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:

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Matt Heinz, President of Heinz Marketing.

We’re such an impatient lot.  The more we can measure, the more (irrationally) we expect what we're measuring to work immediately. 

This applies to many facets of life these days, but particularly for B2B sales and marketing professionals.

Despite a clearer understanding of the buyer’s journey and timeline, we still expect our leads to convert immediately.  We expect new/cold lists to generate results right away.  We expect social selling to drive warm pipeline quickly (apparently just because it’s social).

If you’re a content marketer, you know how important it is to produce interesting and relevant content.

If you’re a content marketer for the B2B space, you know how important it is to produce content that’s also fact-driven and referral-worthy.

Many of the potentials buyers we’re writing for don’t want to read fluff; they want clear initiatives and numbers in a format that’s easy to share. This is especially true for Directors of Sales and CIOs; they see numbers every day, and they are used to these numbers telling the truth. That’s why B2B content with statistics in headlines often perform better.

The problem? Many B2B companies producing content on a regular basis simply don’t have time to produce their own facts and figures. So, with attribution in mind, they hunt down the best reports from their peers.

Today, we will be hosting our third #ProspectingChat on AG Saleswork's Twitter account. Time has flown by, and we are excited to continue offering insights and learning from other #ProspectingChat participants. Here are some details about today's Twitter Chat:

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest blog from Sharmin Kent, Marketing Content Specialist at TinderBox. 

Now that the average B2B buyer is more than halfway through her purchase decision before engaging with a sales rep, it's critical that the content propelling a prospect through the pipeline is informative and relevant. An organization's marketing team is usually responsible for creating sales content, and communication and collaboration between the two departments can be rare.

AG Salesworks is pleased to present you with a guest blog post from Brian Serino, SVP of Sales and Business Development at NetProspex. 

We’re all familiar with the deep-rooted battle between sales and marketing. It goes something like this: sales blames marketing for their inability to produce quality leads, while marketers fault sales for their lack of lead management skills. In this battle, however, there is no winner, because when sales and marketing teams work individually, poor lead management results on both sides.

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!

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.