Sales Prospecting Perspectives

If you’re a content marketer, you know how important it is to produce interesting and relevant content.

If you’re a content marketer for the B2B space, you know how important it is to produce content that’s also fact-driven and referral-worthy.

Many of the potentials buyers we’re writing for don’t want to read fluff; they want clear initiatives and numbers in a format that’s easy to share. This is especially true for Directors of Sales and CIOs; they see numbers every day, and they are used to these numbers telling the truth. That’s why B2B content with statistics in headlines often perform better.

The problem? Many B2B companies producing content on a regular basis simply don’t have time to produce their own facts and figures. So, with attribution in mind, they hunt down the best reports from their peers.

In the world of teleprospecting, many thought leaders are debating the efficacy of new and old techniques. With more and more sales leaders implementing new strategies, it's important for inside sales rep to keep up with the trends. However, don't feel you have to choose one technique and stick to it. Instead, learn to balance your techniques and manage your lists. Social selling is time-consuming, and it cuts out the ability to speak to prospects for a lengthy amount of time about their pains and needs, but it could lead to stronger opportunities. You may find that your team has more activity from the smile and dial method, but without some social intelligence behind these calls, those leads could be dead ends. Below are three things to consider when using commonly used prospecting techniques to find the balance that works right for you.

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

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.

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.

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

It starts with a hesitation.

It becomes an objection.

It festers into a doubt.

And it costs your company leads.

What I’m talking about is sales call reluctance. It doesn’t come from the prospects; it comes from the sales reps themselves. Whether you’re a new teleprospector or a seasoned inside sales rep, everyone experiences varying levels of call reluctance when B2B prospecting.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Cari Zoch, Marketing Manager at Avention, a company that offers real-time, actionable B2B data to deliver 21st century business info, solutions for sales, marketing and research. 

Salespeople are always looking for the holy grail when it comes to making cold calls. They can sort their lists, segment criteria but what’s most important?  Timing.

I’m here today to argue that timing is more than finding the best day of the week or the time of the day to pick up the phone. In fact, it varies by industry and type of prospect anyway.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Katie Kelly, Associate Inbound Marketing Specialist at HubSpot.

Traditionally, we think of BDRs as energetic, hungry, cold-calling machines. How can we get a prospect into taking a meeting? How can we get creative with our voicemails or sales pitches?

This worked well for decades - that was until our little friend, The Internet, arrived.