Sales Prospecting Perspectives

I recently sat in on a meeting with a team of BDRs and Management that are re-vamping the new hire training program.  I was extremely impressed with their thought process and the amount of work they have put into a strong curriculum of training covering Call Strategy, CRM, Resourcefulness, and Client Communication.

It’s the end of the quarter and everyone is scrambling. Whether you are sweating over sales metrics, pipeline, quotas, feedback or analytics you have two things in mind, growth and profitability. Did we use these past three months to our advantage? Is our business growing? Am I excelling as a professional? These milestones are often measured quarterly keeping us in line with what’s really important to our success.

An Inside Sales manager wears a lot of hats. They run point on weekly sales calls, compile metrics, present on analytics, and facilitate communication between everyone. They manage all communication between the BDRs and the clients and are responsible for all final decisions and deliverables. Success of a client engagement is dependant upon the tools a manager provides to their team and the guidance they give. Bottom line, we need to be a resource.

“Too many cooks in the kitchen” is a metaphor used often in sales.  Just as if 6 people were trying to season the same meal, similar chaos can exist on client calls and in a marketing database.  In the past, I have discussed utilizing the 30 minutes with your clients in an organized fashion when on weekly client calls.  That same attention to detail and organization needs to be present in your outbound marketing campaigns.

When I walk into an interview, a lot of things are running through my head.  I’m thinking about how the candidate presented on paper and now in person, wondering what their level of interest is for the position, and whether or not they have done their homework on our company.

There are several factors that go into a successful weekly client call. The objective is to make the most out of the 30 minutes you have. You need to remember to talk strategy, discuss opportunities passed, active pipeline, how the list sources are and what the audience is saying. You need to deliver on “take aways” and action items from the previous week and always be punctual with dead lines. You need to provide your client with something new about their target market every week and have a plan of growth for the next. Whether it’s an adjustment in the pitch from the Sales team or a new Case Study to push out from Marketing, change is good in this business.

Recently, I noticed during training sessions with new Business Development Representatives that I am repeating the same phrase; “remember you’re looking to have a business conversation”. I’ve come to the conclusion that I say it as reactive advice to BDRs and new hires that struggle with transitioning a conversation and listening to exactly what a prospect is saying.

As an in-side sales manager, driving productivity is always on my mind. What can I be doing to assist my Business Development Reps in meeting/exceeding their number? I’ve noticed in my experience that inside sales reps are often like students. They struggle with the productivity in its most simple form. Think about yourself or your peers as undergraduate college students and what your stance on productivity was.  Let’s use the example of a college student that decides half way through the semester to focus on their B+ classes, blow them out of the water and chalk their C/D classes up as a loss. “Hey, I am awesome at English but I really can’t seem to wrap my arms around Calculus, I’ll try something different next semester.”  That student that puts all their eggs in one basket is probably banking on the 4.0 to outweigh the 2.0s and 1.5s….it won’t.

I recently read a great question from one of my LinkedIn groups, Inside Sales Management: “Is anyone measuring activity rather than opportunities? If so, what activities are you measuring and how?

If you manage an inside sales team, you know that a strong implementation process is crucial. There is so much to understand and retain when ramping up for a new product. We have learned that most effective way to learn about a solution is not necessarily found in just product information. While it’s amazing that we have access to whitepapers, webinars, case studies, blogs and demos, interactive learning is crucial to truly understanding a technology or service. The amount of marketing materials available today can actually bog down an implementation week. Our process for implementation week involves working together as a team.