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.

It’s 2012 and high time to revisit 9 predictions that Laurie Page and I made early in 2011. I thought it might be interesting to see how well we did.

We’ll be scoring our predictions like a 9-hole round using this point system:

1. No longer will the Inside Sales Rep be a “jack of all trades”. Roles will be clearly defined and measured based on specific desired outcomes.

   Segmentation/specialization is still a hot topic. We are seeing some hesitance on the part of smaller organizations to specialize but, for those that have adopted the strategy, specialization often leads to dramatically increased productivity.
   Score: Birdie

2. Data will become an integral component for predicting the likelihood of Inside Sales success. No longer will companies buy data from one vendor but rather they will create a network of data providers to deliver to them the specific information in their target markets.

   I actually think this problem got worse last year. People will invest in everything but data. If you got something wrong 30% every time you tried it, wouldn’t you look for a better way? Well, at least 30% of your database is bad and your sales and marketing teams have to work with it … not good!
   Score: Snowman

Many thanks to Peter Shankman for inspiring this post (see his Things I’d Like to See Happen in 2012). Here's a list of things I’m wishing 2012 will deliver.

1. May 2012 be the year we embrace social media for sharing - not endless self-promotion. I’m bored with hearing how busy and wonderful we all are. Aren’t we boring ourselves too? We can learn so much more from what didn’t go perfectly and how we adapted, improvised & overcame.
2. May 2012 be the year that Inside Sales Reps embrace the fact that they are “the new black” and show us what they can really do. Dazzle us – you have the skills, the knowledge and the support!!
3. May 2012 be the year of the least amount of public information about any of the Kardashians. (Copied verbatim from Peter’s list – because it’s my wish too.)
4. May 2012 be the year I figure out how to keep my business partner, Laurie Page, off a plane. If I don’t she is going to kill me…I know she is. Goodbye cruel world.
5. May 2012 be the year that Executives realize that to get the most out of your sales team you need to invest in them. That means training, tools, technology … and, oh yeah, you might want to pay attention to them once in awhile. (PS – forecast reviews don’t count. That’s torture – not mentoring.)