On one of our internal chatter groups, a member of The Bridge Group team posed this question:

45 days in, what's everyone seeing that is changing & improving in 2013?

I thought it would be interesting to share the responses from our team members (folks not often featured on this blog). Just a fun and hopefully thought provoking piece.

Note: we broke the responses into two parts, this is the first in the series.
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Voicemails are being… returned!

We all know our buyers receive dozens of sales voicemails on a daily basis. But something old has become new again: buyers returning some of those voicemails.

I’ve noticed that the voicemails that are inspiring action have the following in common: they avoid coming across as ‘white noise,’ they leave out the product puffery, and they are short and to the point. Think: sound bites that inspire.

When building messaging, most Reps will ask themselves, “What’s the big challenge my buyer is facing?” But the best Reps take it one step further. They ask, “Why aren’t they addressing it already? Where/how is their current thinking wrong or off point?”

 
Last week, I joined a dozen or so sellers in a #SalesInsiders chat on “Closing more business by year-end.” I wanted to share some of the great ideas that came out of that conversation.

More business - less discounting

• Upsell the deals you were going to close anyway. If you have a great relationship and you know the deal is going to close, ask if there is any budget they need to spend by year-end. Before you ask, make sure you have a product/solution in mind for them to spend it on.
• Use your Executives to call prospect Execs to get a deeper sense of the deal and what can be done to close it by year-end. That is what your executive management team is there for. They are a resource for you - use them. (h/t to Jonathan London on these)

 
If you’ve read this blog for any period of time, you know my thoughts on Sales Reps using email as the primary vehicle for communicating with buyers.

We just published our 2012 Inside Sales for SaaS Metrics & Compensation Report. Just under 200 technology companies participated and we compiled 26 pages of data, insight & ideas.