Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Anyone who lived in Boston about 15 years ago will remember the Big Dig. The “Dig” that went from a projected 7 years to nearly 20. One of the best construction signs I saw during that time was “Rome wasn’t build in a day. And if it were, we would have hired their architects” (and that was only 5 year into the construction). That being said, AG didn’t come out of the gates knowing all the successful tricks that make up a successful inside sales rep.

So, you have set your next years goals. You know what revenue numbers you need to hit and you have established the campaigns and marketing events that are going to get you there. Now you need to execute and follow up on your leads. Whether you are planning on outsourcing your teleprospecting team or not, put yourself in the shoes of the sales team and make sure that you are providing the components needed for your efforts, and theirs, to be successful. I have had the opportunity to work for a variety of clients. Some coming right out of the gates with little to no name recognition (some with products still in Beta!), companies with cutting edge technology, others part of the Fortune 500. From my experience, I know what I need to be successful. I am going to share with you some of the preliminary homework that you need to do in order to make your time and investment as successful as possible.

If we all enjoyed the same things, there would not be much variety in the World. There would not be a strong need for Marketing, and one simple message would be able to reach everyone the same way. But that is not the case – thankfully, otherwise life would be pretty boring. Granted, we all strive for the same end result, but the means to getting there is always different for everyone. This same concept most certainly applies for the different roles within an organization. The communal goal within an organization is to make more money, and reach new revenue goals year after year. It’s not a simple task, and it takes the synchronization of different components to get there – marketing targets the right audience, IT increases the productivity of the staff, sales has the right messaging, and the CEO ensures the unity of the machine.  With this thought in mind, you need to be aware and acknowledge that some divisions within an organization may have little concern over what another department is doing; they have their own problems and tasks to deal with.  That being said, it is important as a business development representative, to ensure that the time and effort that you are investing to penetrate a company is not being deleted or thrown in the junk mail folder due to lack of relevancy.

I have written about the importance of closing the loop between Marketing and Sales.  It is equally critical to close the loop between your inside and outside teams! There can often be a disconnect between an inside sales team and the field reps. Once the lead has been passed over there is no further communication between the two parties as to how the call went. The value of having a feedback process in place is that you can make sure everyone is on the same page and that the inside sales team is aware of what makes for a good opportunity.

The key to any success is a strong foundation. A good education will prepare you for your ideal job; a sturdy structure for a new building; and open communication for a strong relationship. The same theory applies when you begin your teleprospecting campaign. As spoken about in my webcast, before you start your calling efforts, you need to establish who your target market is, develop a strong value statement, and develop a list of contacts to call.

If you have established your teleprospecting team, you may already be up and running with your inside team generating leads for your outside sales team. This is great, and exactly what the purpose and goal of your teleprospecting efforts should be. One important question you need to ask yourself, and your outside team, is how are the quality of those opportunities?

There are many facets to teleprospecting -pre-call plan, qualifying questions, overcoming objections and so forth. Through my training experience at AG, there is not one common area of weakness; everyone has different strengths and weaknesses. I'd like to take this opportunity to go over some of the trends that I have come across and things to keep in mind when you reflect back on your own on your lead gen team's prospecting approach:

For any inside rep, it is extremely important to convey all the information that you are provided during your qualification conversation to the Outside Rep receiving the opportunity. This week Jaime, Nicole and I conducted a workshop to help reinforce the listening and note taking skills of our BDRs to strengthen the quality of our leads.  Now, I can't divulge all of our secrets, but I will let you know of some of the key areas that are important to gather during your initial call to help arm your outside rep for their follow up conversation.

One of the toughest struggles when presented with a marketing/trade show list is that not all of the contacts may be the appropriate person to speak with or that the company is outside of our targeted market. Now that does not mean that the list is a total washout. When handed a dilemma, one needs to make "di-lemonade".  If I was asked to describe AG Salesworks' BDR's with two adjectives (and an adverb!), it would be "professionally persistent" and "resourceful". I would like to elaborate a little bit more about the importance of being "resourceful."