Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Before we head home to pick up our shovels again, we had to get in our recap of this week's blogs. But first I need to share with you an interesting article I found this week that discussed some statistics on Social Media in 2013. Econsultancy recently released some of the results to their 2013 Marketing Budget Survey conducted in accordance with Responsys. The results revealed that 38% of companies will be increasing their investment in SMMS (Social Media Management Systems) this year, and 62% will increase their overall social media investment. The industry is still experiencing rapid growth, with new start-ups sprouting up every week and has shown no signs of slowing down as long as there is sustained interest and investment. It's another sign that if your organization hasn't embraced Social Media and developed a Social Media strategy then you run the risk of being left in the dark by your competition. 

Yesterday we had the privilege of presenting with a few experts in the field of lead generation on how to build the ultimate lead generation machine. Our COO, Pete Gracey, was joined by Jamie Shanks, Scott Miller and Mike Puglia. For those who were unable to attend, you missed some great insights from the above mentioned experts. I have included the link to the recording should there be an interest in viewing the webinar at a later date/time. 

Recently, NetProspex released their first B2B Marketing Data benchmark report, The State of Marketing Data 2013. Based on hundreds of millions of B2B contact data assessed over the past year, Netprospex provided a comprehensive assessment of the health of B2B marketing databases. The report looks at four key best practice areas regarding B2B data: record duplication, record completeness, email deliverability and phone connectability. A score was determined based on a 5 point scale, with 1 being considered "Risky" and 5 being "Optimal". 

So I typically reserve this section of the weekly recap to share a great piece of content I have run across throughout the week. This week Kyle Porter, founder of Salesloft, emailed me about a new prospecting tool they just released that can be found on Google Chrome as an app. With the new tool, sales reps can type in a Job Title, Location, or Company and the search engine results will be all Linkedin profiles that match your criteria. Click on the icon again and the search results are then loaded into a spreadsheet format. Click next page at the bottom of the screen, click on the icon again and the next ten results are populated in the same spreadsheet. You then have the option of exporting your results to a CSV file or Google spreadsheet. It is a really great tool that will not only save your reps time during research, but may also be useful in building out lists. We have already found tremendous value in utilizing this tool and I highly recommend people to share this with their inside and outside sales teams. 

If you're located in the Northeast like we are then you're probably bunkered down in your home preparing for the storm of the century. The snow has started and lets hope you already have your milk, bread and eggs. Even 2ft (or maybe 3ft) of snow couldn't stop us from recapping some great posts from the week. First up, of course, is my weekly pick from the blogosphere to share with you. 

Lead Generation activity dominates as one of the most important objectives for today’s marketing professionals. Whether you are using a content strategy to drive prospects down the funnel or using your email automation tool to nurture potential prospects, ultimately the goal of any marketer is to generate more sales qualified leads. In order to continue populating your marketing database, you must first start capturing intelligence on potential prospects to fill the top of your funnel. Most organizations do this by purchasing (or renting) a list. Through the rise of Social Media though, more intelligence is available to today’s marketer, so how can you leverage Social Media and turn it into a lead generation machine?

We are back from our hiatus and hope everyone enjoyed their time with friends and family over the Holiday's. We had some great blogs this week, which I'll recap for you shortly, but first I wanted to share a post that recieved a lot of interest on my social networks when shared this week. OpenView Ventures asked their Top 25 Influencers of 2012 to send their predictions for 2013 and Mike Weinberg, sales coach and bestselling author, replied by stating "Salespeople: Inbound marketing alone won't save you ass". Inbound marketing has made great strides, with the help of HubSpot of course, and should be a part of any company's marketing strategy. But as Mike points out, “the truth is that inbound marketing is not a replacement for traditional prospecting activities. It’s a supplement to them.” Salespeople have always had a distaste for prospecting, preferring to allow an inside team dedicated to uncovering new business play that role for them. In 2013 though, if salespeople want to be successful, they need to "rediscover their prospecting abilities." In order to be successful, the post offers three key things salespeople must commit themselves to: writing and executing against a personal business plan, developing a finite, strategic list of target accounts, and dedicate blocks of time to personal prospecting activity. “When salespeople discover prospects on their own, it’s likely that they’ll be the first person to the party rather than just another body on the bandwagon. As a result, they’ll stand a better chance of defining a prospect’s criteria for purchase.” 

Everyone has months that are up and down due to holidays, vacations, changes at work, you name it. But there are a few constant hurdle's that pop up making it difficult to hit monthly quotta's, causing frustration and stress in the office. Below I will share some common obstacles or roadblocks that inside sales professionals must be prepared to handle if they are going to be successful within the sales industry. 

Kicking off a new outbound teleprospecting campaign requires careful preparation and a proactive, yet adaptable, outlook.  Below are some of the intangibles and physical assets you should be mindful of within the first two weeks of a new campaign:

The Holidays are fast approaching and most organizations are beginning (or should have already begun) to plan for 2013. Keeping that in mind, I wanted to share a post from a great source, OpenView Partners, discussing compensation for inside sales or lead generation teams. I have shared a few posts from this site and highly recommend the RSS feed. Devon McDonald wrote the post I wanted to share entitled Variable Compensation for Lead Generation Reps: Consistency and Frequency are Key. In her post, Devon provides a few guidelines she recommends following when looking to build out your compensation package for lead generation. A couple suggestions include: Pay out your bonuses/commissions on a MONTHLY basis, pay for appointments set AND opportunities created from those appointments, and never cap your goals. I don't want to give it all away, so I suggest giving it a quick read. There are also some quotes from Lead Qualification Managers within Openview's portfolio that many of you may find interesting and helpful.