But you can’t lump all the call reluctance into the same boat. Here are five of the most common personalities that fall to call reluctance, the symptoms, and the potential fix.

1. Polite Polly: Doesn’t want to intrude on others. Feels like their role is invasive in another professional’s space.

The next target name and title for your new B-team salesperson pops up on his screen. He takes a quick look at the company web site and then punches “dial”. His conversation starts the exact same way his last conversation did. He doesn’t have any context for how your company can help his target, instead using a “One Conversation Fits Most” approach.

How much better would his sales numbers be if he could cater each conversation to the person on the other end of the phone?

1. Research the company as it relates to what you’re selling: It’s not enough to get an overview of the target, for example, understanding that they manufacture and sell lenses. Your team needs to get a quick overview that is relevant to the product that they want to sell. Using recent articles about the company might have tremendous hints for their needs (for example, if they have new management or if they recently opened a new location). In addition, current articles about their industry might point to pain that they’re having that your company can address (for example, if there is a huge market for a new size of lenses and they are going to need to ramp up production). If you can start your conversation with a relevant bridge between what you’re selling and what they need, you are much more likely to engage a sale… than with a generic conversation.

By Jim Domanski

Are you getting a decent response when you leave a voice mail with a prospect or are you like the vast majority of tele-prospectors whose messages go unanswered?

Well over 70% of B-to-B calls encounter voice mail so it is imperative that you have a voice mail message that works for you and increases your odds of getting a call back.

Have you broken any of your resolutions yet? Get back on track with a proven way to do your job better. (That was one of your resolutions, right?) Incite2 from ShadeTree Technology is a tool that’s changing the way your sales force will use salesforce.com.

Resolve to take charge:  You’ve heard complaints from your team for years about salesforce.com’s complexity. You’ve experienced the cumbersome clicks firsthand. You’ve seen numbers that are not confidence-building. You’ve had trouble getting an enterprise view of your department’s productivity. There is a way to take charge and do something about all these issues. Something straightforward. This isn’t a resolution to add one-hundred new products, open seventeen worldwide branches and surpass Apple in volume. This is a simple plug-in that will change the way your team sells, for the better.

Resolve to increase sales: Now where did you finish your fiscal year?  CSO Insights stated that less than 50-percent of sales teams met their quota last year. If you want to build on last year's success or gain success this year, take a closer look at Incite2. This tool consolidates the screens your salespeople use from salesforce.com so everything they need is right in front of them. More calls (20-50% on average!). More details about each call. This automatically leads to better conversations. Which translates to what? More sales. With the changing landscape of sales, your people need to do more research than ever to make their conversations more targeted, meaningful and relevant. The way you keep track of all this information leads directly to how successful they’ll be when they do get a prospect on the line… or even when they leave a voicemail. Sure, technology can help them dial more numbers… but Incite2 ALSO makes each dial more relevant, meaningful and productive.