Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Russel Cooke, journalist and business consultant. 

The rollout of Google Plus in the summer of 2011 was nothing short of mighty. What started as an invitation-only “field test” spawned millions of users desperate for the next big thing in social media. Three long years later, and there is finally tangible proof that concludes that Google Plus, for all the hoopla it aroused, and the subsequent drop-off that it experienced, is the social media of the future.

What makes Google Plus so special is the visibility it affords its users. This, for businesses in particular, works particularly well. The fact that Google Plus matters so much when it comes to search engine results also drives businesses to use the medium, as they experience better search engine optimization as a result. This infographic describes why Google Plus is the future of B2B Marketing, and why businesses need to stop neglecting its presence.

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.

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!

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.

Many companies aren’t utilizing the full potential of their lead nurturing campaigns.

They’re passing all lead nurturing responsibilities to marketing.

They’re separating the lead nurturing cycle from the sales funnel.

And they’re not aligning their departments for better conversions.

According to a study by CSO Insights, underwritten by Velocify, 42.3% of companies nurture leads by handing them off to marketing, who then engages and remains active with them through lead nurturing campaigns until they’re ready to buy.

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

If there is anything that the NYPD and US Airways social media disasters have taught us in the world of sales (and business for that matter), it’s that you’ve got to do a far better job of organizing messaging than ever before.

Businesses consciously take great measures to create and sustain a positive online identity.  They want to be found, and once they are, they want to exude a good, lasting impression.  In the B2B world, the human behavior that precedes the act of evaluating and buying has changed drastically with the rise of social media and the availability of endless online intelligence. 

Over the past year, social selling has become one of the hottest topics. When combined with outbound prospecting, social selling can be a powerful selling method.  However, don't be fooled by the phrase "social selling." It is not a vehicle to get your sales pitch out into the world; that would completely shut you down.  It's a method of selling through listening and thought leadership.  We are in an era where prospects choose most of their buying path, as they have so much information (on products and services) readily available to them without having to consult sales professionals.  Understand that social networks are not to be used as sales megaphones, but rather a means of listening and offering consultative advice to help others. Here are a few pointers when it comes to social selling.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from David Hazeltine, Director, Campaign Strategy at Fiserv.

Sales and Marketing integration. It’s such a nice theory, but yet in so many companies, the Sales team isn’t happy with the amount or quality of leads being generated by Marketing. Marketing is frustrated that salespeople won’t give them the time of day, never mind appreciate that Marketing exists for one reason: to support Sales. If sales are down, fingers point to Marketing for not providing enough leads. If there are no marketing campaigns in the works, fingers point to Sales for not clearly stating what they need.

Editor's Note: This blog post is an excerpt from the eBook Marketers Making a Difference: Volume 3 about creating a comprehensive B2B marketing strategy. It was written by AG Salesworks' Senior Vice President of Marketing and Sales Richard April. 

Having a detailed understanding of your ideal customer is a key starting point for a truly comprehensive marketing strategy. To gain this insight, initiate a buyer persona exercise with all the key stakeholders from sales, marketing, support, product management, operations, development, etc. Broader input will yield more detailed insight into these personas. It is important to the success of this exercise to have senior executive buy in and participation.