Sales Prospecting Perspectives

I love playoff hockey. I especially love it when the Bruins are winning. As the Bruins continue through another series against the Penguins, you can easily see their sense of urgency – and it always begins right at game one of each series.

Yesterday, it was 86 degrees outside. I was glad to be inside an air-conditioned office, but I also sympathized with my coworkers, who were calling for someone with “fiber” to help them move all our cubes outside. Oh, the cube life. I hope your business employees are doing well, and have been able to use their breaks to enjoy the much-coveted sunshine this week.

“At least you’re not working at Burger King anymore,” my dad sighed at the dinner table. We were discussing my new position as Digital Content Intern at AG Salesworks, and inevitably the discussion veered towards my past jobs.

I love social media. I love to browse photos of my friends, family and strangers on Instagram, I love to read pointless status updates on Facebook from people I haven’t seen since 2004, I love to scroll through movie stills, silly GIFs and quotes in clever typography on Tumblr, and I love to read jokes and random thoughts consisting of less than 140 characters on Twitter.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Kevin Gaither, Vice President of Inside Sales at uSamp.

I love when candidates ask me the question, “So what are you looking for when you hire salespeople for your team?” While I have developed a customized and comprehensive benchmark for each Inside Sales position for which I’ve hired, I always reply the same way…..

I often like to harken back to my first sales job in the hotel industry. It helps to keep things in perspective. Working a small patch of four suburban towns outside of Boston was a grind, to say the least. 

Few would argue that many accounts and prospects that need to be nurtured can often be overlooked.  In the stream of advice and information discussing the inside sales process, I feel that lead nurturing is neglected.  These nurtured accounts could very well be your future customers. 

Do you ever ask yourself the question: “What characteristics would my team use to describe me as a boss?” If you haven’t, it’s a really great question to ask yourself if you manage a team. Last week I had the privilege of attending a leadership training program where I learned a lot about being a better boss. It’s only been the first session of 7, and I can already tell it will be time well spent.

If you are as big a fan of NBC’s Thursday night comedy lineup as I am then you know that tonight is the series finale of The Office. If you watch the show (who hasn’t watched this show?) then you know that Dwight Schrute is absolutely insane. However, he is also Dunder Mifflin’s top salesman, so he is obviously doing something right. NBC.com put together a collection of Dwight’s top sales tips, which are, like Dwight, insane. I’ve selected a few of my favorites to tone down and translate into language the everyday sales rep could grasp.

A nice benefit of working with a wide range of clients over the years has been the exposure we've had to the unique approaches in presenting a service or technology. Working with some of the brightest sales and marketing minds out there has helped to provide us fresh perspective on how to differentiate your product from the masses.