Showing posts with label warm calls. Show all posts
Showing posts with label warm calls. Show all posts

Monday, May 11, 2015

Sales management tips for growing companies

Many days, I have to dig around for material for this blog, but with help like this I can take time for a lunch away from my desk:

A company Proxima B2B has never represented requires its sales staff to accept 24-hour monitoring of their whereabouts as a condition of release condition of employment. To accomplish this feat of 'management', the firm uses a 'productivity' app we've never represented either. (Neither is getting a link out of me. Because 24-hour monitoring is for suspects, not salespeople.)

Today's free sales management tip is: Treat your staff like valuable members of your team, and they'll act like it. Treat them like low-level criminals, and soon the only people who will work that sales position will be individuals who think that is an appropriate level of oversight for them. And they would know.

So good luck hiring and managing your professional sales staff, and let us know if you decide that it's worth a few minutes to evaluate outsourcing your sales function as you grow.

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Sales Ideas for Engineers

This blog is for you. The engineers that ProximaB2B loves to build sales for. You know who you are.

If making cold calls, heck even warm calls, is your idea of being tortured like the scene with the rack in The Princess Bride

If I Love F*&cking Science is in your top ten viewed site list

If you build it and hope the customers will come, this blog is for you.

We love engineers, programmers, people who hate sales, nerds, geeks, and late night app developers who need revenue to keep the lights on. We know that engineers and developers of all sorts are a slightly different breed than those of us who CHOSE to build careers in sales. We admire your focus on the features and details of the UI. We stand in awe as you debug and compile and design and create.

But in the end, engineers have got to eat. Some of you have investors who are calling daily asking what your revenue plans are for this quarter and next. Some of you are looking at your partners wondering why the word-of-mouth referrals that have always brought in plenty of business aren't bringing in new projects. All of you need to build sales or you would be writing code or reading ILFS instead of a blog about sales for tech companies and the engineers who build solutions not sales plans.

Proxima B2B may be able to help. We've built predictable revenue for a lot of companies. We know when the warm lead is bored and when the follow-up call can be closed into new business. We love to work through pricing issues and positioning challenges. We thrive on trade show floors, telephones, and airplanes.

We're building this blog to help you, help yourself with sales tasks. When the time comes to review your results and bring in specialized professionals, we hope you'll call us.

About Katherine Parker@proximab2b.com
Katherine Parker, Kate to her friends, has been closing major sales for technology companies since the road warrior’s best friend was a Compaq luggable. In addtion to leading new business inititatives at ProximaB2B, Kate still makes at least 50 quality sales calls each week into the markets she knows best.

ProximaB2B closes sales for clients offering complex intangibles within the North American market. Northstar Enterprises, our parent company also offers consulting, training  and a full range of sales support services for company leaders who have found that 'selling yourself' is harder than it might at first seem.


You can find Proxima B2B on Twitter  @Proximab2b
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