18 short months ago I was presenting to a room full of 200 or so Inside Sales Executives at the AA-ISP Leadership Summit.  I asked them the following:

The more I thought about it, the more unfair my final question seemed to me.

Your Reps are spending significant time, effort & energy trying to speak with prospects live.

When the great miracle happens and a prospect tries to call your Sales Line, are you making it easy for them? Are you sure?

Many companies have a department they’re not even aware of – Sales Prevention. It’s comprised of delightfully polite, yet ultimately rage-inducing auto attendant that prevent Prospects from reaching your Sales Reps.

The good news is that there’s a way to downsize the Sales Prevention Department. Here’s how:

• Dial the phone numbers listed on your website, booth, cut sheets, etc.
  Make sure you call the main line and the sales line (if they’re separate). This will help you understand the prospect’s experience.
  How quickly is the phone answered, if at all? If you have an auto attendant, is the Sales option 1^st, 2^nd,  6^th? Is the prospect forced to listen to a commercial before you provide them with routing options? 

Welcome to our 3 Links Not To Miss “will/they won’t they - NBA season” edition. This is going to be a semi-regular feature on the blog where we’ll be sharing 3 recent links we found particularly interesting.
----- 

Conversational: Sales as a Noble Profession

Trish & I were fortunate to sit down with Don Perkins and chat about trends in sales & marketing. In this segment, we spoke about the selling profession and how Reps can become better sellers.

Actionable: Are your Sales Reps Invisible?

Paul Castain argues Reps need to understand that buyers aren’t shy about searching for them online. Like Jill Konrath says, buyers are crazy busy. And what they find (or don’t find) on Google, LinkedIn, etc. might go far in answering “Is taking a meeting with this person worth my time?”

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?