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Note: You can download the slides from this presentation here.
This is a transcript of the talk given by Dan Tyre from HubSpot at the HubSpot User Group Meeting in March 2018 in London.
In today's fast-paced business world, the alignment between sales and marketing teams is more crucial than ever. Enter "smarketing" – a powerful concept revolutionizing how companies approach revenue generation.
As a HubSpot evangelist and frequent speaker at HubSpot User Group (HUG) events, I've had the pleasure of discussing this game-changing strategy with businesses around the globe. The excitement surrounding smarketing is palpable, and for a good reason: when sales and marketing teams work in harmony, the results can be transformative.
But what exactly is smarketing? It seamlessly integrates sales and marketing efforts to create a unified revenue team. This alignment ensures that both departments work towards common goals, share insights, and support each other throughout the customer journey.
The importance of smarketing cannot be overstated. In my experience, companies that effectively implement this strategy often see significant improvements in their performance. Whether you're ahead of your targets, right on track, or falling behind, embracing smarketing can give your business the boost it needs to finish the year strong and set the stage for future success.
This article will dive deep into smarketing, exploring its benefits, implementation strategies, and real-world examples of companies that have mastered this approach. Get ready to transform your sales and marketing teams into a cohesive, revenue-generating powerhouse!
This synergy between departments is at the heart of smarketing, transforming how companies approach their go-to-market strategies.
In my experience working with diverse groups – from marketers and salespeople to executives – I've observed that, traditionally, these teams often operate in silos. It's common to see salespeople clustered on one side of the room and marketers on the other during meetings. However, the magic happens when we break down these invisible barriers and foster collaboration.
To illustrate the power of teamwork and alignment, let me share a personal anecdote that has shaped my perspective on collaboration:
Twice a year, I volunteer with One Mission, a community development organization that builds houses for needy families across El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Mexico. Our team, comprised of volunteers from the United States and local nationals, constructs a 600-square-foot home in three days. While these simple structures lack plumbing or electricity, they provide life-changing shelter for families who previously lived under tarps or boats.
This experience has taught me valuable lessons about the importance of alignment, clear communication, and working towards a common goal – equally crucial principles in the business world. As our diverse team of volunteers unites to build a house, sales and marketing teams must come together to construct a robust revenue engine.
In the context of smarketing, this means:
By fostering this level of alignment between sales and marketing, businesses can create a powerful revenue-generating machine that drives growth and success. In the following sections, we'll explore practical strategies for implementing smarketing in your organization and unleashing its full potential.
When preparing for international presentations, I always do my homework. For instance, before coming to London, I researched British humour. The key attributes I found were:
While these elements can create a strong connection with a British audience, they might not resonate the same way with other cultures. This realization underscores the importance of adapting your communication style to your audience.
My journey in mastering cross-cultural communication hasn't been without its hiccups. I'll never forget my experience in Costa Rica, where I had a translator for the first time. Excited about my newfound "big-time" status, I attempted a joke about the "Mayan apocalypse." The response? Silence.
When I urged my translator to repeat the joke, he refused, explaining, "There are no alpacas in Costa Rica." This moment taught me a valuable lesson about the importance of cultural context in communication.
Another memorable experience occurred at the University of Ohio, where a joke met with complete silence from an audience of 400 people. Instead of moving on, I decided to wait it out. After an agonizing four minutes, one person finally laughed, triggering a chain of laughter throughout the room.
This experience reinforced two crucial lessons for effective communication:
In the business world, these experiences translate into valuable insights:
By remembering these principles, you can enhance your communication skills and build stronger relationships with colleagues, clients, and partners across cultures. Remember, effective communication is not just about what you say but also how and to whom you say it.
One of the critical elements of a solid personal brand is authenticity. I've always believed in being true to myself, quirks and all. For instance:
These quirks make me memorable and help me connect with people more personally. Being memorable can be a significant advantage in business.
Social media platforms offer powerful tools for building and maintaining your personal brand. Here's how I approach different platforms:
Consistency is key across all these platforms. Your personal brand should be recognizable whether someone encounters you on LinkedIn, Twitter, or in person at a conference. This doesn't mean you can't adapt your content to suit each platform, but your core message and personality should shine through consistently.
Remember, social media isn't just about broadcasting your message; it's about building relationships. Engage with others' content, respond to comments, and use these platforms to create genuine connections. In my experience, these digital relationships can often translate into valuable real-world opportunities.
In conclusion, personal branding in the digital age is about being authentically yourself, consistently engaging across platforms, and using social media to build meaningful relationships. Doing so can create a solid personal brand that supports your professional goals and helps you stand out in your industry.
In today's diverse workforce, understanding and appreciating different generations is crucial for business success. One generation that has been the subject of much discussion - and often misunderstanding - is the millennial generation. As someone who has worked closely with millennials and seen their impact firsthand, I'd like to share some insights that challenge common misconceptions.
There's a prevalent stereotype that millennials are lazy or unmotivated. However, my experience has been quite the opposite. To address this misconception, I've written a blog post titled "The Fallacy of the Lazy Millennials." At HubSpot, we've built much of our success on the backs of hardworking, innovative millennials who bring fresh perspectives and tech-savvy approaches.
Millennials now make up a significant portion of the workforce. While there might be jokes about them not getting up before 9:00 a.m., the reality is that many millennials are driven, ambitious, and willing to work hard for causes and companies they believe in. They value work-life balance, but that doesn't equate to laziness—instead, it often translates to increased productivity and creativity during work hours.
At HubSpot, we've embraced millennial talent and culture. Many of our key team members, including some in leadership positions, are millennials. Their contributions have been instrumental in shaping our company culture, driving innovation, and helping us stay ahead in the fast-paced world of digital marketing.
For businesses looking to thrive in the coming years, understanding and effectively working with millennials is not just beneficial - it's essential. Here's why:
In conclusion, rather than buying into stereotypes about millennials, successful businesses should seek to understand, appreciate, and leverage this generation's unique strengths. By doing so, they can create a more dynamic, innovative, and successful organization that's well-positioned for the future.
Celebrating Milestones: The Power of Unique Company Traditions
Celebrating milestones is crucial for maintaining team morale and reinforcing company culture. At HubSpot, we've developed some unique traditions that mark our achievements and contribute to our brand identity. One such tradition involves an orange ping-pong ball—a seemingly ordinary object with special significance for our team.
Back in 2015, when HubSpot reached the significant milestone of 15,000 customers, we decided to commemorate the event in a memorable way. Instead of a conventional celebration, we opted for something a bit more... bouncy. We took 15,000 orange ping-pong balls—one for each customer—and released them from the fourth floor of our Cambridge headquarters.
Picture the scene: 15,000 bright orange ping pong balls cascading down, filling the air with a visual representation of our growth and success. It was a moment of joy, celebration, and perhaps a touch of controlled chaos that perfectly encapsulated the HubSpot spirit.
What started as a one-time celebration has evolved into an ongoing tradition. I picked up a handful of these ping pong balls and now carry them to public presentations, handing them out as small tokens of the HubSpot story. Each ball serves as a tangible reminder of our growth, our customers, and the innovative spirit that drives our company.
This ping pong ball tradition might seem quirky, but it serves several important purposes:
While not every company needs to rain ping-pong balls from the ceiling, creating unique traditions that reflect your company's personality and values is valuable. These could be tied to milestones, annual events, or ongoing practices that make your workplace unique.
When developing your company traditions, consider the following:
Never underestimate the power of a unique company tradition. Whether it's orange ping pong balls or something entirely different, these customs can become a core part of your company culture, helping to unite your team and distinguish your brand in a crowded marketplace.
As HubSpot's "T-shirt and Jeans Guy," I've learned a thing or two about personal branding:
HubSpot's orange ping pong balls aren't just for show:
Pro Tip: Choose swag that's useful, unique, and unmistakably you.
HubSpot's growth secret? Our amazing partners:
Building your partner network? Remember:
The HubSpot Formula: Consistent personal branding + memorable swag + strong partnerships = Unstoppable growth.
Your move: How will you make your brand stick?
From Cold Calls to HubSpot: A Journey of Growth and Purpose
Hey there! I'm Dan Tyre, HubSpot employee #6 and proud cold caller (shhh, don't tell anyone!). Let me take you on a whirlwind tour of my entrepreneurial rollercoaster:
Then came the big question: Join HubSpot in Cambridge. Cue the negotiation with my wife:
Me: "4 weeks a month in Boston?" Wife: "No." Me: "3 weeks?" Wife: "No." Me: "2 weeks?" Wife: "No." Me: "1 week?" Wife: "Maybe."
And that's how I became a cross-country HubSpotter for 11 years!
Today, I wear many hats:
But here's the real kicker—my guiding principle comes from my brilliant son: "Do the most good for the universe." That's why I love HubSpot and our mission to help people.
The Big Takeaway: Align your sales and marketing, sure. More importantly, you should align your business with a purpose bigger than yourself. That's where the magic happens!
Buckle up, folks! We're diving into the wild world of modern buyer behaviour. Why? Because it's turned the sales game on its head, and savvy marketers like you are ahead of the curve.
What's on the Menu Today:
Why This Matters:
Get ready to revolutionize your approach and supercharge your results. Let's dive in!
Let's face it: marketers and salespeople often speak different languages. But in today's business landscape, it's time for these two tribes to join forces. Welcome to the world of "Smarketing"!
The Classic Divide:
Marketers:
Salespeople:
Why Alignment Matters:
Enter "Smarketing": Smarketing is the secret sauce that blends the best sales and marketing. It's about:
How to Achieve Smarketing Nirvana:
Remember: In the age of informed buyers, the line between marketing and sales blurs. Embrace the change, and watch your business soar!
So when is the future? Now, right? People used to say 2020. They used to say 2025. Now, why? Does anybody have good examples of why we live in the future?
Does anybody remember the suit bag? What's a suit bag? Ian, can you pick up my suit bag right there? Does anybody in the audience have a suit bag? They were all over Britain in 1975. Very good. I like that. Do you have one of you? Did you ever have one? You must have had one.
So, does anybody in the audience still have a suit bag? Do the rest of you guys use rolly luggage? Like, roll your luggage behind you? You're so old-fashioned.
There's something called travel robotics. Today, you can have your luggage follow you around like a dog. You load it on an iPhone App, and you walk through the airport. My buddy Sean has it, and you walk to the airport, and his luggage follows him. But I don't know how he gets through an elevator.
Sitting in the airport, I'm like: 'All right, there's no place to plug in'. You know, everybody's cavemen around the plugs all over the airport. You can't find a plug.
And he goes: 'Just plug in'. I'm like: 'There's no plugs'. He goes: 'No, no, no, plug into my luggage'. And he pulls back the thing, and there are three USB ports, and he's got a power supply in his luggage that follows him around like a dog.
That's the future. I'm talking to my nephew and all his Twitter goes: '@coffee, @coffee, @coffee'. I'm like: 'What's that?' And he's like: 'Oh, that's how I always start my coffee pot in the morning'. From the bed, he tweets his coffee pot, so he starts calling the tweet a pot, right? Check it out. We live in the future.
Picture this: It's 2007, and I'm sharing drinks with our first CMO, Mike Volpi. Little did we know, we were about to coin a term that would revolutionize business: Smarketing.
The Inbound Epiphany: After months of cold calling (yes, I admit it), we started getting inbound leads. And let me tell you, it was like striking gold. Suddenly, everything changed.
The Great Content Debate: Me: "We need more of these magical inbound leads!" Mike: "It's not that simple. We need content." Me: "So let's create it!" Mike: "We need professional writers." Me: "Let's hire them!" Mike: "I don't have the headcount." Me: "Take one of my sales headcounts."
Cue dramatic pause
Mike: "You'd give up a sales position for marketing?" Me: "It's not sales or marketing anymore. It's Smarketing!"
Why Smarketing Matters:
The Bottom Line: In today's world, sales and marketing aren't just aligning – they're blending. Embrace Smarketing, and watch your business soar. Resist, and risk being left behind.
Remember: Growth in the digital age demands Smarketing. Are you ready to mix things up?
Spoiler alert: It's more complicated than ever to run a business in 2018. But why? Let's dive into the three big challenges facing today's entrepreneurs and marketers.
Pro Tip: Cut through the noise with laser-focused messaging and clear value propositions.
Pro Tip: Hook them fast and deliver value instantly. You've got 8 seconds – make them count!
Pro Tip: Exceed expectations at every touchpoint. Consistency is key!
The Competition Conundrum: More players are entering the game every day. How to stand out? Bring gifts! (Seriously, salespeople love swag.)
The Bottom Line: Running a business in 2018 is like playing 4D chess while juggling flaming torches. But fear not! Understanding these challenges allows you to adapt your strategy and thrive in this brave new world.
Remember: The future is now. Are you ready to level up?
🚀 Mind-Blowing Stat Alert 🚀 2016: 6-8 competitors 2018: 20 competitors on average
Yep, you read that right. In just two years, the competitive landscape has tripled! But why?
The Startup Revolution:
What This Means for You:
Pro Tip: Arm yourself with data! Check out HubSpot Research (shoutout to Mimi Ang, who runs it) for a goldmine of statistics to inform your strategy.
The Bottom Line: More competitors mean more noise and more opportunities. The businesses that thrive will genuinely understand their customers and deliver exceptional value.
Are you ready to rise above the crowd?
1993:
2024:
The Great Equalizer: Technology has democratized entrepreneurship and got an idea? Congrats, you're in business!
But Here's the Plot Twist: Starting a business is easy. Scaling? That's where things get interesting.
The Real Challenge: Scaling Up
What's a Growth Strategy? It's your game plan for navigating the chaos of rapid expansion. Think of it as your business GPS in the startup jungle.
Key Components:
Remember: In today's world, everyone can start. The winners are those who can scale.
Are you ready to level up from startup to scale-up?
Let's talk about the elephant in the room: cold calling. Spoiler alert - it's time to hang up on this outdated practice.
Inbound Marketing: "A human approach of turning total strangers into table-pounding advocates."
Cold Calling (AKA Outbound):
The Cold, Hard Truth About Cold Calling:
Fun Fact: Remember the Yellow Pages? Neither does anyone else.
Why Cold Calling Persists:
The Bottom Line: In a world with choices, why choose a method that wastes 98% of your resources? It's time to warm up to more effective strategies.
Up Next: We'll explore how your sales team can engage prospects professionally, respectfully, and effectively - without the cold call chill.
Remember: Just because you can cold call doesn't mean you should. Your time (and sanity) are worth more than that!
Welcome to 2018, where cold calling is out and "shelping" is in. Let's break down the Inbound revolution that's changing the game.
Cold Calling: A Chilly Reception
The Inbound Mindset: "Treat people like human beings"
Why Inbound Works:
Introducing: Shelping Selling + Helping = Shelping
The Inbound Revolution in Action:
Remember: In a world of infinite options, how you sell is as important as what you sell. Choose shelping, and watch your business grow!
Are you ready to join the Inbound revolution?
The Classic Divide:
Sales:
Marketing:
The Budget Battle:
The Blame Game:
The ROI Inquisition: Scene: Annual board meeting Marketing VP: "Well, you see, it's complicated..." Board: "So, can we cut your budget by 20%?"
The Vicious Cycle:
The Big Question: Is this adversarial relationship the best way to drive business growth?
Stay tuned as we explore how modern businesses are breaking this dysfunctional cycle and embracing a new era of collaboration!
Once upon a time, marketing was the ugly stepchild of the business world. But times, they are a-changin'! Let's explore how marketing went from money pit to money maker.
The Old School Playbook:
The Outdated Sales Dance:
Why This Doesn't Work Anymore:
Enter: Smarketing Sales + Marketing = Smarketing
The New World Order:
Why Smarketing Wins:
The Bottom Line: Marketing isn't an expense – it's an investment in growth. Combined with sales through a marketing approach, it's your secret weapon for success in 2018 and beyond.
Pop quiz: Who's the most trusted professional in EMEA? Spoiler alert: It's not salespeople or marketers. (Sorry, folks!)
The Trust Leaderboard:
Why the Trust Deficit?
The Hard Truth: In 2018, no trust = no sale
The Smarketing Solution: It's time for a trust transfusion! Enter the era of integrated sales and marketing:
The Bottom Line: Trust is the new currency in business. By aligning sales and marketing (hello, smarketing!), you can rebuild that trust and create a well-oiled revenue machine.
Remember: In the trust economy, authenticity and value win every time. Are you ready to become a trusted advisor instead of just another salesperson?
We actually have something called the smarketing meeting: Sales and Marketing alignment is a big thing at HubSpot. And then Marketing is building email templates for reps. So that we can study that information so that we can provide it.
Welcome to the age of personalization, where one-size-fits-all is so last century. Let's dive into the brave new world of buyer personas and smarketing!
The Great Shift: Demographics → Personas
Why Personas Matter: "Salespeople need to understand the buyer personas."
The New Sales Playbook:
The Smarketing Formula for Success: Marketing + Sales = Growth
The Proof is in the Pudding: "Companies that align Marketing and Sales grow 20% more quickly"
Why Smarketing Wins:
The Hard Truth: "Every company wants to grow, but not everybody wants to change" - Todd Hockenberry
Remember: In 2024, growth belongs to those who adapt. Are you ready to evolve?
Remember 2004? When buying meant flipping through magazines and chatting with pushy salespeople? Those days are long gone, folks. Welcome to the Inbound Era!
The Great Shift:
The New Buying Journey:
The Mind-Blowing Stat: "93% of B2B and B2C searches start online or on social media" (We're still wondering what the other 7% are doing. Carrier pigeons, perhaps?)
Why This Matters:
The Self-Service Dream: Q: When do buyers want to talk to salespeople? A: Preferably never. (Sorry, sales folks!)
The New Role of Sales:
The Bottom Line: The internet changed everything. The inbound methodology is about adapting to this new reality, meeting buyers where they are, and providing value at every stage.
Your mission: Embrace the Inbound way, or risk becoming as outdated as a 2004 Yellow Pages ad.
We're going to talk a little bit about that today, but the buyer has all the control: because you have all the information, because all you have access to all this information. The statistics say that:
In some industries, it's 99%, in some industries it's all the way to the end, right? They never want to talk to a salesperson. The statistics say that 57%... you say no? No question, no question. So in my book, I talk about buying a half a million dollar laser.
And I talk about the president of this company who walks up to the president of the laser company and says: 'I want an MX 1473'.
And he goes: 'How do you know about that?'
And he goes: 'I did my research online'.
He goes: 'I have three options. You're either going to sell it to me at this price'.
This a half a million dollar laser. This is the president of the company and they haven't announced the product yet.
And he says: 'You're going to sell to me at this price or I'm going to go to the opposition'. Welcome to 2018.
And so salespeople are still important. Salespeople just morph. In the old days we did 95% of the stuff, now we do 20-25%. It's still important. You still establish that relationship. It's still crucial.
Most people want to do 65% to 85% of the research online just like Ian. Because they want to be in control, they want to find everything, and then they want specific things from their salespeople. And I'm going to tell you the specific things that they want.
Some people say: 'Well, that's not really the way it is in my industry'.
And there are some differences. But in most cases, if you don't help leads at the beginning, you're not going to build trust with that customer. And if you don't build trust with that customer, you don't have a shot. So in the old days, you hired a vice president of Sales to go out and charge the hill, today you hire one of the marketing people in this room.
It's a great time to be a marketer, because if you can bring the leads to the yard, that provides a huge competitive advantage. If you can get people, first of all, define you, that's the attract. And to do that is different in 2018.
Talked to Brian, HubSpot partner - stand up again. Or one of these people about pillar pages and topic clusters. How many people are familiar with pillar pages and topic clusters? I'm going to say 30%.
This 'attract' is critically important because... I do a lot of board level work. I talk with CEOs, I talk with board level people.
I go: 'Do you know where you stand against your competitors online?'.
And they're like: 'No'.
I go: 'I do. You want to know where you stand?'
And then like: 'Yes'.
And in the HubSpot product, the marketing product, there's something called the competitors tab - and Brian can show you how to put in your competitors, they're always interested in seeing that and their Alexa rank, how they're doing on social media, their marketing grade.
And then I do: 'Do you know where you stand on certain keyword?'
And they're like: 'No'.
I go: 'Would you like to know that?'
And they're like: 'Yes'. And there's a fiduciary responsibility to get found online.
When I'm trying to create a sense of urgency, I will tell a board of directors:
'What happens if people can't find your website and they find somebody else's?'
They're like: 'We don't get the leads".
I go: 'But what happens?'
They're like: 'But we don't get the leads'.
I go: 'Where do the leads go?'
And what am I looking for? What's the answer to that question? Where do the leads go if they don't find you?
Your direct competitor, right? Just let that thinking for a while.
All the CEOs that are new to inbound or like: 'Oh damn, that's not good'. Right? I never met somebody who said: 'No, I don't want to get found for people who are typing in something into Google search that are looking for my stuff'.
There's a fiduciary responsibility. This is 2018, right? We've been doing this for 11 years. You can say: 'That's not the way it works in my industry', but number 1, you'd likely be wrong, and number 2, I can prove it right now.
Salespeople are still critically important, right? But I got all the data. I got all the facts. I got 45,000 bank customers? I have millions of people are practising Inbound.
This is 2018. You don't jump on this bandwagon and if you guys can't convince your senior team to jump on this band, you got a problem!
So the first thing you got to do is attract. The way? How many bloggers are here? I'm gonna say half. Okay. Blogging is super easy. For the salespeople in the audience, blogging is just talking, right? If you can talk, you can blog.
Marketers, if you want your salespeople create content, don't ask them to blog, ask them to talk. They liked to talk? And just sit there when recorded on your phone or just write stuff down and everything that they say redundantly to everybody, that talk is a great blog article.
And if you need help and learning how to write blogs - I think in blog articles now, right after 10 years of HubSpot, I think in blog articles, there's a great article called 74 Blog Article Titles, just write that down, or google that, or just send Brian or myself an email and we'll send you the blog article and it just start with the title:
And like, once you have the title that it's easy.
Once you attract people to your website, then those conversions become critically important.
Anybody knows the average conversion of somebody the first time they come to your website? Guess. Who wants Terrick's Ping Pong Ball? Yes ma'am. 2%? Give the ping pong ball back to that lady. That is awesome.
What's your name? Annette Johnson? You are the ping pong ball champion. They ever must be a UK record for that, that is impressive. 2%. So 98% of the people come to your website they need to understand what you do. The most important thing on your website is not a 'Contact us' page.
How many people have a 'Contact us' page on your website? All right? You're all doing it wrong. That's old school.
You need to have a call to action that say 'A 25 or a 20 or a 15 minutes consultation with whatever expertise that you do'. That's the way we do it.
And you have to figure out - last time, HubSpot partner stand up again, last time HubSpot partners, come on, come on. These guys will tell you all about calls to action. Thank you very much. They'll tell you how to optimise call to action.
The more people drop their contact information on your website, the more you're building trust. You're a website has got to be your best salesperson. The good news is you don't have to pay them, you have to feed them, they never sleep. Your website has to be the central opportunity for those conversions. Once people drop their contact information, you have an opportunity to nurture the relationship. This says 'Close', but I usually refer to it as 'Starting the relationship'.
And you only start relationships with people you can do a good job.
In the old days, if I screwed up, if I sold somebody that wasn't like a good fit, you'd like call my boss and you complained to him and then he'd call me into the office and he'd say: 'Dan, don't do that again'. And I'm like: 'Oh yeah, I shouldn't have done that'. Walk out and do it again. That's what we did in 1970s-1980s.
Today, what happens if you're an unsatisfied customer, what do you do?
You're on social media. You're like: 'I'm never doing business with that guy again, both personally as well as professionally'. You see in the United States there are all the cell phone companies and all the cable companies, where people are complaining because they're on hold all the time and they're like tie you up for all day.
You can't do that anymore. There's a significant impact. The difference in 2018 to 2016 is the customer experience and you've got to move toward. So you're looking for strangers move to visitors, move to leads, move to customers, move to promoters, that is the Inbound philosophy.
We can prove it. This is the way people want to buy. They want you, number 1, to know who you are. Number 2, they want you to know where you are in the sales process. If you've been to the website 37 times, the salesperson needs to know that, the salesperson needs to know what you like and what you don't like, which emails you're opening and what you're not opening, and this is shared between sales and marketing.
That is the smarketing kind of thing.
The reason I spend a little bit of time on this is this should be in your next marketing or sales presentation. This is the future and the future is now. If you're not practising Inbound, you run the risk of alienating your customers.
I was just in New York, a 500-person presentation, it was a grow with HubSpot kind of thing, and they're like: 'No, no, no, no, no. We don't want to help our customers'.
And I'm like: 'What? I'm the guy who wants to do the most good for the universe'. I go: 'You don't want to help your customers'.
They go: 'No, that's not the way we do it. We want to sell to our customers'. I'm like: 'All right, well, you got two choices:
He goes:'No, that's not what we want to do'. And this is like a kind of interactive presentation, so I got no choice, I didn't want to embarrass them, but I go:
'Audience, how do you feel about that?'
'Booooh' Like 104 guys.
He was like standing up arguing and then he was like sitting down very slowly.
I'm going: 'They're actually doing you a favour, because this is the way everybody feels. This is the way it work's.
I'm just getting the meat of the slides. I'm going to spend five minutes on this.
The first is you have to set goals. The second is you have to have a service level agreement, and the third is you have to negotiate this hand-off.
So the goal setting is: 'What do we want?'. And this a shared kind of thing.
I was talking to Emily, I'm going: 'Emily, do you know the goal of your company? '
And she says: 'Oh, I think so'.
But you need to know the quota of your vice president of Sales or chief revenue officer, and then you need to know the individual quota of all your Salespeople. That is super important.
Tells you how much do we want
How many people in the audience have an SLA? Only about 10%.
This is super important because it will be new to salespeople. Salespeople are usually a little grumpy. Have you noticed that? Salespeople a little grumpy.
It's because they got a target on their back.
If they don't work, if they don't produce, they're fired. So that gives you a little bit of a thick skin, but it also gives you kind of an attitude where you're going to run like crazy, so you want continue your employment.
And the third thing that you got to figure out as the lead quality and hand-off, how many people are familiar with MQLs? About half.
It's Marketing Qualified Leads.
Everybody know SQLs?
Sales Qualified Leads.
Anybody knows PQLs? Oh, okay lady, you get to keep your ping pong ball.
It's Product Qualified Leads, right? Very, very good. And let's go walk through this.
The first is... anybody's familiar with an M spot? An M spot is a HubSpot thing, Brian sees it all the time. We wrote about it in the book 'The Inbound Organization'.
An M spot is one page. I'm going to strongly recommend that you build an M spot for either your company (if you're the CEO or for your Sales organisation (if you're in Sales) or for your marketing department.
We start with a company M spot, and moved down to divisional M spots, each one page that shows the mission, the strategy, the plays, the targets, and the omissions. And there's a whole chapter on this in the book about this.
As an example, 'build the fastest growing athletic sock company in North America' right there, that's the mission, that's what we want to do. Everybody knows Simon Sinek's 'Finding your why'?
We talk about the importance of understanding what your company mission is in 2018. It's very important to define why you're doing it. It's not good enough to say, well, our mission is to grow. You want to be very, very specific of what your mission is so you can recruit the right people.
Your strategy is who you're going to service, and how. Your plays are the specific things that you're going to do to get there.
Your targets are how you're going to be measured and your omissions are the things that you've considered that you're not going to do.
The beauty of this is this on one page, the beauty of this is everybody in your organisation should see this and understand, the beauty of this as you can utilise it for Sales and Marketing so there's good interaction between the two, and salespeople and sales executives should know and understand what marketing's goals are and vice versa.
That is leads MQLs, SQLs. Everybody wants the more higher quality leads, that takes years to build. The HubSpot marketing agencies can show you how to do it.
But what all the vice president of sales or vice president of sales want are people who are going to buy now. And you can get those, but it's only going to be 1% or 2%, like the lady in the back said, maybe 3% if you're really, really good.
And it takes a little bit of time to do it, the bottom part of this is how sales works the demand, and in 2018 salespeople have to call a prospect 4 times. They have to email somebody 4 times. And the third email should be a video email.
How many people are using video email? A handful. Okay. What do you use, Soapbox or Vidyard or Loom? So, all of those companies have free products that you can use.
Anybody ever receive a video email? That's it. Yes. So all of those three - Vidyard, Loom and Soapbox - all plays right in the email.
If you have to click a link and it goes to someplace else, you won't do it. Because you don't know if it's coming from Russia or China or wherever. Yes, I know, I know. If you see a little picture and you see Clwyd in the picture right now of a sudden he's smiling, he sold in the little stuffed elephant or something like that and he likes looks human. That is like right out of Harry Potter?
It's amazing? And Pluto is going to say: 'Now I've got 90 seconds. You can't take more than 90 seconds. And what you want to do is you're trying to be human. When you're trying to get that across that much better than a cold call, right? It's like 30 times better than a cold call.
Based on the HubSpot research. My bold prediction is you'll be getting three of them a day starting in October, because everybody's going to jump on this bandwagon, it's just too effective not to be there.
But the thing for salespeople is that there's lots of agencies here in London who would create tons of leads, but the salespeople would screw it up. The reason why you have to have the smarketing alignment is if Marketing does all this great stuff to nurture the leads, be human, provide this content through the top of the funnel stuff and then a salesperson calls up and like ruins it. Boom. All that money gone away.
So the salespeople then have to professionally pursue. So when a salesperson has to do is have to call four times, email four times, the third email is a video email: you'll never get me on the first email.
I am backed up 600 emails and it's only 10:30 in the morning. If you send the second email and it says second email, I'm like: 'Oh yeah, that lady sent me an email'.
If it says: 'Ask for my voicemail', I go: 'Yeah. Yeah. That's the lady you left me the voicemail'. I rarely returned my voicemails.
I'll look at them like maybe an October. They're all there, right? I got 156 of them. I'll try to get to them. I got the best intentions, but it's just the way it works.
And your salespeople have to align with that SLA.
What we see is sometimes people will call once/email once and say: 'Oh, the leads suck'. That's not good. You have to professionally pursue in a way that it works.
Those creation of the OPPs, and then you need to study all of the process, in some industries sometimes you have to call six times, sometimes you have to email six times, but the HubSpot research study says that after 4 times and 4 emails - by the way, the fourth email is 'should I stay or should I go?'.
So you have to calculate your Service Level Agreement. To do that, you figure out what your total goal is. Then, how much new revenue you want to create?
And so you say:
Now, what I'm saying is marketing now has a quota. You're going to go to your vice president of sales and say: 'I want some of your quotas'. The guy who's gonna look at you, he's going to say:' Why?'
'I'm going to help you hit your quota'
How much do you want me to take?
Because I will turn SQLs into this revenue and in exchange this is what I need.
So for an example, if you want a million dollars in annual revenue, you want 40% of that revenue from MQLs; the average deal size is a thousand, the average lead to customer close is 10%.
Now you have the algorithm, now you have the information that you need to go ahead and do it. And then final piece in this segment, we'll come back after Ian's presentation, is the hand-off.
In HubSpot world we don't give leads to Brian until they've come back to the website at least three times.
Some people, because they need more leads, will give their salespeople the leads the first time they come to the website and we're okay with that. You just have to be very cordial when you engage, when you pick up the phone, you say: 'This is Dan from HubSpot' or 'This is Pete from Hubspot', or 'This is Clwyd from Whitehat'.
You tell your salespeople if they're calling, I want them to stand up, I want them to smile. I want them to be friendly. I want them to be human. And then they're going to ask 2 important questions.
They're going to ask, can you do that in the UK? Somebody told me you can't do that. I don't know. Clwyd, what do you think? It depends. All right, you guys... Victoria gave me the frown, so I'm thinking maybe that's a little bit aggressive for this audience.
Remember they've come to the website and converting. Is that okay within your... Okay. Everybody's agree with that, so maybe skip the first question and go: 'What were you looking for help with?' Now that's transformation. That is a very human thing. Rarely will people decline that out. You're just following up professionally.
Anybody know how quickly you have to follow up? 10 minutes? What's your name? Ellen. Very good. It's actually 5 minutes to if you don't follow up with them, 5 minutes, the percentage of close decreases by 90%.
That's in the state of Inbound, 2017. It's a Kellogg study. And it is amazing. That's why if you don't have lead notifications, which we'll talk about in the second part, you will never sell anything. That hand-off is important. We talk about 2 things.
Number 1 is fit, number 2 is intent. Fit is what page they go to. So if you don't know which page people go to, you don't know if he/her is a kind of a good fit customer. And intent is what they mean by that page.
At HubSpot, we grade all of our leads and Brian knows if this is a highly ready to leave or a low ready to leave. For Sales and Marketing alignment, the more information you give to a salesperson, the better.
If you're using the growth stack, our free CRM software will tell salespeople which leads to call first. That is a huge hairball for most folks, because they're so disorganised, they don't know what the priority they should call and the HubSpot software will do that for them.
So the thing is to measure the funnel and set expectations about who works and what part.
What you want to do is avoid overlap in the communication, you want to be very clear in the hand-off, when Marketing owns it and when Sales owns it. When Marketing sends an email for Brian Sexton, it comes from Brian Sexton, even it has his on picture on it, it is great, you will not know that is not Brian Sexton.
If you're doing it on a high level, even when you cycle into the website you'll see a chat-bot and you'll see Brian Sexton's face on, and if Brian face converts a higher percentage that a female face or something like that, then you will use Brian more often.
And if we know the IP address and we know you are covered by a territory that Brian covers, boom! We'll provide the human interaction in that chat-bot. Was that too quick? Was that good? Scale 1 to 10, how did I do? I only did half of my presentation. The jokes on the second half are much much better.
I did say they were going to be funny jokes and the second part. You guys ready for some more British humour? No, I can go through these slides.
How about this one? I don't want to get technical or anything, but according to chemistry, alcohol is a solution. Alcohol, because no great story started something with someone eating a salad.
About that one. Actually there's a funny story with this one. There's a funny story with everyone. I only drank in five foreign countries: I don't drink in United States, I don't drink in the UK. I only drink in five foreign countries. It's a long story. The official sunblock of Ireland. Where's Bryan Sexton? Anybody yet? Brian? I know, I know. Is that funny? Alright. And here's some Clwyd humour for the mathematicians in our thing. I know. I know, I know. Alright.
I mentioned I'm a blogger. In 2015 I wrote this blog article, Always Be Closing Is Dead. How to Always Be Helping in 2015. I sold for HubSpot 2 times, first time for 12 months when I first started, second time in 2015. And when I went back into the funnel to directly sign up a customer, I realised there was a huge change in the early days, right?
Sales people, we're in control in 2015. It was very clear that the customer was in control and what I wanted to do is monitor my sales process and improve my sales process. So he's very evident that I would give control to the salespeople. So I would call them up. I would track people down for calls, for emails. We didn't have video email back then, but I would professionally pursue them.
I would pick up the phone, I'd say: 'This is Dan from HubSpot', maybe like: 'What? Who?' Because I speak a little quickly and I'd laugh like cackle: 'Ahahah... this is Dan from HubSpot'. And they would say: 'Oh, HubSpot'.
About half people would understand, half people say: 'Who? what?', and I'd say: 'How are you doing today?' And they'd be: 'Okay, I'm doing okay'. And then I would say: 'What were you looking for help with?' And this whole process of helping people to earn their trust was a very much in the mainstream and is exactly what works today.
A couple of the comments in the break, some people have difficulties explaining to your senior management that this is the way to go. How many people are in that boat? So that's the reason I wrote the book. The Inbound organisation helps you understand how to convince your senior managers that this is the future.
Everybody wants to grow. Not Everybody wants to change.
I tell CEO's of organisations, if you have more than 10 people in your sales organisation, you go back this afternoon, you can wait till tomorrow if you'd like. You take the 2 least performing reps, you fire them, you take that money, you can give them to marketing. Because if you're not producing content, if you are not optimising your website to bring the leads to the yard, there's no way.
The greatest salesperson in the world cannot overcome that disadvantage. I tell marketers, if you're not practising Inbound Marketing and your senior management doesn't want to, you ask them 2 things. Ellen and I were talking about this.
It takes time for them to understand that Inbound is a philosophy. To practice Inbound, you need to be Inbound, and they have to understand that's a option of helping people as a competitive advantage.
Who was telling me about their company? It was Taisy, Taisy was saying: 'No, they want to do what they've done for the last 30 years and they can. That's their prerogative as senior managers'. The problem with that is that it doesn't give you any advantage.
And what everybody in this room is obsessively looking for is either a competitive advantage or what I find is an unfair advantage. Everybody wants an unfair advantage. Inbound to a certain extent provides that.
At the very last you'll be on the short list when they make a customer selection. I tell marketers, if your senior managers aren't getting it, quit and go find somebody who is practising Inbound because this is the future.
The reason why it's a great time to be a marketer today - or a marketing agency - is because marketing is now scalable.
You guys know that it's hard to find developers in the UK, right? And developers have these escalating salaries because they write the code once you use it, multiple times.
Today, a good piece of content is just like code right? This blog article is driven over 2,000 HubSpot customers. It's one of the top 70 blog articles on all of the HubSpot blog. And it says: 'Always be helping in 2015'. If you see today, it was updated to 2016, 2017 to that, you'll see it for the next 18 years. Because it still applies. I tell salespeople: 'If you're not getting Inbound, leads quit'.
Because the calling like saying the same thing 100 times a day, it doesn't work in 2018. We have the statistics. If you get Inbound leads, now it's completely different.
Now you're talking to people who are saying: 'Oh yeah, I remember I downloaded that piece of information that's very, very important'. And this is the basis for the marketing approach. It's no longer up to us.
The marketplace has spoken and unless people are going to go back and not use social media or search as the front part, as actually the front 65% to 85% of their sales process, then you have to lean into this.
One other thing in keeping with my vision of trying to do the most good for the universe. Sometimes I'll go talk with your senior management team. I have no problem picking up the phone and doing a Zoom meeting - everybody use Zoom in the audience? Yep. Everybody likes Zoom. Zoom is great. Great audio, great video. They can see me, they can see the gray hair. If I have to put on a tie, just coach me and I'm happy to come like dress like them and explaining over the last 40 years. There's a huge difference in the last 10.
What do you think is the percentage of people ? I'll throw out a t-shirt on this, so concentrate. The percentage of people who are practising Inbound marketing in the UK? 2%. Anybody else? Anybody else? This is like the price is right? You guys have the prices right here? It's up to you, but you can't go over. All right. Anybody else?
Hold on a second, I'm confused... Who said 10%? Alright, give that gentleman a t-shirt. It's actually 12%. They're not all using HubSpot.
It's not everybody who's using HubSpot. But the whole idea now moving forward is what we call the code funnel. So when I get to the free gifts, I'm giving you all free stuff that you can bring back to your sales organisation, that will distinctly and effectively increase their productivity.
All right, so the 3 things we talked about in the first part of the presentation is goal setting, SLA and Lead Quality and hand-off.
Goal setting is important because when you leave this room, I want you to go back to your senior managers, I want you to say: 'What is our goal for generating revenue in 2018?'
Or if we're just finished with the year in the new year, you want to understand where you're going to finish that. You want to understand if you're up down or flat. And then you want to know the goal for next year Everybody should have a goal.
If they don't have a goal, then you create one. And that goal is a revenue goal and it's also a percentage increase goal.
Then you backtrack to understand how many net new customers you need.
We call that client engagement. In today's world, all businesses are at risk. Does everybody have good fit customers that they have great relationships with their love? Yeah. Everybody has those.
That is your key competitive advantage against the best transactional companies in the world. The Walmarts, the Amazons, those guys are awesome at transactional kind of stuff.
What smaller businesses are really good at understanding that people, that human kind of stuff, that Inbound kind of stuff, your competitive advantages, creating these personal relationships. So that people will do business with you even you're a little bit more expensive if you can do that, that human type of focus.
Just think if you have three of those great relationships, what would happen if you add 15? That means you can fire some of the marginal customers. That means you can lean into those customers. And so we were talking a little bit with Isabel about how you approach this. With the goal setting, what you want to do is you want to pick a particular niche. So this is very hard for many entrepreneurs.
You guys ever heard that? I know. It's a good one, isn't it? I like that.
I know there is a difference in the last two years. It used to be you could sell to everybody. In the first 30 years we sold to everybody, because you could sell to everyone.
In 2018 you can't, unless you're targeted a very specific demographic and persona, right? If you're selling to Clwyd and you want to sell to marketing agencies in London with at least five employees that are focused on life science, that want to grow 50% a year.
When you say that to Clwyd, all of a sudden Clwyd is thinking in his frontal lobes: 'Yeah, that's me' in his brain he's gone: 'Oh my goodness, this is a person who understands who I am!'. And so it's not about you. It's about understanding that niche and that exasperation customer that I had in slide 2 or 3, right to focus on that very small niche.
If you can dominate that niche with a stronger market share, it's easier for you to build that industry knowledge, it's easier for you to share that. It's easier for you to have the common vocabulary.
So the goal setting has to be very, very specific on the type of companies that you have. In the sales process we call that identify and connect. There are 2 parts to the prospect and we used to call a prospect. The first is identify the right good fit customers, and the second is connect with them effective. So when you do your goal setting, you're going to understand specifically the type of customers you're going to bring on.
And then the SLA. Once again, a SLA is both in Marketing and Sales.
Your marketing folks have to deliver a certain number of leads, a certain number of MQLS, a certain number of SQLS. If you don't know what that is, you start with the number of the revenue, they often increased back into the number of customers, and then you segment.
Typically your SQLs are going to be about 2% of the total lead generation. Your MQLs are going to be 8% to 12 percent and everything else is going to be elite.
And you're responsible for delivering that, either on a monthly and a quarterly basis, and you're judged with dashboards every single day.
You can do it in the HubSpot CRM, you can do it in Salesforce, you can do it in Zoho, just set up the dashboards so you understand where you are against your lead goal.
Salespeople definitely experienced and having a quota. They all understand that they have to hit their quota. They're less excited about calling a lead four times because they'll say what you said: 'I've already called that lead'.
Sometimes they don't know what to say or they're not having the right approach. So when I call somebody and they're saying: 'I'm just calling for educational information, I downloaded the eBook but I haven't read it yet. I'm just early in the process'.
I go: 'Great. My name is Dan, I'm here to help'.
And when you're ready to move to the next step, I'm ready to be there. You have complete control. That freaks them out. They're like: 'What do you mean I have complete control?' I go: 'I am interested in only helping you when you're ready to help, I want to rise like a genie from the keyboard. Exactly when you're ready to go. And I don't want to bother you other than that because you're busy with life'.
So to do that you need a little cooperation, and the cooperation... what you're going to bring to the Sales organisation is a couple of things. First of all, everybody needs what we call lead intelligence.
Anybody know lead intelligence in the audience? Okay, very good. What's lead intelligence? That's very good. That's their buyer persona. We drill that all the way down to the individual, so I need to know is it Tanya? Wow. Yeah, I remember the Arkansas thing. I don't know how I got Tanya in my brain, but Adrian, very good.
You have to bring that down to the individual person. I need to know that you're from Arkansas and have been in London for 15 years. I need to know that you've come back to the website five times. You're a nice person and you might not be overt, but if I know you've come back to the website 47 times, looked at these things, avoided these things, open these emails, watch this video, but just for the first 30 seconds, now I'm empowered.
I can say: 'Adrian, I see that you opened this email. I see you ignore this email. It seems like you're at this part of the process and I can immediately tailor my approach to exactly what you want'.
That is huge because that's exactly what you want. If I don't have that right, I'm at a huge disadvantage. Only 2% of people in UK have that lead intelligence on all the leads.
If you're using the HubSpot free CRM in the UK, you got it, it goes right into the content. You don't have to do anything. You have all of that lead intelligence. If you're using Salesforce, many times you can get that if you're using the HubSpot marketing software as well, but let lead intelligence changes everything.
The second thing is the lead notifications. How many people know lead notifications? Okay, so lead notifications. Great, because no one answers their phone anymore, I'm sure you've seen that.
Although the voicemails that pop up, there is only one time when you'll answer the phone and that is if you're on my website looking at the pricing page and the phone rings and you're like: 'Oh my God!' That's not too creepy is it.
Then people say, well, it's a little creepy. I know, I know you gotta like work a little bit, but I'm telling you it's a funny line. And people is like: 'Yes, it is a little creepy, but I'm on your pricing page and I have this question'.
Those lead notifications, I think we were talking about when people open their emails or when they're back on the website. If you don't have that information, how are you going to sell? I don't want to talk to you, Victoria, unless you're interested in talking to me because all I'll do is annoy you.
But if you're like talking and on my website and looking at a blog article, I need to know that you're looking at that blog article. I need to know what the blog article is all about and I need to call you within 5 minutes.
You can. It's just like putting duct tape over your mouth. It is really, really hard.
The 3rd thing is the meetings tool, and anybody use the meetings tool here? Okay. So if you don't use the meetings tool, the meeting tool alleviates the juvenile process of sending an email around saying:
You feel like you're in high school. The meeting's tool. I sent it to you and it allows you to pick the time that I'm available. It'll only show my available times. If you have multiple people, you can only show the available time for multiple people.
The customer gets the cycle in. You're giving the customer control There's a couple of great benefits to that. Anybody see the benefit of giving the customer the ability to set the time they want to meet with you? Shout it out, earn a t-shirt.
What's the benefit of something like a meeting the customer gets complete control? You think they'll blow out that meeting and they set the meeting if they ever blow out that meeting?
Like: 'Oh my God, I set that meeting with that lady that I didn't show up, that's horrible!'
I'm all about the humanness. I don't want her to think of Dan, the salesperson or executive. I want them to think Dan, the human being. It's kind of what Ian was saying, and you should have a little gorilla on your meetings tool. And the ability to start that conversation, of being helpful by not having to do old kind of stuff is super important. That's the teamwork kind of stuff.
So now I want to talk about the process, because we know it's hard of getting your Sales team - or sometimes your marketing team locked in. And it starts with buy-in, communication and enablement.
And how many people will think it will be hard for you to get your Sales team to practice marketing? So it is.
Most of you guys are well on your way of doing it. Some people think it's hard. So just that you understand, this is the graphic I was saying, there's still a difference in communication.
So when you say: 'Please send this eBook around to your prospects', what are your salespeople think? 'If you have any complaints about this eBook, please let me know'.
That's what they're hearing. I know, I know. Edwin, you're like a typical marketer. So you understand what that means.
Number 1, 'Please work all your leads by Friday'. They're like: 'All right, take a look at some of these leads next time I get bored'. That's what they're thinking right there. Just in a different plane. Venus and Mars.
'This is an internal only piece of collateral'. What does that mean? 'You can send it. Just don't get caught'. Exactly. I know, I know. They're just coming from a different thing.
So you need to get what we call marketing buy-in. That is at the individual rep level.
How many deals they have to close either every month or every quarter or every year, and that you own a piece of that.
So it goes with the organisational goals to start. And then the individual goals, every salesperson in this room should carry a quota. If they don't carry a quota, it's really hard to forecast most organisations.
They need to understand what you expect of them and vice versa: if you're delivering them leads, then you need a little help. There's a couple of ways that they can help.
They can just sit there and talk that content. The things that they say all the time is annoying to them and it's very helpful for you because that's your next five or 10 or 20 blog articles.
They need to understand that the new way of selling is the followup that I've talked about only helping. What that means for a sales person is that you have to manage a wire funnel, because the customer or prospect is now in control.
It used to be: 'We could push them through this actual funnel'. And now it's not a funnel anymore. It's like a hairball.
Guys know what a hairball is? We have any cat people here. How do you describe Edwin? How do you describe a hairball? Yeah, it's like a ball of hair. It's like all twisted and it's kind of stuff. And what happens? I know I couldn't find a English like alternative. So I went with the hairball thing. It worked. Alright, you guys got it?
People start and stop, start and stop, start and stop. Why do they do that in 2018? It's much different. Part of it is the attention span, but part of its session is the way our life is.
Your boss walks in and says: 'Get this done!' Walks in seven minutes later, he said: 'Forget about that, get this done!' And you're like: 'What? I just talked to this guy, Edward, I just was asking about demand generation'. And that's the way the whole world works.
So they're super interested for five minutes and then they move on. That's why:
Because they're thinking about that. They're thinking about it right now and in 7 minutes that are going to move onto the next thing. If you can call them and say: 'I am your resource, I am the person to help'.
Does anybody know the single most important attribute in a salesperson in 2018? guess? Yes ma'am. Empathy is in the top four. Very good. It's not number one.
Who said listening skills? And when you've already won like half the swag we got. So what's your name? Do you want a t-shirt? Okay. Clwyd. Listening skills.
How do you know that? Are you an introvert? Introverts typically make better salespeople in 2018 because of what we call active listening skills. And the number one thing, it's amazing, isn't it? How much does it cost to listen? How much product knowledge do you need to have to listen.
What are the deep training programs that you need to go through so that you can listen? And listening is hard for me, I have to press the mute button all the time. I got a little lion that I squeezed all the time because I didn't want sentence seconds. I didn't want to fill, I just like to talk.
So I pushed the mute button all the time. It doesn't say 'mute' anymore, just says 'm'. I like push it so often.
But listening is super important, because if I'm talking all the time, I don't have an opportunity to figure out what you want. It used to be that you would connect and qualify on the connect call. I would ask:
I just call and say: 'What can I do to help?' And the next stage: 'If you're interested in kind of moving through, used to be a product demo today'. It's a discovery call.
How many people practice a discovery call? Is the second part of the process.
If you want to greatly increase your closing skills, you have to teach your sales organisation how to listen.
There's lots of HubSpot active listening blog articles that we're happy to afford to you because it's a real skill. It's
So you want to understand in the marketing, by and between sales and marketing, what is expected of each person. You want to understand what the timeline is about.
When I say call four times, I don't mean in four hours.
Depending on if there is a weekend. And that is the professional outreach that your salespeople have to have, and you have to explain it to them. We no longer use scripts.
When I started my sales career, we started with scripts. Now you have sales playbooks.
"A Playbook is a description of the persona, a description of what they want and it's a description of how a typical conversation would go"
No salesperson wants to be told exactly what to do. They want to be given a kind of idea of how they would use their own individuality and personality to get that point across. So what the timeline look like, how fast lead should be worked.
Do you know the SQL (Sales Qualified Leads)? They have to be called within 5 minutes within HubSpot. Sometimes people will call 10 times that first day, but there'll only leave one voicemail.
They'll call within 5 minutes, but they'll continue to track, because SQL is when they say 'Do you want a sales consultation?' That is a very strong call to action.
That means somebody wants to talk with somebody in the closing sequence, and those have a very high closing rate for a HubSpot. And how will we communicate between sales and marketing throughout this?
Typically, if it's done, the information is automatically going into the CRM and you're using the same code stream. It's very, very valuable.
Salespeople are typically horrible at the inputting information. They have the best of intentions, right? But they get busy.
Every sales person wants to improve their productivity. To do that, you need a modern CRM that:
If you don't have that, you're at a competitive disadvantage. And then you have to decide what success looks like.
In most cases, success means meeting your quota, on an individual level as well as a company level. Alright, any questions on this smarketing buy-in?
Sometimes when you're starting to migrate your Sales and Marketing alignment to show Marketing, you'll pick three salespeople. If it's really hard, pick the three millennial salespeople that you have the best shot of explaining this to.
We do top down and bottom up, but we always pick three people to start and if they're the right type of people who are willing to lean into the technology and learn this stuff, they'll usually outperform legacy salesperson.
The second thing is communication.
My friend JB Nicholson helped me with this slide. She's responsible for marketing communications at HubSpot. She sends out emails there, sometimes one-off sends. She also sends a weekly digest and she sends video updates.
That's what they look like. That's internal communications for HubSpot. That is awesome. It looks like it's external communications.
Then we hold smarketing meetings, all Sales and Marketing come together on a regular basis because you have to create that situation where people can speak openly about what's happening, what is it, then the managers meet on a weekly basis to discuss whether we're ahead or behind plan and then there's team meetings where we discuss the specific tactics of how we're going to accomplish that.
How many people are familiar with a Wiki? How many people have a Wiki? So about 30%. Wiki is very important because we post all of our statistics all company wide.
If our marketing department is behind, first of all, everybody knows about it, but second of all we're very kind of overt about trying to fix that. And so we have a Slack channel and an internal Wiki as a way of making sure that there's immediate communication so that people can work through that.
This is a build slide that JB put together. This is a corporate Sales playbook. This is what the marketing organisation that HubSpot uses to enable salespeople have what they're supposed to do.
This is available to everyone that has key resources.
And then finally around sales enablement. All right, you want to do 3 things. Number 1, grab their attention. Salespeople are not process oriented. They're very ad-hoc. Attention Span. There is like 2 or 3 seconds. And so they're off on their own, they're agreeing to something and then they're gone. So getting their attention is important.
Then making it easy to understand. You gotta feed them like a baby goat, and it's not that they're stupid, it's just they're thinking a lot of stuff. They're trying to do a lot of different things, so the easier make it better. And then you help them with prioritisation. You tell them this is super important.
I think you have to be very respectful and I try to be humorous. Which is, I can tell in the first 20 seconds if somebody isn't interested in communicating and I will say: "Aug! It doesn't sound like you're expecting my call'.
But you're always going to be human. And you're there to help. Most human beings when you say 'I'm here to help' are going to elicit a response with: 'Okay'. And some people don't want help. You're like: 'Okay, I'm going to send you an email if you ever need my help, let me know'.
The only shot you have, though, is helping them when they're ready to be helped. That's why lead notifications are so important.
The first time you have that conversation, if you don't know their background, sometimes if it spends years when we were talking about banking software, some of these sales cycles are three years, they need you to know what they did in 2016.
Because if you go down the same road that they did two years ago, they're ticked off and it's your fault. You have to know that kind of stuff. That's just why it's harder to do it in 2018 and then it'll be super interesting to see another competitive advantage if you have that information. It is.
There'll be this huge differentiation between people who are doing it the old way, which is calling ad-hoc, saying the same thing to everybody else in essentially a one size fits all. It just doesn't work in 2018.
All right, so your next steps when you go back today or tomorrow, align Sales and Marketing and the company goals.
You have to define responsibilities across the funnel. So this is what we're going to do.
This is the growth playbook
HubSpot is all about helping you grow better and it's finding the right customers, it's engaging in a human way. It's nurturing the hand-off of Sales and Marketing. It's starting the relationship.
There's lots of HubSpot products. All of them started free that help you support this process.
Also the HubSpot Customer Service Hub, which is the customer service component of the growth stack is available as starting in May and any of the HubSpot partners will help you with that. Alright, so these are the free gifts that I want you to bring back to your Sales organisation.
The first thing I want you to ask them is... Has anybody sales organisations using artificial intelligence or machine learning? You can take out your cell phone right now. You can grab your Facebook messenger, you can get the GrowthBot in either Facebook Messenger or Slack.
What the growth bot will do is give your Sales team the ability to use artificial intelligence by asking certain questions that are delivered automatically. It's a Sales and Marketing bot, that will tell you
Number 2, if anybody needs a free CRM, the HubSpot CRM comes free. It'll always be free. And we have the HubSpot Sales free, which I will give you lead notifications, lead intelligence, and a meetings tool.
If you move to a paid product, I think it's $40 or $50 a month, the HubSpot Sales starter. But everybody can start at no charge to understand and get that competitive advantage.
And then there's something called HubSpot Academy. Is anybody familiar with HubSpot Academy? Does anybody have a certification for HubSpot Academy?
So there are now 84 hours and 16 certifications. And so you can go in, it's free. You can give them to your Sales organisation. There's one called Inbound sales. And that will teach them all the things that I talked about today. It will take them 2 hours to watch. And then when they get the Inbound certification, when they take the class, they should put the Inbound certification on their LinkedIn.
Social selling is super important in 2018 and it helps.
This is the book that I wrote a in 2017 available in April 24th 2018. It will help you explain to senior management how to build your own company, how to practice Inbound or how marketing alignment is important, how to lean into your customer experience.
There are four books from Hubspot coming out in April 24th
If you're a PR person, Inbound PR by Illyana Stareva, it is an awesome way of learning how to leverage Inbound for PR
Brian Halligan, last year named the ninth rank highest CEO, super proud of that.
Any Grateful Dead fans in the audience? No, nobody. Anybody know who the Grateful Dead is? So, Brian is all about big impact and a Jerry Garcia, the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead, they sold his guitar for 1.6/1.9 million dollars.
I'm reading that in Rolling Stone. I go: 'Who's stupid enough to pay 1.9 million dollars for a guitar?' It turns out it was Brian Halligan, right? And he took that money. It was doubled and he gave it all to the Southern Poverty Law Center to a fight hatred. Which is huge impact. I put it all in my presentation. Make me so proud. It's unbelievable.
In addition, HubSpot today is all about inclusion and diversity, right? In 2006, we made a commitment to publicly post our diversity statistics. As the kind of company that wants to help. We have to lead, the reason we give you free stuff, we come on the road, we talk with you, we are all in to do anything that we can is because we're trying to change the world.
And so 2016 diversity statistics were okay. In 2017 HubSpot is now one of the top five tech companies in North America for gender equality. We have 3 women on our board of directors. Over 46% of our managers are women. And diversity and socioeconomic diversity continues to grow.
If you like this kind of stuff, how many people been to Inbound? Clwyd, I know, Pete. Yep. What's Inbound like? Great. What's a Inbound like? Yeah, that 20,000 people all like this. All nice people, incredible speakers. Incredibly inspiring. And there's a discount if you get your tickets before May 15th. All right.
So you can connect with me at any point. You can email me. I've got a little bit limited bandwidth, but I guarantee I'll get back to you. What was my small ask? I was supposed to ask, to make sure that everybody fills out the survey there.
Well, thank you very much on behalf of HubSpot, HubSpot partners and our ecosystem community. Thanks for coming out today. It was thrilled to be here. Clwyd, thank you for putting it all together.