This week I had the pleasure of attending the AA-ISP Leadership Summit. Roughly 400 inside sales execs from a diverse group of industries were in attendance.

I'm very excited to announce the launch of our 2012 Inside Sales Metrics Research. This will be our third research project in the metrics & compensation series - where we collect, analyze & share the numbers that drive B2B Inside Sales for tech companies. 

A few weeks back, I came across this scenario on LinkedIn (slightly anonymized to protect identities).

Early in my B2B software sales career, I ran into a competitive situation that turned out to be a major learning experience. If you’re a Sales Leader at a company that sells B2B software, you’ll enjoy this.

The situation

I worked for SoftPoint Data Systems, selling software that helped pharmacists improve the prescription fulfillment process. Everywhere I turned, prospects would tell me, “No thanks, I bought a system from Thom Finn.” (Name changed to protect the innocent.) Thom worked at Script Systems, a primary competitor.

I always found it interesting that pharmacists would say
they bought from Thom Finn; not Script Systems.

I later learned it was because Thom showed the pharmacists how to solve their business challenges. As such, they felt they were buying from Thom, a trusted advisor, not Script Systems, an anonymous company. Realizing I couldn’t beat them, I persuaded SoftPoint’s CEO to hire Thom. (Hey, got any better ideas?)