SUBSCRIBE NOW
FREE RESEARCH
Monthly Archives: June 2010
Inside Sales Tip: Get Direct Dial Extensions to Increase Contacts
This great tip from my friend Steve Richards of Vorsight: Now for your tip: You have probably heard, “Your call is being answered by Audix,” and if you haven’t, I guarantee your reps have; so the next time you hear
Read more…
Leave a comment Sales Management and Company Culture
If you could summarize your company’s organizational culture in a single sentence, what would it sound like?
In my last blog post, I mentioned that paying attention to the company culture and decision-making process of prospects was a way to avoid the “Curse of the Slow No.”
And it got me thinking about how exactly we determine, or evaluate, or inculcate a “company culture” at all.
I bring this up because I think all of us in sales have had the experience of closing a deal, all the while having a nagging feeling in the back of our minds that we may actually have just cost the company money by making the close.
If you’re nodding your head right now, you know what I’m talking about. Your interactions with the new client . . . .
Read more…
Definition of a Qualified Prospect and the Curse of the “Slow No”
We’ve all heard of the “Curse of the Slow No,” or the “Slow No Death Spiral”—sales reps wasting time pursuing prospects that they ultimately never had a chance of closing.
Anyone who’s spent any time in sales has likely had a phone call that went something like this: “Oh, well, it looks like the CFO already sent a check to Vendor X, so, um . . . sorry?”
The problem inexperienced reps often have is that they got dumped long before the so-called “final decision”—they just didn’t recognize it.
Which got me thinking, “What is the real definition of a qualified prospect?”
A traditional definition might resemble something like, “A qualified prospect is someone who meets the minimum criteria for buying a product or service, and has expressed a minimum level of interest to do so.” Hardly earth-shattering, right?
But try this trick and see what happens: add the words “from us” to the end of the definition—”A qualified prospect is someone who meets the minimum criteria for buying a product or service, and has expressed a minimum level of interest to buy from us.”
The idea is that on the surface, a potential buyer may meet all of the boiler-plate . . . .
Read more…
What Is Inside Sales – The Tale of the Golden Retriever
What’s the DNA of your sales team, corporate or carnival?
As the BrandBuilder stated recently,
“Be true to your own nature. There’s no point in faking it. A golden retriever isn’t a chihuahua or a pug or a greyhound, and for good reason. Being comfortable in your own skin is 90% of the trick to rocking out your life . . . Find yourself and embrace your nature. That’s always a great place to start.”
In other words, your sales team is the sum of your organization’s DNA.
And if your sales DNA isn’t based on mutual respect, what is it based on?
One of the biggest challenges about being part of an inside sales organization, or any sales organization for that matter, is the ongoing public perception of the sales community at large.
To the general public, sales feels like a “dirty word.” It’s connotatively negative, drawing up images of used car lots, unkempt slobs . . . .
Read more…
Inside Sales Best Practices – Fixing Communication Breakdown
We had a meeting this morning that may as well have been entitled, “50 Ways For Communication to Break Down When Implementing a New Client.” At InsideSales.com, we go out of our way to try and have specific, workable processes
Read more…
Inside Sales Best Practices: Don’t Mistake Click-Throughs for Real Results
Click-through rate is one of the most important pay-per-click Web marketing metrics. But be careful not to correlate click-through rates with actual success.
For example, which is better? Getting 1,000 visitors to your Web site, and converting 50, or getting 300 people to your Web site, and converting 30?
The answer is that it depends on how much it cost to get those 1,000 visitors and 50 conversions vs. the 300 and 30, and the total sales each scenario produced.
And in our experience, getting 300 carefully targeted, ready-to-buy, high-value site visitors seems to be the better choice.
In other words, it’s not always about getting visitors to your Web site, it’s about getting the right visitors. During one three- or four-month period a couple of years ago, we were pulling our best SEO and PPC click-through numbers we’ve ever had. An influx in marketing budget dollars . . . .
Read more…
Warning: Your Employees’ Technology Skills (or Lack Thereof) Are Costing You Money
How much do your employees really know about technology? Do you even ask the question? Do you think it has any bearing on how functional, efficient, and well-managed your company is? One of the startling things I discovered as a
Read more…
Ethos in Marketing – Some People are Marketing Pros, Some People Wear Togas
It’s not always obvious, but modern marketing is very much an extension (albeit a hyper-realized, narrowly focused one) of a language study that has existed since the 4th Century B.C. Before it became a pejorative term for political haranguing and
Read more…
5 Ways to Rethink Your Marketing Niche – What Is Your (and Your Company’s) Real Expertise?
In our never-ending search for the “perfect marketing campaign,” we as marketers can occasionally get trapped into thinking that “outside the box” is better. Sometimes, it’s simply better to focus on our core competencies. When push comes to shove, we
Read more…
Marketing Anew – “Meet the New Boss – Same as the Old Boss”
I’m probably a bit young to be borrowing phrases from Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey; I’m only thirty-four years old, and most of The Who’s popular songs were recorded years before I was born. Yet the above lyrics from “Won’t
Read more…
