Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Businesses consciously take great measures to create and sustain a positive online identity.  They want to be found, and once they are, they want to exude a good, lasting impression.  In the B2B world, the human behavior that precedes the act of evaluating and buying has changed drastically with the rise of social media and the availability of endless online intelligence. 

When I was growing up, I was a non-stop talker. Some of my family and close friends might say I still don’t know when to stop talking. Well, most acquaintances would probably be a little alarmed about how energetic I can be and how much I can talk. This is part of the reason I knew I would be successful in sales. But, it could also have been the thing that hurt me the most. Learning how to control a conversation is an essential piece of every day in the life of an inside sales representative.

Some would argue that cold calling is more difficult than closing a deal. When you think about it, you get rejected a heck of a lot more than you typically do when trying to bring in that new deal, right? Plus when you're closing at least you have a captive audience willing to listen to what you have to offer. When you cold call, there is no guarantee what you're offering is even of remote interest to the prospects you're trying to get live. 

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Howard Brown, Founder and CEO of RingDNA.

There was a time not so long ago when your average B2B salesperson spent more time on the road than a major league baseball team. But now, more and more companies are hiring remote reps, also known as inside sales. These reps possess many of the same sales skills as field sales reps. They close high-ticket deals and build long-lasting customer relationships, all while racking up far fewer frequent-flyer miles. They also typically carry increasingly large quotas. According to the Bridge Group, the average inside sales rep’s quota in 2013 was $985,000.

Having the know-how to find the right contact could be one of the most underrated functions of the prospecting process. This ability separates someone who is average and someone who excels. It sounds easy enough until you actually sit down and try calling into a company like Microsoft or IBM to see who handles some niche area of technology operations.

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

Whether you’re managing sales for a large enterprise organization, or are trying to build business for your own one-man-shop, these tips should help guide your thinking, strategy and action when building and managing a bigger sales pipeline.

You wake up in the morning and check your email on your phone, tablet, or laptop. You get to work and you check your work email. You delete some emails, save some for reading later, and reply to others right away. But what makes you stop and read some emails versus saving them and forgetting to come back to them until a week later? There are a few things you can do to help your emails get noticed by prospects.

It's the last Friday before Christmas, and the office is full of holiday cheer. But it's still important that sales reps' pipelines are in the clear. Sales managers should motivate their sales team in these last few days before the holidays dawn near. So take a gander at these sales and marketing articles we've curated for you to revere.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Amanda Maksymiw, Content Marketing Manager at Lattice Engines. 

With a handful of days left to impact sales goals, it’s no wonder that some sales professionals are feeling the heat and starting to sweat. According to a 2013 study from CSO Insights, two-thirds of companies are struggling with lead generation.  More than 65 percent of companies surveyed are looking to improve new customer acquisition as a key driver for the year. And sadly, less than two-thirds are making quota. Sales professionals admittedly are raising their hands, asking for help with prioritizing and researching new accounts.