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b'Over the past few decades, companies have invested considerable sums in building out an inside sales infrastructure. During this same period, we have also seen increases in demand for marketing automation. However, in many cases those two organizational investments have not come to fruition, and companies are asking whether they have the right investment mix to move forward as buying journey has changed completely over the past decade or so.\\nWe all know there has been a recent shift in the marketplace, a relatively new phenomenon in which buyers are going online, searching for what they\\u2019re interested in, doing research, finding possible vendors and then checking out vendors online to come up with a short list of who to call. That entire process used to be a function of the traditional sales process. An inside sales rep would call up a potential prospect\\u2014essentially a cold call\\u2014to set up an appointment designed to educate the buyer. Today, that entire buying process today is completely visible. It follows that the selling process also needs to be completely visible, especially when it comes to engaging with a potential buyer upfront during the buying cycle. This monumental shift has been happening quietly and steadily over the past decade and, as a result, telemarketing no longer works the way it used to. These days when a telemarketer calls a potential customer, the prospect hangs up on them 9 times out of 10. The remaining 10% who do accept the call are likely to get highly irritated that someone has called them during the middle of the day. This is where digital prospecting comes in.\\nDigital prospecting is all about giving the buyer choices. Once the buyer has engaged and demonstrated a specific set of interests in certain products and services, the inside sales person can reach out and schedule appropriate conversations.\\nHow can you make this happen? Here are four specific requirements companies need to fulfill in order to drive the digital prospecting process forward.\\n\\nCompanies need to have a clear content marketing strategy. A significant portion of the content marketing strategy needs to be about digital content. It is not just about your web site anymore. It is about what and how you share across multiple social channels, blogs, media and other content distributors in your industry to cast a much wider net.\\nThere has to be a decent level of investment in automation. Now, I don\\u2019t mean automation just for the sake of automation. Instead, I\\u2019m suggesting companies take a careful look at their marketing and sales workflows and analyze how those two elements overlap, how they work together and how leads are generated and handed over. That entire process needs to be mapped and automated where it makes sense.\\nThere have to be sales enablement tools that specifically provide content across the complete prospecting lifecycle. When a potential buyer engages with a company looking to buy, say, a specific technical solution, that buyer typically does not jump right into a specification sheet or a product brochure. Most likely the buyer will also go through use cases and try to figure out whether the company addresses certain core pain points before they delve into product features, details, etc. Once that discovery process has happened and the buyer has determined that there is a possible fit, then he/she will start digging deeper. This is where product demos, solution videos and other necessary elements become absolutely critical. Now, during this engagement process, if the salesperson is aware and interested and actively interacting with the buyer, then instead of being another pushy inside salesperson, that individual can evolve into a more consultative role, being present to answer questions a buyer may have but without necessarily trying to close the sale in a hurry.\\nThe sales team needs to be retrained. The first three steps are about adjusting marketing strategy, deploying process automation and making content-based sales...'