Sales Prospecting Perspectives

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

Cold calls are the bread and butter of successful sales development reps. But what about the times you call and don’t get an answer? Leaving a message is a hard starting point to a demo or qualified appointment.

Instead of being dejected when you don’t get an answer, use it to your advantage. When you’re confident in voicemail, prospects that don’t answer can be your silver bullet.

Leave a voicemail to remember with these five tips:

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Sean Jones of SalesFusion, business writer with a primary focus on the marketing sector.

In the age of the tweeting refrigerator, salespeople are transitioning. The process of a sale no longer unfolds over just one platform; however in many cases it does involve multiple buyers. Bar the anomaly that is the Girl Scout Cookie, the face of the company is no longer the salesperson. As a result, marketing analytics have taken the front seat in driving sales, opening up a whole new industry of firms offering to find niches for their customer’s product or service, to build and develop online content, and to manage existing consumer bases.

What does it mean to be a manager, director, SVP, VP, President, COO, CFO, or CEO, outside of the responsibilities listed in the job description?  It means upholding duties, meeting goals, and contributing to the company.  Sometimes, executives seem to forget the last portion: "contribute to the company."  Many people automatically think, “Well, I'm doing a great job fulfilling my duties, so of course I'm contributing to the company.” But that's not always the case.

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

Inbound, inbound, inbound.

Inbound sales, inbound marketing - it seems like that’s the only strategy that sales leaders depend on these days to generate leads and grow pipeline. And they should be focused on inbound! After all, the concept of inbound - aligning sales and marketing with the buyer’s intent and process, attracting them to you rather than pushing yourself on them - works. HubSpot pioneered the concept of Inbound Marketing and they have now built an entire industry around it. Buyers are becoming smarter and more sophisticated - they don’t need aggressive sales reps pushing products that they don’t want on them.

But wait! What about outbound prospecting?

Sales managers, how often are you evaluating your inside sales team’s messaging techniques? You may have given them the tools to get started, but are they able to craft their own templates for emails voicemails? Are you constantly training them on new social selling techniques?

Just the other day, I sat down with our sales team for a role play. After an hour-long session, they walked out of my office with a better idea of how to target our buyers with tailored messaging specific to them. You see, most sales and marketing professionals just don’t have time. “No, I don’t want to tell you the challenges in my environment and what my company does. No, I don’t want to hear about your product or service right off the bat. No, I’m not always in the mood to talk about my day with someone when I’m already late for my next meeting.”

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Russ Heddleston, CEO of DocSend.

Traditionally, sales has relied largely upon human relationships: successful salespeople know their product and their audience and are enthusiastic about talking to people, pursuing, and closing leads with persistence and moxie. Aside from these personal qualities, until the advent of Salesforce in 1999, the only external tools a salesperson needed were a Rolodex and a phone. In the last decade, technology has dramatically changed the landscape in which inside sales reps operate: the Internet has given the general population unprecedented access to information, the penetration of mobile has allowed people to access this information anywhere and anytime, and (somewhat ironically) the number of people who actually answer phone calls has diminished.

At the same time, the tools that salespeople rely on have evolved and have changed how salespeople gain insight into leads, interact with customers and prospects, and organize their efforts. Here are a few tools that have helped salespeople gain new insights and pursue new strategies for success:

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a post from Gillian Sontz, Business Development Representative at AG Salesworks. 

In B2B inside sales, you will often have to call lists, both warm and cold. When cold calling - which actually isn't that different than warm calling with the right preparation - it's important to make a strong first impression on new prospects. They've never heard of you before. They may have never even heard of your company before. Instead of coming off as a lazy sales rep interrupting their day's work, try out these cold calling tips to help position yourself as a trusted advisor first and foremost.  

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Josiane Feigon, President of TeleSmart.

Millennials are currently flooding inside sales organizations, and their numbers aren’t going to be reduced. They come in a broad range of work personality-types: some are uber-professional superstars with high leadership potential, while others treat the office like a dorm, walk around with their wrecking balls, and have extremely short attention spans.

The challenge of ramping them up and transferring knowledge is big. Since many millennials don’t want anyone telling them what to do, any type of training that involves a talking head or an authority figure is not well received. Here are some issues that inside sales training must overcome if it wants to reach millennials:

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a post from Michaela Cheevers, Business Development Representative at AG Salesworks.

As a business development representative, it is important to make every contact attempt count in order to provide your client with the best information possible. Inside sales reps have the same imperative: maximize time by qualifying prospects creatively. That being said, it’s crucial to be prepared when communicating with anyone in your quest for information. No matter who you get live on the phone, chances are they can provide you with some information; you just need to be equipped with the right questions to ask. Here are some ideas for inside sales and business development reps to find opportunities for quality conversations, no matter where you find yourself in the prospecting trenches.