The Angry Birds phenomenon continues to grow. Not content with being the most downloaded app in 2011, the game is headed to Facebook. For those of you unfamiliar, here's the game's trailer. (In short, Angry Birdsplayers control a flock of birds attempting to rescue eggs that have been stolen by a group of evil pigs.)

Sounds crazy, but I can tell you that - it is addicting! So, how does this relate to Sales?

1. Be prepared – focus on your target

2. Launching - hire the right people for the job

Last month, I had the pleasure of attending the AA-ISP Senior Exec Retreat and spending time with 50+ Execs, VPs and Directors sharing & discussing issues relevant to inside sales.

One of the workshops focused on Employee Lifecycle. Well, let me tell you that I learned a ton from the other attendees – Inside Sales leaders from companies like IBM, Mentor Graphics, Staples, & Henkle to name a few.

I thought I’d share a few takeaways from that session – specifically focused on the front end of the employee lifecycle: Sourcing.

For the better part of the last 15 years we’ve all used a combination of the following to source candidates:

• Internal and external referrals
• External or in-house recruiters
• Online postings: corporate sites, Monster, LinkedIn, etc.

But we know that finding top talent is tougher than ever before. Our hiring infographic notes that:

• The demand for inside sales talent increased 124% from 2009 to 2011
• The demand for lead generation talent increased 59% in the same time period
• 59% of all reqs are filled in under 45 days

Yikes… Since filling open reqs dramatically impact our ability to achieve revenue goals, what can we do about it?

I wanted to call out 2 examples of companies that are using creative methods to recruit top talent.

To those that know me well, I’m not making news when I confess my love for Salesforce.com. Add in metrics, reports and dashboards and we have a perfect weekday afternoon.

That being shared, I recently stumbled upon a recorded Dreamforce session on "Sales Prospecting Secrets: How Salesforce.com Fills the Funnel with Hot Leads." Needless to say, that’s right up my alley.

Since the full session clocks in at 52 minutes, I thought I'd share some of the highlights here. The first part of the talk is given by Erik Nierenberg,VP of Sales Business Development, and covers his outbound-focused team.

Point 1: Build Career Path into your Sales Roles

Judging by the constant stream of job postings in the Inside Sales Experts LinkedIn group, the market for Inside Sales talent in Europe is hot.

Recruiting a German-Speaking Inside Sales Specialist in (Reading, UK)
Looking for Dutch-Speaking Business Development Agents for an IT Co. (Barcelona, Spain)
Hiring Multilingual Inside Sales Reps Based in Dublin (Ireland)

Through numerous conversations with clients, we've been hearing anecdotal feedback about the challenges US & Canadian companies are facing when building inside teams targeting the European market: the more active role of resellers, hiring for sales/language skills, list & data sources, acceptance of phone & web selling, etc.