COMMENTS
What great advice. I immediately followed the steps outlined in the blog and within 5 minutes had a response and within 10 minutes had made an appointment. Magic!
Dave, great post. Based on what we see with our clients, sales reps are not trained on how to use email and voice mail effectively. Couple rules of thumb:
Voice Mail - Less than 30 seconds, you company is not the leader of anything so drop that canned phrase, get a "piece" of your value proposition in the message (other communications will allow you to deliver the whole value prop) and PLEASE provide your phone number by speaking slowly!
EMail - Will probably be read on a Crackberry so no attachments, one link and it should be to your web site, 10 font and the subject line should contain the word YOUR.
Just a few tricks of the trade from the Inside Sales Experts.
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Pre and Post call strategy sessions are critical in moving from first to home. I have yet to meet a sales person that has conducted a sales meeting and executed every step, every tactic and asked every question. To minimize failure to execute the pre-call strategy is critical to prepare:
What questions will you ask
What questions will they ask
What curve balls must you be prepared for.
The post call process allows the sales person to take appropriate action once they've realized what they failed to execute. As a practice we have recently adopted that every opportunity that appears to be over 50k requires a pre-call strategy session.