Sales Prospecting Perspectives

It’s new hire season (at least over here at AG)! We’ve seen several new faces this week, and with college graduations just around the corner, we’ll be seeing even more! Jumping into a new lead generation or inside sales career can be intimidating, but everyone has to start somewhere. I really enjoy working with AG’s new hires, and I’ve come up with the following pieces of advice to help new inside sales reps start off on the right foot.

In a perfect world of teleprospecting, every call would result in success, every assistant would be helpful, and every list would contain nothing but accurate, relevant information. Sadly, we don’t live in that world, but with a little work and the right tools, we have the ability to start building it. Resourcefulness while prospecting and making smarter dials and emails is crucial to inside sales success.

I recently shared my thoughts on voicemail strategies, and how acting like a normal person generates more responses. Good emails follow similar guidelines, but here are a few that are tailored to the written, rather than the spoken word.

In an age where phone ringers are set to silent and text messaging is a primary form of communication, finding a successful voicemail strategy can be daunting and discouraging. It can be tempting to just rely on emails for leads, or set up an automated system to leave messages for you, but the ability to leave an effective voicemail is still a valuable skill to learn. Here are some pointers I’ve learned from my time on the phones.

We've all seen the pictures of chimps sitting in call centers wearing headsets, mocking those of us who are on the phone for a living. Don't get me wrong, I think they're funny too, and I laugh along with everyone else, but it gets me thinking about the people I’m working with every day.

While it's true that anyone is capable of dialing a phone (they were invented in 1876, after all), it takes a special set of skills to get perfect strangers to open up about the business challenges they’re facing in their work environments. I still remember my first day, when our president explained to me the value of hiring smart employees, and how this isn’t a job for idiots.

All the recent news and hysteria about the onset of the zombie apocalypse has gotten the country whipped into a frenzy. With the plethora of zombie survival merchandise available, it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle (pun intended). Since inside sales reps aren’t necessarily known for their physical prowess, it’s important for those of us in the field to have a strategy, both for our own survival and more importantly, to make sure we pass our prospects before they join the armies of the undead. But never fear, for I have compiled a list of tips to help us all survive the oncoming apocalypse. I present to you, the Inside Sales Rep’s Zombie Survival Guide.

“It’s all happening!” Almost Famous is one of my all-time favorite movies. I decided to watch it again over the weekend, and was surprised to realize that some of the issues that come up in the film are actually very relevant to inside sales. If you’ve never seen Almost Famous before, go watch it right now. Come on, you’re sitting here reading a blog; you can’t be doing anything that important. Don’t worry; I’ll wait here for you.

So you wanna start prospecting into the mining industry, huh (no pun intended)? Well, you came to the right place. Grab yourself something to drink and have a seat, because do I have a story for you.

As the end of the month draws near, everyone at AG works extra hard to get the last few leads qualified. Some people come in early, others stay late, and there’s quite a few lunches being eaten at desks. Everyone works even more strategically at the end of the month, and tries to maximize each dial and email. But sometimes a little extra something is needed for that final push, and that extra something is of course a good luck charm.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives in pleased to bring you a guest post from one of our newer BDRs, Elizabeth Guerra.

I am a big fan of New Years Cleaning. It’s essentially the same thing as Spring Cleaning, but it’s done after the New Year begins instead of in the spring. I try to clean up and clean out as much as possible so that I can have a fresh start to the year. I always think that it’s going to make me more organized, even though that’s not always the case. My basic method is to get rid of things I don’t need, organize what I have, and replace what I do need. And I’ve found that my New Years Cleaning tactics can also apply to inside sales.