Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Seeing as this is the end of the year, I suspect many of you may be feeling what I like to call the “end-of-year blues.” It’s a positive time to be a consumer, especially if you are planning to buy a car, as you can often use this end-of-quarter or end-of-year blues to secure larger than normal discounts from desperate and starving sales reps.

For inside sales reps, on the one side, you’re getting the brush off from prospects who want to call you back next year instead. The end of a period is a time when your prospects have other fires burning bright. Often, they use those other priorities as an excuse to put buying decisions on hold – especially if you’re selling to publicly traded companies. “I need some more time,” “let me think about it” and “call me back next (month, quarter or year)” are three of the most frustrating phrases you’ll ever hear in sales.

In a world… where sales stars are born… Four have risen above the rest and become… Superheroes!

Are you Inside Sales Iron Man, confident and persistent, well-armored against objections and always researching new techniques?

Are you B2B Batman, resourceful in the way you maintain your sales toolbelt, whether with new strategies or new technologies?

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest blog by Donato Diorio, CEO of RingLead.

Referral selling is all about helping you acquire new customers by utilizing a crucial asset: your past and existing customers. It can be one of the most effective sales strategies because the referral from a satisfied customer provides you with credibility and opens doors.

Referral selling starts from the top and impacts the entire organization. It’s a cultural shift where everyone is focused, passionate, confident and ready to sell. Improve sales prospecting by implementing referral selling. 

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a post from Mike Lipka, Inside Sales Representative at AG Salesworks, and Kenneth McKenna, Business Development Representative at AG Salesworks.

Working in inside sales, we’re able to rediscover and uncover value from past experiences that help us prospect better. For Mike and I, playing football was something that surrounded all aspects of our lives during our tenure on the field. Now, a few years removed from the game and beginning a career in inside sales, all the messages and tips we were so accustomed to hearing every day from coaches and teammates have found resonance in our daily work.

Here are 7 pieces of inside sales advice lessons we've learned from playing football:

I follow a few key topics on Quora, and I try to answer a question over there at least once a week. My inclination is to answer B2B inside sales and sales topics, since AG Salesworks has such an arsenal of resources for everyone. But every so often, I also foray into the B2B marketing topics, such as content marketing, SEO, and blogging. This question piqued my interest, and I thought I’d share with our readers my response:

What are blogging best practices for a B2B SaaS start-up wishing to generate industry visibility?

As the coordinator for Sales Prospecting Perspectives, a B2B blog that also strives for industry visibility, I thought I’d share a few pieces of advice I’ve learned after a year of doing this.

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

Let’s be honest, the hypnotic pull of the television can be hard to resist after a long day of work. I know I’ve been a victim to it more times than I’m willing to admit! With the influx of new fall television shows, I’ve drawn strength from one of my favorite TV personalities, Olivia Pope – the leading lady of Scandal. As a strong female character known for being a "fixer" for high-profile celebrity scandals, she is passionate, non-judgmental, and determined. Here are some sales prospecting methods I've learned from Olivia Pope that have helped me when B2B prospecting. 

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest blog from Colleen Francis, 

After three years of selling products and services at the same prices, your company decides a change is in order. It’s time to make a few price increases to better reflect the current market and rising costs.

Of course, any time prices go up, sellers are bound to hear complaints from long-term customers. Some companies, in fact, believe regular clients should be exempt from price increases altogether, that there should be a reward for loyalty in the client relationship. And yet there are several other pricing methods that businesses employ as well.

The key factor in all these cases, of course, is providing advanced notice of your company’s plans. Pricing surprises are never a good thing in sales!

We all know how quickly B2B inside sales reps can get discouraged when the first few people they call on an inbound prospecting list end up being grad students doing research, people no longer working with the company, or contacts that don't exist at all. Although they may have worked through a small fraction of the list at that point, as many sales reps do, they've determined that the leads you've given them are complete junk.

I've received a wide range of sales prospecting lists of varying quality for each and every campaign we run for our clients. Over the last 10 years, I would like to assume that I've seen it all, but inevitably unique scenarios tend to pop up over and over. Point is, nothing surprises me anymore.