I've been asked this question by customers and prospects in just about every industry. From start-ups to 50-year old manufacturers, security companies to a dentist's office, folks are wondering how much attention they should pay to this term CRM. To be clear, I run in circles where things have always been done a certain way, so even many of them are just now starting to pick up on buzz words like CRM, inbound marketing, content, etc. 

For those who are wondering and too afraid to ask anyone, here's a few reasons why you should use a CRM in your sales/customer acquisition process: 

Sales organizations often boast how great their pay-per-lead pricing is, or include some sort of money-back guarantee that ensures you get the right number of leads. 

Most of the conversations we get into here at Incept are with companies and organizations that have utilized similar services in the past and gotten burned. Here's why: 

Are you among the dozens of companies that have been burned by pay-per-lead lead generation companies?  Here are a few reasons to consider asking your next inside sales partner for a fractional subscription based inside sales representative: 

Before making the decision to completely outsource your lead generation or to hire an inside sales representative internally, consider a mixed approach - something we like to call co-sourcing.

Co-sourcing is a partner approach to lead generation that provides the cost savings and flexibility that come from outsourcing while integrating with your in-house staff to guarantee every prospect is supported according to your brand and values.

Time to hire again? Last inside sales guy didn't work out? Before you tell HR to go find you another inside sales rep, let's take a look at the costs you'll actually incur. 

Assuming that you're looking for an inside sales rep who will follow-up on all inbound leads, and place outbound phone calls every day in order to generate leads for your business, let's say the sales rep you hire will make $40,000/year + commission.

Learning how and why your customers make buying decisions can teach you a lot about the industry your serve. If this information is recorded, analyzed, and leveraged appropriately, it can lead to a sizable lift in revenue and set you up for sustainable growth going forward. Here's a breakdown of things to keep in mind when conducting your initial customer segmentation campaign. 

Thinking about kicking off a new sales and marketing campaign? Here's a quick-start guide to grabbing a list of prospects to start targeting. 

The last several years have given way to a monumental movement in the sales and marketing world called "Inbound Marketing." In short, this movement circles around creating excellent digital content, position yourself as thought-leaders in your industry, and establishing a broad enough internet presence that your prospective buyers find your name first when they're looking to buy, and then reach out to you. 

There are a lot of articles about getting past gatekeepers on sites like SalesBuzz.com, InsideSales.com, and others. Sometimes, though, these articles start by saying that cold-calling is dead and if you're even getting to gatekeepers instead of direct dials, you're doing something wrong. 

While inbound marketing and sales enablement is the best way to get warm, qualified leads with decision-maker name and number, if you're not having people raise their hand, you still have to go find sales somehow, and in order to do that, you'll need to pull a list, write a script, and make some phone calls.

Cold-calling isn't dead when it's the only way you have to get in front of potential buyers quickly, and in order to help you do that, here are some hacks to get around gatekeepers, or at least to leverage your conversation with them to help with future marketing. 

The story of the rust belt in Ohio is resonant of the manufacturing industry across the country these days: Succession plans have happened, are happening, or will happen soon, and with that comes a flux in sales and marketing that could make or break the company. 

As you plan out your growth goals, here are some steps we recommend to make sure you exceed those goals in the most efficient, strategic manner. 

When you sign up for InceptGrows, you subscribe to a fractional inside sales representative or, Account Growth Specialist, as we call them here. This means we dedicated one high-caliber sales rep to your account who is responsible for conducting sales-related tasks for you every day for a specified portion of their day.  

In his book The Challenger Sale, Matthew Dixon does a great job of describing the personality of the all-star sales representative and providing tips on how to scale that out to the entire team. It's a good read for building a strong overall sales cadence, but what about strictly phone-based sales? On a team of 10 inside sales representatives, what does the top performer consistently do differently than the rest of the team?  

After spending a combined 40+ years in the call center, telemarketing, and sales development space, our team got together to discuss ways to increase productivity and results while reducing employee churn. The solution clearly comes down to one simple thing: You have to hire the right people to begin with. 

Here's a breakdown of the 5 most important things to look for when hiring for an inside sales position, especially one that revolves primarily around phone-based sales: 

Did you know that 71% of leads are never followed up with? And worse yet, the typical lead is touched by a salesperson on average only 1.3 times.  The marketplace is spending massive amounts of money on marketing to generate leads that are never even get spoken to.  

This is why ACCEL Schools came to us in 2016 and asked for help.