The Telephone - The Greatest Sales Enabler Ever!

On this day in 1876, 29-year-old Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for his revolutionary new invention--the telephone. The Scottish-born Bell worked in London with his father, Melville Bell, who developed Visible Speech, a written system used to teach speaking to the deaf.

I just wanted to give a quick shout-out to the anniversary of an important day for all of us who work in the inside sales space. On this day 137 years ago the US Patent Office granted a patent to cover "the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically ...."

What can strike terror into the heart of even the most successful sales professional or entrepreneur? What can crush self confidence, destroy self esteem and leave even the most seasoned quivering with humiliation and defeat? The Terror of Cold Calling. Top Ten Tips for Terminating Telephone Terror 1. Make telephone calls.

I don't know about you, but I'm shocked every time I listen to a voicemail message left for me by sales reps, prospects and even clients. They are filled with 'um's' and 'ah's', they ramble on and on, they leave no compelling reason for me to call back, and they almost always leave their number so fast that I have to listen to it two, three, sometimes four times to make it out!

I was in Staples the other day and saw their promotion using a little red button that says, "Easy" on it. You know the one? They have commercials on it and essentially whenever a business person needs any help around the office, all they have to do is hit this button and BAM!

This is a presentation I researched and put together for a job interview.

Some entrepreneurs are gifted salespeople. They just have a knack for selling their ideas, products, and services. Others, however, are not that great (or so they believe) at selling. So, how can an entrepreneur with a fear of cold calling get past their fears? Check out this list of great tips!

Gordon Gekkos-even briefcase phones.Mobile phones have come a long way in the last seventy years, so be thankful yours fits in your pocket. Maybe one day it will even be able to bend like a piece of thin plastic. Maybe you won't even have to touch it, doing all of your multitasking from cellular implants.

Telephones have changed dramatically since Alexander Graham Bell spoke the first words into a telephone on March 10, 1876. Overall, they've improved since then, but the road wasn't always smooth. Here's a look back at the most important advances in telephone technology and some of the worst.

I get quite a few questions about the value of auto dialing and whether or not it can really increase the productivity of a sales person who works by phone. Most managers who have never tried a form of auto dialing are skeptical, and they should be.

Are you prepared for your next outbound calling campaign? Use our handy checklist to make sure you have your bases covered!

If you get caught up in the blogosphere or read all of the marketing hype around inbound marketing, you may find yourself hard pressed to hear the reasonable voices of sanity. New companies have burst (OK-exploded) on to the scene, promoting all things inbound marketing. "GET FOUND!" they scream.

Yep! I used the words "art" and "cold calling" in the same sentence. We sponsored a webinar last week by our good friend Wendy Weiss, "The Queen of Cold Calling." Pretty much anyone who uses the phone as a selling tool knows Wendy. If you don't, you really need to jump on her next webinar.

Yep - I am astonished by the lack of what we should know but don't. Every day, businesses are cranking out tons of sales calls that seem to fall short of gaining any real intellectual knowledge, despite all the effort. I was chatting with an Inside Sales manager a few weeks back, and he shared some of his data.

A lot of conversations I have with sales managers start off with questions about dials. "How many sales calls should my people be making every day?" "Isn't it always better to do more dials than fewer?" followed by "Don't I need something that dials multiple lines per user to really maximize lead generation and appointment setting?"

Have you taken time to review the effectiveness of your call script and other sales messaging? If you or your agents are not closing as many sales as you would like with your outbound calling efforts, it's time to review what your script is saying to the potential customer.

As a rule, I get to the conclusion over the course of my post or at the end. For this one, I will give you the answer at the beginning. The sad truth, my friends, is that to get to the right VoIP provider you are probably going to have to kiss a few frogs in order to find a prince of a service provider.