Sales Reps Should be Pleasantly Persistent

Earlier today I was having lunch with a successful entrepreneur in town and the topic of sales reps came up. He used a term to describe the most common attribute for productive inside sales reps that I really liked: pleasantly persistent. Continuing with yesterday’s post that customer service shouldn’t be hard, let’s look at why sales shouldn’t be hard with pleasantly persistent reps:

• Make a plan of attack that involves multiple phone calls to the appropriate prospects/suspects until contact is made
• When leaving voicemails, say when the next day/time call will take place
• Follow-up at the previously announced time and reiterate that you said you were going to follow-up and did it
• Do what you say you’re going to do and be pleasantly persistent

Of course, all of this should sound like common sense, because it is so obvious. Sales is not easy but being pleasantly persistent increases the chances of success.