The Sales Lead Management Association has launched a cartoon series focused on lead management.  VanillaSoft got the opportunity to sponsor the first cartoon and we jumped on it.  Sometimes, a cartoon can capture in a single frame what bloggers and experts try to share with thousands of words.  The first cartoon really got me thinking; is a bigger box the answer?  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 »

Have you ever watched an inside salesperson from a distance, trying to figure out who they should dial next in the absence of a defined strategy?  It can actually prove to be entertaining.  Often, they will stare at the record as if through osmosis they can discern the possible outcome.  If they are running old-school, it is the shuffling of the cards or lead sheets that is the giveaway.  In a manual environment, it is easy to spot a lack of strategy; with automation and the rep sitting in front of a screen, it is much harder to discern.  As managers, we often convince ourselves that if we have “automated,” or have CRM, that we have taken a step towards having a strategy.  That simply is not the case. Read the rest of this entry »