Sales Prospecting Perspective Weekly Recap - Week of November 26, 2023
We have a lot to recap for you this week as we had an extra guest post we included on Wednesday. But before we get into that, I wanted to share with our readers a great post I found this week from a great source for anyone in sales, Sales Benchmark Index. On their blog, Sales Force Effectiveness Blog, they posted a great article entitled Why Your Inside Sales Reps Don't Last. The top three reasons they highlighted for why inside sales reps leave were: Conflicts with Management (or management style), Compensation, and Personal Growth and Fulfillment. If you find you are having trouble keeping your team in place, take a minute to read this post and see if your team is suffering from some of the same symptoms.
Now, on to this week's recap.
Monday, November 26, 2023
We started off the week with a post discussing some of the features of the social media tool Hootsuite. In my post Five Hootsuite Features And Their Benefits I listed some of my favorite features within the Hootsuite tool and some of there benefits. Hootsuite has proven to be a big time saver, lead generator, and social nurturing tool and should be apart of any sales/marketers toolbelt. The five features highlighted in the post: Bulk scheduling (hootlet app), keyword searches and monitoring capabilities, teams and organizations, the reporting and analytics features, and the last feature that I use everyday is the SocialBro application. For me, Hootsuite has cemented its place as one of the main tools required for social selling success. Though there are other options available, my preference will always be for the little owl.
Tuesday, November 27, 2023
Craig wrote a great post for Tuesday in which he provides some insight into the types of data vendors you may run into when in need of a list of potential prospects. In The Straight Dope On List Vendors Craig tells a story of his recent attempt to procure a highly specific list he needed for one of his projects. Craig was unsuccessful in obtaining the list he needed, and, instead, he provided our readers with a breakdown of the types of list vendors in the marketplace. He broke them down into four categories and didn't use names to "protect the innocent". The categories he used were: List Brokers, Standard List Vendors, High End/IT Org Chart Vendors, and List Renters. He breaks down each in regards to quality, accuracy and price and provides "the straight dope" on each.
Wednesday, November 28, 2023
We were fortunate to have a couple posts on Wednesday, both special in their own right. First, we had a guest post from a former AG'er who is now the Inside Sales Manager at Care.com, Chris Snell. Chris has a lot of experience with the Inside Sales industry and provided some great insight with his post 3 Skills That Transcend Sales Titles. The three skills Chris discusses are valuable for any sales person, whether they are in business development, inside sales, outside sales, accounts managers, or even sales managers. The first skill mentioned is prospecting, if not done well, "you’re likely going to have a very hungry family." The second skill he discusses is the ability to build rapport, stating that " if you can’t build rapport with prospects, you’re pretty much dead in the water." His last skill, one that I feel is one of the more importants skill sets for any person to possess, is listening. "Listening is active; it’s intentional. Listening is a skill that, for all intents and purposes, has been seen as the biggest lacking skill for the prototypical sales rep." A great post from a great person. A big thanks to Chris for writing it for us.
The second special post we had on Wednesday was from one of our business development reps, Samantha Goldman, who wrote 3 Factors That Motivate Me In Sales. Samantha provides a little insight into what it is that motivates her to excel and succeed in her BDR role with AG. Though what motivates Samantha may be different from what motivates some of our other reps, it's always important to get a sense of what it takes to get your reps moving in the right direction. The three things that help drive Samantha to success were: her competitive nature (always an important trait for sales reps), financial motivation (usually high on anyone's list), and work environment (this one was more surprising, but made sense after reading why). It was a great first time post from one of our better BDR's and worth a minute of your time to read.
Thursday, November 29, 2023
We capped off the week with a post from our CEO, Paul Alves, who continued his storytelling in his post Do You Know What Your Companies Key Results Are For 2013? Paul had previously blogged about his team's experience with the Oz Principle training that the management team has undergone. They recently had another meeting in which they discussed what their Key Results are for the company. What was surprising to Paul was that out of the seven individuals involved in the training, none of them had the exact same ideas as to what AG's Key Results are or should be. It's another great post from a great storyteller discussing the value of having your teams goals aligned with the company goals, and the success that will accompany having this alignment in place.
Thanks for reading this week's recap and we hope to have some more great, informative and insightful posts for you next week. Enjoy the weekend!
