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?

I've been a bit obsessed with sales presentations lately. Not so much on construction of attractive slides, but on the requirement to tell a compelling story via the world's most torturous medium: PowerPoint.

In the Inside Sales world, Reps work incredibly hard to earn 10, 20 or 30 minute discovery/needs analysis calls. At presentation time, we’ve got (at least in theory) guaranteed prospect attention.

But far too often, we squander all that preceding effort by confusing, boring or annoying prospects while generally failing to move the sales process forward.

I just came across this eBook from the folks over at SalesCrunch called "Designing Presentations That Sell." And let me tell you, it rocks. (Note: I wouldn't normally link to registration required content - but it is that good.)

In the eBook, presentation designer Jan Schultink goes through 3 acts: Images, Stories & Content. I thought I’d share the bits that most impacted me.

 
A few weeks back, we wrote about this hot inside sales hiring market. Tracking this market and thinking about its implications has become a mini-obsession of mine. So being a huge fan of infographics, I thought I'd try to capture this hiring market - visually.

I compiled some statistics and did a little original research/polling and came up with the following: 
(Click to view full size) 

.

Feel free to share the graphic. Or better yet, share your questions & comments and I'll do my best to make it better.

So what do you think? Find anything surprising in the data?

 
Inside Sales hiring is up. Way, way up.

I was lucky enough to sit in on a preview call for CSO Insights’ 2011 Telemarketing Inside Sales Optimization Report the other day. This chart really hit me between the eyes.

Said another way, over 70% of surveyed organizations are hiring sales people this year. Nearly 1/4 are bumping their sales force size by 20% +. In case there was any doubt, 

.
Anecdotally, I can testify that folks with 2-3 years sales experience are in white hot demand right now. Doing a little research, I crunched through about 100 LinkedIn jobs looking for “inside sales” reps. Here’s what I found for desired experience:

The height of the curve reflects the proportion of job postings requiring that level of sales experience. You can see that: