Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Next month marks an important milestone not only in my career at AG, but in my career in general.  This October I will have completed my first year as an inside sales manager.  It has been a busy year at AG, with many new faces, new clients and new challenges, as I transitioned from making calls to managing those who do.  A few years ago I wrote a blog outlining lessons I had learned after one year as an inside sales rep, and I am glad to reprise that entry to now include lessons from a management perspective.  

Over the 10 years I've spent interviewing inside sales candidates, I've caught myself looking for the obvious traits we seek in people hoping to explore sales for the first time. 

Do they have the drive? Do they seem intelligent? Are they articulate? Can they think on their feet? How do they deal with adversity? Will they fit in with the team?

While these questions are extremely important for us to ask, there are other questions that we often forget to ask throughout the interview. Over a decade, I've learned that getting to the bottom of these questions is absolutely essential for inside sales candidates.

On the surface, these questions may seem obvious. However, when an inside sales rep quickly flames out after 2 months on the job, I'm often kicking myself for not sticking to the 3 C's:

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:

I think it’s safe to say that nearly everyone in the sales game had humble beginnings. Some of you may have had the fake bravado on the outside when you started, but on the inside, like me, you were probably scared out of your mind. 

I just wrapped up my first fall Sunday Funday. We watched the Pats, had some friends over, cooked some fall-inspired food, and may have had one or two pumpkin beers. This is my absolute favorite time of year. It's a fresh new start as we close out the summer and get ready to start the last quarter of the year. An influx of new customers goes hand in hand with that, and it’s always exciting to kick off new client engagements.

As we launched one program in particular last week, my client asked my all-time favorite question: "What makes for the best programs when it comes to inside sales engagements?" The below are crucial elements of a successful inside sales or lead generation effort from my perspective:

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Max Altschuler, Founder and CEO of Sales Hacker Media. 

With inside sales training tactics advancing every day, it’s important for managers to stay up to date on the latest training news. However, instead of only focusing on how to train their reps, managers should also focus on how to train themselves to equip reps with the best tools and strategies they need to get the job done.

And the people who can help the most with that task may be closer than you think. 

Today, we will be hosting this month's #ProspectingChat on AG Saleswork's Twitter account. We will welcome best-selling author Josiane Feigon as a special guest to discuss sales training tips. Here are some details about today's Twitter Chat: