Sales Prospecting Perspectives

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.

Happy November 1, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! How was your Halloween? At AG Salesworks, we celebrated by dressing up on Tuesday and having a potluck party. You can see pictures of the fun that we had on our Instagram, and look forward to a blog post on Monday about how to plan these types of events so everyone stays productive. As most of us are Boston Red Sox fans, we also celebrated their win of the 2013 World Series! It was an excellent last week of the month for us here at AG Salesworks, and we hope it was for you, too. Here are some of our favorite posts about marketing and sales from our favorite blogs. Some of them even decided to get into the Halloween spirit!

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 +!

I cut my teeth in the B2B marketing world at a company that generates leads entirely through events and inbound marketing. With the naiveté of an English major who could recite every scene from Jane Eyre quicker than she could describe a lead list, I believed that inbound marketing was going to completely eclipse outbound marketing in a matter of years. Who would ever buy a list of leads when they could just wait for their customers to come to them? I thought.

Over this past year I have made an effort to devote more of my time to networking.  It’s always interesting to get out there and meet new people and reconnect with past contacts.  I have not only made a point of doing this from a business perspective, but from a personal perspective as well.  All in all it has been a great success.  I have reconnected with old friends and enjoyed watching my two boys meet and get to know my friends' kids.  It has been so much fun to see the kids developing friendships as we make sure to connect a few times a year.

A company with a reputation for dependability, consistency and quality services or products will win consumers' business. Your company and the people within it should be seen as the leading experts in your industry, whether that be sales, marketing or, in AG Salesworks case, both. The faces of your company (for example, co-founders Pete Gracey or Paul Alves for AG), need to become thought leaders, challenging the status quo and writing books. However, claiming to be a thought leader doesn't make you one; others need to recognize you as the leading guru in your industry. Becoming a thought leader is harder than you think.  

There is an overwhelming amount of new marketing content online every day, whether it be delivered on a blog, social media, an infographic, in a newsletter, etc.  As a marketer today, you need to stay on top of the new trends and findings, and be in the know about new marketing tactics and softwares, and figure out how best to digest and deliver new content. Maybe you're also responsible for creating new content for your company, implementing new marketing strategies, monitoring 10 social feeds or more, replying to, commenting on and pushing out new updates, and then remembering to follow up on all of your efforts. Hey, what about that participant list from the last webinar? Clearly, marketers have many responsibilities and they are usually going 100 different directions at once.  I haven’t scientifically tested this but, I hypothesize that their heads would spin if they did not organize their efforts, and I know it's always easier said than done.  

I don't like fluff on my sandwiches or on my computer screen.

How many times have you read a long article or blog post and wanted to yell "Duhhh" at your computer or phone because the content was so obvious and unhelpful?  One too many times I'm sure.  I read a great deal of content on a daily basis, so this happens to me almost every day, and I always wish I could have spared my wasted time on uninformative articles.  AG Salesworks posts new content on a daily basis. How do we create helpful posts without turning our content into "fluff?"  Here are a few tips on how to keep your content and points of view fresh for your company: