From The Xant Blog — build a sales team
The Forgotten Road to Inside Sales Success — List/Leads 0
Lists gathered or leads generated are the lifeblood of a sales team. Carrying on with the C.L.O.S.E.R. model series from a previous post, this next step in the sales process model actually has the most leverage in terms of lead generation. When setting a strategy for a sales initiative, lists and leads are the core of any sales operations. However, to get the most bang for your buck, it’s important to strategically gather the lists in order to increase your success ratios.
It’s often said that the best lists are the hardest to find. That’s true. In order to ensure that you are contacting the best possible people or companies – it’s important that you prequalify you lists and leads, find the best sources for your leads and test your lists and leads often.
The Forgotten Road to Inside Sales Success — Campaigns 0
The most forgotten part of inside sales is the practice of sales operations. In order to help professionals within inside sales, I wanted to expound upon a previous post on the C.L.O.S.E.R. model and delve deeper into how it can help any sales department refocus their operations in building a successful inside sales team. I’ll start by sharing the first step of the C.L.O.S.E.R. model — Campaign.
The word campaign is usually associated with the marketing department – it’s designed to be. What’s interesting is Inside sales is actually the top method for lead generation. We recommend that your sales people are trained with marketing tools to help them be more effective by building a strong strategy around a particular campaign. The types of campaigns for sales teams are as follows:
The Must Have Sales Tool for Managing Smart Lead Response 0
Have you ever wondered how your sales reps were processing that most valuable of marketing resource – a lead? Why do so many leads get thrown into the “unresponsive-no contact” category? Is this a marketing or a sales process problem? Want to find out?
Request a ResponseAudit. This lead response assessment enables a company to view real response times from the eyes of a hot lead.
ResponseAudit was introduced by XANT as an unbiased assessment tool for the curious or frustrated sales manager. The audit enables a company to benchmark their lead response times (through both email and telephone) and rep persistency in contacting leads against industry norms based on our 2007 published research findings*.
Disney Institute Offers Perspectives all Inside Sales Managers Can Use 0
Disney's Approach to Leadership Excellence offers incredible insights that can help an inside sales team
Many of these principles can be applied by management of an inside sales team. The best practices of leadership excellence, people management, and quality service are universal regardless of the industry.
I recently attended three sessions at the Disney Institute in Anaheim, CA. While the basic information concerning Leadership Excellence, People Management, and Quality Service was not new, the Disney perspective and implementation of best practices was impressive and inspiring.
I’ll share some insights I gained.
How to Build an Inside Sales Team: Best Practices in Voicemail 0
A key tip most professionals in the inside sales industry will tell you is it’s a best practice to not leave voice messages. The truth of the matter is that voicemail is one of the most misunderstood and misused tools in terms of gaining a better lead response. To follow is a list of some best practices we have found from our research and experience regarding effective use of voicemail.
Best Practices of Voicemail
- Leave a message with the person you are directly trying to reach. You may need to get permission from their secretary in order to do this.
- Keep your message brief (30 seconds or less.) Research shows the optimal length is no more than 18 seconds.
- Give enough information that your lead wants to call you back. This means, don’t tell them everything.
- Don’t be irritating – only leave three voicemails over a two week period, tops.
- In conjunction with your voicemail, send a follow-up email. Even better, mention the voicemail you left in the email and vice versa.
