Sales Tips
Posted by Melissa Herald at 07:24 AM on 04/22
Conducting sales calls on speakerphone is par for the course here at Vorsight. We do it for a few reasons: being hands free allows you to take copious notes during your conversation, multiple people can easily participate in the conversation, and colleagues can listen to what prospects are saying on the phone in order to prep for their own calls.
The colleague I share an office with did a call the other day with a prospect he’d spoken to only a couple times. What struck me most wasn’t his take on list-building companies (which, by the way, wasn’t favorable) or his strong New Jersey accent; it was his zeal for LinkedIn. As he and Joey continued to speak, they “connected” on LinkedIn, took jabs at each other’s profile pictures, and realized they had a couple connections in common.
I was particularly interested to hear the prospect say that before he interviews someone, he searches for them on LinkedIn. If the candidate isn’t “LinkedIn”, he won’t talk to them. Harsh? Not really. As salespeople, maintaining a robust LinkedIn profile is as fundamental as knowing what the acronym “BANT” stands for.
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Posted by Steve Richard at 04:03 PM on 02/09
By:
Steve Richard, Co-Founder & Head Sales Trainer
Building a high performing inside sales team is tough. I see so many people making the same mistakes over and over. The other day when out running it hit me: building your team is kind of like growing plants from seeds. I know what you’re thinking, “Steve, plants, really? Are you comparing my team to plants?” I’ve spent many years in inside sales so I get to compare inside sales to whatever I want. Deal with it.
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Posted by Steve Richard at 01:50 PM on 02/01
By:
Steve Richard, Co-Founder & Head Sales Trainer
If you follow this blog at all you know that I’ve been thinking and writing a lot about sales coaching lately. The following research on effective sales coaching popped into my inbox. The below comes from
The Corporate Executive Board and is published by the Harvard Business Review. Sales leaders may not like the message of focusing coaching on the middle 60% (though they can’t disagree with it either).
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Posted by Steve Richard at 11:36 AM on 01/25
By:
Steve Richard, Co-Founder and Head Sales Trainer
In order to understand the business case for investments in sales prospecting coaching, we first need to know a little bit about something that hopefully we all have: our brains. I’ve been learning a lot lately about the way the brain learns new things, and it’s actually simpler than you might think.
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Posted by Steve Richard at 08:36 AM on 12/09
By:
Steve Richard, Co-Founder & Head Sales Trainer
Inside Sales VPs, Directors, and Managers are always asking us about motivating their teams. We all agree that inside sales can at times be a tough job mostly because of:
- The amount of rejection that you face (it’s easier to say no to a person over the phone than in person)
- The tedious nature of the job (using the phone and computer is a little more monotonous for most people than meeting in person)
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Posted by Steve Richard at 02:28 PM on 11/19
By:
Steve Richard, Co-Founder & Head Sales Trainer
I recently made the executive decision to upgrade our sales
gong. The little ‘made in China’ trinket gong only gets you so far. After looking through about 8 pages of
eBay junk, I won this for $199.99. Just so happens the guy lives in Tonawanda, NY near my in-laws. They drove it down and, bingo, Vorsight has a new secret weapon.
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Posted by Eric Young at 09:19 AM on 11/01
By
Eric Young, Director of Sales & Sales Trainer.
- Use your 3 x 3 research to understand your prospect’s business and their unique challenges.
- Be able to answer the question “Why are you calling me now?” An acceptable answer to this question is NOT “a task popped up in salesforce.com."
- Make your messaging all about your prospect (especially early in the sales process). Your prospects don’t care about you and your products until you help them realize that they have a specific need that you can help them solve.
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