Sales Executives

by Joe Grimm

“Dream job” is an overused expression, but here it fits. Kristy Eléna, a 2006 graduate of Rider University in New Jersey, was hired this month to blog for Sunglass Hut for a year.

She will be paid $100,000. She will cover fashion shows in Milan, Paris and New York, where she will live, in a furnished apartment at the W hotel. She will have a $1,000-a-monthly styling bonus. (If you have to ask …)

Eléna’s degree is in multimedia communications with an emphasis in film and video.

She won the gig in what the headhunter who coordinated the search told Todd Raphael of ere.net was “the American Idol for fashion bloggers.” The headhunter, Angee Linsey, was hired by Sunglass Hut marketing, not the recruiting department, to run the campaign.

The three-month competition attracted 611 applications, and generated a lot of buzz, virtually guaranteeing that the blog, Fulltime Fabulous, will be off to a fast start. The Sunglass Hut’s Facebook page hyped the competition and urged people to vote, vote, vote for their favorites.

More than one commentator noted that this was not recruiting, it was marketing. But I bet the paychecks still cash.

Applicants had to submit a one-minute video describing why they wanted to be the ultimate blogger. The videos helped narrow the pool to 100. The public was asked to vote, judges checked the candidates’ social media presence and there was a phone screen.

By December, the pool had been whittled to 10, including a people’s choice candidate, for the blog-off. They blogged daily, they blogged on five special topics, they made more videos and they answered questions for celebrity fashion blog judges Bryanboy of Bryanboy.com and Wendy Lam of Nitrolicious.com. They also campaigned online. Eléna was the last blogger standing.

Why her? She seems well-equipped for the job. Her bio says she grew up around photography and learned traditional photographic printing, hand retouching and hand coloring by age 7. She had a photo exhibit at 8.

She clearly is passionate about fashion and style and, when she took to blogging about it, did so in a multimedia way, conceptualizing, directing, retouching and editing her own photos and videos.

But can journalists learn anything about careers from a blogger, even a good one?

On her personal blog, Vogue Gone Rogue, which helped show the judges what she could do, Eléna took up the subject of bloggers vs. journalists. She reacted after some “fashion magazine journalists stated that blogging is unethical, stupid and pointless …

“what exactly is the insinuation behind ‘blogging is unethical’? … aren’t journalists supposed to be big on research and providing factual information? i’m sure there are some bloggers who are unethical, just as there exist some unethical journalists and some unethical people in every profession, country and walk of life. some people are unethical, and others aren’t. to say ‘blogging is unethical’ is a highly unsupported statement that sounds more like sour grapes than fact.”

The whole debate, she wrote, “reflects poorly on fashion as a whole when such pettiness gets thrown about. journalists and bloggers are not at odds. … it’s an exciting time for the world at large and fashion is not excluded from that. welcome to the digital revolution, please check your old-fashioned mentality at the door and get with the program!”

by Albert Torressmt

Counter to common belief, telemarketing calls are not only suited for B2C or companies that target individual clients or for products and services that are not too expensive. Tele marketing is as productive in B2B markets or for businesses that cater to other businesses. They can have a positive impact on the sales cycle no matter how complex it is. Keep in mind that telemarketers are most beneficial in the early stages of the sales cycle. Once a lead is acquired, the sales job should be handed over to your in-house sales executives.

Telemarketing companies shorten the sales cycle

In the initial phases of the sales cycle, a good number of calls need to be made to a large number of prospects. A few of these will end up as leads while others will be dead ends. Telemarketing services are ideal for managing a large number of cold calls. Towards the final stages of the sales cycle, prospects will need detailed information and specifications of the product or service that is up for sale. Such a situation is best handled by bring in your in-house sales persons who have the talent and information to take the sales procedure to a successful end. It is impractical to expect a telemarketer to close a sale and a specialized sales professional to waste precious time in making cold calls.

Many functions of telemarketing services

Telesales services develop quality leads by making a large volume of introductory calls. This significantly shortens the sales cycle for the specialized sales person. A company can assemble an internal telemarketing service for the task – and use it as a training ground for budding sales agents – or outsource to a third party telemarketing service for quick ROI.

Creating a telemarketing team and have it make cold calls is not going to bring in new clients without good training to add value to the sales cycle. Robo-calls or amateurish conversation can drive away clients. You should instruct telemarketers the right way to converse with customers and appropriate business practices to steer clear of any hurdles.

Telemarketing services can help businesses by:

• Rectifying erroneous data: Customer databases are normally fraught with numerous inaccurate entries or have insufficient information. As telesales services call prospects, they can correct the data
• Appending proprietary data: Telesales services can also insert proprietary data to a prospect’s record in the database. Small but important details such as the contact details of the company’s top executives, replacement due date of equipment, etc. play an important part in timing sales calls
• Building brand awareness: The objective of telemarketing calls is two-pronged – generate leads and build brand recognition. Repeated calls (but without harassment) to customers imparts a feeling of continuity and generates confidence in the business’ commitment to the market.
• Effectively timing a sales call: By getting all the important data from prospects, telemarketing services set the stage for the sales person’s call. For example, if the prospect conveys that an equipment or part may need to be serviced in in four weeks, the sales executive can call at the right time and take the conversation towards a sale.

It is not wise for a business to invest a lot of time and in-house resources in the initial stages of the sales cycle. The greater it concentrates on the later phases, better will be the output of its sales executives. Make the best use of telemarketing services to generate sales leads and spread brand awareness.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kendra_Lee