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Editor's Note: This post was written by Chris Salisbury of the ConnectLeader sales team. Chris was formerly with Dyn, the Manchester, NH DNS Provider.
When I started out at Dyn, I was the single sales rep among a team of engineers. It didn't take much time before they wanted to kick me out of the office because I was being "loud" and talking on the phone all day. It seemed my colleagues preferred a more "Zen-like" environment.
Read top advice for new sales reps. Read this blog.
The early days, the b2b sales process was pretty chaotic as we struggled without the proper sales and marketing tools. Everything started to improve when our company adopted Salesforce as our CRM platform. In those days, we made lots of cold calls and followed up with emails. We learned that engineers liked to hide behind email and once they were comfortable, they would accept a phone call.
Managing the Growth of a B2B Sales Team
As the company grew, my team expanded to 8 to 12 sales reps. and at the height of our growth managed 450+ accounts and a full book of business. What really pushed the team over the top was when I started assigning my book of business to my sales team. I would assign the accounts based upon the traits and personalities of each individual sales rep. This strategy really worked well and we quickly became the fastest growing team in the company.
Finding Reps with that "Sales Mojo"
The traits I looked for in new sales reps was an individual who was hungry for success, driven, passionate and have lots of energy. Some folks call this "Sales Mojo". Most importantly, I looked for focus. During the interview process, I would ask "if I handed you the world as your sales territory, how would you start?" While there were always lots of variations on the answer, I was looking for focus and direction. Do they have a definitive plan. Some of my most successful reps had direction, planning, and focus down to a science. If they started going off course, they would review their plan and simply re-adjust or pivot. Of course, sometimes being focused and persistent can have a downside. I spent nearly three years chasing one account, even sending a piece of granite to Europe (New Hampshire is known as the "Granite State"). Unfortunately, they never became a customer. I still wish I could get that one back.
My only regret from my experience at Dyn was that I didn't have a dialing productivity tool like Personal Dialer from ConnectLeader. I used to make 50 to 60 manual dials as part of my daily prospecting regimen. It would take me all day and it was a real pain. Now I'm making an average of 150 dials a day. But thanks to ConnectLeader's technology, it takes me about 1 1/2 hours to make those dials. Now I actually have some extra time time to write a blog post or two.
Reach out to us here at ConnectLeader today to learn more about our entire suite of sales engagement software, including Team Dialer, our human agent-assisted dialer. Simply click here or give us a call at 800-955-5040.
