Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a post from Taylor Lacey, a Business Development Representative at AG Salesworks.

What do you picture when you hear the word "nurture?"

Many people may think of a plant "nurtured" to full health. In inside sales, potential customers can also be nurtured. If they aren't a good fit now, does that mean they will always be unqualified for your product or service? Or can they slowly become a lead by means of a strong lead nurturing campaign? 

We’ve all seen the contact who doesn’t quite fit the qualifying criteria and is automatically added to the nurture bucket. These are three important tips to remember when nurturing prospects.

As you may already know, AG Salesworks is an active user on Twitter. We share insights and posts from many sales and marketing thought leaders and tweet sales prospecting best practices every day. Today, we’re excited to be hosting our very own Twitter chat, #ProspectingChat, at 1:30 PM EST / 10:30 AM PST!

AG Salesworks is pleased to bring you a guest post from Janelle Johnson, Director of Demand Generation at Act-On Software. 

In B2B marketing, sales and marketing emails play different but equally important roles in a successful communication strategy. Marketing emails lure the leads, and sales reels them in. But if nobody ever opens your messages, they won’t do your organization much good. Getting a prospect to open an email can be extremely challenging in today’s crowded marketplace. Many of us get hundreds of emails every day. Which ones make you click? Which ones make you hit delete?

At AG Salesworks, we talk about aligning sales and marketing departments quite a bit. By now, most people know that in a successful business, B2B sales and marketing need to work together.

However, many people still harbor a misguided notion about what sales and marketing alignment really is. It's not just a mindset. It's a merging of actionable business processes.

Many companies aren’t utilizing the full potential of their lead nurturing campaigns.

They’re passing all lead nurturing responsibilities to marketing.

They’re separating the lead nurturing cycle from the sales funnel.

And they’re not aligning their departments for better conversions.

According to a study by CSO Insights, underwritten by Velocify, 42.3% of companies nurture leads by handing them off to marketing, who then engages and remains active with them through lead nurturing campaigns until they’re ready to buy.

I have always been a firm believer that there are two types of people in this world: those who have children and those who don’t. The reason I differentiate between them is that those who don’t have children tend to think they are the best parents in the world, and some insist on telling you how to raise your kids.

Now, a bit about me: I am a father of three with a boy and two girls.  I have had my share of experiences with people saying things like, “I would never do that with my kids,” or, “You’re doing that?”  I have to admit, there was a time, before I had children, that I remember saying, “Oh my, I would never feed my kids french fries.”  Friends and family fall into one of these two groups. But when or if they have children, their opinions about parenting usually change, and they start to understand how difficult a task it is and stop judging others for their choices. The same can be said regarding outsourcing lead generation for sales and marketing.

AG Salesworks is pleased to bring you a guest post from Kevin Thornton, Executive Vice President - Sales & Marketing for VanillaSoft. 

Here is a statistic that may give you a jolt: “only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales.” (Source: HubSpot). This raises some questions:

• Are sales and marketing in alignment on what constitutes a qualified or sales-accepted lead?
• Am I purchasing the right lists & working with the right list providers?
• How are leads being reviewed and passed along to my sales reps?

A lot has already been written about sales & marketing alignment and list providers.  Today I want to talk about a third point:  how is your team’s next lead reviewed and passed along to a rep?

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from David Hazeltine, Director, Campaign Strategy at Fiserv.

Sales and Marketing integration. It’s such a nice theory, but yet in so many companies, the Sales team isn’t happy with the amount or quality of leads being generated by Marketing. Marketing is frustrated that salespeople won’t give them the time of day, never mind appreciate that Marketing exists for one reason: to support Sales. If sales are down, fingers point to Marketing for not providing enough leads. If there are no marketing campaigns in the works, fingers point to Sales for not clearly stating what they need.

Understand the Difference:

As sales professionals we come across these types of people all the time.  But knowing how to tell the difference between a so-called “Tire Kicker” and a “Window Shopper” is critical and will better help you to eliminate wasted effort. 

Ah yes, it’s that time of year again. Lines at the mall are out the door, parking lots are jammed, and calories don’t matter (right?). With the holiday season comes the end of the fiscal year for the majority of companies. And for inside sales reps here at AG, it can be a stressful time, as they try to pass qualified leads while prospects are taking vacation time to spend with their family. We can use this time to plan for the New Year while also nurturing accounts and catching prospects live. Last week, Craig gave some tips from a director’s point of view, and this week I’m giving some tips from a sales rep standpoint.