Why Change Selling Blog

This month marks the second anniversary as HubSpot Inbound Marketing customers and the following is a review of what we have achieved and learned in our second year.

We signed up for the HubSpot Inbound Marketing platform halfway through the product demonstration, when we realized that it exactly fulfilled our lead generation requirements and perhaps more importantly had the potential to fulfill the lead generation needs of most of our clients.

If you are interested in our first year experience please visit HubSpot-Inbound-Marketing-Performance-Review-Year-1. If you are interested in how we did in our third year, visit our HubSpot Year 3 Performance review.

Prior to HubSpot we had a second generation "presence" Website of about thirty pages for our consulting and training business, but we did not receive any inbound leads from the Website, although we were creating content monthly for magazine placement and did see a small traffic spike with every article we published.
We updated our sales and marketing methodology by replacing our old outbound lead generation methods with HubSpot and their Inbound Marketing Methodology and our lead generation process is dependent on it today.
Since we started with HubSpot we have generated over 220 leads (a lead is defined as a visitor who exchanges their contact details in return for viewing a joint AMC-HubSpot Webinar, downloading our WhiteboardSelling whitepaper or signing up for a free Marketing Messaging Alignment Consultation.)

These are my top 5 sales and marketing performance blogs from 2011 in order of popularity. I also want to extend holiday greetings to all of my connections and friends in the industry on the last working day before Christmas.

Relocating back to California has been a great move for me and my family and we look forward to a promising 2012.

A Guide to Engaging Sales Presentations - Do not use PowerPoint

Thoughts on Powerpoint usage in sales presentations, following Edward Tufte's 1 day course, "Presenting Data and Information" in Los Angeles on 9 Feb.

Avoid these 5 Pitfalls for effective Whiteboard Sales Presentations

In making great whiteboard presentations, there a few things to avoid. Get them right and you will be very successful.

Selling from Home - Here's an Updated Sales Communications Setup 

If you are in sales or consulting, live in the USA or Canada and work from home, the following advice on home telecommunications could worth a read.

Time to Bring Outside Sales Inside - A Guide to Virtual Selling

The Internet is quickly eliminating the need for in-person selling in favor of virtual or inside sales. A 5-step guide to inside sales performance.

Product Training Doesn't Work- Get Sales to DO Product Training

Article discussing the old way of product training vs the new way of product training. The new way gets sales people to DO the product training. 

Readers of this blog collectively will have sat through tens, if not hundreds of thousands of hours of product training in their sales and marketing careers.

The PowerPoint Cringe

I’ve developed a conditioned reflex when I know I’m going to have to sit through a PowerPoint presentation. After nearly two years of working on whiteboarding to communicate with buyers instead of presenting to them, I feel a certain uneasiness and find myself shifting in my chair, stomach sometimes churning and often - my jaw clenching when the presentation starts.

This is a conditioned response and natural reaction to the way the majority of 
sales and marketing presentations unfold; the slides are dense and chock-full of words, the medium is dull, the delivery is product-centric and tedious and the presentation style is generally uninspiring – exactly the type of atmosphere you want to avoid when trying to inspire people to action!

However, I recognize that there are certain situations in which PowerPoint is unavoidable.  Conference organizers may require that presenters deliver information using the same slide template; corporations may insist that you use the corporate slide deck or potential customers may specifically request a PowerPoint presentation.

In these cases, how can you use a PowerPoint presentation without boring your audience to tears or losing out on the engagement levels that other delivery styles allow?

Here’s one rule that’s worthy of repeating – “Never give a presentation you would not want to sit through.” (Nancy Duarte)

In truth, it is possible to create engaging PowerPoint slides, but it takes a lot more effort than most people think.  Unfortunately, because the vast majority of presentations are created the night before they’re used, preparation is rushed, the ideas are jammed-up against each other and it’s no wonder the majority of them fail to achieve their intended outcomes.

The worst offenders are often our sales and marketing leaders, who beat us over the head with bullet after bullet at the annual sales kick-off meeting.  By avoiding their example and adhering to the following guidelines, you’ll increase your odds of both connecting with your audience in a delightful, authentic way and delivering a message that’s both well-received and retained.

The following is a true story. A few names have been changed to protect the identity of some of the people involved. 

In the first episode of this story, Scorched Earth, I described the situation leading to my being hired at MicroStrategy into an OEM sales role and the problems in overcoming relationships that my predecessor had soured.  

In the second episode, 'Defeat", I explored the changing fortunes of B2B sales professionals, and I described the events leading up to my being given 30 days' notice of termination. This article covers the 90-day lifecycle of the deal itself.

I met serial entrepreneur, Rajesh Setty about two months ago as a result of an introduction from a friend. I went into the first meeting with Raj cold, having been referred in the morning and meeting in the afternoon and we hit it off straight away. After 30 minutes of intense conversation, I felt like I had know Raj for years. In that meeting, Rajesh demonstrated his new product to me, and after we were one minute into the demonstration, I had an Ah-ha moment and Rajesh had an OEM partner in me - I could use the technology he and his co-founder had developed to solve a messaging development problem I was working on.

Wow, what a year for Admarco.net and for HubSpot.
In our 4^th year as HubSpot customers, this review will by necessity examine the advances in the HubSpot platform as well as what we have achieved in using it. Prior reviews are available.
Hubspot Review – Year 1
HubSpot Review Year 2
HubSpot Review Year 3 

This year HubSpot took some very big steps in product usability and capability which established the product in a new market, where it is able to compete directly with marketing automation vendors Pardot, Marketo and Eloqua, but with some fundamental and important distinctions in that it is a robust and easy to use inbound marketing platform.

HubSpot accelerated growth and now has more than 8,000 customers in 46 countries. During the year HubSpot placed itself on the path to IPO by adding key executives and raising a further $35M in a funding round to bring the total funding raised to $100M. 

As Hubspot customers, Hubspot partners and fellow travelers on the inbound marketing journey for 10 months now, we heartily recommend "Inbound Marketing", by Dharmesh Shah and Brian Halligan, as this book represents a very readable and do-able playbook for implementing inbound marketing methodology.

Packed with concise guidance, case studies, and practical to-do’s that you can implement today, this book is really a text-book on the subject and is one of the most important books for Internet era marketers published to date.