We moved from our home of 5 years in Scotland last month as we are returning to Northern California after 7 years away, settling in the Carmel/Monterey area...(also a reason why this blog has been quiet for the last month). We were amazed by the amount of stuff that we had accumulated in that time, stuff we did not need.
3 min read
Boost Inbound Marketing Effectiveness - Clean up your Blog
Topics: inbound marketing hubspot
9 min read
The State of the Union between Sales and Marketing
The news is that the state of the union between sales and marketing is not all bad. Like President Obama's State of the Union message, we're doing well in some areas, but have a long way to go in others.
The state of the union between sales and marketing is imperfect, but growing stronger and the hard work and dedication of the pioneers is beginning to deliver quantifiable results. It is our unfinished task to ensure that both sales and marketing teams are served by the sales and marketing alignment process, not just a vocal few in sales.
The changes in buyer behavior are permanent and both sales and marketing must unite and adopt a new vocabulary, new methods and embrace new technologies to more effectively serve buyers, achieve revenue goals and to lower the cost of acquiring and servicing customers.
We need to recognize that for sales and marketing to best serve today's Internet savvy, socially connected buyer, we need to evolve one contiguous and tightly coupled revenue generation process. The outbound "hunter" B2B sales role as we knew it, is giving way to scientific methods of lead generation, lead nurturing and scoring, marketing automation, free trials and light-touch engagement across the IMPACT buying process.
Inbound Leads vs. Traditional Outbound Leads
Mark Roberge, VP Sales at HubSpot is a 10 on a scale of 1-10 of the smartest sales leaders I know. When he talks about sales and marketing alignment, I listen.
Topics: inbound marketing hubspot sales & marketing alignment content creation lead scoring
2 min read
HubSpot Partners Combine to Create Value for Software Start-up
On Monday two weeks ago we received a surprise call from a prospective client who was running a HubSpot trial. We started the trial to gather data to make the business case for an investment in our Sales and Marketing Messaging Alignment process , HubSpot, and our HubSpot implementation support.
Topics: inbound marketing hubspot buyer-persona
10 min read
B2B Sales and Marketing in Transition - What's working?
This three part blog series started with a guest post on The evolution of marketing and PR, by PR-consultant-turned-inbound-marketer
Topics: inbound marketing sales and marketing alignment whiteboard selling brain science
3 min read
How to Create Messaging that Fuels Inbound Lead Generation
Most marketing executives will have lead generation close to the top of their list of goals in 2010; however generating quality sales leads has never been harder, or easier - depending on your strategy.
Topics: inbound marketing marketing messaging buyer-persona
Magic Software - Sales and Marketing Performance Case Study
The Magic Software Case Study has been moved to Sales And Marketing Performance Improvement Case Studies
Topics: inbound marketing marketing messaging sales performance
3 min read
Are Marketing People Needed in Selling SaaS Solutions?
This is the second part of an article Are Sales People needed in Selling SaaS solutions written in response to conversations with three entrepreneurs who have created, or are creating SaaS solutions to serve very specific needs for a well-defined market opportunity. In conversation it emerged that none of them were planning on having any sales people in their business.
Topics: inbound marketing Saas
4 min read
HubSpot Inbound Marketing Performance Review - Year 1
We signed with Hubspot 12 months ago in December 2008 and chose to migrate our Website onto the HubSpot Owner (now Small Business) package, which uses the HubSpot CMS. (Click the following link for a review of our 2nd year with HubSpot.) For a review of our 3rd year on Hubspot visit Hubspot Review - Year 3.
We are a specialist marketing consulting helping companies to generate inbound leads through aligning sales and marketing messaging around buyer needs. We create buyer relevant messaging and use this messaging in conjuction with communication, language and conversation skills training in our selling in the internet age blended learning program to improve individual sales performance.
We contacted HubSpot after receiving a strong recommendation from one of our clients, VICO Software in Boston, who had been using HubSpot for over a year and were achieiving outstanding results.
Our goals with HubSpot are to generate inbound leads and to grow awareness of our marketing and sales performance offerings in the markets we serve.
The situationprior to HubSpot was that we were doing poorly with Google Adwords; our old CMS had no social media integration, nor the ability for us to change any content. We had been placing articles in the Cambridge Network magazine and averaged about 100 unique visitors per month. We received only one inbound lead in the prior year.
Topics: inbound marketing hubspot
3 min read
HubSpot Hits the After-burners in $32M Funding Round
The HubSpot $32Million series D funding round from new investors, Salesforce.com, Google Ventures and Sequoia Capital, with all original investors doubling-down is old news by now, but the ripples are now being felt in all parts of the marketing automation industry.
Topics: inbound marketing hubspot
5 min read
Time to Bring Outside Sales Inside - A Guide to Virtual Selling
This article is relevant for B2B technology sales professionals, not just inside sales, as we are all becoming more virtual in our engagement with prospects and customers.
Findings from the CSO Insights 2011 Telemarketing/Inside Sales Performance Optimization survey set the stage for our conversation. The big Aha in the 2011 survey is that nearly 50% of inside sales are selling independent of field sales.
