Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Employee retention seemed to be a taboo subject at my old sales jobs. If sales managers didn’t speak about it, the problem would simply not be a problem. Unfortunately, they seemed to be conditioned to accept that attrition was inevitable with a team of people making cold calls all day. It wasn't uncommon to see about 50% of new hires exit the organization after 6 months. Why? You've taken the time to interview, hire and train a rep, but once they're at altitude, they leave. No one should be OK with that.

(and how to stop failure from happening)

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Lisa Fugere, Content Marketing Strategist at Radius Intelligence a company that offers sales prospecting software powered by big data. You can find her on Google +!

Radius offers a marketing platform built on top of a database that sorts through billions of data about U.S. businesses each day. Because our platform uses big data to help marketers unlock key customer segments, we’ve thrown our hat into the overcrowded online world of marketing about big data solutions. Online search traffic for big data has surged in the last couple of years.  

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. 

There’s an old adage in sales about sales encounters. It goes something like this:  

You should always go into a sales situation prepared for a no but hoping for a yes.

It’s important to remember that each new opportunity you come across will have its own unique challenges and advantages. Though it’s hard to stay optimistic when objections crop up, bringing baggage from one sales call to another will not help you close. The longer you work with a product or solution, the the more confident you feel in your abilities to sell it, and the more assumptions you may make in regards to the outcome of each business engagement.

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.

I know a lot of people who go to the gym regularly after work, and I myself have always followed that familiar routine. It wasn’t until I started reading over all the benefits from exercising before work and talked to friends who were doing it that I decided to give it a fair shake. There are many benefits for inside sales reps exercising before work.  In inside sales, exercise before the beginning of the work day can motivate you to put your best foot forward. 

Happy Friday, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! We hope you had a productive week; we sure did, and this afternoon we'll be having a contest between inside sales reps who passed leads this week. Despite the consistent snow storms in the Northeast (and there seems to be another on the way), we've continued calling across the country for leads. It's important to stay vigorous even through equally vigorous weather conditions.

It’s the middle of the shortest month of the year, and between calls I hear the familiar orchestra of different off-putting sounds from other cubes: wheezing, coughing, sniffling, sneezing, and zombie-like groans of inside sales reps plagued with cold and flu symptoms.

Happy Friday, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! We've had a busy week, with clients arriving and inside sales reps ramping up for a successful Q1. Without further ado, here are our favorite articles from the sales and marketing world this week! 

Happy holidays, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers. It's back to work at AG, as inside sales reps and managers plan for Quarter 1. Sales and marketing professionals should start off the New Year on a high note. Our advice? In these last few days, inside sales reps should continue to call, but should also review the year's progress. How much have you changed as a sales professional? What about your messaging is different now, and why? Inside sales managers, have you come up with ideas to motivate your team this past year, and what are the results? Does gamification influence your leadership style? It's important to reflect on 2013 before we move in to 2014, and then adapt our sales strategies accordingly. Below, Sam gives some good advice for how to end the year strong as well.