Sales Prospecting Perspectives

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:

It's halfway through July! We’ve officially entered the dog days of summer. That means it’s time to start assessing Q3 goals and targets. July is the ideal time for inside sales reps to regain their focus so they can follow up the quarter with great results. But with beautiful summer weather and vacations planned for the not-so-distant future, it can be difficult for an inside sales rep to remain fully focused and motivated. Here are 3 tips inside sales reps can use to stay on task during the peak of summer.

These last few weeks it seems the amount of people posting statuses about vacationing has skyrocketed. Good for them – I'm jealous. Throughout the year, we all look forward to our vacations because we want a break from the daily grind. Day in and day out we work hard Monday through Friday, and get burnt out from the repetitiveness and stressors of work.  Vacations allow us to change up our routines and result in us feeling refreshed and ready to get back to work when we return. 

Over the years, I found that I innately gravitate towards the part of my job I enjoy doing the most. I think we're all guilty of that at times. In fact, I would argue that most of us gravitate away from cold calling.  In my experience it has been rare to see someone swan dive into cold dials every day. Generally, I had a pre-calling ritual before I got going, but there were still days when it seemed as if it took me an entire morning to get warmed up. 

The hardest transition I've found when moving into a manager role is the change in relationship between you and former colleagues that you've once worked with. This changeover generally tends to be the biggest challenge for most new inside sales managers, whether they're responsible for training the inside sales team or for managing the managers.

A word I have seen pop all over the business blogsphere these days is “gamification.” Gamification in the workplace in the simplest of definitions is making a game out of employees' day-to-day activities. In the various articles I have read on the topic, the opinions seem to be split on the overall effectiveness of gamification.  Farhad Manjoo of The Wall Street Journal feels that it has the “potential for stifling creativity and flexibility in the workplace, and the growing sensation of being watched, and measured, in everything we do.”  Others believe that creating a game out of an everyday work task increases competition and therefore productivity.  Now I can’t speak for the larger companies (the AMEXes, IBMs and Googles of the world) who leverage a gamification strategy to increase productivity, but I can say that at AG we like to keep it simple and effective.  I’ll share with you an example.

I know a lot of people who go to the gym regularly after work, and I myself have always followed that familiar routine. It wasn’t until I started reading over all the benefits from exercising before work and talked to friends who were doing it that I decided to give it a fair shake. There are many benefits for inside sales reps exercising before work.  In inside sales, exercise before the beginning of the work day can motivate you to put your best foot forward. 

It’s the middle of the shortest month of the year, and between calls I hear the familiar orchestra of different off-putting sounds from other cubes: wheezing, coughing, sniffling, sneezing, and zombie-like groans of inside sales reps plagued with cold and flu symptoms.

AG Salesworks is pleased to bring you a guest post from Kevin Thornton, Executive Vice President - Sales & Marketing for VanillaSoft. 

When you take a look at some of the statistics available, it seems like a no-brainer and a win-win situation to implement a telecommuting program for your sales organization.  According to Global Workplace Analytics, telecommuting could have the following benefits for U.S. companies and commuters:

It's officially the end of the first month of 2014. Was the new year all you thought it would be? Are you still keeping your New Year's resolutions? Are your sales and marketing teams surpassing the goals they set at the end of Q4? Now is a great time for some reflection on your sales and marketing plans. Look back on the statistics from this month compared to other years, and see how your teams are doing. We hope they're succeeding!