Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

Working your territory better: Are you reading your trade mags?

  

  

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One of the complaints I most often hear from inside sales reps that take my telesales courses is that they don't get enough leads. Whether you get your leads from lists, whitepaper downloads, your own lead qualification reps, or any other source, you're probably missing a significant amount of business in your territory if you're not subscribing (and reading!) at least one trade publication that addresses experts in your solution area. This is really an old-fashioned idea, and one that still works. Best of all, I'll bet your competitors aren't doing it. So today's post is about beating your competition. And I'll give you a real-world example of what I'm talking about, because it worked for me, and the publication still exists. If you sell into the market I sold into, you can use it too. And if you don't, you can take my story and plug it into your solution set and prospect base, too, and go out and subscribe to a magazine that fits your needs similarly.

Back when I was an inside rep, I sold software and application development tools like debuggers, in-circuit emulators, and regression testers. Our standard trade publications were the EE Times, Dr. Dobb's Journal, and a few others. But the one I loved was Crosstalk, the Journal of Defense Engineering. That publication, published at Hill Air Force Base, addressed issues and situations involving how the Department of Defense built and maintained software (still does). Every issue was packed with information on who was building what. I subscribed free (you still can), and every month I'd take a couple of hours out of my Saturday, skim it (still do, I'm hooked), and highlight names and projects. Monday I'd call those highlighted folks and made sure they knew about my solutions and what we did. And man, did I sell a lot of stuff to the DoD. Most of those folks were experts, and rarely showed up on lists. The only way I could find them was by reading about them. And they always enjoyed talking to me because I'd read about them.

So here's where I'm going with this. Whatever you sell, there are trade publications where experts in your industry talk about solutions. I want you to subscribe to a paper copy, so you can get away from your computer on the weekend, sit in an easy chair with a highlighter, and skim material that will be important to you. Seriously carve out a couple of weekend hours to do it. I don't recommend doing this online, because everything else in the world gets in the way, email, YouTube, and random thoughts turned to web searches. And when you do allocate time to digest the material, what will happen is this: you'll get names of high level people, and you'll finding out what's bugging them that your solution can help fix. Unbelievably, your voicemails will get returned, admins will put you through, and you'll have real productive conversations because you'll know an awful lot about the business your prospects are in, from the inside out. I train and coach hundreds of telesales reps each year, and I know most of them aren't doing this (they should be, after my classes, though). So if you're having a slow time getting to prospects in these tough economic times, ensure that you're reading and working those trade mags. As Gomez Addams used to say, "Ahh, the old ways are best." So add mining those trade publications to your Best Practices Playbook to find those important and lucrative prospects you'd otherwise never find.