic.
March 5, 2024
Our next post from Craig Ferrara posed a great question that I'm sure sparked some conversations in his post Are You Comfortable Telling Your Boss The Truth? Company culture can be extremely contagious amongst your employees and it is important that they feel like they can come to their management team with a concern as they would a peer. Employees need to take on ownership and accountability and that can't be accomplished without creating a culture in which they feel comfortable enough to express themselves.
March 6, 2024
Peter Gracey provided Thursday's post, which was dubbed the "best title of 2013" by Craig Rosenberg. Pete's post When Sales Reps Attack discusses the dynamic relationship between a teleprospector and the sales reps they may support. Pete mentions two sales rep personality types that are deadly to a teleprospector's productivity and morale and offers advice on how to deal with them. The two types Pete references he labels "The Chatterbox" and "El Burro (The Donkey)". The Chatterbox is "the least aggressive and kindest of all the Sales Reps that kill morale and productivity" states Peter. He offers a couple examples of signs your teleprospecting reps are being "chatterboxed" and his solution for dealing with this type of rep. The El Burro is always the rep who crushed their quota at their "last company" and may achieve sales success at the expense of human decency and decorum. Again there are a few examples to relate with and Pete's solution for dealing with this personality type involves a harpoon.
March 7, 2024
I closed out our blog week talking about content marketing strategies and offered a few tips for an effective content marketing strategy. First, develop content to establish credibility and thought leadership within your industry. Second, create content that provides tips, tools and insights designed specifically to help your target audience. Establishing a blog is a great way to start creating stellar content and are a great source of content to repurpose. You must complement your content strategy with a solid Inbound marketing program and solid Social Media strategy. Social Media is a great outlet for distributing your content to a targeted audience, but also may be used to listen and gather research on what your customers care about.
Thanks for reading this week's recap and we look forward to providing you with more stellar content next week.