Accelerate Sales
Mike Volpe: HubSpot’s CMO on Linking Marketing and Sales
January 19, 2012
Every quarter, we bring together marketing executives to swap stories, share experiences and create some best practices. Mike, the CMO of HubSpot, spoke to the group earlier this week.
At a start-up, stopping isn’t really in the playbook. But six years in, I got a chance to think – and talk – at Corporate Ink’s recent breakfast for local tech marketing experts about what worked in our inbound marketing strategy, and what didn’t. So, 1,780 or so days into it – here’s a little bit of what stood out, what worked, and what’s worth doing more of.
Blogging We were early, and it really worked. There More >
Guest Post: The Challenge of Selling in the New Normal… And What To Do About It
September 30, 2011
by Guest Post
in Accelerate Sales
Scott Willard is CEO of BroadReach Partners, Inc. (broadreachpartnersinc.com), a sales consultancy specializing in accelerating measurable top-line growth
Ah, the bliss of yesterday’s sales cycle. We didn’t know how good we had it. Find a lead, make a call, get a meeting, close the deal.
That was then. In the New Normal economy, the sales environment has changed radically. And it’s certainly longer, often taking months, even years, from first call to close. You have to work harder to find the right people to talk to. You have to work harder to get them to talk to you. You need to talk to More >
Guest Post: Selling to a Universe of One
September 29, 2011
by Guest Post
in Accelerate Sales
Earlier this week, Mike Braatz spoke at our quarterly networking breakfast on what it took to turn Memento Security into the go-to resource for insight about banking fraud. The below blog post was contributed by Mike, detailing the key takeaways from his talk.
I’ve led marketing for a number of early stage B2B technology companies. Needless to say, I’ve learned a lot, from both successes and failures. When I first arrived at my current company, Memento, we faced all the usual challenges, and then some.
On the positive side, we knew we had a great solution to a real problem: bank fraud. More >
3 rules for dusting off your “analog” networking
September 1, 2011
In the tech industry, I do so much marketing and networking digitally, that face to face networking can seem foreign. Even in this digital time, it’s still important to engage in old fashioned “analog” marketing. And it’s really important to understand the line that exists between the two and modify your strategy accordingly.
I recently attended a venture capital startup/entrepreneur meetup in Cambridge and was pleased to network face to face and hear many interesting ideas. Here some observations I was reminded of:
1. Less hype In real life, you can’t treat every conversation as a business More >
You know the economy’s in trouble when…
August 30, 2011
Twice in one week, different executives used the word “scrappy” to describe their marketing approach to me.
Bring it on! Here’s one simple formula:
Create really, really compelling content. Run fewer campaigns and only those that really have juice. If you sit on data, exploit it. If you don’t, find a way to create it. It works for the media and for lead-gen.
Button down your lead-gen process. On the front end ask the qualifier: How will it generate or nurture leads? On the back end: Who’s going to follow-up, and how will they advance the conversation?
Invest in search. Get an independent More >