Ken Krogue

Notice I did not say 7 Ways to Increase Contact Rates! What is the difference between a Ratio and a Rate? Socrates said “the beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.”

Socrates - The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms

A Rate is contacts divided by time, like contacts per hour, or contacts per day. It results in a metric, or number, like 10 contacts today, or 1.25 contacts per hour.

A Ratio is contacts divided by dial attempts, which results in a percentage. For example, if I make 100 dials and talk to 10 people, I have a 10% contact ratio.

There are three more Ratios that I like a lot. They are the Correct Contact Ratio, the Contacted Ratio, and the Contactable Ratio.

A Correct Contact is the number of correct decision makers divided by time. Technically, a Contact could be anybody you speak to, whether they influence the buying process or not. A Correct Contact is talking to the right person. Why is tracking this important? It pushes your people to make sure they constantly seek the proverbial Decision Maker(s).

A Contacted Ratio is the percentage of leads you have actually contacted divided by the total leads. Why? According to eleven different ResponseAudit research studies we have done with over 10,000 companies, companies only actually contact 27% of their leads. I will show you in this article how to contact 85-92% of your leads, which we were able to do for nearly two straight years, that is a 3.4X increase!

A Contactable Ratio is the percentage of leads you receive with valid contact information (real phone number) divided by the total number of leads. Web leads in particular are notorious for junk contact information. People want the white paper or ebook, but they don’t want people calling them, so they put in bogus information. (Hint, usually only part of it is bogus.)

Bryon Geddes of Dixie State College

My good friend Professor Bryon Geddes from Dixie State College of Utah and Director of Southern Utah Marketing Resources (S.U.M.R) asked me to share ways to increase contact ratios. He is leading an initiative at Dixie that we will be talking about soon.

Here goes:

1. Get direct dial phone numbers: This trick was shown to me by Steve Richard of Vorsight and it is so common sense people miss it. Usually doubles or triples effectiveness. The best lead generation reps know this best practice. Vorsight has lots of amazing ways to do this (Steve, maybe a guest blog article with some ideas here?)
2. Ask for the best time of day: This is also common sense. Put on your web form or other response mechanisms this question, “best time of day to respond?” The individual knows their own schedule better than anyone. When getting stopped by a gatekeeper, ask the same question.
3. Know your best Time of Day to call: This came out in our original study with Dr. James Oldroyd (Inc.com recently mentioned this with a download link) , the contact ratios at 4 to 6pm was 114% higher than right after lunchtime. 8 am was the second best time to make contact. So rearrange your meetings and calling times.
4. Know your best Day of Week to call: Wednesday and Thursday (again from original study) were 49.7% higher contact ratios than Tuesday.


Inc.com - How to Best Harness Inbound Marketing Leads

5. Call back Immediately: This was the biggest finding of all. In a study of over 100,000 datapoints (very statistically significant) Dr. Oldroyd and Dave Elkington found an incredible increase in contact ratios if you call a web lead back in less than 5 minutes. The odds of contacting that lead are 100x higher than even waiting 30 minutes. And the odds of qualifying that lead (setting an appointment to progress in the sales cycles) are 21 times higher. Kristina McElheran of Harvard Business Review (HBR), along with Dr. Oldroyd and Dave Elkington our CEO did a completely updated research study in an article called The Short Life of Online Leads with 10 times the data in March of 2011 that re-validated the original findings. Eleven ResponseAudit studies show the average response time is still just over 49 hours.
6. Call back Persistently: In these same ResponseAudit studies we found that the average sales rep at a company only makes 1.41 calls before giving up. We find that you need to make 8-12 calls if you want to dramatically increase contact ratios. Think about it. The average contact ratio hovers between 10-11% in business-to-business (B2B). How many calls do you need to make to reach someone? 9 to 10.
7. Caller IDs matter: What shows up on your caller ID when you dial a busy decision maker? A blocked number? A Toll Free number? A long distance number? Those are all red flags that say, “I don’t know you.” A local caller ID has been shown to be 17% to 193% more effective in getting people to answer than those other three. We have a product called LocalPresence that has been shown to increase contact rates by 58% as a byproduct of many of its other great benefits.

Ok, I’ll try and address contact rates next. Thanks for reading everyone, spread the word about contact ratios!

Ken

Today I had lunch at the MountainWest Capital Networks Entrepreneur of the Year Award Luncheon watched Josh James, Founder & CEO of Domo, and former founder and CEO of Omniture give the keynote address and receive the annual award for Entrepreneur of the Year.

Much deserved.

Anyone selling their company for well over 1 billion dollars is in a league shared by only a handful on the planet. And to lay it all on the table again within a year and start up another company is audacious to say the least. He has a reputation for doing the unexpected.

Josh James Receives Entrepreneur of the Year 2012

Well, right in the middle of his keynote address he mentions his desire to promote up-and-coming tech companies based in Utah and asks our own CEO, Dave Elkington, to come up and take two minutes to “pimp his company” and tell the whole audience about InsideSales.com and why they should pay attention. Dave spilled the beans and shared with the room of movers and shakers that Josh James recently invested in our company, along with some other key players in the high technology area.

Nobody I know shares the stage of their own awards ceremony and keynote address to share the love with a budding hyper-growth company… except Josh James.

Thanks Josh!

Josh went on to tell the amazing story of how he raised $50 million for Domo without any revenue by telling everybody “No, not interested.” I was sitting there at the table and thumbed through a small booklet with a collection of quotes called “Josh James – Startup Rules.” I was spellbound.

Josh James shares 36 Startup Rules; and the Stage with our Own Dave Elkington

Here they are (#jjsr):

1. I only care about sales. Don’t talk to me about marketing, booth, HR, comp, legal, etc. Can be fixed later with $$$$$$$. Close Deals.
2. I’m note trying to be rude by ignoring you. Your topic isn’t important yet. It will be but not now. No coddling. — Good person. Bad topic.
3. Don’t listen to your customers or potential customers when trying to #innovate. Use their feedback only to iterate.
4. Think big. I never think big enough. Be audacious. Imagine deals people around you think will never happen. Believe.
5. Don’t be afraid to hire execs older than you; But if treated like their child slap ‘em upside the head figuratively. #MutualRespect.
6. Attorneys work for you. The best make great partners, but you must manage them not them manage you. You have to make the decisions. Don’t let them intimidate you with legalese. Have them explain the full spectrum of choices. It’s still your business.
7. 1st things 1st. Ignore everyone until most important item is completely done. #RelentlessLikePitBull
8. Find salespeople who love to spend money: watches, cars, houses. The more they spend the better your prospects.
9. I relish an all-nighter like my dad relishes the smell of jet fuel in the morning. #Startups #SaaS
10. Nothing crystallizes your strategy like several hours of continuous, peaceful, uninterrupted focus.
11. Nothing is more motivating and nothing pisses me off more than people who doubt me. #Startups #Omniture #SaaS #Cloud
12. Spelling and grammar: Great employment filters. If they can’t, I don’t want them at company. 1% exception. #TakeToTheBank
13. Customers first!!! In every way. Had 100% retention of customers at #Omniture for 5 years. Aim to do the same at #Domo.
14. Believe in your tech team more than they believe in themselves they will rise to the occasion.
15. Make everyone responsible. Create internal conflict to quickly fix complex problems because it forces cooperation.
16. Make mistakes faster than anyone else. I do and it’s rad.
17. Big time execs put their pants on one leg at a time–treat them like an old high school friend. #Don’tBeIntimidated
18. Culture–be polarizing–some people will leave but others will love it. #WeedEmOut #FindTheBallers
19. In zeal to close deals, be careful not to become the CEO 10% discount. Sales won’t invite you back. #SaaS #Cloud
20. Hire hungry, angry, slighted, bad-luck, orphans and others waiting for their chance to prove the world wrong. #Startups
21. Competitors are trying to take food from your family and your team’s families. Treat accordingly.
22. I got 99 problems but hiring ain’t one. Fire fast. Hire slow.
23. Making decisions with more than 75% of the information is by definition hesitation.
24. When raising money, your 1st move is to tell potential investor, “No, not interested.” Makes them crazy.
25. CFO office not allowed to lose any sales. Prohibited from lying about finances but not allowed to lose deals either. #Startup
26. #Cloud: Pay attention to churn early because retention gets very nerve-wracking when 10% churn equals a $50M hole in the bucket.
27. When in #Cloud and #Startup, strive for perfect uptime. Fire repeat offenders. Measure uptime from inside and outside. Customers will.
28. #GuerrillaMarketing for #Startup: Get universities to run competitions about your space. $5K-10K goes a long way in branding + hiring.
29. Don’t spend #Startup money on anything until you have to, but when the time comes, don’t be chintzy… #PlayToWin
30. Early to bed early to rise hurts my head. Give me peace and quiet at 2AM and I’ll give you opportunity for genius. #Startup
31. Don’t be a scared American. Go solo overseas for biz. A jointventure is like playing roulette with your brand and success. #Startup
32. Do not negotiate with Israelis in business. You will lose.
33. Pay commissions only after receiving cash from customer. Sales people hate it but collections are easy. #SaaS #Startup
34. Family and friends more important than #Startup so act accordingly. More effort, zeal, creativity at home than work.
35. Unless emergency, until #Startup is stable, work like dog during week; weekends and friday nights are sacred time for family + fun.
36. If old enough to die for country, you should be able to rent a freaking car. Charge more if I’m a risk. #StillMadAtHertz

Q: How do you determine how many reps you need to be able to handle inbound leads most effectively?

A: There is a really cool algorithm that sophisticated inbound call center professionals know who calculate service levels.

It is called Erlang C.

Let’s say you want to staff enough reps to make sure that 80% of the time you answer inbound calls in 30 seconds or less. That is called an 80/30 service level, and it’s pretty good.

Well, Erlang C has you plug in the service level you want, how many calls you get, how long the calls are, and average delay of calls, and it tells you how many people you need to handle the service level you want.

This is exactly what you need to do for your Inside Sales team. Type in “Erlang C Calculator” in Google and try it for yourself.

You could be burning a lot of expensive leads by not staffing up enough. Beware, we’ve done it.

Q: What happens if we don’t have enough reps to handle the leads?

A: This may be the biggest mistake companies make with inbound models. We have often made it ourselves, even though we handle hundred inbound and outbound inquiries weekly. Our research shows time and time again that the average company responds to a lead in 46-49 hours. And the average inside sales rep only makes 1.2-1.4 call back attempts before giving up and moving on.

THIS MEANS ONLY 27% OF LEADS ACTUALLY GET CONTACTED ON AVERAGE!

Did you read that? You are spending all this marketing money to generate leads and only 1 in 4 get contacted? Are you kidding me?

No. Measure it yourself.

We have also found that if we:

1) respond to web leads in less than a minute,
2) make 8-12 call back attempts,
3) get direct dial phone numbers if possible,
4) use local phone numbers on caller IDs,
5) call at the best time of day and
6) day of week, good things happen.

WE HAVE MAINTAINED LEAD CONTACTED RATIOS OF 85-92% FOR NEARLY TWO YEARS INTERNALLY. Just recently we forgot this key at InsideSales.com and had to quickly remind ourselves of this important rule when our leads went up, but appointments went way down (my fault, I’m kicking myself.)

Calculate this. 27% versus 92% of your leads getting contacted. That is a 3.41x increase in results!

Q: When should we schedule inside sales reps and BDR reps to work?

A: Simple. When the calls come in.

Watch your call flow. There are call scheduling software platforms to help larger organizations to this.

Research shows that inbound calls increase just when outbound calls tend to become less effective (hint: an hour before and after lunch time by time zone.)

So have your outbound reps here early and stay late and give them longer lunches. Our study with Dr. Oldroyd showed that 8am and 4-6 pm were great times to call. But 11am to 1pm were the worst.

Q: Does a purely outbound cold calling shop need to be tightly scheduled?

A: Not as much. But don’t you have inbound calls in response to all your outbound calling? Aren’t those the hottest leads of the day? Shouldn’t you have people ready to respond? It is still important.

Yea, I know. Professional sales reps want autonomy, right?

Well, those who are way ahead of quota get more flexible schedules. Those who are behind need to be putting in more effort and taking more calls anyway, eh?

Should inside sales reps be allowed to pick their own schedules and come in to work as they wish as long as they get the job done? Isn’t autonomy and flexible schedules one of the things that all sales reps want to have?

These questions get asked a lot. Our own reps ask them. Our customers and prospects ask them.

I have a few questions and thoughts in return:

Q: Do your inside sales reps find their own leads or do they respond to inbound web leads provided by the company?

A: If they respond to leads then schedules are important.

We have found that by far the best way to respond to web leads is with immediate response technology (which we pioneered) that calls leads back in less than a minute and routes it immediately to a Business Development Rep (BDR) to pre-qualify and hot-transfer to an inside sales rep if they are available.

This means that you need to have BDRs and Inside Sales reps available when the leads come, don’t you think?

Well planned scheduling is far more important for inside sales teams receiving inbound leads.

Q: How much fall-out do you have trying to set appointments and call people back versus taking the call right then? 30%, 40%, more?

A: Basically, an inside sales model that responds to inbound leads required far tighter scheduling to have people ready to answer and respond to calls than an outbound model. But you know what, even an outbound model benefits from hot-transfers from appointments setters to closers if it is a “specialist” model that hands off phone calls (and our Kellogg research found specialist models to be significantly more efficient and effective.)

If you can have qualified reps ready to take calls at any time, do it!

Top 25 Articles on www.KenKrogue.com (with total views)

1. What is Inside Sales? Our Definition of Inside Sales | Ken Krogue – 23,175 Views
2. Inside Sales Best Practices - 2,878 Views
3. Inside Sales Tips by Ken Krogue - 1,798 Views
4. KPI – Key Performance Indicators – 1,141 Views
5. Inside Sales versus Outside Sales – 963 Views
6. Is Leaving a Voicemail Worthwhile? – 758 Views
7. 31 Linkedin tips-How to use Linkedin Best Practices for B2B Prospecting-NEW!-702 Views
8. About Ken Krogue – 656 Views
9. Funny Inside Sales Videos – 567 Views
10. Inside Sales Training – 512 Views
11. Inside Sales Tips – Skip to the Beep – 477 Views
12. Inside Sales Tips – No Vacations Last Week of the Month – 467 Views
13. 6 Reasons Salesforce Users Need Hosted Dialer Technology - 462 Views
14. Behind the Cloud – Ken’s Notes – 460 Views
15. Inside Sales is Top Method of Lead Generation – 452 Views
16. Inside Sales Tips – Interest is The Counterfeit of Need – 420 Views
17. Demand Generation Tactics and Strategy – 370 Views
18. Climb the Trust Ladder to Increase Results in Prospecting – W/ VIDEO! – 354 Views
19. Harvard Business Review says Sales is No Longer About Relationships – NEW! – 347 Views
20. Inside Sales Tips – Specialize – 324 Views
21. Inside Sales Tips – How LinkedIn Gives you 3 Free SEO Backlinks - 297 Views
22. Power Dialers – 286 Views
23. Marketing B2B 4 Quick Email Tips – 273 Views
24. Lead Generation Strategies: When to Call, When Not to Call? – 215 Views
25. What is Lead Response Management – 207 Views

(This blog is longer than most, but one of my favorite ever – Read on! – Ken)

LinkedIn is the greatest source of business to business (B2B) sales intelligence and research data for the average sales professional ever invented. This kind of tool has never existed before. LinkedIn let’s you connect with people and see their network of connections. Once you understand that you can only see relationships that are 2 levels deep it gets much easier to use and understand.

My LinkedIn Network of Professionals - 3 levels deep

I just came from training a great team at Veracity Networks, a local internet, voice, and tv provider in Utah and long-time customer of ours. We talked about all the ways that LinkedIn can help in B2B prospecting. I also promised on my last webinar that I would make a list of 20 ways to use LinkedIn, well I got carried away.

Here is one thing you can do for every day of the month.

1- First, use LinkedIn to get in to a new account. I remember when I wanted to get into the inside sales department at a company just up the street by the name of Novell. I looked up the company, found an old friend of mine that works there named Morgan Spencer, contacted him, and asked for a referral.

My friend Morgan Spencer worked at Novell when I needed him

Now he works at Concierge Communications, so maybe I should see if he can refer me again. Anyway, it worked and took just a few minutes. That was my first productive use of LinkedIn years ago.

2- Follow your customers companies. That means you should be connected through LinkedIn to ALL OF YOUR CUSTOMERS! That seems like a no brainer, but very few companies do that. We recommend that your CEO, VP Sales, VP Support, etc. reach out with the welcome pack to each new customer and connect. Then ping them now and again to ask “how are things are coming?” Follow each of your customers companies in LinkedIn.

3- Make sure you complete your profile, keep it fresh, and set it up correctly so you have credibility. Complete the profile! That means 100%. Salespeople never take the time to finish and this hurts them.  

4- Use a good close-up picture that stands out. Our company uses black and white short-cropped head shots that are sort of cool. Why black and white? We stand out. Nobody else on the page is black and white. I like to zig when everyone else chooses to zag. (Sorry you can’t use this one, everyone else has to stay with color pictures.)

Notice my name in the Public Profile has my name!

5- Grab your name before someone else does! Make sure that your public profile is shortened to contain just your name, ie: http://www.linkedin.com/in/kenkrogue. If you leave this to LinkedIn it will have lots of crazy random letters and numbers and looks like a mess and is hard to link to. Write a compelling introduction to you and your company so people know what you do! If your company is hiring, mention it like our VP Sales did, it works!

6- Have a point person at your company. LinkedIn works by letting you connect to people 2 levels deep. It is a good idea to have at least one person in the company who reaches out to lots of connections. If everyone else at the company is connected to them, they act like a “window” with great connections for everyone else.  I’m connected to over 2300 people, and through me, all of my sales reps have a connection that is far more broad than their own.

7- Connect to your employees. Spend time and teach your colleagues and employees the value of using LinkedIn as a team. By designating a “point person” as mentioned above, make sure that person is connected to every single employee. Do it from day one in the onboarding process for all new hires.

8- Connect to your customers. Who in the B2B world is more important than your customers? I like to use Tags to connect to and classify my customers as part of my LinkedIn network. Why? I care deeply about my customers. They are like the kinds of prospects I want to also become my customers. Be getting to know them well, I can connect to others just like them. I can find the groups they are part of. I can ask for referrals or recommendations that will really have impact (if I have earned it.)

9- Connect to your prospects. We ask our salespeople to connect to all of their prospects right after the first contact attempt. Do they always do it? The smart ones do. Why have them connect? Increases rate of building a relationship. LinkedIn increases response to communications by 300% versus email.

You can also search by keywords to find lots of prospects. For us anybody with “inside sales”, “lead management” or “salesforce.com” in their LinkedIn profile is a prospect. What are your keywords?

10 – Do a 3×3 analysis of your prospects. My friend Steve Richard from Vorsight, outsourcers in inside sales training, taught me this. Take 3 minutes before calling a prospect to find 3 things you have in common to talk with them about.  LinkedIn is great for a resume, company, college sports or alma maters, common trade groups perspective, Facebook for hobbies, sports, etc.

11- Join relevant groups. One of my favorite LinkedIn Groups is Inside Sales Experts that was originally formed by Trish Bertuzzi of The Bridge Group. When I first joined it there were about 8000 members, now there are over 14,000 members, all inside sales professionals. I think there are more members in this group than all others combined about inside sales. I have met dozens of people who I now call friends just by joining the conversations that are going on.

Trish’s only rule? No SPAM or self promotion allowed.

Trish Bertuzzi Manager of Inside Sales Experts LinkedIn Group

12- Find and join local LinkedIn groups. Go to the Groups search window at the top right and type in your home city and/or home state to find groups close by to you. Now look for industries that you want to prospect into. These groups usually have quarterly or annual meetings. I love the American Association of Inside Sales Professionals – Salt Lake City Chapter.  Change my city to your city in the search and go join today!

13- Make your wedding and funeral list and connect in LinkedIn. This is an old prospecting technique with a new twist. I am asked all the time by new sales reps what is the first thing they should do when they get hired. I tell them to make their wedding list (if they are young, and their funeral list if they are old.) What is that? The 250 people you know well that you would invite to your wedding or that your family would invite to your funeral. I’m told that wedding planners and funeral directors estimate the average wedding or funeral at 250 attendees if they don’t know how many are coming.  Imagine if you linked to 250 people who care about you, wouldn’t they be the best place to start prospecting and looking for introductions, recommendations, and referrals?

14- Respond first to email, then by LinkedIn. This is a way to make connections with interesting people and valuable people. Whenever someone emails you that would be a valuable connection to make, simply respond by email and mention in the email that you will be connecting by LinkedIn. Then reach out and connect. Remind them you just emailed them. LinkedIn penalizes you if you try to connect to too many people who reject because they don’t know your or don’t remember who you are.

15- When you go to trade shows connect with LinkedIn. My favorite task after going to a trade show is to take time that night back at the hotel and reach out by email then connect with LinkedIn.  I also have my team help me reach out to everyone that comes by our booth at trade shows. Remind them of the “common experience” you had together at the trade show when you reach out by LinkedIn so they remember you and don’t reject you.

16- Follow your prospect Companies. Use the “Follow Company” feature and follow the target prospect companies you have. This ties you in to news about them and you can see connections you already have to their employee base.

17- Offer value to your LinkedIn Connections. Interact occasionally with your LinkedIn connections and build relationships with them. Offer things of value to them: information, training, good books, ideas, tips, tricks, best practices, and best of all, referrals. My friend Paul Allen, the founder of Infobases, Ancestry.com, MyFamily.com, and FamilyLink.com told me about one of his favorite books called Love is the Killer App, that teaches this very thing.  I reach out about every six months to my LinkedIn connections in Utah and share my latest seminar with them for free. I probably have 70-80 people come. I do the same with webinars nationally. Warning: Don’t try and sell them something, it’s a turnoff. Just offer great content. If they want to buy something from you, they will seek you out.

18- Kill two birds with one stone. By linking Twitter with the “share an update” window on your main page in LinkedIn you can put in one message that is shared with both systems. This takes advantage of the Signal feature on LinkedIn which is a lot like the “Wall” on Facebook. It’s a way to see the latest news about your connections, but I like to filter it down or it’s just overload.

19- Connect a Widget on your Blog. I also have a twitter widget on my WordPress blog that allows me to update LinkedIn, which updates Twitter, which updates my blog. Pretty cool!

20- Share your blog on LinkedIn. There are ways to go the other direction by putting the most recent articles on your blog in a section on your LinkedIn page. I love the WordPress widget for LinkedIn which puts my three most recent blog articles on my LinkedIn page.

Use Tags in the Contacts section of LinkedIn

21. Use Tags to categorize your customers from prospects, friends, etc. As your Connections begins to grow it is wise to use the Tags feature on LinkedIn to create categories for your Contacts. This lets you slice and dice your LinkedIn network for all kinds of communication purposes.

Tags are found in the Contacts section of Linked in and are absolutely invaluable for more advanced methods of using LinkedIn for prospecting.

I use Tags to categorize partners, friends, association members, customers, etc.

This takes some time and I’m just getting started in effectively using the Tags feature.

22. Use Events in LinkedIn to promote real or virtual events. One of the things I try to do to offer value to all my friends on LinkedIn and to keep in touch with them is to offer free webinars or seminars on topics I’m familiar with around inside sales and lead management. I have found that the Events feature of LinkedIn is especially powerful in allowing me to post the important information, invite my connections, and post attendees so they can interact and network amongst themselves also. We do this every quarter for the AA-ISP in Salt Lake City.  I never use these events to sell, but only to network, educate, and raise awareness for the inside sales industry. Sale introductions have a way of taking care of themselves.

23. Use the 3 free backlinks in LinkedIn for Google juice! I wrote an article years ago about the SEO value of LinkedIn. We have 85 employees. Imagine if each of them used all three links to drive keywords for InsideSales.com, hmmmmm.

24. Look for LinkedIn Events Corresponding to all Trade Shows! This is one of my favorite tips for using LinkedIn for B2B prospecting. My friend Jay Weintraub, the founder of LeadsCon, was one of the first to really use LinkedIn to promote his trade show.

I am attending LeadsCon West 2012

Now it is a standard for hundreds of people to add his events to their calendar. Well, when they do, they are open to you to go out and introduce yourself and invite them to come meet you at your booth.

People attending a LinkedIn Event

Notice the link with 194 other people attending the same event you are going to. That gives you 194 people you can introduce yourself to BEFORE THE EVENT BEGINS!.

My favorite rule for events is to schedule enough appointments before the event begins to pay for the event.  LinkedIn helped us invite over 600 people to come visit us last year at Dreamforce 2011.

The power of the LinkedIn Events can help you do this all by itself if you start a few weeks ahead of time.

25. Share that you are attending LinkedIn Events. Remember I have linked my LinkedIn to my Twitter. So when I share in LinkedIn, it goes out to my 2800+ followers of Twitter (by the way, if you choose to follow me, I try to send out tips, best practices, and research weekly.) I like to help promote all of the events I go to, speak at, sponsor, and exhibit so that it helps all of us.

26. Freely give recommendations to co-workers, colleagues, former employers, authors, etc. Don’t wait for people to ask. Make a personal goal to reach out and recommend one person a week. If someone does something special, tell them. Business is crazy, take time to show gratitude and respect. Show the love!

27. Ask for recommendations from co-workers, colleagues, and former employers. This is an obvious practice and is a great way to “prime the pump” of getting lots of recommendations in your LinkedIn profile. Once you have lots of honest and frank recommendations from those closest to you then I like to move to asking for recommendations from customers.  I love to recommend people.

28. Ask for customer recommendations using LinkedIn. I admin at first this looks very hard to accomplish, but it is actually a good practice to get into. It works best when you ask for this early in the process as a measure of how well you do.  I also do this if a prospect is asking for additional pricing discounts or negotiating terms aggressively. I say, “Well, with this discount I’m giving you, I’m going to need to make up for it by selling more clients (smile), would be willing to recommend me in a format like LinkedIn if I have earned it?”

29. Ask for customer referrals using LinkedIn. I live by referrals. I tell my prospects that “one of the best ways I grade myself on how well I do is whether or not you are willing to recommend me to other people just like yourself when we are done.” I set this expectation up early and remind them once or twice during the sales process. The big problem is getting people to think of 3-4 good referrals. Quite often I need to prompt them with ideas. Well, recently I’ve been using LinkedIn. Before I ask for referrals I go look at their LinkedIn network and find several accounts I would like my teams to get into. Then it is easy to say “To make it easy for you to help me grow my business with your recommendations, I’ve already found a few people you know that I would greatly appreciate an introduction to.” Then you can use the normal LinkedIn process, I still like a live phone introduction though, as it is stronger. But the LinkedIn process is better then me calling them on my own.

30. Ask for LinkedIn recommendations,  and comments from blog readers! Ok, if you liked this article, especially if it helped you generate a lead or make a sale, I want something in return. I want a recommendation on my LinkedIn, a reference to this article, or a comment with Linked tips, ways to use LinkedIn, or best practices I haven’t mentioned for B2B prospecting.

Fair enough?

Now for one thing NOT TO DO!

31. Don’t send sales or marketing messages by LinkedIn. This is another word for SPAM! Overzealous marketers ruined the telephone, faxing, and email by sending SPAM. Just don’t do it. If someone sends SPAM to me I try to let them know that only rookie salespeople do that in LinkedIn.

It’s like urinating in the public swimming pool, it ruins the swim for everyone. It’s a mistake we should only make once. I just wish we had a dye that turned their LinkedIn page red for a week when somebody uses LinkedIn to brazenly pitch their product!

Top 25 Articles on www.KenKrogue.com (with total views)

1. What is Inside Sales? Our Definition of Inside Sales | Ken Krogue – 26,265 Views
2. Inside Sales Best Practices - 3,399 Views
3. Inside Sales Tips by Ken Krogue - 2,124 Views
4. KPI – Key Performance Indicators – 1,251 Views
5. Inside Sales versus Outside Sales – 1,135 Views
6. 31 Linkedin tips – How-to-use-Linkedin-Best-Practices for B2B Prospecting - NEW! – 1106 Views
7. Is Leaving a Voicemail Worthwhile? – 876 Views
8. About Ken Krogue - 757 Views
9. Inside Sales Training - 657 Views
10. Inside Sales is Top Method of Lead Generation – 558 Views
11. Prediction – SEO will be Dead in 2 Years - 557 Views
12. Inside Sales Tips – Skip to the Beep – 522 Views
13. Inside Sales Tips – No Vacations Last Week of the Month – 528 Views
14. Behind the Cloud – Ken’s Notes – 506 Views
15. 6 Reasons Salesforce Users Need Hosted Dialer Technology - 501 Views
16. Inside Sales Tips – Interest is The Counterfeit of Need – 489 Views
17. Climb the Trust Ladder to Increase Results in Prospecting - W/ VIDEO! – 426 Views
18. Harvard Business Review says Sales is No Longer About Relationships - 415 Views
19. Demand Generation Tactics and Strategy – 392 Views
20. Inside Sales Tips – How LinkedIn Gives you 3 Free SEO Backlinks - 331 Views
21. Inside Sales Tips – Specialize – 324 Views
22. Marketing B2B 4 Quick Email Tips – 328 Views
23. Power Dialers - 321 Views
24. Lead Generation Strategies: When to Call, When Not to Call? - 258 Views
25. What is Lead Response Management – 240 Views

There are tips and tricks in the inside sales industry that can be classified as science. There are others that are definitely classed as art.

Some books on sales are science, “The Challenger Sale” by Matthew Dixon and Brent Adamson, others are fine art “Snap Selling” by Jill Konrath (both of these I’m writing summaries on currently, watch the blog.)

Science is when you can prove it with research, and others can follow right behind you and prove it as well. Art is when you try it and it seems to work really well and everyone else tries it and they all agree with it because it “feels” right.

This tip is art, not science.

I have noticed that when a sales rep buys a house, their sales go up 20%. When they buy a car, sales go up. When they have children, sales go up.

One of our best sales reps had twins lately… and yup, you guessed it. Sales went up, and stayed up.

Can I prove it? Probably.

How do you use this tip?

Push your reps to higher levels of personal and professional commitment. Spouses, kids, houses, cars, whatever.  They will step up. And sales go up as a byproduct.

In your performance reviews, find out what makes your reps tic. Help them set goals in these big areas that require a commitment.

Has anyone else out there noticed the same thing? I welcome your comments. – Ken

The question is: Do we work harder? Or are we blessed more? Hmmmm… I have my own thoughts on this one.

I have heard that the original thanksgiving meal began with the Native Americans and Pilgrims just after the Mayflower landed but it was one of my three favorite presidents Abraham Lincoln, on October 3rd, 1863, that proclaimed Thanksgiving a national holiday.

He was well into the civil war when he declared:

“The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.”

“No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy.”

“It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquility and Union.”

I long for the day when another President will again sit in the Oval Office who is willing to commend us openly to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.

This article by Chris Brogan of Forbes is VERY thought provoking. And though he targets it to Chief Marketing Officers, I thing the inside sales space better look closely.

He knows you are thinking, “The LAST thing I need is to figure out yet another social network” and he has spent over 250 hours in Google+ and has these 10 points for us to think about: 

1. A social network offered by Google will impact search marketing.
2. Google+ evolves from Gmail with hundreds of millions of users.
3. Google+ will soon offer business pages.
4. Google+ added 10 million users in 2 weeks.
5. Google+ blends business and personal with “circles” that categorize easily.
6. Google+ is indexed and searched by Google much easier than LinkedIn or Facebook.
7. Many companies block Facebook, Google+ hasn’t been thought of yet.
8. Google+ isn’t just a “social network,” more of a “communications backbone” that works with email.
9. Google is committed to the Google+ platform, which should make it amazing.
10. First usually wins and Google+ expertise may put you ahead for a while.

Chris hasn’t predicted a “next big thing” for a while. But Google+ is already the #1 referrer of traffic to his website, so for him, at least, it’s working.

Confucius

One of the very best rules and patterns to live by and sell by is the Golden Rule. The only rule that I’ve found to be better is the Platinum Rule (go to the end of this article.)

“What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.” - Confucius 551-479 BC

“We should behave to our friends as we would wish our friends to behave to us.” - Aristotle 384-322 BC

Aristotle

“What is hateful to you do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary.” - Hillel 30 BC – 10 AD

Hillel

“What you hate, do not do to anyone.” - Judaism

“No one of you is a believer until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself.” - Islam

“Do nothing to they neighbor which thou wouldst not have him do to thee.” - Hinduism

“Hurt not others with that which pains thyself.” - Buddhism

“Do as you would be done by, is the surest method that I know of pleasing.” - Chesterfield 1747

“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so them, for this is the law and the prophets.” - The Bible — Matthew 7:12 (King James Version)

“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and Prophets.” - The Bible – Matthew 7:12 (New International Version)

“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.” - Golden Rule: Common form (Bartlett’s Quotations)

The Golden Rule - Norman Rockwell

“Do unto others as they would have done unto them.” – The Platinum Rule, a slight improvement on the Golden Rule – Requires a good needs analysis… asking lots of questions.

About three years ago we were analyzing the leads that come from our website trying to find out if some were better than others.

Everything we do at InsideSales.com is based on metrics. Instead of just hiring marketers, we hire math majors and economics majors in our marketing department because it is all about studying and testing and analyzing.

So we charted out our leads and we found that there were two obvious “clusters” of leads based on the types of offers we had made to generate them. I call them “Buying Signals” and “Tire Kickers” and we found there was an 8 to 1 difference in the results they generated based on overall revenue.

Buying Signals are just that, respondents to offers that clearly say I’m anxious to talk to somebody at InsideSales.com about making a purchase decision. I have “need,” not just “interest.” Anything product-centric, pricing-related, commitment-based, etc. We learned that even a toll free number is an “offer” somebody can choose to accept on a website (and is often the very best one.)

Tire Kickers want to learn something. They aren’t ready to buy, they have “interest” but not need. They may not know that have need yet. The way to turn a Tire Kicker into a Buying Signal is with compelling information and education. Our research shows that a Tire Kicker is 8 times less likely to buy than a Buying Signal.

I was reminded that interest is the counterfeit of need. Interest belongs to the marketing department, whose job it is to educate. And need belongs to the sales department, whose job it is to build value and close to fulfill need.

Kinds of Buying Signal leads:
Free trials, demos, product overviews, contact us, product slicks, pricing requests, proposal requests, toll free phone numbers.

Kinds of Tire Kicker Leads:
Company overviews, white papers, research papers, webinars, on-demand webinars, how-to’s, forums, blogs.

So what did we do?

We cut out most of our Tire Kickers and focussed on Buying Signals. We even scaled back our well-known research papers like the paper that Inc. Magazine recently quoted.

What happened?

Things went great for about two months. Our sales went up, then they went down. And our leads started drying up. We couldn’t figure out what happened until one day we looked at previous leads and found that people typically downloaded 2-3 Tire Kicker offers before moving to the Buying Signal leads. It was a “lead funnel” and we had stopped the new leads from entering the funnel.

So immediately we put back all of our Tire Kicker information leads and expanded them.

It was almost a disaster, but it turned out to be one of the most important things we have ever learned.

Hope it helps!

Ken

Top 25 Articles on www.KenKrogue.com (with total views)

1. What is Inside Sales? Our Definition of Inside Sales | Ken Krogue – 23,175 Views
2. Inside Sales Best Practices - 2,878 Views
3. Inside Sales Tips by Ken Krogue - 1,798 Views
4. KPI – Key Performance Indicators – 1,141 Views
5. Inside Sales versus Outside Sales – 963 Views
6. Is Leaving a Voicemail Worthwhile? – 758 Views
7. 31 Linkedin tips – How-to-use-Linkedin-Best-Practices for B2B Prospecting – NEW! – 702 Views
8. About Ken Krogue – 656 Views
9. Funny Inside Sales Videos – 567 Views
10. Inside Sales Training – 512 Views
11. Inside Sales Tips – Skip to the Beep – 477 Views
12. Inside Sales Tips – No Vacations Last Week of the Month – 467 Views
13. 6 Reasons Salesforce Users Need Hosted Dialer Technology - 462 Views
14. Behind the Cloud – Ken’s Notes – 460 Views
15. Inside Sales is Top Method of Lead Generation – 452 Views
16. Inside Sales Tips – Interest is The Counterfeit of Need – 420 Views
17. Demand Generation Tactics and Strategy – 370 Views
18. Climb the Trust Ladder to Increase Results in Prospecting – W/ VIDEO! – 354 Views
19. Harvard Business Review says Sales is No Longer About Relationships – NEW! – 347 Views
20. Inside Sales Tips – Specialize – 324 Views
21. Inside Sales Tips – How LinkedIn Gives you 3 Free SEO Backlinks - 297 Views
22. Power Dialers – 286 Views
23. Marketing B2B 4 Quick Email Tips – 273 Views
24. Lead Generation Strategies: When to Call, When Not to Call? – 215 Views
25. What is Lead Response Management – 207 Views