Barbara Giamanco

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Demystifying Executive Presence for Women in Sales w/Julie Hansen, Performance Sales & Training

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Julie Hansen was my guest in this interview. She is a sales presentation expert and the founder of Performance Sales and Training, helping sales professionals communicate with greater confidence, clarity, and influence.

I’ve done a women’s program at a number of corporations called The 5 Behaviors of Sales Sabotage and What You Can Do About It. Women, more than they may realize, often sabotage their own efforts with unconscious behaviors that hurt them more than help them.

Executive presence is a key requirement for success inside and outside your company, and if you are in a sales role, presence and the ability to “influence” conversations has never been more critical to achieving revenue goals.

In talking with Julie, we covered the following topics:

How Julie defines executive presence.

Why women in sales must invest the time to develop their executive presence.

Whether or not, executive presence is assumed to be a natural strength in men versus women.

How women can maintain their own style and personality but also be savvy to times when adapting leads to greater success.

The things that can undermine credibility for women in the workplace.

Strategies to consider when speaking up in meetings matters or when women feel they are not being heard.

Finally, we talked a few specific things that women can do – besides investing in one of Julie’s Programs – to improve their presence now.

Listen and enjoy the interview!

Subscribe on iTunes and never miss a podcast episode! If you are enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review and a 5-star rating. Also listen on Spotify, Stitcher

Or listen to the interview on the podcast page.

About Julie – Connect with her on LinkedIn, Twitter

Julie Hansen is a sales presentation expert and the founder of Performance Sales and Training, helping sales professionals communicate with greater confidence, clarity, and influence.

Julie is also the author of two books on sales:  Sales Presentations for Dummies and ACT Like a Sales Pro!  and she was recognized as one of the “35 Most Influential Women in Sales” by SalesHacker.

Julie spent 20 years as a sales contributor and leader. She also worked as a professional actor, performing in over 75 plays, commercials and television shows including HBO’s “Sex and the City.” 

Feature header blog post photo Photo by Christina @ wocintechchat.com on Unsplash

Leveraging Behavioral Intelligence to Grow Revenue with Mary Grothe, Sales BQ

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I talked with Mary Grothe, Sales BQ CEO & Founder to better understand how behavioral intelligence plays into the success of salespeople and the sales managers leading their teams. As a top performing individual sales contributor herself before starting her own business, Mary knows a thing or two about over achieving sales quota.

We start by talking about what BQ – Behavioral Intelligence is and how a keen understanding of BQ impacts sales success.

As beneficial as understanding BQ can be, there are circumstances where BQ has a negative effect on sellers. Learn what those things are when you listen to the interview.

Mary talks us through how to identify and remove barriers that lower a sales team’s BQ overall.

Next, we tackled the topic of motivation. Lots of opinions about what that means and whether or not sales leaders can motivate their team members. Mary shares her thoughts on how to motivate a sales team to perform at higher level.

Finally, we closed by talking about how once a once a culture of high BQ is created, the ways in which you maintain it.

Listen and enjoy the interview!

Subscribe on iTunes and never miss a podcast episode! If you are enjoying the podcast, please leave us a review and a 5-star rating. Also listen on Spotify, Stitcher

Or listen to the interview on the podcast page.

About Mary – Connect on LinkedIn, Twitter
Sales BQ Website

Mary Grothe, CEO and Founder of Sales BQ. She is a former #1 rep in the MidMarket B2B SaaS Payroll / HR industry. After 8 years and millions in revenue sold, she founded Sales BQ, and leads a team of fractional VPs of Sales across the country as they rebuild their clients’ sales departments, all while focusing on the behavioral quotient.

Feature header blog post photo by Amy Hirschi on Unsplash

Setting Intentions for 2020

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I’m bucking the annual tradition of pitching predictions about what is or is not going to happen in sales, marketing and business in 2020 or the decade ahead.

It seems pointless.

Predictions aside, for the past decade buyers have clearly communicated their displeasure with traditional, outdated selling approaches; yet, old behaviors rage on.

It seems pointless to predict what could happen when what has happened isn’t even being addressed.

It’s a New Year and things are bound to be different, right?

I’d like to think so. Could 2020 be that year?

If you follow numerology at all, you know that 2020 represents a year of insight, perfect vision and accomplishment. It is the number for “work” and about getting things done. The right things.

I wonder what would happen if more companies challenged themselves to set the intention to THINK different, SELL different and BE different leveraging 20/20 vision and insight to make that happen.

Intentions versus goals. Is it one or the other or both?

Goals are meant to help us reach an objective within a finite period. Basically, it is about establishing clear tactics and setting deadlines to get what we want.

With intentions, we have a plan we intend to carry out, but those intentions may or may not be linked to a specific deadline. I view intentions as being a bigger vision of something we want but setting arbitrary deadlines may not make sense. At least not at first.

Setting goals sounds like the smarter way to go.

We’ve been trained to believe that the only way to reach our goals is to set deadlines. SMART goals. Specific, measurable, actionable, realistic and time stamped goals. Goal achievement experts proclaim that without setting actionable goals you don’t fulfill your true potential, which to me, is a lie we should not believe.

More will be revealed, and timing is everything.

The difficulty I’ve always had with traditional approaches to goal setting is that I don’t know what I don’t know.

In sales, goal setting is easier in the sense that you are assigned a quota for the month, quarter and year. That’s your goal. Following a consistent sales process backed up with the right activities, you can work backwards to lay out the steps needed to achieve your objective. You don’t have to guess at the right activities, there is enough research and proof to know what they are.

On the other hand, you may have a goal to become a sales manager. You could set your achievement deadline to be December 31, 2020. But I would argue that there are many factors that will impact your ability to achieve that goal or not. You could lay out all the steps, execute them well, and still not achieve the goal by the deadline you set.

That’s the big problem I have with traditional goal setting. It feels like a forced process, as if we can control circumstances often far beyond our control.

There is nothing wrong with thinking big, striving for the best version of ourselves or dreaming of big rewards to keep us motivated.

When I think about intentions and whether or not I should focus my energies on this or that, I have to know in my heart that it feels right, and I want it. I may have no idea how it will all come together but I have faith that more will be revealed. That the people and the resources I need to make my intentions come alive will show up at the right time.

A personal example to prove my point.

In 2009, I created a list of publications who I wanted to publish an article of mine. I had no idea if this intention would come to pass. At the time I was a less confident writer even after being signed to have my book published the following year!

Anyway, one of those publications was the Harvard Business Review. I could have taken my list and created “goals” to make my desire a reality. My book on Social Selling was published in 2010, so logically, that might have been the year to push to get at least one of those publications to publish me. But what if the timing was all wrong, or I didn’t have the skills required just yet? And, if I didn’t achieve my objective in the time frame I’d committed too, would that motivate me to adjust and carry on or simply cause me to give up? Hard to say.

What did happen is that in February 2012, one of the editors at the Harvard Business Review contacted me (email and Twitter!) to ask me to write an article about Social Selling for their July 2012 magazine. They had decided to devote an entire issue to the topic of sales evolution. As a result of them following me on social media and hearing me on webinars, they had decided to invite me to write for them. They felt I had a unique perspective to add to their magazine focus. No PR agent created that opportunity for me. Had I set the goal to make this happen in 2010, it probably wouldn’t have. It was clear that buyer behavior was changing and that social was impacting selling but it took another two years before these new ideas began gaining traction.

I set the intention. It had no deadline. I certainly took action to walk my talk and demonstrate how I used social in my own business and taught clients to do the same. The visibility I created for myself ultimately paid off but I didn’t try to force the achievement of a goal.

To some of you reading this post, you’ll be thinking – that’s airy fairy, new age nonsense. For me, it works. It feels more authentic, and I have accomplished quite a lot in my lifetime approaching things this way. I simply don’t try to force things into existence merely to prove I can set goals and achieve them.

I take a combination approach and set goals and intentions.

For example, my #1 intention is to change the prevailing sales mindset about a salesperson’s role in the buying process. We are (or should be) problem solvers and value creators. Not product pitching demo dollies.

To turn that intention into a goal, how would I measure the real impact of my work and message? It doesn’t make sense to me to say I will make this happen by July 2021. How would I know? What would be the measure I would use to judge my success? Is it the number of people I coach who shift their approach and book more meetings? Could be. But what about the people who may hear my rantings for another 2-years before they decide to change? Does that mean I failed if it happened after my self imposed deadline?

My second major intention is to impact and increase the percentage of women who assume sales management and leadership roles in their companies. How do I put a number to that? Is there really an end date I could use to say that I made it? Perhaps the goal is to choose 1-2 key projects that I feel might move the needle in terms of awareness and change. But what activity is the right activity? Is it the number of blog posts I write, number of times I’m interviewed about the topic, is it the number of people who listen to my Conversations with Women in Sales podcast, or the number of consulting gigs I’m hired to do that confirm I’ve successfully achieved my goal?

You get the point.

Here in the United States, we’ve been conditioned to believe that we cannot get anywhere in life unless we set goals, as if we could have insight into all the steps it will take to reach them or the obstacles that might derail us.

I’m not saying don’t plan for your success. What I am saying is consider how to identify an approach that works best for you to live your best, most fulfilling life year to year. The approach is not going to be the same for everyone. If you don’t have specific goals figured out yet, you aren’t doomed to fail. It means you are human.

If, like me, you find the traditional approach to goal setting a challenge, ease up on yourself and try setting 3-5 specific intentions instead. Then give yourself permission to let more be revealed about when/how you can make your intentions more concrete in the 30-days after you set them. I’ve found that the answers I need start to show up pretty quickly once I set my intentions and read them aloud every night before bed and each morning as I kick off my day.

We enter a New Year in less than 15 hours. In whatever way you decide to approach the New Year and the new decade, my intention for you is that you love and live your life to the fullest!

Cheers to the journey!

Step Away from the Keyboard

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What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas is a popular phrase adapted from Las Vegas’ tourism slogan meant to mean that no matter what you said or did in Las Vegas, your unbridled freedom of expression wouldn’t come back to haunt you.

Ah, if only that were true on the internet, in social networks, online communities and public forums. One would think examples of epic lapses in judgment made by individuals – think Roseanne Barr, or companies – SnapChat’s completely inappropriate “would you rather” ad about Rihanna – would serve as strong reminders that what you say online can burn your reputation so fast you might not know what hit you.

Sometimes it is better to back away from the keyboard.

I’ve seen nasty, snarky comments and arguments taking place on LinkedIn, which for the unenlightened is supposed to be a business network of professionals who are there for the purpose of doing business. I can’t figure out if the people who do this sort of thing are simply ignorant to the perception this creates about their character or if they’ve deluded themselves thinking that any publicity is good publicity.

Actions have consequences.

When we feel under attack or judged unfairly it can be easy to react without thinking through the consequences of what we are doing. That monkey mind reaction may intensify if someone has bashed you or your company online. The justification to defend becomes strong. This is exactly when you should take a breath and back away from the keyboard. A mindless response to justify your position or to prove you are right can easily backfire on a much larger scale when it is done online.

Reputation matters.

Before the rise of the internet, if you found out that misinformation about you or your company was making the rounds in business circles, you’d go to the source to work it out. Advice worth considering as your first option today.

If you choose to get in a pissing contest with someone online, you’d do well to consider the risks, especially if you are in a sales role.

  • If you think how you conduct yourself in online conversations won’t factor into a decision to buy your product or not, think again. What you share, say and do matters. Buyers do check us out.
  • Don’t assume that because an online community is small that your behavior won’t be noticed. People are watching.
  • Even if you are in the right, going overboard to prove your point makes you look like a jerk who can’t keep their ego in check.

I saw a public example of how these 3 points played out between two rival software companies earlier this year.

It started with a sales manager at one company sharing a meme they’d created to poke “fun” at their competitor. It did not go well for good reason. Reps following in the footsteps of their leader started sharing the offending post with their social connections and followers. As tends to happen in social networks, a smack down began with people showing up to chastise the company and the sales reps for what they were doing. The sales leader apologized.

That should have been the end of it, but it wasn’t.

It didn’t take long for the situation to escalate when an offended manager at the rival company decided to air his grievance about the competitor’s joke. Aside from the fact that the better decision was to say nothing at all, the sales reps who work for this same company were guilty of talking smack about the very competitor being complained about. People didn’t hesitate to call out their hypocrisy publicly.

Think first. Your brand will thank you!

Whether it is bashing a competitor or feeling justified in defending yourself when you feel wronged, everything you say and do remains attached to your digital footprint. Deleted tweets and social posts almost never disappear. You’d do well to remember that what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, EXCEPT when it is on the internet.

Your Sales Kick-Off Meetings Are a Waste of Time!

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As sales teams mount their final push to finish 2019 strong, someone in a sales enablement, marketing or sales support role is planning what has become status quo in sales. The annual sales kick off (SKO) meeting.

As the term implies, a sales kick-off meeting is meant to be a sales reset. An opportunity to review what worked and what didn’t in the prior year while also creating the positive momentum needed to achieve sales goals for the year ahead.

But let’s get real. Most SKO’s are a complete waste of time and money.

Throughout my sales career, I’ve attended plenty of these meetings and usually left them feeling ticked off that 3-5 days of my selling time was wasted, and I was away from my family to boot.

Though the “goal” is to set the stage for sales success, SKO agendas are dominated with things that do not help salespeople be better at the craft of selling. That includes new product announcements, product feature training, product demos, reviews of marketing materials, or execs who feel their title justifies air time with the sales force when it doesn’t.

Use your SKO time to train your sellers how to be better at selling; otherwise scrap the meeting.

SKO’s are expensive! Studies suggest that the average per head cost is between $1,500-$3,000. Conservatively, it can cost $75,000+ for a 50-person sales team to attend your SKO plus the cost of other people in your company who attend too. That doesn’t even account for event planning costs, or the lost opportunity cost due to non-selling time while salespeople attend the event.

Companies are literally burning cash on SKO activities that do not advance sales performance.

Given the expense of these meetings, it is a huge miss to waste time on anything that does not directly impact a salesperson’s ability to sell more effectively to today’s modern buyer. As Salesforce reported in the 3rd annual State of Sales research, “winning deals still requires human to human interaction.”

And, it isn’t just any human interaction that will get the job done. It must be the right interaction that happens at the right time and in the right way.

Buyer expectations keep rising. How does your SKO prepare salespeople for this ongoing reality?

The surprising thing is that this is NOT a new revelation. What is surprising is how many companies remain mired in their own status quo, and as a result, they fail to adapt and act on what B2B buyers keep making clear. The salespeople they will give their time and attention to are the rare ones who demonstrate that they operate differently from other salespeople.

Nowhere on this list does it say that buyers want sellers coming at them with generic, product feature driven sales pitches. They certainly don’t care if you redesigned your marketing materials.

Buyers do say they have higher standards for salespeople, can take their business anywhere, expect vendors to personalize their approach, and that they will work with sellers who act as trusted advisors.

Use your SKO as an opportunity to train salespeople to be what buyers want them to be!

If buyers want to work with salespeople who are trusted advisors, what does that mean?

Trusted advisor defines the salesperson who has exceptional, targeted knowledge about specific business problems that decision makers in certain roles and industries face. These salespeople solve problems and put the needs of the buyer FIRST. Sales reps don’t become trusted advisors without help and that means training.

With that in mind, how is your SKO agenda training your salespeople to:

  • Engage rather than repel buyer interest with sales messaging and approach?
  • Conduct sales meetings using business acumen & insight vs. feature dumps & demos?
  • Manage multiple relationships with “buying teams”?
  • Compete with buyer status quo?
  • Reduce the sales cycle length and close deals more often?

A better playbook for designing that sales kick-off meeting.

  1. Planning beyond the event. Your plan must include what happens prior to the SKO, during the event, and how the training you deliver will be adopted and acted upon after the event.
  2. Clearly define the behavior you want to change. Be specific. After the SKO we want our sales reps to demonstrate competency in the 3 key traits of a trusted advisor. Then go deeper. What specifically does or will hinder our ability to evolve our salespeople into trusted advisors? Lack of training? The activity KPI’s we set today, which incent the wrong behavior? Are there internal systems, processes or even management biases getting in the way of the objective too?
  3. Plan pre-work prior to your kick-off event. Brainshark’s research found that “more than six out of 10 organizations (62%) don’t deliver pre-work to sales representatives in advance of their SKO, and 84% don’t conduct training in advance – neglecting to provide a foundation on the skills and topics that will be covered.”
  4. Create and block plenty of time for role plays at the event. Sports teams don’t show up on the field once a week expecting to win the game. They run plays and practice possible game day scenarios every day. Sales teams should operate the same way. Practice improves skills, turns them into ingrained habits and builds confidence.
  5. Reinforce. Your SKO sales training establishes the foundation for better sales results, and behavior will not change after one training. For salespeople to embrace and act-on the new skills they’ve just learned, coaching and management reinforcement must happen consistently after the event concludes.

Conduct your SKO with the right “end in mind” or don’t bother to do it all.

A sales kick-off meeting has huge potential if done in the right way.

The end goal should be that salespeople leave the event having improved their selling skills. The skills that decision makers expect of them. The skills that position your sellers to achieve their quota and deal profitability objectives in year ahead.

Everything else is a waste of money and time that can be better spent elsewhere!

Dig That Well Before You’re Thirsty

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By now, if you’ve read some of my work, listened to any of my interviews, you know that I believe that learners are earners. People often tell me that they have a desire to keep on top of their own learning but then complain that they just do not have the time.

We all have the same 24-hours in a day.

That is not meant to be flippant or sound like I lack empathy for others who may have more and different obligations than I do. I simply believe that when any of us choose to focus on what we believe to be important; we will make time for it.

Why make learning a priority?

As 21st century humans, we live in a world moving at speeds faster than our predecessors could have imagined. The rapid pace of change is dizzying, and all signs indicate that won’t be stopping any time soon.

To remain relevant as people and business professionals, our learning mindset must always be on. Whether it is through reading (I’m a junkie), podcasts, webinars or watching video clips, or any combination that works for you, there are so many ways to learn on the fly that you have no excuse not to.

Even 10-minutes a day learning something new will translate into 3,650 minutes of learning or 60.83333 hours of new learning each year!

You seriously cannot invest 10-minutes a day?

Harvey McKay wrote a book called Dig Your Well Before You’re Thirsty and while many books written about networking have been published since Harvey’s, what I liked about Harvey’s book is that he says DON’T WAIT UNTIL YOU NEED YOUR NETWORK to build it. Many an employee surprised by the news that their job was eliminated have discovered the hard way how painful it is when they don’t have a network to fall back on.

Networking and learning the 21st century way.

Online networking and relationship building using platforms like LinkedIn has never been easier. Yet, even today, I’m surprised at the number of people who barely keep their profile up to date, much less dig that well before they need it.

Aside from the networking and relationship building, LinkedIn has also become quite a learning resource. You can learn from others through their articles and posts or follow hashtags (#) that feature topics of interest most relevant to you.

The point is that you must keep up.

What you know today is important. What you know about what’s coming or could be coming is how you maintain relevance when others are left behind.

I’ll close this post with another book recommendation.

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein.

As David says, “Plenty of experts argue that anyone who wants to develop a skill, play an instrument, or lead their field should start early, focus intensely, and rack up as many hours of deliberate practice as possible. If you dabble or delay, you’ll never catch up to the people who got a head start. But a closer look at research on the world’s top performers, from professional athletes to Nobel laureates, shows that early specialization is the exception, not the rule.”

He makes the strong case that range of knowledge and skill is of high value. Being educated in many different areas I have found to be of great importance as a sales professional. The more diverse our education and skills, the easier it is to connect with people on so many different and diverse levels.

I’ll continue to promote my belief that learners are earners. A few times each month, watch for posts that promote books, podcasts, articles or videos I recommend.

AND… please share YOUR favorites with me and my readers in the blog comments.

The Sales Leader's Role in Complex Selling with Alice Heiman, Alice Heiman, LLC

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In this episode (#35), we talk about The Sales Leader’s Role in the Complex Sale. I think this is an important conversation because it seems to me that you want a balance. Reps have a job to do, which includes closing the business, and at certain points in big deals they may need to bring in bigger guns to help move the opportunity along.
My guest today is Alice Heiman CEO and Founder of Alice Heiman, LLC. Alice and her team helps SMB companies drive sales growth by incorporating the newest research and the best practices to enable CEOs, business owners and sales leaders to bring about sustainable change that leads to growth.
As with so many of my guests, I asked Alice what led her to pursue a career in sales?
Then we discussed the following questions:

  1. Alice you have a different role in the sales world than most of the people we talk to. Alice told me more about what she does.
  2. What are the struggles that company leaders are having with sales?
  3. What is the role of a company leader in sales?
  4. How can a company leader determine if they have a sales culture that will produce the result they need?
  5. How can a company leader build a great sales culture?
  6. What’s the number one thing that a company leader can do to ensure their company gets the sales growth they need?

Another insight packed interview, which I encourage you to listen to and enjoy!
Apple Podcasts  – Please subscribe so that you never miss an episode! Write a review for the podcast if you like the interviews.
Spotify  Stitcher  Google Play   Don’t use any of these platforms to listen? Listen HERE
About Alice:
Alice demonstrates how sales performance is directly related to a leader’s mindset. When sales leaders change the way they work with sales teams, results are immediate and dramatic.
The Alice Heiman, LLC team helps small and midsize companies drive sales growth by incorporating the newest research and best practices to enable CEOs, business owners and sales leaders to bring about sustainable change that leads to growth.
Thanks to our Sponsors!
This podcast is presented by our Elite Sponsor, Microsoft. Corporate Vice President and Channel Chief Gavriella Schuster, along with other female leaders in the company, are driving for change, trying to bring more women into the technology industry. Gavriella and Microsoft are committed to giving “young women better role models and a stronger voice to all women.” You can hear more from Gavriella and other Microsoft leaders, on the Microsoft Partner Network podcast. Or visit partner.microsoft.com 
Thanks to our Media Sponsor. Women Sales Pros has a vision for more women in B2B sales and sales leadership roles where there are currently male-majority sales teams. We help educate companies on how to do this, and we champion women on what a professional sales career can be. We also showcase the very top women sales experts who are speakers, authors, consultants, trainers and coaches. People can sign up to get updates HERE and follow us on Twitter and Instagram at @WomenSalesPros

B2B Sales Success with Ken Lundin

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In this episode, I talked with Ken Lundin. Ken is hosting the B2B Sales Summit, which we discussed in the interview. He was gracious enough to collect 28 of the top speakers to supercharge your sales activities by bringing you the whole experience free of charge. No pitches just pure content – it’s an irresistible opportunity. Remember, learners are earners so take advantage of this incredible chance to jumpstart your B2B Sales Success. REGISTER NOW.

Here is what you will learn about in my interview with Ken.

For most listeners, their sales year has just kicked off, and for those listeners who are half-way through their sales year, Ken’s nuggets of advice apply to you too.

Ken started off by sharing his actionable advice about the steps that salespeople both individual contributors and their managers do to set themselves up for success.

For anyone looking to fill their pipeline with more qualified sales opportunities, Ken shares his thoughts on the top priorities to focus on to get you there.

The sales cycle is often misunderstood, and Ken and I talked about the most misunderstood aspect of the selling process.

Learn what a salesperson or their sales manager do today to improve their sales in the coming year.

Hear from Ken about why he decided to create The B2B Sales Summit kicking off on February 6, 2018.

Ken told me what surprised him most when interviewing some of the top sales influencers around the world.

Enjoy the interview AND REGISTER NOW for the B2B Sales Summit for FREE!!

Event Dates: February 6, 2018, to February 14, 2018

  • There will be 3-4 interviews made available each day.
  • Daily sessions will be live for 24 hours and then the next set of videos will be released.

About Ken Lundin:

Ken made his sales bones by delivering $26,000,000 in contracts in under 9 months and being a part of a management team recognized as 1 of INC 500 Magazine’s fastest growing companies for 3 years in a row driving sales from under #2 million to $77 million in just 4 years.  Today, he is a consultant for Span the Chasm, helping deliver sustainable sales growth for companies under $100 million in revenue and the Host of The B2B Sales Summit.

Does Cold Calling Still Work?

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In this day and age, many unsolicited sales calls go unanswered. Modern sales and marketing professionals are up against savvy buyers who have easy access to detailed product information on the Web and through Social Networks.

Everyone is connected to the latest information. Buyers today are pretty good at blocking your calls and emails, through Caller ID, email spam filters and they can easily send your email to its grave with a simple click on the delete button. But since so many sales people continue to follow this old school approach, it makes me wonder if in their minds they are saying to themselves…”I just know that I can get through all these defense mechanisms and land that one magical deal.”

Can they? Based on what clients are telling me, I believe the answer is no.

This question was the subject of online consultancy Software Advice’s latest Google+ Debate, “Does Cold Calling Still Work?” The panel, moderated by Derek Singleton, brought together inbound marketing and inside sales experts to debate three questions:

  • Given how the Web has empowered B2B buyers, is cold calling still relevant in the Internet Age — and are companies still generating a return on investment (ROI) on it?
  • With other lead generation activities on the rise, like paid search and content marketing, can cold calling help marketers stand out from the noise?
  • Can inbound marketing and analytics help us better decide who to cold call and when?

Here are the takeaways from the discussion, and I’m pleased to say that they jive with what I have been evangelizing for several years now.

Cold Calling is Shifting to Warm Calling

Understandably, every panelist agreed that cold calling (in its original form) is decreasing significantly in effectiveness. Furthermore, there is no excuse for business calls to be random and unsolicited anymore. In the words of Anneke Seley, Founder and CEO of Reality Works Group, “in this day and age, there’s no excuse for a call to be cold anymore.” Anneke – you are right on!

I recently read a Selling Power poll in which 47.76% of sales reps said that they were never prepared for the initial conversation with a prospect and 2.81% said that they were rarely well prepared. That, my friends means that 50% of the sales reps out there either can’t or won’t take the time to do a little homework before engaging with their prospect. And that should be enough motivation for companies to expect their salespeople to approach prospects differently. When you can turn to LinkedIn, Twitter, Google+ and Facebook, and it is SO very easy to find out information about your prospect before you pick up a phone, why aren’t more sales reps doing it? Your prospects, by the way, are using similar channels to learn about you before committing to a call.

The group described the process of doing your homework in advance of calling prospects “warm calling.”

Only Call the People that Come to You

But Mike Volpe, CMO of HubSpot, thinks that marketers can take it one step further and not even waste time reaching out in this manner. Volpe believes that the world is shifting away from any type of outbound marketing – I respectfully disagree Mike – and that your inside sales team should only reply to inbound inquiries because you already know that they have an interest in your product or service.

Meanwhile, Volpe explains that inbound marketing tactics like SEO and PPC that are significantly cheaper than doing things like employing a great sales rep to make outbound calls. And he says it’s also a much less invasive approach to contacting buyers.

Sounds good but are all inbound inquiries created equal? I’m probably not the only one who likes to benefit from all the free informational content out there. I may have downloaded a white paper on your website, which many marketers would term an “inquiry” but that does not mean that I’m a qualified buyer. In defense of Hubspot, they are pretty savvy in terms of knowing when salespeople should engage with someone who proactively entered their world, but I would say that a lot of companies still are not at Hubspot’s level of sophistication.

Find a Happy Medium by Employing Both Tactics

Of course, there’s usually room for middle ground. And that’s where Ken Krogue, President of InsideSales.com, sided on the debate. According to Krogue, InsideSales.com relies very heavily on inbound marketing tactics but the leads they generate by purely inbound means just aren’t high enough value. So he turns to very targeted outbound calling after warming up contacts. To quote Krogue:

“If we [at InsideSales.com] just rely on the Internet to bring us leads, it’s like a fish sitting in a pond waiting for the river to bring whatever it brings them. What we’ve found is that if you look at a typical bell curve, 70 percent of all the leads that come in are small. For example, we’re moving up to enterprise class companies and we have to forget about the Web bringing us those leads and have to reach out to initialize the conversation (usually through calling), then we move to a Web-based type of nurturing.”

In any Case, Marketing is Becoming Permission-Based

One point each panelist could agree on was that lead generation is shifting toward a permission-based model of marketing. This means marketing will need to evolve into being about showing buyers the value to them in doing business together, and ultimately getting them to come to you. If you aren’t demonstrating your value in a tangible way, then buyers will increasingly overlook your company; ignore your marketing efforts and move onto the competition.

It was a great discussion from thought leaders that I admire and follow. I’m curious. What are your thoughts on the evolution of outbound and inbound selling and marketing? Share your thoughts and comment below.

If you’d like to read the full article, visit the B2B Marketing Mentor

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