Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Whether you’re building your own inside sales team or considering outsourcing your teleprospecting functions, it’s important to know and perfect the training process for new hires.   

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.

As an inside sales manager, I try to use my few minutes of downtime to read articles related to my field.  When I open the “news” section of my LinkedIn, almost all of the recommended articles revolve around professional women.  My news feed is flooded with articles about Sheryl Sandbergs Lean In, work life balance, women who don't want to work for female managers, women who do want to work for female managers, areas where women outperform men,  women being urged to “sit at the table." The list goes on and on. 

Hello AG blog readers...I'm back!  I saw many changes in 2013, one of which was my transition to Manager of Client Operations here at AG.  Because I have been able to get my feet wet in this new role for the last few months, I thought I would take this opportunity to rejoin the AG blogging community and share the insights I have gained thus far.

Oh lists…lists are great! Lists keep teleprospectors and inside sales reps busy and within those lists hold the potential for qualified opportunities and sales pipeline. Getting a fresh new list can feel like Christmas to a teleprospector. On the other hand, sometimes the size of a new list (3000-5000+) can seem like a daunting amount of data to deal with, like finding a needle in a haystack.  All the preparation, training and role playing won’t do a teleprospector any good if they are not equipped with the knowledge of how to properly manage and refine the data to get to decision makers faster. One of the mistakes I see teleprospectors make is what I refer to as “thoughtless dialing.” This is when a list is imported and the rep just goes down the list one after the other, voicemail/email, voicemail email…and so on. Knowing how to properly manage/refine that data and research contacts helps to provide purpose to those dials.

It was a sad week in the Staib household for I had to bid farewell to one of my favorite shows of all time…30 Rock.  If you have gone all seven glorious seasons without watching a single episode you really do not know what you’ve been missing.  The creative mastermind behind the show is of course the brilliant Tina Fey.  It was my love of the show that led me to purchasing her New York Times Bestseller Bossypants.  

This past weekend I happened to be visiting family back home on the east end of Long Island.  During my trip, I got to stop by one of my favorite hometown restaurants, Amano; coincidentally, I also spent one summer working here.  The executive chef is quite well known on the island and is somewhat famous for his “Top Ten” lists he publishes in Great Restaurants of Long Island at the end of every summer season.  The list is a roundup of the top ten most bizarre/interesting/hilarious/dreadful customers of the season.  As in the restaurant industry, it can be said that teleprospecting presents itself with just as many bizarre or interesting encounters.

Interviewing for a new job can often be a stressful experience.  Did you wear the right kind of outfit? Will you say the right things? Are you the kind of candidate they are looking for?  It has been a tremendous learning experience for me being able to be the person “on the other side of the table”.  My favorite question to ask during the interview process has to be how they feel their previous professional/educational experiences would apply to a sales position.

Summer is upon us and so is the time of the year for weekend getaways. Before work this morning, I was preparing for a weekend getaway of my own to Cape Cod. I stood in front of my empty duffle bag and made a checklist of the essentials I would need to pack; toothbrush….check….sweatshirt…check, and so on and so forth. I have always been the type of person to make checklists in my head and I realized that I do the same thing when I tackle my day at work.