Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Imagine you’re the CEO of a B2B high tech company. Your company has survived the most difficult start-up stages, and you’re ready to start successfully selling your product or service. At times, your solution is difficult to explain, but your engineers know its features like the back of their hand. You decide to insource your inside sales team.

You hire new inside sales reps, many just out of college. Your marketing team works on qualifying leads, but your sales team leaves many unqualified leads untouched. According to Marketo, 80% of leads generated by marketing are ignored by sales.

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.

Sales Prospecting Perspectives is pleased to bring you a guest post from Lauren Weatherall, Senior Marketing Manager at TinderBox. 

For the first time, people accessed the internet on their mobile devices more than on their desktop computers in 2013 – OK, we all knew that was coming. What does this mean? It means that online, cloud-based, and internet solutions are taking over not just consumer markets, but business-to-business marketplaces. Especially when it comes to sales technology.

Technology companies create solutions that are complicated, have various levels of functionality as well as varying levels for usage.  Whether verbally or through content creation, marketers and sales professionals will run into a consistent issue: How do I explain this without rambling on and on?

This blog post is part three of a series of video blogs about the impact of technology on sales. See part one here and part two here. 

A few weeks ago I was putting together an email campaign to send out as a follow up to my client’s sales initiative, but I was having some difficulty setting up an integration tool on my computer. However, I knew that a sales rep on my client’s team was fairly tech savvy and had done some troubleshooting before, so I reached out to him asking for help. As I sat on the web conference using a program I had downloaded for free, I wasn’t dazed in the least when my colleague took control of my screen and walked me through each step. Within 5 minutes he had shown me how to set up everything perfectly!

With only one full week left before the holidays are upon us, it's important to ramp up your sales efforts to meet quotas for quarter 4. This week, we've curated articles about how sales and marketing can succeed in this final quarter. The reward? Spending time at home with the family during the holiday season. 

Here are some of our favorite articles from this week. Remember, we share around 10 articles a day on our Twitter as well. 

This blog post is part two of a series of video blogs about the impact of technology on sales. See part one here. 

A few weeks ago I was putting together an email campaign to send out as a follow up to my client’s sales initiative, but I was having some difficulty setting up an integration tool on my computer. However, I knew that a sales rep on my client’s team was fairly tech savvy and had done some troubleshooting before, so I reached out to him asking for help. As I sat on the web conference using a program I had downloaded for free, I wasn’t dazed in the least when my colleague took control of my screen and walked me through each step. Within 5 minutes he had shown me how to set up everything perfectly!

After our conversation, I realized how much  of the technology we were using I had taken for granted. Not only was I about to greatly improve the amount of activity I could produce within a day, but I was working with a colleague who was half way across the country as if he were sitting next to me in my cube. That got me wondering: What other changes in technology have had the biggest impact on how we communicate and operate in sales? I’ve interviewed a few of our sales veterans to see what changes in sales technology they feel have made the biggest impact within the past decade.

Good morning, Sales Prospecting Perspectives readers, and Happy December! The holidays are upon us, as is the ending of the fourth quarter for sales. This week, we've curated articles focused on best ways to hit your sales and marketing goals. We hope they're helpful in these final weeks. May the odds be ever in your favor!