Sales Prospecting Perspectives Weekly Recap - Week of February 28, 2024
Happy Friday, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! This week was a busy one for us. As it was the last week of February, our inside sales reps strived to meet their month's goals while continuously increasing their pipelines. In the marketing world, we worked hard to produce a new eBook. Social Selling: How to Use Social Media for B2B Sales is available now for free. Social selling can complement your pre-existing sales efforts and result in more contacts, leads, and even closed sales. Let us know what you think!
Without further ado, here are our favorite articles - concentrating on new inside sales strategies - from this week:
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If you know how to sift through big data, you can find what you need to enhance your customer's experience. Home in on the customer journey using big data to really know your customer or prospect.
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This infographic by Introhive is an overview of B2B marketing and social selling, with social media strategies to build brand awareness for your business.
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There's a lot of buzz about the term "big data," as evidenced by the first article we chose to highlight. Toby Daniels, executive director of Social Media Week, talks about the hype and how social data can be used for sales.
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Many social media sites now allow the use of hashtags. Facebook, Google +, and Twitter are just a few of them. On these social sites, are you using hashtags correctly, as social sellers or marketers?
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We're tired of seeing comments like "But social media is only for B2C businesses, right?" Actually, no, not exclusively. In fact, B2B companies can teach B2C a thing or two about marketing.
And here are some of our blogs you might have missed this week:
Monday: On Monday, we published Buyer Personas and Company Goals: How to Research Your Marketing Plan. This blog, like two others, uses content from the eBook Marketers Making a Difference: Volume 3, to which our Senior Vice President of Marketing Richard April contributed. In this section, Richard details resources for creating an accurate buyer persona and aligning your marketing plan with the company vision. This research before the execution of a marketing plan is essential to a successful plan.
Tuesday: Craig Ferrara on Monday reflected on his previous blog post, 7 Things I Want My Inside Sales Team To Know for 2014, in Tuesday's post, Accessibility at All Levels is Essential for a Healthy Sales Work Culture. If every employee feels comfortable talking to every manager, and vice versa, more questions can be addressed faster and there will be more open communication and transparency across the entire organization. As one of the creeds on his previous post was "I will always make myself available," Craig detailed exactly what that meant in this blog post.
Wednesday: On Wednesday, guest blogger David Hazeltine from Fiserv wrote Are Your Sales and Marketing Teams Playing Nicely Together? In order to align and integrate sales and marketing, David offered advice in three areas: physical proximity, emotional investment, and even food and beverages. Creating a healthy culture between two departments who are often at odds with each other will increase leads and productivity. Follow David's tips in this article for harmony between both departments.
Thursday: Megan Toohey on Friday wrote B2B Social Selling: Sales Megaphones or Convesration Drivers? Coupled with our new social selling eBook, this blog post includes advice for using social media to create and maintain productive relationships between buyers and sellers. Her advice is to define which social platforms your buyers are most active on, constantly monitor social media sites and "social listen" for those in need of your product or service, and consult and offer gentle advice. With time, you will be seen as a thought leader in your industry, resulting in higher repuation, respect, and eventually, lead volume.