Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Who's excited for this month's #ProspectingChat? Over at AG Saleswork's Twitter account, we'll be sharing inside sales messaging do's and don'ts for your team. We'll also be welcoming special guest John Golden, CSO of Pipeliner CRM, to discuss his experiences and tips Here are some details about today's Twitter Chat:

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Russ Heddleston, CEO of DocSend.

Traditionally, sales has relied largely upon human relationships: successful salespeople know their product and their audience and are enthusiastic about talking to people, pursuing, and closing leads with persistence and moxie. Aside from these personal qualities, until the advent of Salesforce in 1999, the only external tools a salesperson needed were a Rolodex and a phone. In the last decade, technology has dramatically changed the landscape in which inside sales reps operate: the Internet has given the general population unprecedented access to information, the penetration of mobile has allowed people to access this information anywhere and anytime, and (somewhat ironically) the number of people who actually answer phone calls has diminished.

At the same time, the tools that salespeople rely on have evolved and have changed how salespeople gain insight into leads, interact with customers and prospects, and organize their efforts. Here are a few tools that have helped salespeople gain new insights and pursue new strategies for success:

Two weeks ago, I entered the Boston Exhibition and Conference Center in awe. It was my first time at HubSpot’s INBOUND Conference, and as a content marketer just starting my career in marketing, there was certainly a lot to take in. I watched Simon Sinek give an inspiring keynote on leadership and learned about how different neuro signals can affect your work. I talked to Boston businesses about how they’re using inbound methodology. I raced from session to session with my laptop and iPod to jot down notes in Google Drive and tweet my top takeaways.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a post from Michaela Cheevers, Business Development Representative at AG Salesworks.

As a business development representative, it is important to make every contact attempt count in order to provide your client with the best information possible. Inside sales reps have the same imperative: maximize time by qualifying prospects creatively. That being said, it’s crucial to be prepared when communicating with anyone in your quest for information. No matter who you get live on the phone, chances are they can provide you with some information; you just need to be equipped with the right questions to ask. Here are some ideas for inside sales and business development reps to find opportunities for quality conversations, no matter where you find yourself in the prospecting trenches.

In the world of teleprospecting, many thought leaders are debating the efficacy of new and old techniques. With more and more sales leaders implementing new strategies, it's important for inside sales rep to keep up with the trends. However, don't feel you have to choose one technique and stick to it. Instead, learn to balance your techniques and manage your lists. Social selling is time-consuming, and it cuts out the ability to speak to prospects for a lengthy amount of time about their pains and needs, but it could lead to stronger opportunities. You may find that your team has more activity from the smile and dial method, but without some social intelligence behind these calls, those leads could be dead ends. Below are three things to consider when using commonly used prospecting techniques to find the balance that works right for you.

As social sellers, it is imperative that we constantly share valuable information and insights with our networks. This is essentially what separates us from the rest of the sales community. However, clearly there is not enough time in the day for us to be constantly creating brand new content from scratch, nor is it necessarily beneficial to do so.

A healthy content marketing mix involves a significant portion of 3^rd party content sharing in addition to original thought-leadership pieces. By sharing content from other sources, you are not only showing your network that you respect the opinions of others in your industry, you are also showing them that you’re well informed on topics that are important to them. For these reasons, it is important that you master some basic content curation skills to ensure you always have an ample amount of information to share with your community of prospective buyers.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing.

It starts with a hesitation.

It becomes an objection.

It festers into a doubt.

And it costs your company leads.

What I’m talking about is sales call reluctance. It doesn’t come from the prospects; it comes from the sales reps themselves. Whether you’re a new teleprospector or a seasoned inside sales rep, everyone experiences varying levels of call reluctance when B2B prospecting.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Cari Zoch, Marketing Manager at Avention, a company that offers real-time, actionable B2B data to deliver 21st century business info, solutions for sales, marketing and research. 

Salespeople are always looking for the holy grail when it comes to making cold calls. They can sort their lists, segment criteria but what’s most important?  Timing.

I’m here today to argue that timing is more than finding the best day of the week or the time of the day to pick up the phone. In fact, it varies by industry and type of prospect anyway.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Katie Kelly, Associate Inbound Marketing Specialist at HubSpot.

Traditionally, we think of BDRs as energetic, hungry, cold-calling machines. How can we get a prospect into taking a meeting? How can we get creative with our voicemails or sales pitches?

This worked well for decades - that was until our little friend, The Internet, arrived.

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