Sales Prospecting Perspectives

As a Business Development Representative for tech companies, I understand that organizations can be hesitant to implement new technologies.  I have heard many different reasons as to why companies don’t want to change what they are already using or put new software or systems into place: the cost is too high, it doesn’t fit their needs, or it just isn’t a priority at the time.  One reason I often hear is that the company won’t be able to persuade their employees to start using the new technology.

I am so lucky when it comes to clients. I am fortunate enough to work with individuals who truly value what we do and trust our processes. They trust that we are the experts, and that’s the key to every successful customer engagement we run as a company.

A few minutes ago I was eavesdropping on two BDRs that were recording their voicemails to use with our new auto dialer software. In between their giggling, it was music to my ears to hear them continue to re-record their voicemail messages until they were just right.

At the start of the year, our organization rolled out an auto-dialer software. With the software comes the ability to increase contact and qualification rates for every BDR within our organization. Like anything new that’s being implemented, user adoption was an obvious concern during the process. As to be expected with any new technology, objections from the reps came up, questioning “What’s in it for me?”

I decided to write this week’s blog about organizations that are looking to build inside sales teams. Building a team can’t be done overnight. You need to take a lot into consideration; the type of people you are looking to hire, how you will align your sales territories, the training needed for best practice messaging, and the CRM system your team will be leveraging – and that’s just to name a few.

If you manage an inside sales team, you know that a strong implementation process is crucial. There is so much to understand and retain when ramping up for a new product. We have learned that most effective way to learn about a solution is not necessarily found in just product information. While it’s amazing that we have access to whitepapers, webinars, case studies, blogs and demos, interactive learning is crucial to truly understanding a technology or service. The amount of marketing materials available today can actually bog down an implementation week. Our process for implementation week involves working together as a team.

These weeks just fly by, don't they!?  Well, we're two full weeks into Q2 of 2010 - where are you against your goals?  Hopefully ahead of them, right where you want to be!

"Here at XYZ Comp, we offer a solution to automate your process by blah blah blah."

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:

It's your 20th call of the day.  You just left 10 voicemails, you've been screened by 7 admins, and had 2 prospects dismiss your cold call immediately.  FINALLY, a prospect picks up the phone, ready to talk to you.  After introducing yourself and your business, you have the green light to proceed.  The problem is, you have a surplus amount of information as to why your product is better than the rest, but have approximately 30 seconds to peak interest.  Where do you go from here?

Everyone has their own unique personality and we all communicate very differently.  It's interesting when we think about people in our lives that we look up to on a day to day basis.  I personally tend to gravitate to more distinct, unique, and spontaneous communicators; always positive thinkers. I find these people inspiring and interesting to watch and listen to, and maybe that is because there is no telling what they will say or do next.  The bottom line here is that there is something that intrigued me enough to make me want to listen.