
Tele-sales Done Better
You may be asking the right questions. But are you getting to right outcomes?
Company: Managed Sales Pros
Job Title: President
Carrie has 20 years of inside and field sales experience. She is the founder of Cold Calls Lead Generation, a business to business sales appointment setting firm. For fourteen years she has helped technology companies sell more, more efficiently. Carrie spent two years building the Managed Services lead generation program at The Eureka Project before founding Managed Sales Pros, a sales cycle acceleration firm that focuses exclusively on the managed services ecosystem. She was named by MSPMentor as one of the 250 most influential people in the technology channel for 2013.
Carrie still cold calls daily. She is responsible for client strategy at Managed Sales Pros and is available for consulting, training and speaking engagements. Carrie’s client list includes MSP industry guru Robin Robins, RMM vendors AVG Managed Workplace and Nable by Solar Winds, Network Security firm OpenDNS, the document management startup ITGlue and emerging and established MSPs from Seattle to New York City.
You may be asking the right questions. But are you getting to right outcomes?
Many MSPs have grown healthy, sustainable businesses using nothing more than word-of-mouth. You can, too.
Though it might sound paradoxical, some companies are finding success narrowing their focus.
When is it time to hire someone to do lead generation? There are a few factors to consider when deciding whether to DIY lead gen or hire help.
As you begin to prospect more, you’ll need to start forecasting to support your growth. Staffing, for example, will be very contingent on what your sales pipeline looks like. How do you create the forecast, and how do you manage it so that you are proactively prepared for the new business you’re signing?
With all the distractions available to you through the summer, it can be difficult to maintain focused on picking up the phone. Or take it up a notch.
So many companies tell me they are waiting for something to change or something to be finished or something new to happen before they begin a prospecting campaign. There will always be something that prevents you from executing on new initiatives. Budget. Timing. Headcount. Something. If you wait for the perfect time to start something, you’ll never begin.
When we hear that Company A is dropping the ball, we can be pretty certain they’re dropping it constantly — and that’s the perfect time to hit Twitter to figure out who else on their client roster may be considering a change. Once you have your Twitter hit list for each of your competitors, you can lead with the services you happen to know (based on the calls you’ve already had or the business you’ve already won) they are likely going to be unhappy with.
While there are companies that struggle to fill their pipeline with qualified leads, there are also organizations that have the opposite problem. They get plenty of leads, but nothing seems to close. Why does that happen? How can they fix this problem?
A happy client or an impressed colleague has presented you with the name of a company they think requires your services. That’s fantastic. It’s an enormous compliment and your highest percentage chance to win new business. How do you go about pursuing this prospect?
Old school sales coaching says you must defer talking about price until you’ve built enough value in the prospects mind to justify it. New sales experts encourage you to vigorously disqualify in the first call using trial closes that include pricing discussions to make sure you’re not wasting your time on prospects that aren’t qualified. Which strategy is correct when selling cloud?
No matter how badly you botched that pitch, someone has done something worse. Making thousands of calls daily, we aren’t going to knock each one out of the park. You won’t either. Don’t let one bad call take you out of the game for the day.
Without an effective sales strategy in Q2, sales teams will find themselves scrambling in Q3. Sales prospecting in Q3 is all about follow-ups and maintenance of relationships. July and August are difficult months to prospect in to new accounts.
By becoming a giver, a salesperson can provide a personal touch to any sales conversation. Understand the needs of your lead and how your company can add value. You’d be surprised by how being persistent will help you close any deal.
It happens all the time. You ask to speak to the CEO, the gatekeeper asks what your call is regarding, and then you hear those five little words we all dread: “I’ll transfer you to IT.”
Telemarketing remains one of the most cost effective ways to drive new business — if you have the right person for the job. So how can you find, hire and support a telemarketing superstar? The short answer is, you probably can’t
Planning an event to bring prospects to you is one way to convert leads into paying customers. But if you’re hosting a party, you better know what you’re doing, right?
If you’re not sure when during your day you should cold call, find out when you’re feeling the most energetic. You will be best at cold calling when you are on your game.
One way to prevent business growth is by moving away from your original plans too early. Go back to your goals for 2015 and review. What are you not implementing?
Using IT terminology in your sales pitch can be confusing to a non-technical audience — so stay away from it. Keeping things in Plain English during your sales calls can go a long way.
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