Sales Prospecting Perspectives

I just wrapped up my first fall Sunday Funday. We watched the Pats, had some friends over, cooked some fall-inspired food, and may have had one or two pumpkin beers. This is my absolute favorite time of year. It's a fresh new start as we close out the summer and get ready to start the last quarter of the year. An influx of new customers goes hand in hand with that, and it’s always exciting to kick off new client engagements.

As we launched one program in particular last week, my client asked my all-time favorite question: "What makes for the best programs when it comes to inside sales engagements?" The below are crucial elements of a successful inside sales or lead generation effort from my perspective:

Last week was my 10-year anniversary at AG. At times, 10 years seems like eons ago, but honestly most of the time it truly feels as if time has flown by. During this period, I bought a condo, got married, had a child (who is now 7), sold a condo, and bought a house... all while watching AG grow from an 8-person shop to the 60 folks we are today. 

It's time for another #ProspectingChat over at AG Saleswork's Twitter account. As well as sharing many insights from sales and marketing thought leaders throughout the day, we will also be hosting a Twitter chat at 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST.

The decision to outsource part of your sales team - whether you're revamping an insourced team or whether you don't have on insourced team - can be a very tough one to make. What are the most crucial factors to look for in an outsourced teleprospecting team? Most people's answer would be: cost. While cost of service is a very important factor when considering an inside sales teleprospecting partner, there are numerous other questions to ask to determine whether the company you're researching is well-run, successful, and most important, trustworthy. In a discovery call about that company, ask these 4 questions to get a real feel for the way they conduct their business. These questions and more are featured in our new guide, "Your Lead Generation Home Away From Home: How Outsourcing Teleprospecting and Inside Sales Functions Can Augment Your Tech Company's Revenue."

1. What kinds of clients do you serve?

Identify the specialist and generalist outsourcing companies. Generalists will take any type of client, but their processes won’t be specific to your industry. Many generalists only see a 20-30% conversion rate to next steps in the sales process. However, with a specialized teleprospecting firm, you should see a 60-70% conversion rate. Specialists will make a point to say that they specialize in the tech industry. Specialists will also have an army of advocates for their service, and are happy to provide you with client references and/or case studies specific to your industry, product or service, or perhaps even share how they solved a similar challenge to the one your company is facing. If you want a more streamlined sales process with people who have experience selling products and services similar to yours, steer clear of the generalists and only consider specialist sales providers.

Employee retention seemed to be a taboo subject at my old sales jobs. If sales managers didn’t speak about it, the problem would simply not be a problem. Unfortunately, they seemed to be conditioned to accept that attrition was inevitable with a team of people making cold calls all day. It wasn't uncommon to see about 50% of new hires exit the organization after 6 months. Why? You've taken the time to interview, hire and train a rep, but once they're at altitude, they leave. No one should be OK with that.

Hello AG blog readers...I'm back!  I saw many changes in 2013, one of which was my transition to Manager of Client Operations here at AG.  Because I have been able to get my feet wet in this new role for the last few months, I thought I would take this opportunity to rejoin the AG blogging community and share the insights I have gained thus far.

When we start working with a new client at AG, we establish a time for all parties involved to have a conference call per week. We like to check in with our clients once a week to make sure everyone is on the same page and all teams are aware of opportunities and pipeline. It is also a good time for questions to be answered if schedules are tight during the week. I’ve found that most clients like to use this time to ask us questions and give advice on certain accounts.

At the beginning of the year I set a goal to improve communication across the entire company, from the way we communicate to our customers to the way we communicate among the management team, the way management communicates with team members, and how team members communicate with each other.  We invested in formal training, and had a summer outing with an Olympics theme which turned out to be an excellent team building opportunity. 

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Craig Wortmann, CEO and Founder of Sales Engine, a company that helps firms build and tune their sales engine(s). You can find him on Google +, LinkedIn, & Twitter!

The best sales leaders I’ve ever worked for had three traits in common that made them powerful leaders.  Like all great leaders, they model the behaviors they ask for from their people.