Positioning
- Create a strategy. Invite multiple people to define your position. Include decision makers
- Positioning: What markes you serve and what products and services will you sell them?
- Positioning requires you to pick a niche. Targeting everything is silly.
- Start with who you won't serve. Filter your targeting
- Specialists get paid more than generalists
- Attract the right prospect, not just any prospect
- Craft a Unique Selling Proposition (USP). What is it you do differently from anybody else?
- Every message, every move, every decision should tie directly back to your USP, and your positioning. Websites, brochures, media, should all reflect your positioning and USP
- Why: Why you do what you do?
- How: How you do what you do? Culture and Belief systems
- Who: Who are you targeting?
- What: What are your core competencies. Tie back to USP
Unique Selling Proposition
Pricing Inbound Retainers
- Retainers: An ongoing payment for services contract
- Advantages: Clear deliverables and predictable revenue
- Build retainers to accomodate scalability
- Channel Consultant (CC) helps with service level agreements
- Channel Account Manager (CAM) helps with pricing and sales issues
- What do you offer in exchange for the retainer?
- $$$ What can upsell down the road?
- Remove ambiguity for retainer services. What are you building and how much of it will you build?
- BUILD - SEO, keyword research, buyer personas, content creation like blogging
- GROW - Social media, content offers, conversion paths
- ACCELERATE - Social Ads, segementation, CRM builds
- Figure out timed deliverables, monthly, quarterly, etc.
- Figure out the cost associated with each retainer deliverable
- Start smaller and scale up instead of biting off more than you can chew
- Average Transaction Size
- Customer Transaction Frequency
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- Use the old metric RFM - Recency, Frequency, Money Spent
- Purpose of inbound marketing - develope a consistent stream of leads and customers
- Practice What You Preach - How can you market clients if you cannot market yourself?
- Cobrand Hubspot approved assets, don't reinvent the wheel
- Save time by starting with what works
- eBooks
- Campaign kits
- Charts
- Presentation Resources
- Closer material, marketing and sales decks
- Worksheets
- Gear towards your buyer persona
- Customize
- Personalize
- Keep the funnel path in mind
- Use required fields on any form
- Remember conversion path and where your prospect is in the buyer journey
- Shy away from transactional business, embrace customer recurring payment business
- Inbound: We turn strangers into leads, leads into opportunities, and opportunities into customers
- Seek to understand
- No pitching
- Promote your USP
- Keep the funnel path in mind
- Tie solutions to inbound methodology
- Use Client Account Manager (CAM) for coaching and sales call mentorship
- Would you rather have 100 weak leads who have a low probabilty of converting? Or, would you rather have 10 leads desperate for your product or service?
- Start with the ideal buyer profile. This is your blueprint to finding high-quality leads
- Find people who develop customer relationships month after month. Avoid transactional businesses. Transactional operations have 1-2 launches per year and that is all.
- Customer driven businesses are easier to sell retainers too. Why? Because they also use a monthly subscription model.
- Keep somebody focused on conversions. Begin with the end in mind. Leads turn to customers who buy over and over again
- Use this to evaluate secondary criteria as well
- Consider business verticals
- Identify geographic and local targeting opportunities
- Choose leads who fit your ideal buyer profile
- Now you generated the lead, it is time to find out more
- To use a dating analogy, this is the first date. You have matched with a prospect, now you find out more about the them
- Assess if the lead is a good fit for your agency model
- Figure out if you can help
- Start the conversation
- If they are a good fit, then your job is to melt resistance, and get a meeting
- Avoid pitching
- Avoid talking at them with the inbound mantra
- Advance relationships with existing clients
- How can you use inbound to build the relationship and business book with existing clients?
- Leverage and highlight your prior work with clients
- Introduce yourself
- State the purpose of the call
- Remind them why you are calling, because of a form they filled out.
- Ask for permission to continue the discussion
- Call inbound leads within one hour. Statistics show the probability of advancing a lead decreases as time passes from a lead generation form filled out
- Busy prospects or people unreceptive to your message, leave them with a free, valuable tip
- Ask a question with an answer relevant to the client and their pain points
- Ask open-ended questions. Get the prospect talking. The more they talk, the more they reveal clues to you
- No need to learn the complete workings of the company you are speaking to. Learn the basics
- Summarize the discussion. Tie everything back to the prospects challenges
- Get the prospect to commit to an Exploratory Call
- Lock down a time and date for the Exploratory Call
- Get the lead to talk through their goals
- Should you and the lead work together? This is the time to find out
- Get the lead to talk through their goals
- Promote both the inbound mindset and your inbound skills
- Set the agenda and establish control
- Ask the prospect about their Unique Selling Proposition
- Identify competitors
- Find out their pricing structure
- What are their revenue goals?
- CEO Test: Explain to the CEO in 5 minutes how you understand their business and their challenges. Think of it as reading their elevator speech back to them.
- Use power statements: A concise statement of your agency and how you solve the prospects problems with your skillset
- Avoid proposal building on this call. Find out more about Goals
- Send a summary
- Follow up after the call, within 24 hours
- Budget - Can your prospect afford your agency?
- Authority - Who is the decision maker, i.e., who signs the checks?
- Need - The Bleeding Neck theory. Does your prospect need help right now, or soon in the future?
- Timing - Is their an urgent need?
- Goal setting and planning call
- After you cover the agenda, ask the prospect if they want to discuss anything additional
- Focus on lead generation, speak to inbound
- Discuss targets and benchmarks
- Later in the call if it is applicable, give the Hubspot Demo. Cover the tools applicable for inbound, lead generation, and their business goals
- At the close, reiterat the cost of inaction. More sales are lost to indecision than anything else. If you make it to the close, make sure they know what they lose if they do not act now.
- Determine which plan is best: Basic, Professional, Enterprise
- Basic: Generate Traffic
- Professional: Drive and nurture leads using Workflows and automation tools
- Enterprise: Optimize Conversions
- Discuss the best plan fit with your Client Account Manager (CAM)
- Discuss portal transfers, upgrades, and start date
- Know when discounts expire
- Be aware of cancellation requirements
- Enterprise: Optimize Conversions
- Stay alert for Contact Tier Upgrades. Make sure the client knows each tier, and when they get close
- First rule of client success: Retention. The longer they stay, the more they pay
- The longer they invest with you, the more the opportunity for upsells
- Expand on digital assets
- Map content to buyer journey stages
- For any numerical goal by the client, try to get a range of acceptable values
- Make sure all team members are HubSpot Inbound certified
- Onboarding goal: Get the client up to speed. Start generating results
- Establish trust and manage expectations
- Communicate with the client consistently. Keep their comfort level up
- Stay on top of the expected deliverables from the client
- Set Expectations
- Keep the excitement level up and momentum moving forward
- Client happiness gives you a chance for upsells and referrals
- Avoid waiting until the last minute for referral calls
- Keep the renewal call scheduled 2 months before contract expiration
- Point back to your accomplishments
- Work with Channel Consultant on renewal items
- If the client is expanding, you have a potential for an upgrade. More salesmen equals the need for more leads to work
- Watch for anchors, where a client references a discount price point
- Based on conversations and client interactions, does it make sense to renew the retainer? It may be best for your team to cut ties with a client
- Notify your Channel Consultant
- Continue serving your existing retainer
- Prepare items for transition such as login details
- Set up debrief with your team. What went wrong? Things to improve
- Reporting honors your retainer, builds trust, but it also presents upsell oppoortunities
- Use HubSpot Sales to track funnel journeys
- Stick to monthly ROI calls. More touches keeps the communication lines open
- Avoid spewing metrics to the client. Use the story narrative, tie it back to why you were hired. What is the end game of this retainer?
- Avoid hiring for emergencies. Hire for a good, long-term fit for your team.
- Keep Career Paths Open. Talented people want to grow.
- Utilization: Number of billable hours an employee works on.
- Some non-billable work is unavoidable. But the closer to 75% utilization you can get, the better your agency runs like a well-oiled machine
- Utilization helps determine hiring.
- Retainers and predictable sales help determine hiring practices
- 3 part time contracts equals 1 full time hire
- Fast learners, good communicators, who can handle account loads
- Have them complete HubSpot Academy Training
- Then give them a few accounts
- Have them complete Inbound Certification
- To get them up to speed on the Inbound Way, use the Inbound Hiring Project Resources
- Tier program encourages inbound excellence and rewards those who excel at Inbound
- Each tier unlocks new benefits
- HubSpot Partner Directory Listing
- All Silver Tier Benefits Plus...
- HubSpot Blog Contributor. Build thought leadership and pick up more leads
- All Silver Tier and Gold Tier Benefits Plus...
- Agency Partner Speakers Bureau (Speaking Engagements)
- Agency Growth Fund (Interest Free Loans)
- HubSpot Agency Partner Certification
- 5 HubSpot Apps used on accounts
- Sold
- Managed
- Tier Promotions get communicated on the newsletter and to team members