Peter Caputa

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    Gravy & Mashed Potatoes, Hammer and Nails, Email and Analytics

    Posted by Peter Caputa on Dec 14, 2013 8:07:00 AM

    HubSpot is pretty famous these days. Well, maybe not as famous as the Beatles or bicycles. But HubSpot is as famous amongst marketers as let's say... One Direction is amongst teenage girls. Just like teenage girls and One Direction, there are different levels of fandom. Please don't ask me to explain what would make someone go gaga over these pubescent boys. But, maybe it's just that not every teenager gets to see One Direction live, up close and personal. I don't know. Probably taking this analogy too far. But, when my wife and I walked by them performing at a mall once, I saw firsthand how much their fans adore them. Most of the concerts I attended were in the 90s. So, it was new thing for me to observe. Anyway, the marketers who use HubSpot effectively are kind of like that. You can see it in the case studies. We get gushing notes every day from customers about how we've changed their fortunes and their lives, and helped them change the lives of their customers. 

    So, why is it? There's a reason, I think. Why do we have these gushing fans? Most companies would say that their fans are fabs because "of a lot of little things all wrapped up into one". That's true for HubSpot in two major ways. Yes, we pride ourselves on caring about our customers; providing support that backs that up, we focus on educating the market and especially our customers and partners; our software team is brilliant at UI and usability. There are lots of reasons. But, these are secondary to the one big one. 

    The big one is integration.  Yes, integration is a cheesy over-used marketing word. Totally. We prefer 1+1 = 3. It's the same thing, though. The important thing is that our founders were ballsy enough to say from the beginning, "We want to be the only marketing software that a business needs!". And we did it. We'll never be done, of course. But, we're as done at this goal as anyone else is. Especially companies that don't innovate from within and have to acquire to try and keep up. The claim was certainly was more hyperbole in the beginning. We started with search engine optimization (SEO) tools and small businesses (SMBs) and a shitty content management system (CMS). But, we've broadened that big time beyond SEO tools-- all while serving many different types and sizes of businesses. The claim is true now.

    So, why is 1+1=3 so important to our customers? Two words: Efficiency and Effectiveness. Yes. Also over-used and cheesy sales words. Let's get beyond the cheese. Let's start talking about cheese and crackers. Maybe a bit of PB&J? Or how about screw drives and screws?

    HubSpot has integrated things together in ways that no other marketing software company has. We've done it in a way that our customers can't imagine living without. A grass lawn with no lawn mower? A garden without a shovel? Cars without wheels? Ha? What are you crazy? You can't take this stuff apart? 

    The thing we don't talk about enough is that long list of things that make 1+1=3 equations. We're not talking about just 2 things that make three. We're talking about a whole lotta math equations that just don't make any sense. There are a handful of 1+1=5 equations in there and even one equation that goes something like 2+2=12. 

    Here are a few of my favorites: 

    1. Web analytics + contact database = lead intelligence 
    2. CMS + Analytics = Smart CTAs
    3. Social Media Monitoring + contact database = social prospecting 
    4. Email marketing + website analytics = marketing automation
    5. SEO + Web analytics = you still do manual SEO reporting, you fool?
    6. CRM + HubSpot = closed loop marketing
    7. Blogging software + CTAs =  lead generation
    8. Landing pages + analytics = lead tracking
    What are your favorites? How do they help you be more effective and more efficient? 
     
    PS. If you're a HubSpot partner or customer and you've written an article about how HubSpot makes you more efficient or more effective because of a 1+1=3 equation, tweet it with hash tag #HubSpot1+1=3
     
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    The Importance of Confidence in Sales. Channeling Liam Neeson's Taken Character.

    Posted by Peter Caputa on Sep 6, 2013 1:52:00 PM

    I'm a huge fan of the movie Taken. In general, Liam Neeson is the man. But, he's especially the man in this movie. If you've ever watched the first Taken movie, I'm sure you remember the scene where his daughter calls him from underneath a bed in her friend's cousin's apartment in Paris, as she's about to be abducted by what turns out to be some thugs running a prostitution ring. The kidnapper picks up the phone and Liam notices the change in breathing. He then delivers an amazing set of lines over the phone from across the world. If you haven't seen the scene, here you go...


    If you don't want to watch it or don't remember the scene, here's what he says:

    I don't know who you are
    I don't know what you want
    If you're looking for ransom, I can tell you that I don't have any money
    But what I do have is a very unique set of skills
    A set of skills I have acquired over a very long career
    Skills that make me a nightmare for people like you
    If you let my daughter go now, that will be the end of it
    I will not look for you. I will not pursue you. 
    But if you don't...
    I will look for you. I will find you. I will kill you.

    As you can see, Liam has confidence. He is direct and concise. He knows what he's capable of delivering and he's confident in telling the guy on the other end of the line what he can do. He is appropriately aggressive for the situation, but in a calm, cool and collected way. Anyone who is a father can relate to wanting to react in that way. Not many of us could. Very few of us would be able to deliver on the threat, either.

    Salespeople need to be confident too. Salespeople need to be calm and collected. Even in difficult situations, they need to state clearly what they can do, set expectations properly, and then follow through on their words. They need to be appropriately confident so that their prospect believes them. 

    Just like very few (if any) of us would ever be able to react the way Liam did in the movie, salespeople do not commonly exhibit the appropriate level of confidence. I've found that it's important to remind salespeople that they are absolute experts at what they do. Salespeople often need to be reminded of how much of an expert they are before they can project it. Sometimes, they have it. Sometimes, when stress hits them at the end of their quota period or they lose a deal,  they really lose confidence. A sales manager isn't always there to remind them how awesome they are. So, sometimes, it makes sense for salespeople to develop a habit of reminding themselves through sales affirmations, so they can project the confidence they need to project. At Inbound13, in my "Transformational Selling" talk, I delivered these lines to a room full of inbound marketing agency owners, as a reminder to them that they are experts and that as they talk to prospects, they should be confident in their expertise: 

    I know who you are.
    I know what you want.
    If you're looking for an easy answer, I can tell you that I don't have one
    But what I do have is a very unique set of skills
    A set of skills that I have acquired over a very long career
    Skills that make me a savior for people like you
    If you buy from me now, we will make progress faster
    But if you don't..
    I won't look for you. I won't find you. I can't help you.

    $10 to the first person who uses it on a sales call at closing time. Have your prospect comment here after they've bought. It's pretty much what a great salesperson should be able to say anyways, if they've done it right

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    More, Better, Faster (TM)

    Posted by Peter Caputa on Sep 6, 2013 1:24:00 PM

    I've been using the phrase: More, Better, Faster for a few months now. Maybe a year. Can't remember the time when I originally coined it, or at least made it popular around HubSpot. But, I found myself always asking people, "How do we do more of that?" and challenging people, "But if we did it this way, wouldn't it be better?" Or "How can we get there faster?" I'm not the only one that asks these questions. They are pretty much the questions we're all asking all of the time. It's a big part of our culture to always be improving. So, I started saying, "More. Better. Faster." a lot. I end emails with it, when appropriate... which is almost always, of course. 

    This past Tuesday, I presented HubSpot's new sales methodology to the senior leadership team. There was a big slide that said. "More. Better. Faster" in big bold letters. Here's an article and slideshare he wrote this morning called, "Sell More, Better, Faster with Inbound Selling.You know it's good when the CEO picks up on it and starts using it in our public positioning... I love @bhalligan's vision on Inbound Selling. See his slideshare below:

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    Social Media Implementation Checklist

    Posted by Peter Caputa on Sep 6, 2013 12:13:00 PM

    Love this social media 'setup and go' checklist. Set goals first. If traffic, leads and sales are part of the goal, then gotta have the next focus be on content creation. Then, using social to share. Can't get much value out of social unless you're actively creating, publishing and sharing content. 

    The Social Media Implementation Checklist – An infographic by the team at Maximize Social Media

     

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    Are you Pitching & Chasing Unqualified Prospects?

    Posted by Peter Caputa on May 22, 2013 11:29:00 PM

    The other day, I posted about how I've stayed true to a helpful sales philosophy. It's not about me selling something. It's about me figuring out whether I can help someone or not. Sometimes, helping them involves them buying my solution. Sometimes, it doesn't.

    Here's a bit more about my sales philosophy that I wrote in email to one of my sales reps: 

    I imagine you know this, but I am a hard ass about qualifying (and disqualifying) prospects. The way I see it is that I think sales is all about helping people... who want and need my help. Therefore, I don't want to waste time trying to sell someone who I don't think I can help, or who doesn't want my help. I would rather spend that time helping someone else who wants and needs my help. So, I'm particular about who I spend time with. I would much rather rule someone out (respectfully) so that I can spend more time putting someone else in my funnel.

    The only thing that a salesperson truly controls is whether they've put enough opportunities into their funnel. Best way to ensure they do that is to spend as much time doing that, and be careful to avoid wasting time with people who don't want or need their help.

    Therefore, whenever I approach a sale, my goal is to answer the question, "Can I actually help this person/company or not?" I'm trying to make my own conclusion. I don't care if the answer is yes or no. It just has to be one or the other and I want to answer the question as soon as possible.

    Some prospects think they can figure out whether I can help them better than I can figure it out. They're wrong. They have no clue how I help people no matter how much they've read about me, my company or my product. I am much better at quickly figuring out if I can help someone because I've done this 1,000s of times. I've diagnosed company's sales and marketing practices 1,000s of times. I've seen it all. I can diagnose it quickly with a series of questions.

    This philosophy can be really hard for a salesperson to embrace.  Salespeople are afraid of disqualifying prospects. Salespeople are afraid to ask tough questions to figure out whether a prospect really needs, wants and can take advantage of their product. Salespeople can make sales by giving unqualified pitches.

    But, as a salesperson, I know that I won't convince someone to buy my product unless they need it and want it. I can get lucky and pitch the right person. But, more often than not, salespeople who give unqualified pitches are not going to close the deal. As a market gets more competitive or they have less demand, these salespeople will really struggle.

    How do you qualify or disqualify a prospect? How much time are you spending making unqualified pitches and chasing prospects who don't want your help? How much of that time could you be spending talking to more people who do want and need your help?

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    Keeping True to a Helpful Sales Philosophy

    Posted by Peter Caputa on Apr 26, 2013 4:50:00 PM

    I was reading some of my old blog posts today and stumbled across this one called, "Networking Isn't About Favors." In it, I talked about my sales philosophy,

    [At some point in my sales process] most of my prospects ask me "how they can hire me". Meaning: they are already sold. It's just a matter of fitting the right solution to solve their lead generation problems. In order to do this, I interview them about their business, discover their goals and budget, and then make a budget and goal appropriate recommendation. Then they say "yes" or "no". Most of the ones that get that far, say "yes". I usually rule most of the "no's" out before we get to a recommendation. As a result, I don't waste my time or my prospect's time if there isn't a good fit. And I help a lot of people along the way, creating a lot of good will - that always results in more opportunities for me and my clients."

    That was written in October 2007, the month before I joined HubSpot. For those that don't know, before I joined HubSpot, I sold online and email marketing services for events and small business owners. But, when I joined HubSpot, I applied this same sales philosophy to selling HubSpot's software. I've had the opportunity to train 10s of salespeople directly, impact the way other teams at HubSpot sell, and help 100s of agencies realize how they can sell in the same way. The other day, I was in a meeting with Brad Coffey and he told me that a vendor asked him a sales question. When he laughed and said, "That's a great question.", they said "We learned from your agency sales training." The funny thing is that they are neither a partner or an agency. 

    It feels pretty good to reflect and realize that I've stayed true to this philosophy and have compelled so many other people to follow along. Together, we're doing a lot of good, helping a lot of people now. Thanks to those who taught me and those who helped spread the messages along the way. You know who you are.

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    Don't Assume that Your Prospects Care About What You Do...

    Posted by Peter Caputa on Apr 15, 2013 8:29:00 AM

    HubSpot's CMO, Mike Volpe (@mvpolpe), wrote a piece on the HubSpot blog that I could paraphrase like this: "Don't Assume Your Prospects Know What You Do." He suggested that 'not repeating your value proposition' is the biggest mistake that marketers make.

    Every marketer should read it.  He knows marketing and marketers better than I do. But, if that's the biggest mistake marketers can make, I think the biggest mistake that salespeople make is assuming prospects care about your value proposition. As salespeople, we must suppress our urge to spit out what we do and how we do it until the right time, which is usually closing time. Our prospects must believe that we care about them, their challenges and their goals, before they'll be interested in hearing about us. Even then, it's important to focus on how we help them, not how we do what we do. The tricky part is that some prospects will ask you what you do and how you do it. Some will even demand that you tell them before they answer any of your questions. Explaining too much is still usually a mistake in these scenarios too. Why?

    Although prospects have more information available to them then ever before, they don't have the right knowledge and experience to make informed decisions and create the ideal plan to help them accomplish their goals. In a perfect world, everyone would follow Mike's advice and marketing would help every prospect fully comprehened the positioning of every company. Then, prospects could make their own decisions about how to solve their own problems. In reality, that rarely happens. Even at HubSpot, where our marketing team effectively generates and nurtures 10s of thousands of contacts every month, only a small fraction of our prospects have connected their goals and challenges to our solution before we start talking to them. Prospects need salespeople to guide them through making the right decisions, given the prospect's unique situation. This starts by uncovering the challenges and goals that a  prospect has. Then, it's the job of a salesperson to connect how their products and services can help them achieve their goals and overcome their challenges. Here's the process that we follow on my team at HubSpot:

    1. Exploratory. Understand a prospects goals, how they currently plan to achieve those goals, any challenges that have prevented them from achieving those goals in the past or challenges they (or you) anticipate they might face in achieving them, the timeline for achieving their goals and implementing their plan, the [usually negative] consequences of not achieving their goals and the [usually positive] implications of achieving them.
    2. Diagnostic. At this point, a prospect should trust that you are trying to help them. You mostly listened and challenged them and they should be thinking, "Wow. This salesperson knows exactly what I want and based on the questions she's asked, she must have helped other people in my situation before." At this point, it's time to identify what they are and aren't doing well that they will need to do well in order to achieve their goals and overcome their challenges within the timeline they need to achieve it, assuming they will eventually buy your product. This is where a good salesperson can teach a prospect what they don't know they don't know and talk through what they'll need to change in order to be successful. This is often the place where you should disqualify prospects if they are unwilling or unable to make the requisite changes to be successful.
    3. Goal Setting & Plan Development. Rarely, do prospects have all of their goals, challenges and timelines figured out. Rarely, are they confident in their plan. Rarely, do they know how they'll overcome challenges. Rarely, do they have realistic timelines. A good salesperson will help them set realistic goals and a plan to achieve them. 
    4. Demonstration and Contract. Once all of the above is figured out, it's time to present exactly how a prospect will use your solution to achieve their goals, implement the new plan you co-developed, overcome the challenges they'll face and do it all within the timeline needed. If steps 1, 2 and 3 are done well, a salesperson can usually ask, "How are you going to implement this plan?" and the prospect should say, "I was hoping you guys could help me do that."

    How Can Marketers Help?

    Assuming that your salespeople follow a guided sales process like this one, how does this change what a marketer should do? Should they, as Mike suggests, focus on including their positioning in every piece of content? It can't hurt. But, I think marketers can do more than that. I'd suggest that marketers should care less about their own positioning and more about guiding prospects to solutions to their challenges, just like a good salesperson. In a complex sale, a prospect could have any number of challenges or may have different goals than other prospects do. Your short product positioning and company branding  will rarely convey all of the right solutions to all of these challenges and goals. Why? If you want your positioning to be relevant and memorable for most of your audience, it must be short and sweet. Buyers are only going to store so much about you in their brains. But, the way your product helps someone is rarely short and sweet. If it were, you wouldn't need salespeople. 

    In my next article, I'll feature how two sales experts - Frank Belzer (@fbelzer) (Sales Shift) and Aaron Ross (@motoceo) (Predictable Revenue) - teach marketers and salespeople to customize their positioning based on the needs of a prospect. And I'll talk about how marketers can then connect the right content to a prospect based on their unique goals and challenges.

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    HubSpot Officially Launching in Europe Today

    Posted by Peter Caputa on Mar 5, 2013 7:59:00 AM

    Today, HubSpot officially launches in Europe.  Here's a few presentations they'll be making:





    It's cool to see that we have our International Agency Partner of the year involved in the event. I understand that many of our top European partners will be present at the event too.
    We have 5 people already on the ground in Dublin focused on our channel partners. Yesterday, I took 5 more people out to lunch that will return to Dublin and will focus exclusively on our channel partners after receiving training in Cambridge, MA this month. Exciting times for HubSpot and our partners. 
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    Sales People Can (and Should) Blog Too

    Posted by Peter Caputa on Mar 4, 2013 9:54:00 AM

    I blogged long before I had any real sales skills or experience. I thought I knew how to sell, but didn't really learn the right way to do it until I hired Rick Roberge. When I started learning how to prospect, I realized that a blog is a perfect selling tool. Blogging helps with generating awareness, establishing credibility, and nurturing prospects. Shortly after I started getting sales coaching from Rick, I started coaching Rick Roberge on how to use a blog. Unlike me, he was a salesperson long before he ever wrote a blog post. That was almost 10 years ago now. Rick is still blogging.

    At HubSpot, my sales team is constantly telling our partners to blog more frequently. They're also coaching agencies on how to offer blogging as a service to their clients. But, very few people on my team actually write their own blogs. Not anymore...

    1. Sales People Can Blog - A group blog by Danielle Herzberg's sales team. So far, contrbutions are from Dan MacAdam and Brian Signorelli, both Channel Account Managers at HubSpot. It's fun and it's funny, not just for salespeople, not just for agencies.... So far, their stuff appeals to a general marketing and sales audience.
    2. Inbound Agency Selling with David Weinhaus, a Channel Account Manager. David was the first salesperson on my team to blog consistently. Great advice for agencies.
    3. Nick Sal Inbound - Nick Sal is a consultant on our agency team. Anyone who knows Nick, knows that he brings excitement to everything he does. That shows through in his writing too.
    4. Innovation Al Marketing  - Al is the wise man on the agency consulting team at HubSpot. He's an excellent writer and communicator. I speak from experience when I say: don't ever ask him for critical feedback about your blogging efforts, if you don't really want it.

    There's a real SHIFT going on - where marketers aren't the only ones blogging. There's a shift in sales going on - where salespeople are seeing the value of blogging. Inbound marketing changes sales. Frank Belzer just published his book today: Sales Shift: How inbound marketing has changed selling, making it more difficult and more lucrative at the same time. He's leading a bit of a movement, I believe.

    Are you in sales? Do you blog? Why? Why not?

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    The Inbound Mandate

    Posted by Peter Caputa on Feb 27, 2013 2:15:00 PM

    Today, I shared the stage with Tony Mikes (@secondwindbuzz) and Billy Mitchell (@billymitchell1) to give a talk titled, "The Inbound Mandate" at YA2: Your Agency Empowered.

    Below is the deck, which was largely created by my right hand man @HubSpot, Patrick Shea (@mpatrickshea).

    For those who weren't there, here's a blog post I published a few weeks ago that says some of what I said today: 9 More Reasons to Invest in Inbound Marketing. I plan to work with @shannopop to get a blog post on the HubSpot blog that covers more of what I said in the deck.

    PS to @bhalligan. Although the slides might not look like it, you would blush if you were there. @BillyMitchell1 will tell you.

    Feedback welcome. Engage on Twitter: @pc4media.

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