Out with the Old, In with the New - Tips For Insides Sales Lists
Sales Prospecting Perspectives in pleased to bring you a guest post from one of our newer BDRs, Elizabeth Guerra.
I am a big fan of New Years Cleaning. It’s essentially the same thing as Spring Cleaning, but it’s done after the New Year begins instead of in the spring. I try to clean up and clean out as much as possible so that I can have a fresh start to the year. I always think that it’s going to make me more organized, even though that’s not always the case. My basic method is to get rid of things I don’t need, organize what I have, and replace what I do need. And I’ve found that my New Years Cleaning tactics can also apply to inside sales.
Get rid of what you don’t need: Prospecting lists can get messy. Sometimes a company will be imported with so many contacts it actually is a better use of your time to weed out the ones that are going to be of no use to you. Send a referral email (just in case that Director of Automotive Procurement happens to eat lunch with your target contact every day), mark them as “Not Appropriate Contact,” and move on.
Organize what you have: Now that you’ve cleaned up your list, look and see what’s left. Clearing out the clutter can actually reveal potential opportunities you might’ve skipped over. Make sure to follow up with the prospects who told you to hold off until after the new year, and check in on contacts you haven’t spoken with in awhile to see if anything has changed in their company. And of course dive into any untouched contacts.
Replace what you need: If your ideal contacts work in IT, and you only have the Sales Director and a Marketing Executive on your list, go find some new contacts! See if there’s anyone you missed on sites like Jigsaw and NetProspex, check out LinkedIn to see if there’s anyone listed in the right department, and don’t forget about the company websites.
Getting your lists organized at the beginning of the year is going to help you focus on the contacts that are more likely to lead to an opportunity. And hopefully you’ll be more successful than me at becoming more organized for the year.