Today's post is about a new organization that I know will be of interest to everyone - the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals. This organization was founded by Bob Perkins and Larry Reeves. Today we interviewed Larry.
Full disclosure, I am on the Board of Advisors for the AA-ISP and think it is a great organization!
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AA-ISP is such a great idea. What is the vision you and Bob share?
The vision has multiple facets but at its core we want to provide a centralized, trusted resource where inside sales professionals can go to get information that will assist them with their careers, performance and productivity.
Who are you targeting for membership?
Anybody in the inside sales community all the way from entry level rep's to senior executives. Our goal is to provide information and resources that provide value to everyone.
We know this is a very broad scenario but we feel we can address it in a variety of ways. Nothing will be segregated but things will be classified in a way that will allow people to get access to the information they are looking for quickly and easily.
Some information is of value to all categories. For instance our Member Directory and Regional Chapters are great networking tools that everyone can utilize.
Talk to me about the value of being a member. What do I get?
There is a number of ways members get value from their AA-ISP membership. These include:
- Access to an ever growing library of white papers, best practices and articles from a variety of contributors so you get a collective view of the industry - all in one place.
- We just introduced the AAISP Contact Exchange. Member's have access to the data collective of over 1 Million contacts being built by mywayinteractive. In a nutshell, it is a crm tool that is completely social media enabled and allows sale reps to trade select contacts.
- We are building a community via our open member directory, member forums, and regional chapters. We've had great interest in Chapters and a number are being formed (note to readers - we are very privileged to have Trish as President of the Boston chapter so please reach out to her for more info on our October meeting).
- Ask the Experts provides personalized 1 x1 consulting. Members can go online and post very specific questions and get responses from the AA-ISP Panel of Experts which is comprised of a variety of hand selected industry experts.
- We provide a Career Center which provides a portal to search all the major job boards from one centralized location.
- In August we presented our first webinar, "The Emergence of the Hybrid Role". Many more webinars will follow.
- We will conduct an annual Spring Leadership Summit focused specifically on inside sales managers, directors and executives. The 2010 Summit is planned for May in Minneapolis. In addition a Member Conference is being planned for the fall of 2010.
- Monthly newsletters and activity updates keep members up on the latest.
- A week ago we launched another new service, the AA-ISP Service Provider Directory where we list best of breed consultants, trainers, authors, vendors etc. Members can also rate and comment on providers.
Is there a way for people to sample the value? What do they get for free?
We provide a variety of ways for non-members to sample the value. These include:
- Sample download reports
- Utilize the new Service Provider Directory - view only
- Chapter meetings
- Webinars
Thanks so much for your time Larry. How can our readers learn more?
Thank you Trish, I appreciate you having me. We would like to extend a membership discount for your readers - we'd like to offer annual memberships for $99 (normally $250) through the end of September. Readers use the promo code "TBG2009".
For more information on the AA-ISP visit http://www.aa-isp.org/
(Trish here: if you are already a member, would love to hear about your experiences!)