Lay the foundation for better sales performance in 2011 by taking the Incite2 Challenge.

The Basics - Incite2 90-Minute Challenge Details

Incite 2 is a plug-in for salesforce.com that helps your sales professionals: 

• Make More Calls
• Have Better Conversations
• Know Who To Call

More calls equals more qualified leads, equaling more revenues. 

The trouble with a classic elevator speech is that in tele-sales no one has the time or the inclination to hear what you have to say.

Communicating by phone is different than face to face where a suspect or a prospect will grant you a few more moments if only to be courteous. On the phone it is simple and easy for a prospect to terminate the call and that's one of the main reasons why you need an escalator speech.

An escalator speech is an abbreviated version of an elevator speech and it is absolutely vital in the world of B to B tele-sales. Whereas an elevator speech is based on the premise that you present what you do over the time it takes to travel a few floors up an elevator, the escalator speech is based on the premise that you present what you do in the time it takes to travel only one floor.

• Number of qualified leads
• Number of opportunities in the pipeline
• Number of closed deals

All of these goals have one thing in common - increasing current output levels.  There are many ways to arrive at making the gains in output - add more people, work longer, etc.

With many organizations using the telephone more and reducing travel, one place to look at in more detail is productivity on the phone.

More Calls = More Results

The wonderful thing about increasing call volumes is that the results of those call tend to track consistently across all of the milestones in your sales cycle.  All things equal, a 20% increase in call volume will equate to a 20% increase in:

Change.  Inevitable,  Constant.  Everyone's talking about it.  Social media, the new (2.0) customer, the downsized organization - and how selling strategies need to change to adapt to today's customer.

As sellers, I think we can all agree on a few things, today's customers: 

• Are harder to get on the phone
• Are less likely to respond to email
• Can discover a lot more about us and our solutions than they used to be able to (because we help them)

Oh yeah... one other thing: 

• Our solutions and services are still relevant... helping improve and optimize our prospect's businesses. 

In this series we detail the new capabilities in ShadeTree's Incite2 product Fall 2010 release. 

Incite2 helps salespeople make more calls and have better conversations - increasing sales results.

In October 2010 ShadeTree send out a survey request to sales vp's and managers, inside sales managers and marketing vp's and managers.  The short survey was focused on understanding how salespeople go about the job of prospecting: 

• Figuring out who to call
• Where to find names
• Building list / call queues 
• Related challenges

Key Findings:

• Over 60% of salespeople report difficulty determining who to call
• 82% of salespeople reported that better lead pipeline reporting would be valuable to them
• 73% of salespeople have difficulty building call queues within their CRM system

Below are results from the survey.  

Please accept our invitation to contribute to one of the most remarkable surveys that we have ever used, contributed to and learned from: 

In this series we detail the new capabilities in ShadeTree's Incite2 product Fall 2010 release. 

Incite2 helps salespeople make more calls and have better conversations - increasing sales results.

If you are one of the companies investigating marketing automation systems then you are aware of their bold claims for generating leads.  And, they would be right.  There is much to love about the benefits of marketing automation systems.  

They provide one of the foundational components for Marketing 2.0.  Amongst the highlights are these systems' ability to:

• Build an "intelligent", multi-step campaign - using a prospect's actions to direct him/her to the next content in a series of messages / events
• Notify salespeople of activity - such as email opens, the fact that "prospect X" is on your web site... right now!
• Score leads - based upon demographic data and activity - helping us know "who to call" or "who to nurture"

As sales professionals prepare to close out Q3 2010... here are some thoughts to stay on top of the game.

1) Understand Political Structure and Decision Making Hierarchy - Don't get Blindsided

A brilliant sales job to a prospect that doesn't make a purchasing decision works... sometimes... but not very often.  If you are investing your own time and energy to proceed down the path of a sale, it is important that you are headed in the right direction.  Until salespeople understand political structure and decision making hierarchy they are lost.  Occasionally salespeople might get lucky and find their way to a closed deal... but most of the time they will just be lost.