Sales Prospecting Perspectives

5 Ways to Boost Inside Sales Training Reinforcement

Allison Tetreault — Thu, 21 Aug 2023 13:56:00 GMT

With the release of AG Salesworks’ new guide The Inside Sales Manager’s Guide to Sales Team Training featuring Josiane Feigon of TeleSmart, AG has learned that training is not just about the event. It’s a process that has to be perfected during, before, and after that event. The following is a redactment from our new guide. For more advice, please download The Inside Sales Manager’s Guide to Sales Team Training.

Sales training never ends: the initial training week is just the beginning. The most effective B2B sales firms are 22% more likely (more than one in five) than all other sales firms to reinforce training at least once each quarter, according to Aberdeen Group. Companies that carry out post-training reinforcement see 20% more salespeople achieve sales quotas.

The best way to keep your training momentum going is to start reinforcing the training immediately. Inside sales reps should be able to demonstrate that they understand what they’ve been taught. They need to reassure you in some way that they are following up on your suggestions and are putting them into action.

Training has to be fluid. As their manager, you can oversee the entire process and adjust the training initiatives moving forward. As their coach, you can oversee each individual inside sales rep to assess which skills need to be developed over time.

Here are a few ideas to help you measure their progress:

1. Call Shadowing Partnerships.

We don’t want cookie-cutter teleprospectors. Everyone’s got a personality, and we want that personality to show on the phone. With more comfort and confidence, new inside sales reps may be able to find that qualified opportunity. A popular peer-to-peer training practice is call shadowing, where new inside sales reps listen in on calls while seasoned inside sales reps exchange messaging tactics. Designate each new sales rep to partner up with a fellow sales rep and listen to an hour of each other's calls. Then, have them recap three "learning points" from their peer’s approach and messaging. Remember, though, that peer-to-peer training shouldn’t be limited to your top sales reps. Call shadowing should be done across the board so new inside sales reps can learn from everyone’s different style on the phone and then develop their own.

2. Role Playing.

The only way to really know that an inside sales rep will incorporate your suggestions is to test them on a fake sales call. Role plays are daunting for new inside sales reps, and it doesn’t help that some managers strive to make the role playing process as challenging as possible. To curb that dread, let your new rep prepare for the role play. Make sure that the more challenging role plays are conducted later in the training process. What should you look for in sales role plays? Look for confidence in the interaction. You can’t teach confidence, but you can coach your reps on everything else.

3. Mock Calling.

This training technique expands on the traditional role play and gives inside sales reps a much better sense of what a normal day of calling looks like. The mock calling scenario mirrors the process of navigating a company’s architecture and qualifying the correct prospect.

Give new reps the contact information for five mock prospects from the same company (calling these people will lead them to different people throughout your own organization, playing different roles). Their goal is to navigate through the organization chart to find the “Contact Identified” or the decision-maker. Once they get the decision-maker live, have them give a high-level overview, handle basic objections, qualify the prospect, and set up a next-steps engagement.

4. Practice Call Recording.

If you are a manager who doesn’t have time to sit down with each inside sales rep on your team but still wants to monitor calls, consider implementing call recordings. After creating the necessary legal disclaimers, call recording can be immensely helpful for inside sales reps. They are in charge of choosing which calls to record, and that call can then be shared with the manager or with the entire team. Inside sales managers can ensure messaging is standardized and inside sales reps are handling objections well by listening to call recordings.

5. Build an Audio Library.

Organize these call recordings into an audio library of best practices for your inside sales team. Using audio reinforcement in your training can shorten your ramp-up time for new hires. While waiting to call shadow a fellow team member, inside sales reps can download sample pre-recorded calls and observe smart sales skills.

Related Inside Sales Training Articles:

B2B Sales Prospecting: Remember to Finish Listening!

Megan Toohey — Wed, 20 Aug 2023 13:30:00 GMT

AG Salesworks is pleased to bring you a guest post from Jeff Shore, an in-demand sales expert, author, speaker and executive coach.

“Most people do no listen with the intent to understand, they listen with the intent to reply.”

~Stephen R. Covey

Perhaps when you were a child, someone in your life tried to emphasize the importance of listening by reminding you that we each have two ears and one mouth. According to the well-known saying, we have two ears and one mouth in order that we might listen twice as much as we speak. There’s a lot of truth to that idea, and never more so than when a buyer raises objections during the sales process.

It is important to remember that when a buyer raises objections, they are not complaining, but are asking you, the sales professional, for help.

A common mistake that sales professionals make is to believe they know where a buyer is going with an objection before the person has even finished speaking. The temptation is to be formulating an answer to a question that hasn’t yet been asked. When you are busy putting together an answer in your head, you are no longer fully listening. In doing this, you risk losing your connection with the buyer. (People can tell when they are not being listened to!) And, if you jump the gun and assume you fully understand what a buyer is asking before clarifying anything with them, you risk even more.

Rushing to respond to an objection before fleshing it out is asking for trouble.

If you assume to understand what is troubling a buyer based on one small objection and hurry to respond to what they have (barely) said, you could very likely create new and bigger problems. Here’s how that works: The buyer starts to mention an objection and feeling like you’ve heard that particular remark a thousand times before, you all but cut them off with what you believe is the pertinent information they need to alleviate their worries.

But, you could be wrong... because you don’t actually know what their worries really are... because you didn’t finish listening! So, by trying to solve a problem that you don’t fully understand, you may inadvertently plant the seed for more concerns and objections.

The way to avoid this trap is to cut yourself off, internally, when you are tempted to rush in. Instead, ask your buyer a question like “Would you tell me more about that?” when they raise an objection. Everyone, everywhere likes to be listened to and a buyer with objections will respond positively to a sales professional who makes an effort to understand their concerns in depth vs. assuming they have all the answers.

Buyers aren’t making things up when they raise objections. They have reasons for their concerns that are unique to them and it is your job to understand where they are coming from.

Encourage your buyers to tell you more so that you can finish listening.

Jeff Shore is a highly sought-after sales expert, speaker, author and executive coach whose innovative BE BOLD methodology teaches you how to change your mindset and change your world.For more than three decades, Jeff has guided executives and sales teams in large and small companies across the globe to embrace their discomforts and deliver BOLD sales results. In a crowded field of sales experts and training programs, Jeff Shore stands out with his research-based BE BOLD methodology. Combining his extensive front-line sales experience with the latest Cognitive Behavioral Therapy research, Jeff has created a highly effective, personalized way to reset sales paradigms and deliver industry-leading results. Jeff doesn’t just teach you how to sell, he shows you how to change your mindset and change your world.His latest book, "Be Bold and Win the Sale: Get Out of Your Comfort Zone and Boost Your Performance," (McGraw-Hill) was published in January, 2014. Learn more at jeffshore.com and follow Jeff on Twitter.

Read more from Jeff Shore:

6 Email Prospecting Tools Every Inside Sales Rep Should Be Using

Allison Tetreault — Tue, 19 Aug 2023 13:30:00 GMT

As an inside sales rep, your call plans most likely include effective email prospecting strategies. You’re giving out your email to everyone you talk to in case they want to contact you later. You’re sending reports to your superiors and asking for advice from your managers, all within your inbox. You’re inundated daily by messages from clients, prospects, marketing, and more. It’s no surprise that email takes up 28% of the average workers’ time, according to McKinsey & Company. To put things into perspective, that’s one-fourth of your day spent in your inbox.

For many inside sales reps, email is one of the most powerful prospecting tools. However, spending more time on email tasks than on role-specific tasks like agile selling for prospects with the right fit may result in a negative dip in quality conversations each quarter. Here are some email prospecting tools and apps every inside sales rep should use to streamline their email tasks and organize their inbox:

1. Streak- A CRM in Your Inbox

Streak has an interesting value proposition: “You already live in your inbox; shouldn’t your CRM?” The company was born out of the frustration of inside sales reps having to switching between the email inbox and the CRM. This free Gmail app allows you to manage prospects through the entire sales cycle, as it keeps track of the status and details for each customer. Just group your email recipient into the right “box” (i.e., lead, pitched, demo, closed) and schedule follow-ups with them to increase their status.

Streak also streamlines the process of writing repetitive emails with what they call “Snippets,” customizable email templates for each stage of the sales cycle. Email templates are helpful when sending out messages to mass recipients, but customizable templates are even more helpful for tailoring and personalizing your initial message for the prospect’s experience.

2. Yesware - Email Tracking with Custom Templates

Yesware “removes barriers to productivity” according to their website. This Gmail app allows for simple email tracking, to see who opens your emails and clicks on your links and when they’re completing those actions. It also can sync with Salesforce, so tasks and contacts can be viewed in both Gmail and your CRM.

Over the years, Yesware has also expanded to offer the possibility for email reminders, custom email templates, and analytics and reports on sales team inbox activity including email opens and response rates. Identify which of your prospects are opening your emails and track their activity with email tracking software like Yesware.

3. Signals - Email Tracking with HubSpot Integration

Signals is also an email tracking app, and is a recent competitor of Yesware. If you’re a HubSpot user, Signals offers integration with HubSpot, which can be immensely helpful for email marketing and prospecting. It also allows for Apple Mail integration, which YesWare does not. However, if you send an email to more than one participant, HubSpot does not have the capability to identify exactly who is opening it. You’ll get the most out of this tool if you send more 1:1 emails.

Both Yesware and Signals compete for sales professionals’ time. We recommend trying a week trial of both to see what works for you (and then sharing your thoughts with us in the comments section below!)

4. Boomerang - Email Scheduling Plugin

After learning when your prospects are opening your emails through email tracking software like Yesware and Signals, use that knowledge to improve your prospecting strategy. Use Boomerang, a simple Firefox and Chrome plugin that allows you to schedule emails to be sent at an optimal time. Boomerang displays these emails in a dashboard that is easily accessible from your inbox, and allows you to change the date or time of your scheduled emails at any time.

While scheduling emails is its core offering, Boomerang also offers email reminders, which archives your email and then sends it to the top of your inbox when you want to be reminded of it. Its response tracking feature is also helpful as it reminds you to follow up with people if you don’t hear back within a given time frame.

5. NetProspex - Data Health, Including Email Data Cleansing

How often do you email prospects from a list and receive an annoying message in response that reads, “Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently?” According to this article, 17% of Americans create a new email address every 6 months. If you’re sending emails to dead email addresses, you’re losing valuable prospects. It’s important to make the most of your time by having the correct data at hand. One tool that can help boost your email efficiency is offered by NetProspex. With NetProspex’s service, you can assess, cleanse, enhance, and grow your data. Start with a free sample of the Data Health Scan, which will provide a real-time view of the health of your data and will enrich your database by filling in any gaps or correcting any errors in your records, validating any email addresses before you send out any messages.

NetProspex also offers services such as CleneProspex, which measures email deliverability and spam trap risk, phone connectability, duplicates based on email addresses, and more, supporting a healthy CRM. According to SiriusDecisions, companies managing data quality experience a 66% revenue increase. The most efficient and effective emails are sent using up-to-date information, and NetProspex offers an easy solution. AG has seen NetProspex’s effectiveness firsthand through our AG Opportunity Connect program.

6. Rapportive - Important Information About Your Email Recipient

Rapportive is a Gmail plugin that gives a quick overview of your email recipients and prospects - including their picture, email, location, job title, and social networks, as well as any previous email interactions you’ve had with them. Rapportive, which helps build rapport, shows as a sidebar, so it doesn’t interrupt your workflow. Just sign in with LinkedIn and Twitter and all pertinent information about your prospect will be available on the right.

Rapportive also shows the recipient’s most recent activity on social network sites, which could help you add value to a conversation they already started. For example, you could write, “I saw that you tweeted about cloud security. You may be interested in this lastest post about ___.” This is a great way to bring context to your emails, and it organizes most of your research about a single prospect into one, localized place.

With these email prospecting tools, you can streamline your email prospecting for more productivity, response rates, and open rates. Consider implementing one of these tools today for a trial period and assessing which email prospecting tools are best for you.

What other tools would you add to this list?

Allison Tetreault is the Marketing Content Coordinator at AG Salesworks. She writes, designs and promotes new marketing content every month, monitors and produces updates for social media networks, gathers important data from marketing and sales efforts, and maximizes the potential of content marketing efforts. Read her articles here.

Related Email Prospecting Articles:

4 Communication Tips for Ramping Up a New Inside Sales Client

Patrice Morrison — Mon, 18 Aug 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Ramping up on a new project can be stressful for business development and inside sales reps. There are many different marketing materials they need to read, and processes they need to understand, before they’re able to start prospecting. Training is rigorous and ongoing. Each project and each client is different, so the necessary ramp-up materials always change. One thing never changes though: in order for a successful ramp up, sales reps need to have a good relationship management strategy. In layman's terms, they need to be able to communicate and collaborate with closing reps effectively.

The best way to set a new project up for success is to organize a productive ramp-up week, as I described in my last blog post on this topic. The ramp-up week is a critical period where clients and their sales team (which includes business development reps, managers, and directors of client operations) connect to share goals and expectations. This is also the perfect time to set a precedence for the relationship between these teams. Effective and constructive communication is very important in order to create and maintain a positive relationship. Here are four communication tips to remember when ramping up with a new client:

1. Actively Listen.

It’s important to take the time to listen and internalize all information you are given during the ramp up period. We’ve talked about the importance of active listening in sales calls; be active listeners with your clients, too. Take notes and show sincere interest in the ramp up materials presented to you. Paraphrase the material to show that you are internalizing it and to confirm the understanding of both parties. Active listening will help you retain new information, which will better the relationship between you and your client.

2. Ask Questions.

It is important to make sure that the whole team is on the same page. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to clarify any ramp-up material. Your client will appreciate your desire to follow up and your interest in their product or service. Instead of sitting on your hands when learning new information, show your outside reps how politely persistent you are early on, and they will appreciate your desire to be politely persistent to prospects on the phone.

3. Share thoughts.

It’s important to emphasize a collaborative client relationship. Brainstorm with your client on scripting tactics and prospecting techniques. You may want to mention other techniques that have worked for you in the past. Your client will once again be grateful that you’re invested in the project enough to contribute your own ideas to make it better.

4. Be patient.

Especially when moving between different projects, it’s important to be patient. Not every client will want to use your suggestions. Remember to respect everyone’s thoughts and experiences and keep an open mind. Don't get discouraged; there is a lot of new information to learn during the ramp-up time frame, and it will take some time for the teams to adjust to working with one another. Every client is different, and so are their processes and strategies. To make the ramp-up process easier for both outside and inside sales reps, remember to be patient.

Hopefully these communication tips will help you better the relationship between outside and inside teams when ramping up on a new project. Communication and collaboration is absolutely essential when both teams are working towards the same goal: more qualified leads and conversations.

What communication tips would you add to this list?

Patrice Morrison, a Business Development Representative, has been working for AG Salesworks since February 2013. She keeps her clients happy by identifying and qualifying opportunities through cold calling efforts and emailing campaigns. Patrice is an avid member of AG's social media team. She also participates in the training and development of new hires. Read her articles here.

Related Client Success Articles:

#ProspectingChat: Sales Enablement Goals and Best Practices

Allison Tetreault — Thu, 14 Aug 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Today, we will be hosting our third #ProspectingChat on AG Saleswork's Twitter account. Time has flown by, and we are excited to continue offering insights and learning from other #ProspectingChat participants. Here are some details about today's Twitter Chat:

Date: Thursday, August 28, 2014Time: 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 PM PSTHashtag: #ProspectingChatTopic: Sales Enablement

Today we’ll focus on the struggle to define sales enablement practices. According to DemandMetric, sales enablement is "poorly or very poorly understood" by 74% of organizations who rated their sales enablement as underperforming. We're going to try to close the gap for sales and marketing professionals by discussing sales enablement goals, best practices, and metrics to track.

Here are today’s questions. We encourage you to prepare your answers beforehand. If you can't attend the Twitter chat, but would still like to add to the conversation, feel free to tweet at #ProspectingChat any time or comment here. To study, feel free to check out our Sales Enablement guide.

Q1: Sales enablement is a relatively new term. How do you define it? Is it a function, a process, or both?

Q2: Why do B2B companies need sales enablement?

Q3: What role does sales enablement play in your organization?

Q4: Where does sales enablement fit in your org's structure? Is it a new department, or are responsibilities split within?

Q5: What are your goals for sales enablement’s impact on the entire company?

Q6: How does sales enablement impact prospecting efforts? How can sales translate SE support into effective prospecting?

Q7: How can you align sales and marketing towards sales enablement?

Q8: How do you measure sales enablement success? What metrics / KPIs should you track for sales enablement ROI?

Q9: What trends should B2B orgs look for in sales enablement moving forward?

Q10: Are there any sales enablement topics or advice that we haven’t touched on yet?

A quick overview: #ProspectingChat focuses on issues that sales, marketing, IT and tech leaders want to discuss. Each chat lasts 1 hour long. For those of you who are new to Twitter Chats, you must have a Twitter account to participate. You can join our Tweet Chat room, which allows for automatic feed updates and hashtag inclusion. Other tools to monitor the discussion are: HootSuite, Twub, TweetDeck and of course, Twitter itself. #ProspectingChat will be held every other Thursday at the same time, and the transcript will be available on Storify shortly after.

We hope you can join us today at 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST for #ProspectingChat!

More Sales Enablement Blog Posts:

How Marketing Can Collaborate with Sales to Create Engaging Content

Megan Toohey — Wed, 13 Aug 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest blog from Sharmin Kent, Marketing Content Specialist at TinderBox.

Now that the average B2B buyer is more than halfway through her purchase decision before engaging with a sales rep, it's critical that the content propelling a prospect through the pipeline is informative and relevant. An organization's marketing team is usually responsible for creating sales content, and communication and collaboration between the two departments can be rare.

For forward-thinking organizations, however, the age-old tug of war between sales and marketing is finally coming to an end. Aligning marketing and sales goals ensures that a marketing team produces the kind of content its sales team needs to close more deals, and that sales can provide marketing with current and relevant ideas for content creation.

But that's much easier said than done. Even the most harmonious sales and marketing unions had to start somewhere, and chances are the beginnings were less than smooth. How does an organization bring its sales and marketing teams together to create content that's valuable to both teams as well as customers and prospects? And how can sales and marketing teams create a method that works every time?

Let sales take the lead

Involving your sales team in the content process can help bridge the gap between sales and marketing by giving ownership of content to sales. It can also help soothe tensions around when and how content is created.

Salespeople are hardwired to offer solutions. They're always ready to persuade, explain, and sell their prospects on new products, services and ideas. That's why you should involve your sales team in the conception and creation of content: they're ideally positioned to tell you what customers want and need.

Sitting in on prospect meetings can ensure that sales and marketing content aligns with the way your sales team interacts with prospects. Consider using sales tools to inform the content you create. Be sure to encourage salespeople to create their own kinds of content as well: they can do things like reaching out to customers on social media or writing guests posts on relevant blogs. In addition to lightening the load on marketing, content generated by the sales team can help build credibility and brand awareness.

Go prospecting

Salespeople can give you an idea of what prospects are looking for in effective content, but prospects can tell you exactly what they're looking for. Talking to current customers can offer insight into the messages that resonated with them during the buying process, and can help marketing teams craft content that's both educational and engaging.

Use data to track the content you create

Talking to salespeople and the customers they serve will give a marketing team the tools it needs to produce effective content, but tracking content performance is a critical element of ensuring success. A data-driven content strategy can guide how marketing shapes messaging and how sales engages with prospects.

Tools like marketing automation software and Google Analytics provide top-of-the-funnel engagement metrics, which is useful for discovering where and how prospects come to your site and what they read while they're there.

But sales automation software can provide performance insight for middle- and bottom-of-the-funnel sales content. Tracking how prospects engage with sales content like presentations, proposals and contracts keeps sales teams on top of pipeline activity; it also shows sales which kinds of content closes deals.

Sales and marketing will always have different goals, but there are plenty of places where those goals overlap with each other. Finding the common places and using them to build content will make both teams look good and positively affect the company's bottom line. And when that happens, everyone wins.

Sharmin Kent is the Marketing Content Specialist for TinderBox, sales automation software that increases productivity with data-driven sales documents in the cloud. She's also a writer and contributor to Social Media Today, Business2Community, Salon, ThinkProgress and NewsCred.

10 Inside Sales Lessons Learned Over 10 Years at AG Salesworks

Craig Ferrara — Tue, 12 Aug 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Last week was my 10-year anniversary at AG. At times, 10 years seems like eons ago, but honestly most of the time it truly feels as if time has flown by. During this period, I bought a condo, got married, had a child (who is now 7), sold a condo, and bought a house... all while watching AG grow from an 8-person shop to the 60 folks we are today.

I was watching a great documentary last night called "180° South." It spotlights the co-founders of the clothing companies Patagonia and NorthFace. In effect, these guys would best be described as anti-CEOs. In the documentary, a big message they tried to convey was that you can't be afraid to get a little dirty in order to learn important lessons as you grow. The joy of what we do is less about the process, and more about the experience. One quote that stuck with me was:

"The best journeys answer questions you didn't even think to ask about yourself."

To some degree, this describes my experience with AG. I came here back in the day with no idea what to expect, but I knew that I was brought in to help complete a vision. Before I came here, I had been fairly conservative with my choices professionally, taking the safer, more obvious route. I had my reservations, but I was willing to get a little dirty for the sake of the journey.

Here is a collection of 10 inside sales management and prospecting lessons I have learned over the past decade at AG:

1. Employees need to know you’re in the trenches with them, fighting the good fight. There is nothing worse than a boss who commands the team from behind their desk. Get out of your office! Take some time to sit in their space and listen to their calls while offering up collective strategies to attack their job tasks.

2. Employees need to know you have their back. Nothing demotivates an employee more than bosses who don't stick their neck out for their people. We’re in this together aren’t we?

3. They need to know their opinion is heard. Opinions on scripts, call plans, employee motivation, retention & development are all areas your employees can provide valuable insight on. Listen to them! After all, these are all areas that affect them each and every day, and they may even offer up an idea you'd never even thought of.

4. Campaigns will die if you don't feed them with solid contact data. 100% of the campaigns I’ve worked on don’t meet expectations when we’ve purchased a crappy list or have been handed un-scrubbed MQLs.

5. Pre-call planning is a must. You rarely get very far when cold calling if you don’t do your research and have a mental game plan before each and every dial you make.

6. Devise effective tracking metrics. I’m sure there are a variety of metrics that are very important to you, such as lead rate, conversion rate, total activity, etc. Before you ramp any campaign, make sure to determine the metrics that are the most important to you to adequately track effectiveness from the outset.

7. Ongoing training can lead to employee success. This may be time-consuming, but we can’t assume that the front-end training as a campaign launches is all the training that sales reps needed. Training should be an ongoing effort that takes place over several months… especially with greenhorns.

8. Create a tough but attainable comp plan. There's nothing more demotivating than seeing an unattainable goal dropped in front of you at the start of the quarter. I understand that it isn't always going to be a walk in the park, but we need to feel that the odds of hitting the goal are reasonable.

9. Continual feedback from outside reps is a must. Providing a good quantity of leads to sales is obviously a good thing, but if the reps aren't doing anything with them, what's the point of even picking up the phone? Implementing a closed loop feedback process should help keep them accountable. At AG, we send lead feedback requests 24 hours after a meeting has been scheduled with their boss copied. The last thing a sales rep wants is an angry superior wondering why they never followed up on a hot opportunity. Beyond that, feedback lets us know if there are additional questions we could be asking to better qualify the lead.

10. Don't avoid conflict with employees: A problem rarely goes away on its own and eventually it may bite you in the arse. Address it head-on so the cards are on the table and your employee knows what is required of them moving forward.

BONUS lessons learned, and far and away the most important:

Nurture your culture. We’ve all heard that culture eats innovation for lunch. Teleprospecting will grow old very quickly when you feel like a number. Since we all know it ain’t glamorous, there's still a lot we can do to keep the team engaged. What I've seen that can have the biggest impact is making employees "active participants" in their own success (for example, by allowing them to strategize on their calling effort). At the end of the day, it is actually possible for cold calling to be fun, but it starts with your team culture.

Be nice. You really shouldn’t vary from this. When you feel like you may stray from being nice, consider being nice.

They say that fear of the unknown is the greatest fear of all. The only thing you can do in those situations is just go for it. I'm glad I did.

Craig Ferrara is the Vice President of Client Operations for AG Salesworks. He has extensive experience in the sales and teleprospecting process. Craig joined AG Salesworks in 2003 and has successfully managed several teams of high-performing Business Development Representatives. To read more of his articles, see here.

3 Traits to Inspect in a New Hire Interview for Inside Sales Success

Laney Dowling — Mon, 11 Aug 2023 13:30:00 GMT

As the end of summer draws near, hiring season looms upon us inside sales professionals. Many recent graduates will be looking for their first job after a relaxing summer, and many seasoned sales reps will be taking stock of their current positions. At AG Salesworks, we’ve seen many potential inside sales reps walk through our door for interviews in the past few weeks. However, our hiring process isn’t for everyone. After all, new sales hires frequently fail, so we want to make sure that we’re hiring the best talent to benefit our clients and our prospects. During the initial interview, we have a keen eye for personality traits that will help the candidate thrive in an inside sales environment. Here are 3 traits we look for in an inside sales interview and 3 questions to ask when assessing if a candidate’s personality is a good fit for your company.

1. Solution-oriented, not petulant.

Accountability is everything in inside sales. If an inside sales rep is not hitting goal for the week, the worst he or she can do is blame everything out of their control. Great inside sales reps hold themselves accountable and take ownership of their shortcomings. Instead of moping in despair, they focus on finding solutions so they can do a better job next time.

Question: What was your reaction in the past when you didn’t hit a goal? If the candidate worked in sales before, you should be able to get a very clear idea of their reaction to failure. If they didn’t work in sales, they may describe another situation. Look for them to not only say they were disappointed, but to enumerate any next steps they took to alleviate the situation.

2. Confident, not arrogant.

There’s a fine line between confidence and arrogance. I have a no-tolerance policy for arrogance at AG Salesworks. For me, it’s all about being confident. Prospects and clients can read confidence over the phone, and that morale goes a long way in building rapport. If an inside sales rep has confidence in the product or service they’re selling, that confidence can be contagious for potential buyers. Arrogance, however, has the opposite effect.

Question: Tell me about a situation that might demonstrate your confidence to do this job. The candidate may detail past leadership or sales experience. If they brag about their successes, it might not be a good fit. However, if they describe a tough obstacle that they overcame in the past, they could be a good addition to the team.

3. Clear and direct, not meandering.

Good inside sales reps don’t talk in circles or make excuses, and they are direct in their communication. From a manager-to-rep relationship and a rep-to-prospect relationship, this is extremely important. As a manager, you want someone who makes things easier for your prospects and clients, not more difficult by not getting to the point. From a prospecting standpoint, people don’t have the luxury of time to speak with someone who isn’t clear and won’t get to the point. Instead that candidate will likely lose that prospect right away, obtaining no useful information for our clients.

Question: Can you tell me about yourself? This is a common interview question. For some, it is also a very challenging one. Look for the potential hire to briefly summarize past work experience and focus on the strengths they have that are specific to inside sales.

Next time a polished interviewee comes into your office, I hope you keep in mind these traits and questions that will hopefully gain you a successful new hire.

What traits would you add? What questions do you ask your inside sales reps in the interview?

A Structured Day in the Life of an Outbound Prospecting Rep

Megan Toohey — Wed, 06 Aug 2023 13:38:00 GMT

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest blog from Gareth Goh, Content Marketing Manager at InsightSquared.

If you have a team of outbound prospecting reps, spare a minute to give them some love, attention and empathy. After all, they have perhaps the toughest job in your organization: making cold calls to hit aggressive dial targets day after day can be a grueling experience that weighs on even the most motivated and productive prospecting reps.

At the same time, both you and them know how important their role to the organization is. Without them, your sales pipeline - and subsequently, your bookings results - would be substantially smaller. What can you, as their manager, do to ease the painful monotony of their day-to-day job responsibilities?

Provide them with the structure they need to really do their jobs well.

Fighting the temptation of “more!”

Sales managers typically have one way of managing outbound prospecting reps - demand more! “We need MORE leads!” “You guys have to make MORE dials!” When faced with this type of “more” pressure, reps will adopt a mentality of boiling the ocean, as they pursue more leads by any means necessary. However, when reps have a strong and varied structure to their day, they can fight the temptation of “more.”

Structure breaks down the day into specific and palatable chunks, with a goal that is unique to each of these time periods.
Reps who fall behind early in the day won’t feel the pressure to make more dials at the end of the day in an effort to make up the gulf on their daily activity goals. The worst thing your reps can do is make calls just for the sake of making calls to hit a quota.
Structure helps your reps avoid going on “autopilot,” where they just make calls without actual prospecting or planning.

Not sure how to provide your reps with that structure? Here is a sample day-in-the-life of one of the outbound prospecting reps at InsightSquared.

A typical prospecting day:

8:00 a.m. - If you fail to plan (your day), you plan to fail (your day). You want to get in the right frame of mind for the whole day, instead of just dialing immediately upon your arrival to the office. Ask yourself, “Who am I calling today?” and then set up your lists appropriately.

8:30 a.m. - Time for that first prolonged call blast of the day. Here’s where planning comes into effect. Who’s most likely to be at their desk right now? Prospects on the East Coast and in Europe will be, so start with those numbers first. Now’s also a good time to set small, reachable goals. Need to hit 100 dials in a day? Shoot for 30 now.

10:00 a.m. - Call blasts should be followed by breaks, so your reps can stay refreshed with a clear mind. Going for a walk to get some coffee or taking a break to play a game of ping pong with a fellow prospecting rep is a good way to get the blood flowing after sitting down for so long.

10:30 a.m. - Time for another call blast. You should be in a pretty good groove now, so make sure this is your biggest and most productive call blast period of the day. You can also hit a variety of different time zones across the United States, so plan your prospect list accordingly. Forty dials is a solid target to aim for here.

12:30 p.m. - Time to refuel with some lunch. Don’t eat at your desk, though; it’s important to physically unplug and think about something else other than prospecting.

1:00 p.m. - After lunch is one of the worst times for a call blast - you’re in a food coma, and the people you’re calling might be in one too. You can do other productive activities here... such as prospecting! After lunch is a perfect time to do some lead generation and start backfilling your lists for the rest of the day or week. You could also build out an organization chart (allowing you to reach more decision-makers on each account that you call) or research new prospecting email templates to experiment with.

There are plenty of productive prospecting activities to do, so much so that your reps should not be in the mindset of strictly making calls. Getting out of that mindset will help them plan their days better and be more productive overall.

3:00 p.m. - It’s been a productive day, so allow yourself another break. Get a snack to make sure you’re properly fueled to finish the day strong.

3:15 p.m. - Time to finish out the day and hit those goals! You’ve done 70 calls today, which means you have 30 more to do. Target those West Coast prospects, as well as those Australians just waking up on the other side of the world.

Don’t just stop at 30 though. If you’re ahead of the pace and there’s still time at the end of the day, shoot for 110 or 115 dials. These extra efforts will not go unnoticed.

Adding structure to your outbound prospecting reps’ days will see them be more refreshed, more motivated, more focused and ultimately, more productive. You should also give them the autonomy to structure their day in a way that works best for them. Offer plenty of flexibility to schedule in sales coaching exercises or to shadow senior reps - there is always room for improvement.

A more structured schedule for your prospecting reps will result in a more robust sales pipeline. Implement that structure and you will see immediate dividends.

Gareth Goh is the Content Marketing Manager at InsightSquared, writing about sales analytics and Salesforce best practices on their blog. He is a two-time graduate from Boston University, with a strong background in journalism and digital marketing. Gareth is an avid sports fan, especially in basketball, soccer and the NFL (Go Patriots!), and enjoys playing board games and poker. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

[Infographic] The Outsourced Inside Sales Teleprospecting Process

Allison Tetreault — Tue, 05 Aug 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Imagine you’re the CEO of a B2B high tech company. Your company has survived the most difficult start-up stages, and you’re ready to start successfully selling your product or service. At times, your solution is difficult to explain, but your engineers know its features like the back of their hand. You decide to insource your inside sales team.

You hire new inside sales reps, many just out of college. Your marketing team works on qualifying leads, but your sales team leaves many unqualified leads untouched. According to Marketo, 80% of leads generated by marketing are ignored by sales.

Eventually, your inside sales team gets frustrated. Your engineers don’t appreciate talking on the phone all day instead of working to enhance the product they labored over in the first place. Your inside sales managers aren’t seeing as much progress as they would like because of a 6+ month ramp-up time to full sales productivity (Sales Readiness Group). After a few months, it’s apparent that many of your new sales reps aren’t cut out for the job, and turnover rates jump up. Everyone is feeling overwhelmed, including your buyers, who complain that the sales process is too tech-heavy with early demo offers that turn them away from the product.

You know what you need to do. In order to restore balance to your organization, you decide to research outsourcing some of your inside sales functions. But where do you start? How do you know you’re looking in the right places? Are you asking the right questions during the discovery call? Are you prepared for the transition and implementation phases of the outsourcing process?

Many business leaders are swamped with many sales and marketing tasks every day. The time to research - and begin to implement - the steps to outsourcing inside sales functions just isn’t there.

AG Salesworks knows your struggle. We’ve heard it from our clients. We just wrote an eBook with advice for balancing the pros and cons of outsourcing inside sales functions for your company, Your Lead Generation Home from Home: How Outsourcing and Teleprospecting Functions Can Augment Your Tech Company’s Revenue. To make outsourcing easier, we’ve created an accompanying infographic to aid you in your outsourcing research: The Outsourcing Process.

The Outsourcing Process Infographic includes:

4 easy, actionable steps to outsourcing inside sales functions
Sample questions to help you determine your level of need for outsourcing
Statistics comparing generalist and specialist inside sales partners
Expectations and differentiators for a successful teleprospecting partner

View the infographic here. It’s best read alongside the Outsourcing Guide to Inside Sales Teleprospecting. Feel free to share this infographic with others who may need guidance through the outsourcing process.

6 Tips for Successfully Onboarding New Inside Sales Reps

Kim Staib — Mon, 04 Aug 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Whether you’re building your own inside sales team or considering outsourcing your teleprospecting functions, it’s important to know and perfect the training process for new hires.

Over the last couple of months, AG Salesworks has seen many new faces. As a Manager of Client Operations, one of my jobs is to oversee the training of new hires on my team. Having previously been very active in the training team as a business development rep, I happen to think we have a very effective process that has only improved over the years. Here are a few training tips we follow to ensure successful onboarding of new hires at AG:

1. Pack their day.

On their first week, are your new hires often sitting at their desk, twiddling their thumbs and wondering, “What should I be doing right now?” To ensure that their time is used wisely, make sure every hour of the day is blocked with something to do, whether it be call shadowing, training sessions, or independent research.

2. Mix up the trainers.

Having new hires solely trained by their managers and directors is a tremendous underutilization of talent among the rest of your team. Here at AG, we rely a lot on peer coaching as a means to get new hires up to altitude. How do you become a better inside sales rep? You practice with a stronger inside sales rep. Expectations and overall methodologies are left to the managers, but in regards to learning how to do the job, isn’t it best to learn from someone who is already doing it? Additionally, this process allows new hires to get to know more people in the office, which is always a positive.

3. Take them to lunch.

This may seem like a small task, but it really goes a long way in establishing rapport with a new hire and making them feel comfortable in the company culture. By taking new inside sales reps to lunch, you are affirming that they belong and that you can serve as a greater resource to them.

4. Reinforce with video training sessions.

Studies show that the retention rate for information that is both seen and heard is 80%, compared to a 10% retention for hearing and a 20% retention for seeing. The hardest aspect in our training for new inside sales reps to master is the use of Salesforce.com. However, we have found that making a few 2-3 minutes videos demonstrating everyday tasks performed in Salesforce has helped us to better ensure our new hires get up to speed quickly.

5. Role-play, role-play, role-play.

As a manager, I want to feel 100% comfortable by the end of training week that an inside sales rep will be able to pass a live prospect as a qualified lead if she or he gets that prospect on the phone. There is no better way to ensure that happens than through role-playing. We even take it a step further at AG and include many different people in the office playing different roles so the new hire gets exposed to as many common scenarios as possible. Apart from just sounding confident and intelligent on these role play calls, they are also tasked to put into action what they have learned in Salesforce training, including dispositioning accounts, logging calls, and more. With a manager close by, we encourage them to ask questions, make mistakes and get those pre-calling jitters out of the way.

6. Survey them.

This is one of the key parts of training week. Once your new inside sales reps finish their training, mock calling, and role-playing, survey them to see what they thought of the experience. How comfortable do they feel on their project material, Salesforce, etc.? What exercise did they find most helpful during training week? Least helpful? Identifying trends in feedback helps us as managers tweak the training process to make it even more successful. It also establishes our AG philosophy that ideas for improvement can come from anywhere. A good idea is a good idea, and we value their input.

As more and more inside sales reps join the ranks of your outsourced and insourced inside sales teams, it’s important to know the training processes that they undergo. How do you train effective inside sales teams?

#ProspectingChat: Experiences Outsourcing Inside Sales Functions

Allison Tetreault — Thu, 31 Jul 2023 14:00:00 GMT

It's time for another #ProspectingChat over at AG Saleswork's Twitter account. As well as sharing many insights from sales and marketing thought leaders throughout the day, we will also be hosting a Twitter chat at 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST.

Date: Thursday, July 31, 2014Time: 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 PM PSTHashtag: #ProspectingChat

A quick overview: #ProspectingChat will focus on issues that sales, marketing, IT and tech leaders want to discuss. Each chat lasts 1 hour long. For those of you who are new to Twitter Chats, you must have a Twitter account to participate. You can join our Tweet Chat room, which allows for automatic feed updates and hashtag inclusion. Other tools to monitor the discussion are: HootSuite, Twub, TweetDeck and of course, Twitter itself. #ProspectingChat will be held every other Thursday at the same time, and the transcript will be available on Storify shortly after.

Today we’ll focus on outsourcing teleprospecting and inside sales functions. We'll ask participants to "role-play" as a new tech company and consider the various differentiators that play into the decision to insource, outsource, or create a hybrid of the two for your company's inside sales functions.

Here are today’s questions. We encourage you to prepare your answers beforehand. Remember, they have to be 140 characters or less!

Q1: When you hear the word “outsourcing,” what do you think? What are some inside sales teleprospecting myths?

Q2: Many tech companies face this conundrum: to insource or outsource inside sales functions. What are your experiences?

Q3: How do you go about looking for an outsourced inside sales teleprospecting partner?

Q4: Why do some tech companies outsource their inside sales teleprospecting functions?

Q5: Is it possible for both insourced and outsourced sales functions to collaborate on lead generation? How could they work together?

Scenario: Let's do some roleplaying here. Imagine you're the owner of a new tech company.

Q6: What is one pitfall you may need to overcome when insourcing the entire inside sales function?

Q7: What is one of the biggest problems you face when looking for a trustworthy outsourced teleprospecting partner?

Q8: What main questions should you ask during a discovery call with your inside sales teleprospecting partner?

Q9: What metrics do you expect your outsourced teleprospecting inside sales partner to use to gauge progress?

Q10: Is there any advice for outsourcing, especially for tech, that we haven’t touched on yet?

We hope you can join us today at 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST for #ProspectingChat!

Supercharge Your Sales and Marketing Vocabulary

Megan Toohey — Wed, 30 Jul 2023 15:30:00 GMT

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest blog from Greg Klingshirn, Content Marketing Manager at SalesLoft.

From breakthroughs to benefits and from profits to process, the words used to present your product or service to prospects are instrumental to your success.

There’s no denying that the persuasive power of certain words can increase conversion rates and shift a buyer’s behavior. First impressions are far more valuable to engaging a potential customer than you may think. But have you identified these words?

The good news is that there are only a handful of words that are powerful and compelling enough to move your prospects to action. Whether you want your prospect to sign up for a free trial of your product, subscribe to a monthly newsletter or follow your social media accounts, it boils down to the weight of your words.

Incorporate these five words and we guarantee you’ll see stronger engagement:

Benefits (Not Specifications).

The most effective way to understand the true benefit of your product or service is to focus on results. "What's in it for me?" Can you effectively answer this question from their perspective?

When you focus on selling the specs of your product, you're asking the prospect do all the work to figure out why they want the features offered to them. Do the work for them by outlining the connection and the benefits.

Explain exactly how your service will benefit a prospect by focusing on the big picture. Rather than listing specs X, Y, and Z, extrapolate on what these features will accomplish and how they will help the prospect.

Value (Not Price).

You should never allow price to be a valid objection to any sales development call. Your role as a sales development professional is to demonstrate the value your product or service has, and will in turn demonstrate how it outweighs the price tag. Therefore, your conversations should be value-centric.

It’s easier and more effective to convince the customer of your value early on, because it immediately removes price from the equation.

You (Not I).

Your pitch, your product, your service, and your benefits are about them...not you.

If you want to delight your customer, focus on them and how you can help them overcome some of their most pressing challenges. Instead of talking about yourself, talk about how they’ll save time and energy by investing in your product or service.

A simple, one-liner is all it takes: “You will be able to spend twice as much time calling and emailing your best prospects.”

It’s clear, it’s understandable, and it demonstrates value.

Talking about yourself in the first person only will overshadow the benefits and value that your product or service offers. Make it all about the prospect.

Process (Not Specifications).

Leveraging the explicit functions isn’t going to cut it. Neither is a rundown of specs listed on the products page on your website. Determine the process that your prospect has implemented and align your pitch with the benefits of using the product. Then speak to that. Your number one goal is to focus on the context in which the product or service will be used.

Objectives (Theirs, Not Yours).

Determine your target’s objections at the onset of your outreach process. By understanding how you can help them tackle their business goals, your value and credibility increases exponentially.

Ask questions like:

What are your revenue goals next quarter and how are you going to get there? What happens if X occurs? What about Y? Who is responsible for that and what happens if it is not achieved? What is it worth to the company?

If you can help your prospect meet these goals, you’ll close the deal then and there.

Don’t lose a deal or miss an opportunity to develop a relationship based on sloppy interactions that undermine your credibility. Identify the power words that are best suited to your product or service and buying process, and supercharge your vocabulary.

Let us know! What does your power word bank look like? Are you making deposits or borrowing time before your connections run dry?

Greg is the Content Marketing Manager at SalesLoft, one of the fastest growing startups in Georgia. His goal is to plan and create content to make sales professional’s jobs more productive and enjoyable. Follow him on Twitter.

Cold Calling: You Get What You Put In!

Craig Ferrara — Tue, 29 Jul 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Back in the mid ‘90s, I was fresh out of college and managing a hotel front desk, with aspirations to one day become the General Manager. I quickly became accustomed to long hours and cranky business travelers, which most of us know can be challenging to say the least. At the time, a large percentage of my friends were living the high life at multiple tech company and making obscene amounts of money relative to their experience, as they were recent college graduates as well.

So, around the year 1999, I finally decided to take the plunge into the tech industry.

And within a year, the tech bubble burst.

While this was a difficult time for me, my adjustment to the downturn was much easier because of my experience in the hotel world. I wasn’t accustomed to having that silver spoon fed to me immediately after college graduation, unlike some of my coworkers. Man, were those people awful to be around when the crap hit the fan. Not one of them had the capability of dealing with any kind of adversity because they were accustomed to “just showing up” for work and watching their income double year after year.

In retrospect, the two values that my hotel experience instilled in me were work ethic and a realistic expectation of what that work ethic would produce.

Seems simple to me: You get out what you put in.

With the benefit of hindsight, I try my best to instill this mindset into every member of my sales prospecting team.

The goal is to focus on realistic success. Every new hire who is relatively new to the cold calling game needs to understand that they aren’t necessarily going to kill it out of the gates. Being a success in sales, more often than not, is an arduous process. There is no magic wand that you can wave to suddenly blow your number out of the waters. I like to impart an important piece of advice for new sales reps here: Actually take the time to absorb the knowledge we’ve obtained over the years (the hard way) at AG and if you’re methodical with your approach, you should inevitably see the positive outcomes we’re all anticipating.

Unlike in the pre-tech bubble days, deals aren’t just going to fall out of the sky. What AG makes abundantly clear to our teleprospecting team is this: we’ll provide you with the tools and the philosophy for being successful, but we can’t pick up the phone for you. Carve out the time out in your day to research, call, and uncover the sales opportunities we’re all trying to chase down.

It ain’t pretty advice - no one’s being fed a silver spoon here - but I think it’s good. Who ever said cold calling was easy, anyway? It’s all about the amount of time and effort you put in to make each call count.

How to Have an Effective First Conversation When B2B Teleprospecting

Laney Dowling — Mon, 28 Jul 2023 13:30:00 GMT

I believe one of the most challenging aspects of sales teleprospecting is the first conversation.

You have less than a minute to prove yourself as a trustworthy sales rep. You only have your phone, your research, and your CRM to back you up. You can get bogged down by administrators or frustrated by curt replies. I’ve seen firsthand how extremely difficult it can be to build trust with a prospect on a first meeting.

Whether you’re new to an inside sales role or you’ve been sales prospecting for years, it’s important to know how the best techniques for holding a quality first conversation with your prospects. Below are some tips that I can offer based on my experience:

1. Don’t waste time with the wrong person. After introducing yourself, immediately let your prospects know that you understand their time is valuable, and make sure they’re the right person who oversees the specific area of interest you’re calling about. Your time won’t be wasted and neither will theirs.

2. Eliminate fluff. When it comes to teleprospecting scripts, I hate fluff. Don’t ask your prospects about the weekend. Get to the point quickly and ask them questions about their environment and their current technologies.

3. Avoid product dumping. Leave the product information for later conversations. Instead of hounding prospects with tech speak, focus on learning about their environment during the initial prospecting efforts. Have a 3-sentence “What We Do” statement prepared for the initial call; anything longer could be overkill. You don’t want to talk your way out of a sale without even knowing enough about your prospects’ environment yet.

4. It’s OK to keep it brief. Don’t feel like you need to have a 30-minute conversation on the first attempt. Gather key information from the prospect, and then ask for 30 minutes in the upcoming week to regroup. That way, you have time to prepare a selling approach that will be most relevant to them.

5. Play detective. Ask meaningful questions that will help you determine quickly whether or not prospects are a good fit for your product or service. Having a list of qualification questions in front of you will allow you to do this more effectively. The key is to work these questions into the conversation without sounding like you are taking a survey.

6. Less talking, more listening. If you are talking for the majority of the call – STOP! The initial call is all about the prospect. To succeed in not talking your prospect’s ear off, it is crucial to have a list of probing questions in front of you. Ask the questions based on the flow of the conversation and then step back and let them talk. Remember that you don’t always have to fill in the silence, as sometimes the prospect will take that opportunity to further explain their situation.

7. Don’t interrupt. There’s nothing worse than an inside sales rep who interrupts a prospect while he or she is talking on the phone. You may be thinking, “This never happens; who would do that?” but believe me, it astonishingly does happen. It’s rude, abrasive and it causes prospects to lose any trust they had in you immediately. Being assertive and polite at the same time is crucial when it comes to any sales conversation, never mind an initial one.

B2B teleprospecting is tough – kudos to you for sticking with it! What additional tips can you share for having an effective first conversation?

Laney Dowling is the Director of Customer Success at AG Salesworks. Laney's responsibilities include managing daily client engagements, inside sales team oversight, reporting, training, and ongoing contact list development and refinement. To read more of her articles, see here.

Sales and Marketing Alignment Equals More Revenue

Megan Toohey — Wed, 23 Jul 2023 13:30:00 GMT

AG Salesworks is pleased to present you with a guest blog post from Brian Serino, SVP of Sales and Business Development at NetProspex.

We’re all familiar with the deep-rooted battle between sales and marketing. It goes something like this: sales blames marketing for their inability to produce quality leads, while marketers fault sales for their lack of lead management skills. In this battle, however, there is no winner, because when sales and marketing teams work individually, poor lead management results on both sides.

In fact, organizations that establish strong alignment between their sales and marketing teams achieved 20 percent annual revenue growth compared to companies with poor alignment, which experienced a 4 percent decline in revenue, according to a HubSpot report titled, “The Complete Guide to Unifying Your Sales & Marketing Efforts.”

It’s no secret that your inside sales team will close more deals when funneled high quality leads. However, in order to create an effective lead generation process, the two departments must be on the same page from the very beginning. Below are some tips to help better align sales and marketing.

Set a common end goal: While each department has its own set of goals, it’s important to establish a common end objective. Revenue is an important metric to measure, but also focus on engagement, connections, and quality conversations. At the end of the day, the goal for both marketing and sales is to drive more success for their company.
Define your ideal prospect: Before marketing can deliver quality leads to sales, both departments must work together to define what constitutes an ideal lead and how leads are scored. Doing so helps ensure that the marketing team is attracting the type of leads your sales team wants.
Make lead scoring a collaborative process: A lead scoring model is very flexible; therefore it should be consistently tested to make sure that it is accurately sending over the best MQLS. However, this can only happen when there’s an open line of communication between the marketing and inside sales teams.

Sales and marketing alignment is crucial to organization success. So take off the boxing gloves, make nice, and follow the tips above. Trust me, your bottom line with thank you.

Brian Serino has more than 20 years of technology sales experience with the proven ability to build and manage teams that exceed goals and drive profitability. Prior to joining NetProspex, Serino was responsible for increasing revenue and market share for marketing technology provider Neolane. Brian is an avid skier and enjoys all outdoor activities in the white mountains. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

4 Big Questions to Ask When Outsourcing Inside Sales Teleprospecting

Allison Tetreault — Tue, 22 Jul 2023 13:31:00 GMT

The decision to outsource part of your sales team - whether you're revamping an insourced team or whether you don't have on insourced team - can be a very tough one to make. What are the most crucial factors to look for in an outsourced teleprospecting team? Most people's answer would be: cost. While cost of service is a very important factor when considering an inside sales teleprospecting partner, there are numerous other questions to ask to determine whether the company you're researching is well-run, successful, and most important, trustworthy. In a discovery call about that company, ask these 4 questions to get a real feel for the way they conduct their business. These questions and more are featured in our new guide, "Your Lead Generation Home Away From Home: How Outsourcing Teleprospecting and Inside Sales Functions Can Augment Your Tech Company's Revenue."

1. What kinds of clients do you serve?

Identify the specialist and generalist outsourcing companies. Generalists will take any type of client, but their processes won’t be specific to your industry. Many generalists only see a 20-30% conversion rate to next steps in the sales process. However, with a specialized teleprospecting firm, you should see a 60-70% conversion rate. Specialists will make a point to say that they specialize in the tech industry. Specialists will also have an army of advocates for their service, and are happy to provide you with client references and/or case studies specific to your industry, product or service, or perhaps even share how they solved a similar challenge to the one your company is facing. If you want a more streamlined sales process with people who have experience selling products and services similar to yours, steer clear of the generalists and only consider specialist sales providers.

2. How exactly will leads be qualified and transferred?

The qualification conversation is very important to have before implementation. Understand the outsourced partner’s criteria for quality leads and ensure that it is communicated well. Will the quality leads passed over express a business pain that can be solved by your product or service? Are they interested in the next step? What exactly defines a “next step?” Not only will these questions give you a glimpse into the best practices the company uses to deliver quality leads to their clients, it also helps you understand the necessary criteria your insourced team might have to look for as well.

3. Do you have a feedback process? If so, what type?

It’s important to know the kind of feedback process your outsourced partner provides. Closed-loop feedback allows for communication between everyone involved, including the outsourced team and your own team, on each opportunity. After a lead is passed from your outsourced team to your internal team, the movement of that lead should be documented and reported on by each partner. The outsourced team would like to understand if that lead was converted to an opportunity and is being pushed further down the sales funnel. On the other hand, the outsourced team should also receive feedback if the lead did not convert to an opportunity, complete with reasons why the lead was stalled in the process. This information keeps both teams on track with their metrics and allows for better communication on what’s working and what’s not, as well as more insightful conversations on how to serve your sales numbers.

4. What metrics should we use to gauge progress?

With customized reporting dashboards for their clients, your outsourced teleprospecting provider can suggest what metrics are best to focus on when measuring lead qualification progress and offer explanations as to why some metrics are better than others to track. For example, call volume isn’t as important as positive lead feedback percentage, or passed leads that agreed to the next step. With some recommendations from your teleprospecting partner, agree early on what both of you will be tracking to ensure success, and agree together when or if those metrics need to be changed.

Interested in reading more about outsourcing inside sales functions? Our new guide contains even more questions to ask the company you're considering as well as advice for successful implementation and proven benefits to outsourcing teleprospecting to the perfect team for your company. Download it here or click the button below.

3 Tips for Inside Sales Reps to Stay Motivated During Summer Months

Patrice Morrison — Mon, 21 Jul 2023 13:30:00 GMT

It's halfway through July! We’ve officially entered the dog days of summer. That means it’s time to start assessing Q3 goals and targets. July is the ideal time for inside sales reps to regain their focus so they can follow up the quarter with great results. But with beautiful summer weather and vacations planned for the not-so-distant future, it can be difficult for an inside sales rep to remain fully focused and motivated. Here are 3 tips inside sales reps can use to stay on task during the peak of summer.

1. Know Your Goals.

I know this tip sounds rather obvious and straightforward, but nonetheless it is very important. One of the key factors to staying on top of goals and objectives is having a clear understanding of what those goals are. To make those goals clear, schedule a meeting with management. Inside sales reps should take a couple moments to connect with their team, and most importantly their boss, to discuss expectations for the month, quarter, and more. This face-to-face meeting helps to ensure that both inside sales managers and reps are on the same page according to their quota and other expectations. When the inside sales team understands their objectives, it’s much easier to draft a plan and zone in on the most important tasks, such as calling high-level contacts, passing high-quality leads, and reaching other metrics that are most important to their managers. However, “making goal” shouldn’t be your only objective. Instead, focus on exceeding that goal with quality, not quantity.

2. Plan Ahead.

After an inside sales team has a clear understanding of their objectives, they can begin to create a plan for the upcoming weeks, months, and quarters. Some sales reps prefer to make task lists of short-term and long-term goals for completing and exceeding quota. These task lists can be hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or all of the above. For example, I aim to complete at least 40+ outbound calls a day and send about 50 emails a day. My weekly task list includes averaging an 8% connect rate and bringing in 3 leads. Having a tangible task list - especially one where I can cross off items when they’re completed - helps me stay on track, manage my time, and be more productive overall.

3. Reward yourself.

It can be hard to stay motivated at work during the summer months. The weather is so beautiful that it’s hard to ignore. But why deprive yourself? As long as you are staying on task and are on pace for your goals, there is no reason you shouldn’t be able to treat yourself. In fact, taking breaks here and there, even just to walk outside in the sunny weather, is proven to vastly improve focus and productivity for prolonged periods of time. For example, I look forward to visiting the local park during my daily lunch breaks. It gives me the rest and rejuvenation I need to finish off the work day productively. Sometimes I go out for coffee or visit the local bookstore just for the change of scenery. It’s important to take a moment to clear your head so that when you return to your desk, you are able to tackle any task with an open mind.

It's crucial to meet with management to develop a plan for summer success, outline that plan in a task list you can look at often, and reward yourself with short breaks in order to stay productive in the summer months. A few weeks ago, I wrote about strategies for summer sales prospecting that should help you stay motivated when calling prospects, as well. Follow these tips and wow your team, manager, and your prospects with your persistence to stay motivated in the peak of summer.

Join Us for Our First Twitter Chat, #ProspectingChat, Today!

Allison Tetreault — Thu, 17 Jul 2023 13:00:00 GMT

As you may already know, AG Salesworks is an active user on Twitter. We share insights and posts from many sales and marketing thought leaders and tweet sales prospecting best practices every day. Today, we’re excited to be hosting our very own Twitter chat, #ProspectingChat, at 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST!

A quick overview of our Twitter chat:

Date: Thursday, July 17, 2014Time: 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 PM PSTHashtag: #ProspectingChat

#ProspectingChat will focus on issues that sales, marketing, IT and tech leaders want to discuss. Each chat lasts 45 minutes long. For those of you who are new to Twitter Chats, you must have a Twitter account to participate. You can join our Tweet Chat room, which allows for automatic feed updates and hashtag inclusion. Other tools to monitor the discussion are: HootSuite, Twub, TweetDeck and of course, Twitter itself. #ProspectingChat will be held every other Thursday at the same time, and the transcript will be available on Storify shortly after.

Today we’ll focus on lead nurturing, asking participants to consider and share their own lead nurturing strategies as well as any issues aligning those strategies to both sales and marketing goals.

Here are today’s questions. We encourage you to prepare your answers beforehand. Remember, they have to be 140 characters or less!

What is the impact lead nurturing can have in a B2B organization? Is it solely a marketing function?
How would you convince a B2B organization that’s not using lead nurturing to start? What stats would you share?
How can sales contribute to lead nurturing and collaborate with marketing? What processes can both be involved in?
What is one of the biggest problems you face when aligning sales and marketing departments towards lead nurturing?
What do you think are some solutions to the rift between sales and marketing when it comes to lead nurturing and scoring?
How has lead nurturing evolved over the past couple of years? What’s important now?
What is needed in order to create a robust aligned lead nurturing strategy and implementation?
What are some of the best ways to segment lead nurturing campaigns?
What specific tools can sales and marketing use to increase their lead nurturing impact? What are some key metrics, KPIs, and benchmarks to track when lead nurturing?
How can sales make the most of MQLs with lead nurturing?
In what ways can Salesforce help your sales team nurture leads?
What can B2B organizations do to improve their lead nurturing efforts that we haven’t touched on yet?
What trends should B2B orgs look for as they move forward with lead nurturing strategies?
Can you share 3 key takeaways to keep in mind when it comes to aligned lead nurturing strategies?

See you today at 1:30 PM EST at #ProspectingChat!

4 Steps to Content Curation for Inside Sales Reps

Megan Toohey — Wed, 16 Jul 2023 13:30:00 GMT

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Dave Howe, Principal at Sales for Life.

As social sellers, it is imperative that we constantly share valuable information and insights with our networks. This is essentially what separates us from the rest of the sales community. However, clearly there is not enough time in the day for us to be constantly creating brand new content from scratch, nor is it necessarily beneficial to do so.

A healthy content marketing mix involves a significant portion of 3^rd party content sharing in addition to original thought-leadership pieces. By sharing content from other sources, you are not only showing your network that you respect the opinions of others in your industry, you are also showing them that you’re well informed on topics that are important to them. For these reasons, it is important that you master some basic content curation skills to ensure you always have an ample amount of information to share with your community of prospective buyers.

Step 1: Create a List

As with many processes in life, gathering a good list of content sources requires a bit of initial brainstorming. Take 15 minutes to compile a list of topics and keywords that relate to the type of content your buyer community will find valuable. These can include product names, trends, industry buzzwords, etc.

Don’t worry about racking your brain for every single possibility. Just focus on creating an initial list of 5-10 topics/keywords to start with. You will be able to easily add new items to this list as you go.

Step 2: Find Content

Now that you have your list of topics/keywords, you’re ready to start finding content sources related to them. The easiest place to start is typically with a search engine like Google or Yahoo. Search for content sources by entering in your topics/keywords one by one along with words like “Blog,” “RSS,” “Newsletter” and “Feed” behind them. That will look something like this: “Commercial Real Estate Blog,” “Cloud Computing RSS,” “Corporate Finance Newsletter” and so on.

Once your search engine begins to return desired results, click on the links that appear to be regularly updated with valuable information and bookmark them in your browser for future use. It is also helpful at this stage to setup Google Alerts for your topics/keywords to make sure you catch any important content sources you did not find in your initial search.

Step 3: Content Delivery

Once you have found your information sources it’s time to setup an easy way of browsing the content. It is important to use content aggregator tools for this process to ensure you don’t spend too much time searching through all this content for a good article. I personally use Feedly because it is very user-friendly but there are lots of other options out there. Choose a content aggregator that you like and add your content sources to it from the bookmarks that you saved in Step 2.

Most aggregators will let you sort your content by topic, which is very helpful if you want to share content on several different topic focuses. Once you have all of your content sources loaded into your aggregator tool, you will be able to easily review tons of topic-specific content from multiple sources in one view.

Step 4: Content Sharing

Here is the easy part: SHARE CONTENT. Now that you have all this amazingly valuable content at your fingertips, share it with your buyer community. This can be done in a number of ways. By sharing through LinkedIn, you can publish to both your LinkedIn and Twitter networks simultaneously.

You can also use social publishing tools like Hootsuite to help you schedule and disseminate your content throughout the week in multiple networks. The important thing is to make sure that you're sharing content where your buyers will find it. If your buyers aren’t on Facebook, then don’t bother sharing your content there.

Don’t forget to add some insights to your posts as well. It is one thing to share valuable content with your online community, but it is even better to provide some additional insight. Let your network know how you feel about a certain article. This will help humanize your online persona and potentially start conversations within your community. Also, don’t be afraid to be a little controversial from time to time. People often enjoy a good debate, and it can help spark additional visibility.

You’re ready to start sharing! Be sure to add in some original content along with your 3^rd party curated content. We recommend the 4-1-1 strategy to anyone starting off in content sharing; that means each week you should share 4 pieces of 3^rd party content, 1 piece of original content, and 1 piece of content that displays your personality, such as a favorite quote or funny picture.

Dave is a gifted salesman with a passion for training. Having started from humble roots as a doorknocker in Australia, Dave quickly excelled over his decade long sales and marketing career to hold several VP and Director level positions. Having personally felt the diminishing effects of selling into B2B marketplace during an evolution of buyer behavior, Dave began to develop his own social selling techniques and training them to his reps. In addition to being a Principal at Sales for Life, Dave is also an Advisory Board Member for Special Olympics Toronto.

Does a True Inside Sales Team Player Care About Getting Credit?

Craig Ferrara — Tue, 15 Jul 2023 13:30:00 GMT

I'm a big teamwork guy. I like when everyone can share credit.

That may seem like an overly obvious statement for most of you out there, but if you asked yourself if you're a team player, what would your answer be? Deep down, do you prefer to collaborate with others or tackle things independently? I don't think there's really a right or wrong answer, but at some point, inevitably, you're most likely going to need to collaborate with a colleague or boss on a portion of your work in order to take it to the next level.

As I've discovered over the years, the more responsibility I take on, the more I realize that working independently isn't really an option for me. As much as I would like to have direct control over my world, I realize that there are far too many moving parts for me to not have to rely on others for their input and insight. I'm perfectly fine with that, and I came to terms with that reality long ago. Most of us will have to if we have any intention of working in a management capacity or in inside sales.

Working collaboratively, as we all know, can be difficult at times, but from my experience it produces a far better result than working independently. Problem is, some individual thinkers always want the credit for something they've contributed to. They're so consumed by their desire for credit that they forget that the work they did is amazing despite that lack.

I recently came across a great quote from Harry Truman that I think sums up this issue rather nicely:

"It's amazing what you can accomplish if you don't care who gets the credit."

True collaboration is when you worked so well with your team that when something is rolled out, you can't even remember who came up with the idea to begin with. Heck, it may have been you who came up with the idea, but you got so caught up passionately working through the process that you don't care who receives the credit.

Don't get me wrong, assuming you’re working for the right company, those of you who deserve individual credit will be recognized. In my opinion, the true team player focuses on the team first and how they can contribute to getting everyone credit for their work.

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3 Key Metrics to Track When Managing Your Inside Sales Team

Laney Dowling — Mon, 14 Jul 2023 13:30:00 GMT

(And Call Volume is Not One of Them)

I recently wrote in my blog post 5 Most Frequently Asked Questions About Outsourcing Inside Sales that gone are the days of closely tracking the number of activities when managing your inside sales team. While I still think measuring activities is important to a degree, I don’t think it should hold as much weight as it does for many inside sales teams out there.

The problem with placing such a large emphasis on the number of activities is that doing so confuses the purpose of teleprospecting. It’s not about quantity, it’s about quality. With this metric as a forefront in Inside sales reps’ minds, they tend to get caught up in making a high number of dials instead of focusing on making smart dials. Smart dials lead to quality conversations which in turn result in qualified opportunities for themselves or for the outside sales team to follow up on.

The times have changed, and with exciting new auto-dialer technologies, inside sales reps can really focus on having fruitful conversations instead of stressing about hitting their activity number for the day. All calling efforts are done for them, which allows them to reach upwards of 150 dials per day. Auto-dialers along with marketing automation really eliminate the time spent on manual activities, leading to more and more time for inside sales reps to focus on what they do best – talking to prospects live.

So what metrics should you track to ensure your inside sales reps are focusing on quality, not quantity? If activity number isn’t as important anymore, what is?

1. Number of Conversations.

As I said above, and it bears repeating, the key ingredient to a successful inside sales rep is their focus and motivation to talk to prospects, uncover quality information, and hopefully convert them to opportunities. As long as the rep is averaging 12+ quality conversations per day, they will uncover 8-12 opportunities per month.

2. Lead Rate.

The lead rate is the amount of leads your inside sales rep uncovers in comparison to the amount of conversations they have. While conversations are well and good, uncovered opportunities is the number one metric to track.

3. Positive Lead Feedback Percentage.

After a lead has been qualified, it’s crucial to track its quality. To calculate the positive feedback percentage, simply take the total amount of leads passed and divide by the number of leads that moved on to a next step Some examples of a next step are: scheduled follow-up or check-in call, scheduled demo or onsite meeting, etc.) This metric is just as important as their lead rate. Even if your inside sales reps are passing a ton of leads, it really doesn’t mean anything unless they have a high lead feedback percentage. This metric allows you to track quality, and that’s obviously what will ultimately yield high forecast, pipeline, and closed business numbers.

When I was on the phones, I remember my daily goal: 120 calls. Eight years later, we’ve seen a shift in focus, and now inside sales managers want quality conversations and quality leads. It’s less about how long you’ve been hammering away at dialing as many prospects as possible, and more about how those prospects are reacting and whether you’re able to move them on to the next step. Again, it’s not that number of dials isn’t important (it definitely is), but emphasis should be placed on what is resulting from them.

What metrics do you utilize to manage your inside team?

8 Tips for Improving Open Rates for B2B Sales and Marketing Emails

Megan Toohey — Wed, 09 Jul 2023 13:35:00 GMT

AG Salesworks is pleased to bring you a guest post from Janelle Johnson, Director of Demand Generation at Act-On Software.

In B2B marketing, sales and marketing emails play different but equally important roles in a successful communication strategy. Marketing emails lure the leads, and sales reels them in. But if nobody ever opens your messages, they won’t do your organization much good. Getting a prospect to open an email can be extremely challenging in today’s crowded marketplace. Many of us get hundreds of emails every day. Which ones make you click? Which ones make you hit delete?

We already know what works on us. Putting this knowledge into practice for our customers can be difficult.

Sales Emails vs. Marketing Emails

Before we start optimizing open rates,first let’s look at the key differences between a sales email and a marketing email.

Marketing emails are designed to build relationships with prospects so that when the sales rep enters the picture, the lead is ready for action.

Newsletters deliver relevant content that can build your brand, set your organization up as a thought leader in your industry, introduce a new product, offer videos and whitepapers, and much more.
Drip campaigns are automated programs that send content to prospects at the right moment in the sales cycle; “lead nurturing” is a type of drip campaign that helps leads proceed through the funnel. This gives your prospects relevant information at the moment they’re most likely to appreciate it.
Triggered emails are fired off automatically based on the actions your prospects take, such as a “thank you” for a download.

Sales emails are direct communications between the sales team and prospects.

They get to the point faster, usually with a call-to-action right up front, and they’re focused on getting the recipient to do something specific.
They’re sent from a real person, ideally through a customer relationship management (CRM) tool, and they’re customized based on the prospect’s needs and past behaviors.
They offer a benefit, whether it’s a solution to a problem, an answer to a question, or an offer for something the prospect can use.
The templates should be created in partnership with marketing so they reflect the brand consistently while still delivering the personal touch.

Both of these types of messages will benefit when you apply some key best practices for improving open rates. Here are:

8 ways to make sure your email message actually gets read:

Understand the objective: This seems obvious, but in order to make sure your reader knows what you want them to do, you need to be crystal clear about it. Do you want them to visit your website, or to schedule a one-on-one call? Are you inviting them to an online demo, or are you trying to get them to meet in person? It may be that the goal is to get more information from them, either through direct communication or a survey. If they’re not ready to take a certain step (like scheduling a meeting), do you have a secondary action they can take, like downloading a white paper? Outline your objective before you start crafting the email and you’ll have more chance of success.

Consider where it comes from: For both marketing and sales emails, the From address is a key aspect of the equation. Both should come from your organization’s domain rather than a personal address like “sales.person@yahoo.com.” For marketing emails, it’s appropriate to use something generic like “news@yourbizdomain.com.” But a sales email should use a real name. And be sure it’s your full name. Even if your business is just you, you probably shouldn’t send an email from “jane@yourbizdomain.com.” It’s a good way to make sure everyone knows how small your company really is.

Grab their attention: A successful subject line is one that stands out in a crowded inbox. It’s one of the reasons why marketers are including symbols (like “Do you ♥ marketing?”) in subject lines. But simply getting someone to notice you isn’t enough. You need to communicate some sort of benefit to your reader, and the subject line is a great place to do it. That’s not easy, because your subject line should also be short and to the point as well as accurate about what’s inside. When sending marketing emails, you can always run an A/B test to find out which subject line is the top performer. For a sales email, you can try your own test with different leads in the same organization – or in similar industries – in order to find a proven winner.

Get personal: Try adding your prospect’s name to the subject line; for many companies, this works very well. Test both first-name-only and first-and-last to see the full range of possibilities. Of course, you’ll want to make sure your sign-up forms ask for this information, so your automated programs can make use of it in the subject line or in the body of the email message. And stick with the name by itself. You never want to deliver something to Mr./ Ms. and risk getting it wrong.

Prepare for the preview pane: The information that displays in the preview pane is a big part of the reason your message gets opened. Make sure you know how the message will show up in different email clients. Don’t put key messages or the call to action in images only. If the pictures don’t render, or they don’t display correctly (and a lot of preview panes suppress them), your primary message will be lost. Make sure to have your call to action in text as well as a button or banner. When you do use images, adding tailored alt text will encourage your reader to open the email and click to display them.

Keep preheaders and subject lines short and specific: The preheader is a short line of text at the top of an email that many email clients display in the preview pane. When images are off, it can be a powerful call to action because it shows up even when images don’t. Be sure to include a link in your preheader, so your reader can act on the email without opening it. Ideally, you should limit the preheader text to no more than 85 characters. Subject lines should generally be about 50 characters or less. And since many email clients are different, be sure to “front load” your subject line by putting the critical information at the beginning. That way if it gets cut off (and it might, especially on a mobile device) your main message still comes through.

Make sure it’s mobile-friendly: According to Forrester, 72% of US online adults send or receive personal emails on a smartphone at least weekly. That means your email, whether it’s a sales or marketing message, needs to be optimized for reading on small screen. It also means that you need to think about the preheader and how it works together with the subject line to entice someone to open, because they often display right next to each other.

Turn down the volume: Are you over-messaging your audience? It’s surprising how often companies make this mistake. You probably know first-hand how annoying it is to receive emails from the same company every day. Set up a schedule that keeps your company on the forefront of your leads’ minds without spamming them. Make sure sales and marketing are in alignment and working from the same calendar. You don’t want your sales email arriving right on the heels of the company newsletter – that is, unless you sales rep is calling out something in the newsletter that you think this prospect should really see. If you over-message your audience, you’ll likely see open rates go down while opt-outs go up.

Making it Easier

The right marketing automation platform can help you increase email open rates by making it simpler to run A/B tests, automate scheduling and sending campaigns, and integrate messaging with a CRM tool. Integration is key for a number of reasons: You can track how often a prospect has been contacted and which emails have been opened and clicked on. You can swiftly identify the leads that are ready to buy, and you can automate the hand-off to sales. Plus, your marketing team can quickly create email templates for sales to use, and the sales team will be more likely to actually use them if they’re readily available through the CRM system.

Learn more about Act-On’s solutions for automating and optimizing your email marketing, and find out how to make sure every message you send clicks with your audience.

[INFOGRAPHIC] The Aligned Lead Nurturing Funnel

Allison Tetreault — Tue, 08 Jul 2023 13:30:00 GMT

At AG Salesworks, we talk about aligning sales and marketing departments quite a bit. By now, most people know that in a successful business, B2B sales and marketing need to work together.

However, many people still harbor a misguided notion about what sales and marketing alignment really is. It's not just a mindset. It's a merging of actionable business processes.

We explored this idea in our Sales Enablement guide last month. Sales enablement is a function that combines responsibilities of both sales and marketing departments. Therefore, it's impossible to have a successful sales enablement process without a healthy alignment between the two departments.

So when we started writing our latest guide, Aligned Lead Nurturing for B2B Sales and Marketing, we wanted to challenge the traditional idea that lead nurturing is primarily a marketing function. The days of segmented sales and marketing tasks are over for most businesses, and that includes lead nurturing. We searched for more information about aligned lead nurturing practices, and in fact found an arsenal of facts and figures to support our claim: B2B lead nurturing works best as a function shared by both sales and marketing.

As we realized that the thought leadership around lead nurturing was slowly shifting, we wanted to provide more for our readers. Since our last infographic received praise, we decided to try our hand at another type of infographic: the funnel.

The Aligned Lead Nurturing Funnel Infographic includes:

Specific actions sales and marketing can take when nurturing prospects in different buyer stages.
A 5-step plan for nurturing exploring prospects to champions for your brand.
Key metrics to observe every step of the way.

Best of all? It’s free, and you don’t need to fill out a form to see it.

If you're interested in a graphic representation of how sales and marketing can really work together on a business practice that is becoming more and more prevalent today, check out our latest infographic. Feel free to share it with others who may be interested, too!

How are you ensuring that sales and marketing aren’t only aligning ideologies, but are also aligning business practices?

The Fine Line Between Cold Calling and Warm Calling

Patrice Morrison — Mon, 07 Jul 2023 13:35:00 GMT

Inside sales representatives and business development representatives spend a majority of their time prospecting companies to find and create potential sales opportunities. Depending on the type of project, an inside sales rep may have many different campaigns to follow up on, calling both warm and cold prospects.

Let’s recap the colloquial definitions of “cold calling” and “warm calling.” I contact prospects for my client who have expressed interest in their solutions through downloading information on their website or attending their events. Reaching out to a prospect who already has a relationship with your client or that you have previously engaged with is considered “warm calling.” It is also common for a sales rep to prospect campaigns in which the prospect has had no prior engagement with a client. This type of situation is commonly referred to as “cold calling.”

What is the true definition of a cold call? According to Merriam Webster Dictionary, a cold call is “a telephone call made by a business to try to sell something.” Sound familiar? This definition sounds quite similar to a warm call. The main difference between the two is that cold calling is considered unsolicited - unexpected and unrequested by the prospect.

After looking up these definitions, I realized that both sales prospecting techniques do not always follow suit. Not every warm call is expected and solicited. Teleprospecting is not black and white. There are many shades of gray between cold calling and warm calling. In fact, cold calling does not have to be cold.

A talented and successful sales rep will warm up their cold calls by using a variety of methods. Resourcefulness is one of the best techniques an inside sales rep can learn. A rep should make sure to do research before beginning dials. They should learn as much as they can about the prospective company by browsing the company’s website and social profiles and learning about their industry. Most inside sales reps learn as much as they can about their client and in turn immerse themselves in the clients’ products or services and industry. This will be helpful when talking to the prospect, because they can refer to success stories that are particularly relevant to their industry.

An inside sales rep will also want to confirm that the data on their list is accurate. To confirm information, you can use resources such as Data.com and LinkedIn to check prospects’ job titles and responsibilities as well as find corporate phone numbers and emails. Inside sales reps may also find valuable information about prospective companies through conversations with operators and administrators. It’s good to ask them questions because they can often point you in the right direction departmentally. And, better yet, you could even get a referral to decision makers within the company.

All of this information can be used to warm up the initial “cold call” with the prospect. Mention that you have spoken with the prospect’s colleague who had helped direct you to them. Express to them how your client helped other companies within their industry that have had the same pain points and challenges.

Prove to your prospect that you have done your research. Show them that you are genuinely interested in finding out whether or not your solution can help them overcome a business challenge. To me, this is the essence of a warm call.