2009 Hotlist- What’s In and What’s Out in Inside Sales

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Written by Josiane Feigon

Yes and No Are you ready for adventure and originality? Our popular hot list of What's OUT and What's IN for 2009 will prepare you for a bumpy ride. As we slide into this year, the economy continues to tank, consumer confidence is at a record low, unemployment rises, and the housing market is shaky. No worries — we will survive and thrive from all of this.

Inside sales is where all the talent and brains are these days. That’s right. While field sales is busy trying to figure out how to make their quota with frozen T&E expenses, inside sales is pulling the real revenue. Be ready to get blindsided by competitors, get that log-in password to one more sales tool, and say “yes” to small deals.

What’s the best thing to do when selling in uncertain times? Get creative, get resourceful, and keep smiling!

Our Hotlist is loaded with cool ideas, as well as a splash of pop culture, to get you geared for a fantastic year.

WHAT'S OUT	WHAT'S IN
Credit cards	Savings accounts
Lucky salespeople	Smart sales warriors
Olsen Twins	Obama Sisters
Ecorazzi	Paparazzi
Multi-tasking	Mono-tasking
Smart Car	Chevrolet Volt
No-Pos	Power Buyers
Malcolm Gladwell’s theories	Nate Silver’s numbers
Mama Mia	Slumdog Millionaire
Phone order takers	Smart sales cubicle warriors
Death by PowerPoint	8-Slide Maximum rule
Connecting	Strengthening relationships
Data dumping and hoping they will buy	Educated buyers who don’t want to be sold
Upgrading XP machines to Vista	Macs in the enterprise
Long-term projects	Automating processes to save money
Long meetings	4-minute meetings
A glut of unemployed talent	Talent that went off and reinvented itself in completely unrelated fields
Being a maverick	Working together
Banks	Hole in the backyard
20% off	75% off and free shipping
Video conferencing	Telepresence
XBox	Wii
Theme parks	Old-fashioned road trips

Josiane Feigon
		About the author:
		Josiane Feigon is a pioneer, maverick and visionary in the Sales 2.0 community. As President and Founder of TeleSmart, Josiane is a 20-year veteran and one of the world’s leading experts on developing sales teams and management talent. She provides consulting, coaching, and training solutions for hundreds of Fortune 500 companies whose global Sales organizations range from 20-800 salespeople. Clients such as Agilent, Apple, Cisco, EMC, Genesys, Harte-Hanks, HP, Mercury, Microsoft, Oracle and Verisign consider her an invaluable part of their sales strategies. Visit her website at www.tele-smart.com or email her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Be sure to check out her Life in the Telebusiness Trenches blog .
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