Sales Prospecting Perspectives Weekly Recap - Week of November 1, 2023
Happy November 1, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! How was your Halloween? At AG Salesworks, we celebrated by dressing up on Tuesday and having a potluck party. You can see pictures of the fun that we had on our Instagram, and look forward to a blog post on Monday about how to plan these types of events so everyone stays productive. As most of us are Boston Red Sox fans, we also celebrated their win of the 2013 World Series! It was an excellent last week of the month for us here at AG Salesworks, and we hope it was for you, too. Here are some of our favorite posts about marketing and sales from our favorite blogs. Some of them even decided to get into the Halloween spirit!
- Robert Koehler from LinkedIn Sales Solutions wrote a guest blog post for Funnelholic called, Searching for Buried Treasure: Finding Prospects on LinkedIn. Koehler’s post was both fun – he shared a story about a geocoaching experience to find buried treasure with his 7-year-old and 10-year-old – and enlightening, showing how to map your current location on the social network and branch out to other people. Definitely a must-read for those looking to find prospects on LinkedIn.
- On Hubspot, Jay Gaines wrote How to Create a Focused and Structured Teleprospecting Team. At AG Salesworks, we’ve continuously adapted the process of managing a teleprospecting team over the years, and we agree with his points, some of which are support your reps and broaden the profile of reps who can teleprospect.
- Did you spend hours creating your last whitepaper, but feel like you could get more out of it? Read this post: How to Get More From Content Through Repurposing from Arnie Kuenn at CMI. He outlines the process for repurposing content, the benefits of doing so, and the several different kinds of content to repurpose. Great article on developing your content strategy out of the materials you already have – very MacGyver!
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Zombies is an article that is surprisingly both inspiring and informative. Zombies can actually teach you how to be an effective worker – they almost always get what they want, even if that is human flesh. They are confident, they have great ears and as a result are great listeners, and they dare to be different. This article was hilarious, and perfect to read on Halloween.
- What do you think is the top ingredient (and inhibitor) to sales enablement success? Michael Cannon, who wrote a guest post for Heinz Marketing, says persuasive messaging is that ingredient. Persuasive messaging enables both sales and marketing to engage customers with relevant and influential conversations and content, said Cannon. Persuasive messaging is the “why” content that is typically missing; why should they consider your product? Read this article to learn more about how persuasive messaging can help your sales!
And now, here are some blog posts from Sales Prospecting Perspectives that you might have missed this week.
Monday: Sam Goldman wrote 3 Topics to Discuss on a Teleprospecting Call on Monday. She uses the word “topics" to show that a "script” doesn't always work. You can’t always make educated guesses about how prospects will answer questions, but you can bring up a few topics, such as time frame, budget and decision-making, and see where to go from there. Let the conversation flow by showing you already know about the prospect, and that you want to help his or her company with your product. If they’re a match, the time frame, budget, and decision-maker will fall into place.
Tuesday: On Tuesday, Mike Ricciardelli wrote Increase Business by Avoiding Web Demos Early in the Sales Process. Most technology companies feel te need to conduct a web demonstration to a prospect or a group of prospects early in the relationship building stage. However, web demos are often one-sided and heavily focused on more fine details such as capabilities and features, rather than exactly how the product can help the company. Sales reps should first engage their audience and focus on understanding their prospects before overloading them with technological jargon.
Wednesday: Lisa Fugere of Radius wrote a guest blog post on Wednesday called The Rules of Inbound Marketing Rewritten for Outbound Marketers. Inbound marketing is not replacing outbound marketing, but that doesn't mean they can't learn from each other. For example, a rule of inbound marketing is to share content on as many sources as possible. That rule rewritten for outbound marketers would be: Score leads on the number of sources on which they’re listed. With the combination of outbound and inbound rules, smart prospecting is possible again. Lisa wrote a great article here, and it's a worthwhile read!
Thursday: On Thursday, Stephen Wolff wrote, How Invested are Your Inside Sales Reps? In order to be invested, sales reps need the following traits and skills: devotion, persistence, and active listening. Be excited about business opportunities, learn “polite persistence” by following a call plan, and actively listen to prospects and use the information you hear to find the true issues, pains and needs that your solution can fix. The more invested you are, the more business you will close or leads you will pass!
What were your favorite articles in the sales and marketing universe this week? Comment here and we'll tweet them next week!