Sales Secrets

Sales development is a tough role but it's an important role and one of the most innovative roles to emerge from sales in the last decade. The problem is, the research has been weak and so has the best practices. That ends today. InsideSales.com in partnership with a half-dozen companies have produced the largest study ever on sales development. The study focuses on Structure, Systems, People, and Pipeline. Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: Sales Development Summit State of Sales Report InsideSales Labs Best Practice Training In This Episode You'll Learn: What is sales development How 1000+ companies are building and executing successful sales development teams The structure, systems, people, and pipeline of successful sales development teams

Inbound leads are what they are. The question is, what should you do with them? In a rebuttal to an article questioning if companies should respond to inbound leads, yours truly, lays out a handful of reasons you might want to think about responding quickly to inbound leads at your company. Links and Resources Mentioned in This Episode: LinkedIn article 2017 Lead Response Study Sales Hacker Article Time Management Article In This Episode You'll Learn: Respond to High Priority Leads in Under Five Minutes ... Unless You're an Idiot Find the Balance Between Speed and Score Don't Ever Reach Out and Start Your Conversation With 'May I Help You' Know This: People Who Download Your Content Will Most Likely NEVER Read It Prospects Rarely if Ever Want to Talk to a Sales Person Prospects Are Impressed with Hustle If You're Going to Reach Out, Do It Immediately-Don't Wait Multiple Days Account-Based Doesn't Have to Equal Slow Response

What good is hiring great people if you don't train them? Sales onboarding is still broken and many companies think they can solve the problem simply by having one rep shadow another. That's not going to work and it doesn't work. In this episode, Ryan Reisert, Lead Instructor at Sales Bootcamp, talks about what he's learned about onboarding sales reps and shares his secrets to success.

You can't forget the customer. The customer experience should trump everything but for some reason it doesn't and it is often the reason that companies fail. Companies get focused on themselves and why and how they are winning and they lose sight of their customers. B2C has an advantage sometimes because they can map the user experience and see the data but that's not a good enough excuse for B2B leaders. In this episode, Chad Sanderson, Managing Partner at Value Prime Solutions talks about the importance of the customer experience and why companies need to focus on it to win.

It's never easy to find the right leader. What complicates it even more is where companies are at in their revenue journey. Different types of leaders excel at different times. Sometimes you need tactical leaders other times you need leaders who can close big deals or operationally get things in order. In this episode, Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital shares his secrets of hiring and discusses how start-ups must find the right leader at the right time in order to succeed.

AI is the thing but InsideSales.com knows a thing or two about it. What do I mean by that, well we've been doing AI for the past ten years and we have the world's largest database of sales interactions with over 110 billion. That's a lot of data. So, yes we know a thing or two about data but most people don't. In this episode, we talk AI, what the definition is and three ways you can start thinking about using it to be successful in your business.

We go to trade shows and we are constantly asked, "what do you do?" Sadly, the answer to that questions turns out to be a 5-35 min rant by most people instead of a clear and concise one-liner. An elevator pitch needs to be short, clear, and direct to the point. In this episode, we talk about why one-liners are important and how you can begin crafting your own.

Great companies realize that to be successful, generating inbound inquires is key. Great companies also realize that to get big fish, they need to have a targeted outbound or account-based strategy. In this episode, Fes Askari talks about his work as a strategic consultant helping organizations set up and optimize full funnel strategic sales.

We've been talking about being a #Playmaker for a few months now and a lot of people have asked me, "What is a Playmaker?" With Dreamforce here we decided to formally launch Playmakers and let you in on how we came up with the idea of playmakers and some of the fun things we hope to do with the idea over the coming weeks and months.

AI is having an impact on sales productivity and it's here to stay but few people know what AI is or how it works. In this episode, Dave Boyce, Chief Strategy Officer at InsideSales.com discusses what leaders need to know about AI and how they can get started without going in the wrong direction.

I'm a big believer in using direct mail in prospecting strategies but it doesn't mean I always get it right. Partnering with Joey Wood from InsideSales.com we ran a test with one of our direct mail campaigns and it completely failed. We called it the Magic Eight Ball Play

I know, I know, we've talked a lot about direct mail but this is different. Rather than hearing some expert, we did some research and asked 325 B2B associates what they think of the topic. Rather than focus on one specific thing, we decided to understand the opinions of those that may send or receive direct mail. Interesting results, check them out!

Direct mailers are a hot commodity nobody knows more about them than John Coe, founder of B2B marketing.com. In this episode John talks about his experience with direct mailers and principles he's learned and taught others to be successful.

If you want big fish you have to go outbound, end of story. The question is how do you build that. Some people start with an outsourced model but eventually companies typically bring that back in house. Every company is different but there are tried and true principles to creating and building an outbound machine. In this episode, Aaron Ross, author of Predictable Revenue discusses his experiences creating prospecting machines for companies and his lessons learned.

Sales Development isn't going anywhere but what should you do them? Many sales development reps are just a fancy marketing automation system using templates and pressing buttons so do we really need them? Marketo works fine and in many cases it's better a sales development rep. In this episode, John Barrows, founder of JBarrows Training discusses the role of sales development and how sales development reps need to start acting in order to be successful. In addition, John hits on AI and the relationship of sales and marketing.

Trouble comes in many formats and as good as LinkedIn in it still doesn't quite hit the spot when it comes to trigger events. Kyle Morris, founder of SifData talks about the importance of staying on top of key events and receiving real-time notifications about your buyers.

Some things are popular and then they fade out and come back again. High impact mailers are back. For some they are back in style and for others they are new. High impact mailers are physical items mailed to a prospect or customer to initiate a conversation or build a relationship. There are different types of mailers and different use cases. Valerie Sklar, president at Corporate Specialties, is an expert in mailers and has been in the business of working with companies on such initiatives for years. In this episode, Valerie expounds on what mailers are and how companies should start thinking about them.

The message isn't all bad. Enterprise companies are behind the times and some of that is our fault and some of that is their fault. The good thing is they know it and they are actively doing "stuff" to change it. InsideSales.com Labs did a study with nearly 1200 companies and it revealed how companies are winning using structure, systems, and people.

Content used to work but it doesn't because everybody creates content. Every sales rep used to send plane text emails and it worked but it doesn't work anymore. Everybody used to require a form to get leads but nobody wants to fill out a form anymore. Things seem to be changing but companies are not changing with it. In this episode, David Cancel, CEO of Drift, talks about the old trends and discusses about how they are broken and if companies want to win they'll have to move to channels that are working for content and they will have to provide the ability for real time-conversations via chat bots on websites.

The buyer has changed. It doesn't matter what stat you believe, the fact is customers are more educated and are further down the buying journey before they talk with a sales rep. This isn't a problem, it's an opportunity. Sales is still about segmenting the market, how you target you ideal buyers, and how do you go after them. In this episode, Victor Antonio founder of Sellinger Group, talks about how great B2B sellers move to education and consulting and recognize buyers need more support than they ever had before.