Sales Prospecting Perspectives

With the release of AG Salesworks’ new guide The Inside Sales Manager’s Guide to Sales Team Training featuring Josiane Feigon of TeleSmart, AG has learned that training is not just about the event. It’s a process that has to be perfected during, before, and after that event. The following is a redactment from our new guide. For more advice, please download The Inside Sales Manager’s Guide to Sales Team Training.

Sales training never ends: the initial training week is just the beginning. The most effective B2B sales firms are 22% more likely (more than one in five) than all other sales firms to reinforce training at least once each quarter, according to Aberdeen Group. Companies that carry out post-training reinforcement see 20% more salespeople achieve sales quotas.

As an inside sales rep, your call plans most likely include effective email prospecting strategies. You’re giving out your email to everyone you talk to in case they want to contact you later. You’re sending reports to your superiors and asking for advice from your managers, all within your inbox. You’re inundated daily by messages from clients, prospects, marketing, and more. It’s no surprise that email takes up 28% of the average workers’ time, according to McKinsey & Company. To put things into perspective, that’s one-fourth of your day spent in your inbox.

Today, we will be hosting our third #ProspectingChat on AG Saleswork's Twitter account. Time has flown by, and we are excited to continue offering insights and learning from other #ProspectingChat participants. Here are some details about today's Twitter Chat:

Imagine you’re the CEO of a B2B high tech company. Your company has survived the most difficult start-up stages, and you’re ready to start successfully selling your product or service. At times, your solution is difficult to explain, but your engineers know its features like the back of their hand. You decide to insource your inside sales team.

You hire new inside sales reps, many just out of college. Your marketing team works on qualifying leads, but your sales team leaves many unqualified leads untouched. According to Marketo, 80% of leads generated by marketing are ignored by sales.

It's time for another #ProspectingChat over at AG Saleswork's Twitter account. As well as sharing many insights from sales and marketing thought leaders throughout the day, we will also be hosting a Twitter chat at 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST.

The decision to outsource part of your sales team - whether you're revamping an insourced team or whether you don't have on insourced team - can be a very tough one to make. What are the most crucial factors to look for in an outsourced teleprospecting team? Most people's answer would be: cost. While cost of service is a very important factor when considering an inside sales teleprospecting partner, there are numerous other questions to ask to determine whether the company you're researching is well-run, successful, and most important, trustworthy. In a discovery call about that company, ask these 4 questions to get a real feel for the way they conduct their business. These questions and more are featured in our new guide, "Your Lead Generation Home Away From Home: How Outsourcing Teleprospecting and Inside Sales Functions Can Augment Your Tech Company's Revenue."

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!

At AG Salesworks, we talk about aligning sales and marketing departments quite a bit. By now, most people know that in a successful business, B2B sales and marketing need to work together.

However, many people still harbor a misguided notion about what sales and marketing alignment really is. It's not just a mindset. It's a merging of actionable business processes.

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.

According to The Bureau of Labor Statistics, there will be an 8.9 percent employment growth for sales representatives between 2012 and 2022. They project that an additional 132,000 jobs will need to be filled within that time period.

At AG Salesworks, we hire new teleprospectors with varying experience levels every month. On-the-job training is offered, as well as mentoring from other reps and managers. While many inside sales teams such as our own do have a training process in place, inside sales reps also hear many nuggets of advice along the way that may not be explicitly written in their training documents.