I’m on my flight home right now after spending two days at HubSpot headquarters in Cambridge with some of the smartest people I’ve ever met, along with THE BEST inbound marketing agency leadership in the world. BTW, did you know there are 156,000 marketing agencies out there? Good lord. To put it into perspective, I was one of only 300 people to be fortunate enough to attend HubSpot’s Partner Day 2017 in Cambridge.
Man, I soaked it all up like a sponge. I bowled a 180 my last game at Jillian’s next to Fenway while the Sox played the Yanks. That was cool. And to top it off, Perlick beer systems were pouring craft beers and cold brew throughout the HubSpot offices - SUPER cool!
We just hit a major milestone for our clients this week and here's why.
The Eco-System
We are helping our clients create a complete eco-system for running their business. We are changing the way they go to market. Inbound is not just marketing. It’s sales, too. And without the sales team being completely involved, inbound marketing success has limits. The success that a CEO wants to see is revenue impact. CEO and co-founder of HubSpot, Brian Halligan, ‘gets it’, right? That’s success. Full Go-To-Market Agency
TMC has become your business consultant, like an Accenture. We are a full go-to-market agency.
HubSpot has dedicated the past year to becoming truly one unified marketing & sales platform, one eco-system. The sales and CRM implementation and/or integration is key to having success with our clients. Their open API allows us to connect in other software systems like ORGO and Salesforce. And look, the HubSpot CRM is FREE. Yes, free! If you’re not knee-deep in a new CRM implementation but considering a CRM for your sales team, why wouldn’t you give it a go?
The tools that HubSpot continues to develop and roll out into production are incredibly valuable, not just to marketers but also to sales people. At the end of the day, this value strengthens the long-term relationship with your customers.
HubSpot has launched some incredible new features that will help empower sales people. Take Messages for example. We’ve been talking about it since Inbound 2016 and testing it for months. It’s live! It’s ready for you to use. Plus, Meetings is integrated into it. [Give it a go on the bottom right of this blog page - let’s chat right now]
Here’s an idea: let’s make it a goal to convert MQLs and SQLs into booked meetings with specific sales people. Let’s fill up their calendars with qualified business meetings. I don’t know about you, but as a sales guy, I freaking love that idea. Bring that shit on.
Sales Much More Involved in Inbound
Here’s something else: lead nurturing will be led by sales people as much as marketing. Marketing will help set it up, but sales is going to end up owning a lot of the automated nurturing process of your own leads - especially if you have longer sales cycles and repeat business [cross-sell/up-sell] over the lifecycle of a customer.
If sales and marketing don't work together to close-the-loop on leads, we cannot grow together. Period.
Take Advantage of Free
If you are not ready to spend money on incredible software to help your business grow, if you are not ready to commit to a partnership, let us help you implement some free tools to get going. Let us show you how your website can capture leads and intel. Let us show sales the CRM that they can use right now, and test out some of the Sales Tools so they can experience the value of seeing lead intelligence data, of knowing when their emails are opened and read, and start to think differently regarding the way sales follows up with leads/customers.
Video Video Video
Video content is the future for B2B and delivers better results than any other form of content. And no, video production doesn’t cost a fortune. It can’t when you have to pump out weekly videos. TMC can provide our clients a cost-effective video content solution - strategy and execution. Take advantage of video especially in the foodservice space. Hell, you already do video. But is it bringing you LEADS? We'll provide the tools to help maximize impact and results.
We Are All In
TMC is ‘all in’ with HubSpot, and we need our clients to be ‘all in’ when it comes to TMC helping them build and fine-tune their company eco-system. This includes understanding real revenue impact and investing into the technology that will help get us there. It’s about the data. And at some point in the future, you are going to want to have all of that data in one system, not spread across eight different platforms piece-mailed together. Having the data in one place allows for intelligent software to really start working for you. ABM and AI
Listening to some of the smartest people geeking out is mind-blowing. I love this kind of shit.
Account-based marketing (ABM) is the future for B2B. It’s complex as hell and requires ’the data’ (and some really smart people). We are in with the right peeps that are figuring this stuff out and will be able to implement it for your organization.
AI (Artificial Intelligence) - wow. This IS the future and it’s just getting started. Chatbots and Google’s WaveNet is going to automate voice conversations from specific reps, without the rep needing to record their voice. Just listening to Dharmesh Shah (co-founder of HubSpot) talk made my I.Q. go up. Follow him on social. The guy is a genius.
Summary
At the end of this week, I realize that our agency is about to reach a new level of maturity because of our commitment to HubSpot and the HubSpot community's commitment to helping all of us achieve greater success with our clients. There is no question the buying process continues to evolve. Agencies help agencies, for the greater good. If we have a strategic partnership with you, so much more value is coming your way, from the CEO on down to your individual sales reps. Giddy up!
[S/O to our peeps at Nextiny and congrats on all of your success of late]
If the above mentioned stuff gets you as excited as we are to help empower your business for future growth, we welcome you to join us in the inbound journey.
