Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Happy Thanksgiving Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! We thought it would be fitting to highlight what inside sales reps here are thankful for:

Good morning, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers! We hope everyone had a fantastic week, especially those who were at Dreamforce, networking and learning more than ever about sales and technology. This week's weekly recap has a bonus at the end, so keep reading! For now, here are some of our favorite articles this week:

I’ve been in sales a long time.  More years than I care to count.  It’s been eleven years since my business partner and I founded AG Salesworks with the goal of helping sales and marketing teams succeed through identifying and delivering their ‘ideal’ prospect.  

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Chris Croner, Principal at Sales Drive, LLC.

One of the most frustrating experiences for sales managers is hiring “hunter” salespeople who produce lackluster results in spite of their stellar interview performance.  Unfortunately, this phenomenon occurs all too frequently and results from insufficient scrutiny of candidates in the recruiting process.  One of the most common mistakes companies make in this area is failing to screen candidates effectively before moving them into the interview phase.

Happy Friday, blog readers! Here are some of our favorite sales and marketing posts that we shared on our Twitter feed this week.

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. 

Back in 1995, I got to know a Professor of Anthropology from Rhode Island College.  Richard was a great guy. He always had a smile on his face, and he seemed like a very happy person.  

As I got to know him better, I learned that he was in fact a very happy person.  His happiness came from several areas in his life. He had a wonderful family with whom he was able to spend lots of time, he was healthy, and one last thing: He loved his job.  He told me that he thought he was getting away with something each day as he woke up, got dressed and went off to work.  The fact that he was being paid to do something he loved so much was something he was very grateful for.  

I had the opportunity last week to participate in a webinar AG hosted with Hootsuite and Salesloft about setting up an effective work process. The recording can be downloaded here. We covered the secrets to sales prospecting success, how social selling can enhance the sales process and what tools should be used to support your prospecting efforts. My portion of the presentation had more to do with setting up an effective inside sales team, but I did field some interesting questions at the end of the webinar. 

From a marketing and a sales point of view, this week has been extremely busy. The chatter around the office has expounded as more and more people are returning from vacation. Marketing is gearing into the fall months as well, as we just released an eBook we've been working on all summer. Team leaders are working one-on-one with sales reps, and new employees are coming in every week, eager to get their hands dirty in sales. For the first week of September, we're doing great, and it can only go up from here.