Sales Prospecting Perspectives

A few years ago I was faced with a tough decision. I was moving 20 miles north of Boston, which posed a problem because my job was 22 miles south of it. Driving through Boston during rush hour twice in one day quickly became overwhelming and was just too much. The last thing I wanted to do was leave the job I loved, and when my boss kept pushing me to work from home more, I was hesitant. I kept saying no because I thought it was crucial to be on site when managing an inside sales team. I had a lot of guilt on days that I couldn’t make it in. Slowly I started working from home more and more and I learned how to manage remotely. With all the technology available today along with some changes in my management style, I am now able to work from home most days and still manage reps – probably better now than ever.

Our job is to find highly qualified sales leads for our customers that will lead to qualified opportunities. Our clients come to us with a need to fill their pipeline and want us to do so as quickly and effectively as possible. One of the first questions usually asked when speaking with potential or brand new customers is what we ­recommend for a call strategy for the campaign. To be more clear, customers who are either outsourcing or supplementing their teleprospecting efforts to us want to know if calling efforts should be focused on cold calls, follow ups on warm leads from marketing events, or target accounts identified by their own outside sales reps.

In my opinion, the answer to this question is fairly straightforward: calling efforts should be focused on all three areas because the potential of uncovering great leads can come from any of these sources. Sure, there are caveats, like the amount of resources and time you are able to allocate to each, but in general, I think the best route is to mix things up and call into a few different sources at any given time.

It's Friday, and that means it's time for a Weekly Recap! What did you do to motivate your sales team this week? At AG, we held Extreme BDR Bingo. Inside sales reps were distributed bingo sheets with squares such as: 30 dials before 10 a.m., 3 leads in a day, 700 activities in a week, arrive before 8:15 a.m., etc. The prize for completing five squares in a row was $50, and the contest was so successful that sales enablement was rewarded extra money to keep it going throughout the rest of the month (as more and more people kept winning bingo). It was a big success. Be creative in how you inspire your sales team!

Every single campaign I've run here at AG has had its inevitable challenges. We've discovered the hard way that each campaign is like a snowflake: there may be many similarities between them, but no one is exactly the same. Sorry for the lame analogy, but it's true.   

Currently, I am working with two clients at AG Salesworks. I’ve been working with one client since February, and with the other client for only about two weeks. The transition from one client to another has to be smooth, and the focus on both clients needs to remain equal. It can be a stressful process to learn a new product and new style of communicating with sales reps and marketing contacts, but if you are organized and plan your days, then the process of ramping up will be easy.