Who: Mark Roberge, former Hubspot Advisor, teaches Sales and marketing at Harvard Business school. Has a technical background as mechanical engineer. Works as investor, too.
About the book: The book circles around “Scalable, predictable revenue growth.” Its good to read because of many practical tips from Marks experience, especially from Hubspot, where he still is an advisor to. I like his handsdown approach to (online) sales. Especially the way how to create a lead generation inbound marekitng and sales organization seemed clear and obvious as it is „metrics-driven, process-oriented“.
Top 10 Notes and Quotes from the book:
- On Sales Management: It was critical for the sales team to not confuse transparency and involvement with an invitation to selfishly design the plan around their individual needs.
- On inbound marketing: “Successful inbound marketing comes from two tactics: (1) continual quality content production, and (2) frequent online participation in social media where your target buyers are already conversing.”
- On the relation between sales and marketing: To Recap, when implementing an inbound sales and marketing revenue machine Marketing needs to: Filter the leads. Avoid passing all inbound leads to Sales. Avoid the lead scoring trap. Use a Buyer Persona/Buyer Journey matrix to decide when to pass leads to Sales. Sales needs to: Call low, and then call high. On the call, scrap the generic elevator pitch. Prioritize prospecting by engagement, not call cadence or alphabetical order. Consider specializing the team by inbound or outbound.
- „Sales is accountable to Marketing just like Marketing is accountable to Sales. The Sales SLA defines a series of behaviors expected of the Sales team to ensure each lead is worked effectively.”
- The dysfunctional relationship between Sales and Marketing is the kiss of death in a buyer-driven world.
- On innovation: “A key role of the executive team is to set up a culture around innovation, rather than generate all of the big ideas themselves.”
- “Follow a specific formula for experiment execution so that you can be confident your experiments are efficient and effective.”
- On metrics: LTV/CAC, payback period, salesperson productivity, customer retention, and a few other metrics.
I receive an affiliate kickback if you buy the book on amazon. All kickbacks go to a charity organization from my hometown, Neue Schmiede Bethel