I must admit, when I heard Steve died, I think I was like many people. We were somewhat expecting it, and not necessarily shocked by the news. Like many of you, I watched the coverage and it made me reflect on the many contributions Steve and Apple have made in terms of form, design and marketing. But, with all of the coverage, I did not necessarily feel that connected to the event. Or, at least not until I read the following Facebook post the next morning. It read:

“Game changer to Electronics

Life changer for the Future

We will miss the man that lets us

do what seemed out of our grasp”

  Read the rest of this entry »

I get quite a few questions about the value of auto dialing and whether or not it can really increase the productivity of a sales person who works by phone. Most managers who have never tried a form of auto dialing are skeptical, and they should be. There are so many amazing claims in the market built around dialing that it makes it hard to get to the truth. I have seen wild claims: 400% increases promised, triple your sales, never go 10 seconds without a live conversation and so on. Most are just that: claims.  But before we throw out the baby with the bath water, let’s take a look at reasonable claims. Read the rest of this entry »

VanillaSoft remains the leading software platform driving phone sales. Thank goodness right? If we had listened to the pundits we would have pulled the plug years ago. Selling by phone is dead they yelled. We heard it all. No one uses the phone anymore;  people can’t be reached. If you reach them they do not want to be bothered. Read the rest of this entry »

August of last year I posed the question: “Can Twitter really be a lead source?” That original post follows these revised comments. Give it a read afterwards and see how things change. Back then we were new to Twitter, experts at driving inbound traffic, but somewhat suspicious of all of the Twitter hype. To remain relevant, we dove in and gave it the old college try. I think, at the time of the post, we had around 1000 followers.  Read the rest of this entry »

If you get caught up in the blogosphere or read all of the marketing hype around inbound marketing, you may find yourself hard pressed to hear the reasonable voices of sanity.  New companies have burst (OK-exploded) on to the scene, promoting all things inbound marketing.  “GET FOUND!” they  scream.  Some seem to suggest that people need to take a back seat to technology.  Actual sales people need not apply.  If I get one more e-mail suggesting I read this blog or article and it says; “Powered by” whoever the flavor of the day is, I will just… Read the rest of this entry »

Come-on, we have all done it at one time or another.  You know, produced a sales forecast out of thin air.  Heck, back in the day it was all but required.  “Jim, what does your gut tell you the sales team can do this quarter?”  BTW – by “back in the day,” I mean a few years back when the economy was flowing, fat marketing budgets ruled the day and the question was how much over quota will would go.  Times have changed my friends, and we must change with them. Read the rest of this entry »

I was chatting with Mike Brooks, Mr. Inside Sales himself, the other day about, well, you guessed it, inside sales.  I shared with Mike that one of the items I hear more and more sales people talking about is how email is becoming a black hole.  Here at VanillaSoft, our platform provides sales people with fully integrated on-board email that allows them to send highly personalized emails directly to prospects and customers, or send them en masse.  Great!  We have a wonderful platform that gets them out the door, but what about all of those emails we sent, and never heard back from the prospect.  If it was a cold email, fair enough, no harm, no foul.  However, if you sent an email to a prospect you were engaged with and they went stealth – that is a different story.  Read the rest of this entry »

Lead Scoring is hot right now.  As technology continues to advance, powerful new software is emerging to assist Inside Sales teams with their lead management.  Lead scoring can take on many forms.  Some are automated, while others allow a sales person to score based on their interaction with a prospect or customer.  One thing is sure; we have moved well beyond yesterday’s standard scoring of cold, warm, hot and sold.  Read the rest of this entry »

As a rule, I get to the conclusion over the course of my post or at the end.  For this one, I will give you the answer at the beginning.  The sad truth, my friends, is that to get to the right VoIP provider you are probably going to have to kiss a few frogs in order to find a prince of a service provider. Read the rest of this entry »

The super cool news is that these new social selling and corporate view features are getting paired with the best-in-class lead routing features that are the drivers of productivity for inside sales.  This makes for an unbeatable combination.  

This post may be bit self-serving, so I apologize in advance.  However, to make my desired point I need my own company, VanillaSoft, as an example.  We have all followed posts from talking heads like me that discuss the question, “Is cold calling dead?”  I say, along with our thousands of customers who cold-call, that it is alive and well.  Others say its time has come and gone.  I am sure, like most things, the truth is in the middle. Read the rest of this entry »