Recruiting, motivating & retaining great Reps is a critical component of any Inside Sales strategy. One thing that has largely been absent in the process is feedback from the Reps themselves.

With that in mind, I am very excited to announce the launch of a new research project with our good friends at Vorsight:
Inside Sales Motivation Research Survey.

We are asking Inside Reps (& reps only) to share 3-minutes on a web survey about what motivates them professionally and how their current role is stacking up. In exchange, participants will be entered into a drawing where one winner will receive an Apple iPad2 and another a Kindle Fire. For the full who, what, where & how please see this.

"There's something happening here." That was the thought that went through my head when I learned that three folks I respect tremendously (Paul Roetzer, David Meerman Scott & Mitch Joel) are all reading the same book:

Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson.

My second thought was back to a piece of advice from Trish’s new ebook Sales Onboarding: the express route from hire-to-revenue.

So heading over to Amazon, I was blown away to see the Jobs book at #2 in the Top 100 Books (not just business books – all books).

I’d argue that if your perfect buyer cares deeply about:

• Products
• Marketing
• Innovation
• Entrepreneurship
  -or-
• Leadership

Welcome to our 3 Links Not To Miss “will/they won’t they - NBA season” edition. This is going to be a semi-regular feature on the blog where we’ll be sharing 3 recent links we found particularly interesting.
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Conversational: Sales as a Noble Profession

Trish & I were fortunate to sit down with Don Perkins and chat about trends in sales & marketing. In this segment, we spoke about the selling profession and how Reps can become better sellers.

Actionable: Are your Sales Reps Invisible?

Paul Castain argues Reps need to understand that buyers aren’t shy about searching for them online. Like Jill Konrath says, buyers are crazy busy. And what they find (or don’t find) on Google, LinkedIn, etc. might go far in answering “Is taking a meeting with this person worth my time?”

I recently ran across this question on a group on LinkedIn:

Judging by the 162 (to date) responses, this is a hot topic. So I asked around and put together some interesting Inside Sales interview questions. A few folks were kind enough to share their favorite questions and the rationale behind them:

What do you know about us? What do you know about me?

This is a twist on the standard, did they do their homework question. It lets you see how well prepared they are & how confortable they are using publically available data. Did they do the research on you as well as the company or did they just show up and throw up?