B2B Sales Lounge » Sales Tools

10 Tips from Inside Sales Expert Josiane Chriqui Feigon of Telesmart Technologies

Jeff_O — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:00:53 +0000

In her top 10 recommendations for 2010, we wish to highlight three.

Today’s skittish buyers still value innovations that are pragmatic, exciting, and cost efficient.

Be prepared! Bring your new smart-selling attitude as you shift into high gear and start a new year with the courage to do some seriously smart selling.

Know Your Customers Intimately: Given the glut of web-based information available, inside salespeople must come to the table equipped with a depth of information and knowledge about their target customers that proves their research and interest and attracts the prospect’s attention.
Multi-Touch Strategy: In an era where content is king, frequent distribution of varying content (such as. trend reports, webinars, articles, and the like) is a must. Sending “contagious content” that follows prospects throughout the sales cycle shows buyers you understand and can solve their pressing challenges.
Synchronize Email and Voice-mail: In order to increase response rate dramatically, email and voice-mail messages must work together. Today’s salesperson needs to create a consistent communication in vocal and visual messages.
Determine Power Buyer Worthiness: More people today are involved in the decision-making process, but fewer have the power to make a purchase decision. Learning to recognize the Power Buyers and push their hot buttons will quickly take you out of the No-Po zone and put you into position for closing the deal.
Get Good At Online Presentations: Web conferencing tools have replaced in-person meetings, but holding audiences captive through a Death by PowerPoint presentation guarantees a lost sale. Taking the time to organize, design, and build strong online presentations will quickly convert prospects into buyers.
Practice Prospecting 2.0: In order to engage a prospect’s attention, it is essential for salespeople to insert themselves into the prospective buyer’s social network by participating in the client’s social media outlets, such as LinkedIn, Twitter, and
Facebook, and the appropriate blogs.
BANT Is Dead: Today’s prospects have lost patience with vendors. They are tired of hearing the same questions and annoyed with outdated sales tactics. It’s time to stop asking meaningless questions of the wrong people or putting prospects in a headlock
with a barrage of questions that sound scripted. Ask us for a copy of our Qualification Criteria for a more robust questioning plan.
Get Out of Self-Selling Utopia: Time to come down from this comfortable, familiar, and safe sales place that is all about YOU. Now that you’ve got the pitch down, it doesn’t mean you can just slobber it over anyone who says “hello.” Remember: your delicate, risk averse, distracted and busy prospects need to be heard more than ever.
Green Renaissance Is the New High Tech: Green is not just about banning plastic bags and eating sustainable foods or driving a hybrid. It’s about becoming more efficient in everything you do. Everyone wants a piece of green, so learn to transition your high-tech experience to green space.
Real-time reviews: Today’s buyers tap into a live stream of firsthand experiences from their peers and colleagues. The sheer mass of opinions will lead to a real-timestream of info. Prospects are much more receptive if they receive a recommendation to watch a webinar, listen to a podcast, attend a demo, or download a trial if they hear it from their peers. Become part of the conversation!

About Josiane Feigon:

Josiane Feigon is the founder of TeleSmart Communications and is recognized as one of the world’s leading experts on sales. For over 20 years she has provided consulting, coaching, and training solutions for hundreds of Fortune 1000 companies, including Cisco, EMC, Genesys, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and VeriSign. Her recent book, Smart Selling on the Phone and Online (AMACOM, 2009) was chosen by 800-CEO-READ as one of the best sales books of 2009.

iSell by OneSource

See those three highlighted items? iSell is revolutionary software from OneSource that arms salespeople for battle like no other.

This post was written by Jeff Ogden, the Fearless Competitor and President of Find New Customers “Lead Generation Made Simple” – a demand generation company dedicated to improving the flow of quality sales leads.

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Leverage Data Sources To Fill In the Gaps, Better Yourself

Dan Vescuso — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 13:40:51 +0000

Geoffrey James recently posted in the bNet Sales Machine blog about some of the qualities a “salesperson of the future” should possess. The post is a compilation of the best answers he received from CEOs and sales experts, some of which are right on track with our thinking.

One particular trait he highlights is the ability to be a collaborator rather than a communicator. The article states that both sales reps and customers are generally very familiar with each others’ business. Because of this, the process of selling should be more about hammering out the details in order to come to a deeper understanding and mutually beneficial agreement – rather than the sales rep just, well, selling (aka only providing information and not working with the prospect).

To that point, you can never be too prepared. If you’re a salesperson of the future (and I’m sure you are), the more information you have about your customers and prospects the better.

“In general, sales professionals who exceed expectations do so because they are more informed and have better prepared themselves than their counterparts.” Says Bill Murphy, Director of Channel Sales, OneSource. “Using external resources to keep yourself current as well as using information services to gain insight into each call are essential tactics for staying on top in sales.”

Make sure you’re leveraging a data source that can provide you with accurate, up-to-date information. This information will not only arm you for a discussion with your client, but provide you with enough information about what they might be looking for – the holes they might be trying to fill- to help them achieve their goals.

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Social Networking Gaining Traction Among B2B Marketing and Sales Pros

Dan Vescuso — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:20:23 +0000

As you have heard by now, social media is becoming a more important and widely used tool by sales and marketing professionals. In a recent survey conducted by Outsell and covered in eMarketer on expected B2B marketer spending on social networking, Outsell asked respondents to rate the different social media sites in terms of there effectiveness. Somewhat surprisingly, Facebook came out on top with 51% of respondents claiming that Facebook was extrememly or somewhat effective. LinkedIn came in a close second with 45%.

Other recent surveys, such as the SalesPulse survey conducted by OneSource and a survey conducted by Hubspot found that sales professionals surveyed rated LinkedIn as most effective.

The Outsell survey also showed that 43.3% of respondents had showed an increase in the amount of spend in the last year on social media marketing. Whether it’s Facebook or LinkedIn or some other emerging channel, social networking is becoming increasingly important to sales and marketing execs for identifying new opportunities, qualifying leads and taking action at the right moment in the buying cycle to close sales.

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Initial Impression from Sales 2.0 in San Francisco

Dan Vescuso — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 20:01:42 +0000

Today is the first day of the Sales 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and surprisingly the conference has grown significantly to around 350 attendees this year from only about 50 a few years ago. Geoffrey James of BNET is giving first hand impressions of the conference as it happens, and he posed the question as to why the conference has grown so significantly over the past few years despite the ongoing recession. The answer is that companies are trying to make the most out of their current sales and marketing organizations by utilizing the sales technologies on display at the show. If you aren’t making the most out of your current resources, then current strategies won’t be as successful. Time is money, especially in sales. And, every business – along with their sales people – should use every resource they can. That is the key to success.

In addition, it is important to make sure sales and marketing teams are aligned and working in harmony. Even if both departments are working full out all the time, it won’t matter if a rift exists between the two. The use of sales technologies and platforms can significantly reduce or even erase this void between sales and marketing groups in some organizations, therefore dramatically increasing productivity.

Are you at the conference? ADP panelist (and OneSource customer) Suzette Godwin Romer discussed how over 2,000 of their sales representatives use OneSource to find relevant, targeted sales opportunities. It’s important for sales people to use their resources to the fullest when it comes to leads – if you understand your prospect’s needs and company as a whole, the prospect will be more receptive to what you are saying.

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OneSource Survey Shows LinkedIn Preferred by B2B Sales Professionals

Dan Vescuso — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 15:00:13 +0000

In this era of web 2.0, where social networking sites dominate the social and now the business scene, it is difficult to tell just how beneficial some of these sites are for B2B purposes. OneSource Information Services recently conducted its own primary research on the topic, asking B2B sales professionals about the types of information resources and tools they use for building their sales pipelines and qualifying opportunities. They found that most social media tools are not having a large impact on the way they research companies and contacts:

66% of respondents suggested LinkedIn is “significantly” or “moderately” changing their methodologies
23% said the same of Personal & Professional Blogs
Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube did not achieve mentionable numbers (4% or less)

To some this might be surprising, but to me it makes perfect sense. I have heard again and again from a range of marketing and sales professionals that LinkedIn is providing real value to business professionals, as opposed to the other social networking sites. While a site like Twitter can help you keep connected and up to date, it takes too much effort with too little a reward for marketing purposes. Sales reps may occasionally catch a tweet from a prospect or customer that gives them valuable information to use during a call, but for the most part LinkedIn will be their go-to source of info.

Check out the survey results here: http://bit.ly/aZop5H, and be on the look out later this month for more results from the OneSource survey.

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Marketing Yourself Through Social Media

Dan Vescuso — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 17:45:30 +0000

Last week I posted about an interview between Chad Levitt and Kipp Bodnar – this week I came across an interesting interview on the Selling to Big Companies blog in which Chad was the interviewee.

Chad talks about how important it is for salespeople to market themselves, and he’s right. In order to maximize results, sales people need to take advantage of the tools at hand – specifically social media.

Chad believes that utilizing these tools is necessary because the rules of cold calling are changing. It’s harder to reach prospects by phone/email, they’re less willing to meet in person, and they’re busier than ever.

Sales reps need to adapt in order to stay afloat. Interacting with customers through social networks not only builds your own personal brand, but also fosters stronger customer relationships.

Taking advantage of social media will also improve your inbound marketing – allowing customers to more readily find you on the internet.

It may be intimidating for sales reps who have never ventured into the world of social media, so try making a Youtube video of yourself, then building on more content from there. Take on one thing at a time – make a twitter account or join facebook. Whatever you decide, get involved. The rewards will speak for themselves.

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Social Media: No Longer Just A Tool For Lead Generation

Dan Vescuso — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:28:30 +0000

Sales reps: You are constantly educating yourself on the newest sales techniques and business trends, right? Well doesn’t it make sense to keep up with latest and greatest in social media? Social media is constantly evolving and sales reps need to evolve with it or risk being left behind.

Social media tools are no longer only used by marketing departments. While it is true that many companies use social media to generate leads, sales reps must also start to integrate social media into there regimen.

Great B2B sales reps have strong relationships with there clients and prospects. In a recent interview by Chad Levitt, Kipp Bodnar, a Social Media Marketing Manager at Howard Merrell & Partners, states that there is a direct correlation between a sales rep’s ability to bond with his/her client and his/her use of social media. Many sales reps don’t see the need for social media, but it can be a very useful tool in fostering and maintaining relationships with customers.

Social media is an up-to-date method of staying on top of the latest information, so for example, when you call your contact you can congratulate him on his new baby or ask him how his vacation was. You’ll already be aware of this information because you’re connected with them via social networks. It adds a personal touch which can take the relationship to a new level. As Kipp states, it’s also a great way to stay in touch between interactions.

While you may not need social networking to make a sale, it definitely helps your overall efforts and increases your chances of boosting client relationships and making effective sales.

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