Forget telephone screening interviews when hiring inside sales reps. Instead, give them a writing assignment. In today’s social landscape, good writing has become an essential skill — as confirmed in my 2011 Trend Report. It’s a known fact that keyboards are clicking more than the phone is buzzing. And that’s okay!
Make sure reps pump up their writing skills, especially in these important areas:
Blog Comments: With the millions of blogs being created every second, chances are your prospect has one. Reading and commenting on their blogs provides you with lots of exposure, and it’s the best way to build long-term relationships. But don’t just start typing! Your comments must be interesting. Here are Mike Volpe‘s suggestions and tips for leaving interesting blog comments:
Start with positive feedback about their blog post and follow-up with a more in-depth explanation or disagreement on one specific part of the blog. Make sure it’s not too long but demonstrates you thought about it and made an important point about it.
A few years ago, I landed a $20K opportunity because I took the time to comment on a CEO’s blog. His blog post was about their earning and their projected growth for his organization. He wrote about the need the hire and expand his workforce in terms of salespeople, support, technical product managers. Here’s what I wrote:
“Congrats on your new earnings announcement and the impressive growth your company has undergone in the last few years. Hiring headcount isn’t always the answer but efficiently developing their talent is more important. As you position yourself for a lean and mean year, you might want to consider increased efficiencies and productivity with the talent you have in place.”
That Sunday, I received an email from him asking for a meeting the following week to discuss our services.
LinkedIn Discussions: Another perfect way to get visibility and exposure. First, sign up for key groups. Second, monitor the discussions. Third, answer some discussion questions (remember to be generous with your info, don’t write too much and stop any self-promotion). Now, this is hard when a question is asked about your area of expertise. This happened to me recently when someone asked the following question in the very popular Inside Sales Experts group (which has over 6,800 members thanks to Trish Bertuzzi and her team): “Can anyone recommend a good inside sales training vendor for our lead development team?”
I sat back and watched the recommendations coming through, and was happy to see several mentions of my company. I felt compelled and inspired to respond, immediately drafted a “Selecting an Inside Sales Vendor” white paper, and responded with the following:
Great question! Selecting a vendor for your complex and very unique inside sales team is a daunting task. Lots to think about, my white paper can help.
Thanks to that post I received a response and a LinkedIn invite, and scheduled an appointment to discuss our offerings.
Tweets: Welcome to the world of 160 characters. You’ll soon find that there are so many words you just don’t need anymore. Twitter forces you to be as concise as possible. First, learn some basic Twitter etiquette. Second, train yourself by reading tweet streams and Yahoo headlines. Third, include a link to something interesting when you tweet. Now watch the tweets happen.
A good exercise when hiring an inside salesperson is to ask them to take one of your products and draft up the following:
- Introductory email with good subject line
- Blog comments on industry related blogs
- LinkedIn questions or answers in related groups
- Tweets on the product line
Oh, and ask if they work weekends — especially Sunday, because that’s when lot’s of the social action happens.
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