Have you ever stood behind your outbound sales people and really paid attention after they complete a sales call? It can be quite the learning experience. Whether they are the high-paid closers or the entry level prospectors, many, if not most, will kill quite a bit of time before saddling up and making the next call. As a sales manager or business owner, this loss of productivity can be the difference between OK performance or harnessing a high-powered sales team. Read the rest of this entry »

I was chatting with my good friend Dan McDade over at PointClear about how some businesses select not to outsource their sales lead generation and prospect development even when they are struggling with it internally and missing their sales goals.  It got me really thinking about how I see the value proposition of when to outsource and when to go at it alone. 

 If I may be so bold as to paraphrase a line from Master Card, here is what I have to say about outsourcing in general: “Building your own internal campaigns for lead gen and doing a decent job without losing focus on your core business- fair enough. Pulling the trigger and letting the big dogs run while you focus on your core competencies and winning the day on both sides of the ball- priceless.” Read the rest of this entry »

“WOW! Free, and it does everything I need it to”…. Really?

Because of the nature of what I do, I keep a close eye on search volume for particular terms. Over the last several years I have seen a measurable uptick in the number of searches for “Free Software.” It is not only call center software, but software of many types. And, interestingly enough, advertisers and software companies say come hither, we have what you desire.

The purpose of this post, as with many of my posts, is to say get real. Remember the golden rule: you get what you pay for. Now, for what you did not expect me to say: Read the rest of this entry »

If your business is dependent on setting appointments as the starting point to generate sales, or if you are a professional service that sets appointments for your clients, and you have not taken full advantage of the remarkable advances in appointment setting software, then the boat to success may have sailed without you. Get on board – it is not too late.

Over the last several years we have seen a migration from basic telesales software and lead management software, to powerful appointment setting software focused on driving better qualified appointments and, most importantly, more appointments. 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 »

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 »

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 »

 Don’t get lost in the hype of slickness and cool features if you are seeking software to power your inside sales team. If you have folks making calls to generate leads or sales, then do the easy math.  It is about making better calls, the right calls, and making more of them. Read the rest of this entry »

I was recently asked about how I measured my Inside Sales people back in the day when I had over 200 of them.  I shared that we used lots of standard criteria, but that we also stack ranked each of our Inside Sales people.  The puzzled look told me I may need to go into greater detail, possibly for two reasons.  Read the rest of this entry »

All of the recent obituaries about the death of cold calling have been greatly over stated.  As a matter of fact, more companies than ever have increased their efforts with good old fashioned cold calling.  In part, the challenging economy has pushed companies to reduce their more costly outside sales efforts and replace them with- you guessed it- cold calling.  Sure, you hear a bundle about social media, social calling and Sales 2.0 and the hope that no one will ever have to cold call again.  But, the facts support a different story.  While companies scramble to understand the changing dynamics of selling through social media, they still have to butter the bread and move products or services into the market.  Many are turning to a reliable friend that has a history of predictable outcome: cold calling.  Read the rest of this entry »