Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing. 

Who is responsible for qualifying inbound marketing leads and identifying new, short-term sales opportunties for senior sales executives in your company? Whether they're Sales Development Representatives (SDRs), Market Development Representatives (MDRs), or simply inside sales, their role is a critical and strategic part of an efficient, scalable sales process.

Whether you’re launching a new SDR effort for your company, or seeking to improve its effectiveness and success in the New Year, here are five steps to get you off on the right track.

Sales development reps, you've all heard it. Cold calling is not a walk in the park. Sometimes, it will seem like a monumental struggle, trudging through lists full of incorrect contacts and trying your best to influence influencers. If your company has a sales development team, you know that one of the few things that helps these sales reps get through the day is knowing that the person sitting next to them is dealing with the same challenges. They can reach out to each other for advice, or to bounce off ideas. At AG Salesworks, this is especially helpful as we have teams for support, including team leaders, managers, and directors of client operations, each of which have experience in the field and have their doors open to reps at all times. 

Like most people, I love Christmas.  I love the beautiful twinkling lights everywhere, shopping for gifts, and spending quality time with friends and family.  December is also a deceptively great month for sales prospecting as outlined in an earlier blog from Craig Ferrara.  What December brings to the operations team is an opportunity to come up with some creative ways to manage our sales development team.  Below are a few sales motivation tips for your teams in the month of December.

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?

Preparing for a client call in B2B sales takes a minimal amount of time and can greatly impact the quality of your client relationship. What time is the call scheduled? Who will be included? What are the topics that will be discussed? What reports do you need to pull? These are just a few simple questions you can ask yourself to feel better prepared before you hop on a call with your client. Here are some of my best tips for preparing for client calls, as well as a sample client call itinerary.  

The Details

Being punctual for a client call is extremely important. If possible, set a reminder ten to fifteen minutes before the call. This way, you can organize your materials and thoughts. You can also use the time to check your inbox for any last-minute updates. Make sure you know who will be included on the call, and, most importantly, how the call will be facilitated. Are you calling into a conference bridge? Do you have the appropriate technology available needed for the call?

Historically, the typical sales rep thinks that prospecting and December do not mix. The mindset is that generally the last month of the year should be spent getting deals in and preparing for the following year.  No one really picks up the phone this time of year, right?

Wrong. And I'm not just saying this from the perspective of AG Salesworks, a B2B lead gen company that prospects year round. 

If you work in outsourced B2B lead gen, you know this moment in a conversation all too well:

Sales Partner: Can you tell me what criteria you want us to follow when procuring data?

Client: Well, we want only C-level executives, in companies with over 250 million in annual revenue.  Our sales reps won’t take calls with anyone who has a lower title.  What’s the point if they’re not the ones who will sign off on the budget?  We don’t want to waste our time with Managers or Directors.

And there you have it.  You’ve just been “C-Bombed.”  

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: