Podcasts about inbound organization

Today on the show with Dan Tyre, we talk about how infusing your business with a human centered outlook at every level can help you achieve exponential growth while maintaining healthy relationships. Dan is a rapid growth expert and has many tips from years of developing several massively successful startups. We talk about some of the most important keys to growth such as niching, effective websites, human centered sales, and the “freemium” business model. This conversation is a much needed reminder to treat each other like humans and do our best to help others. When you strive for this, your business, and the world, will become a much better place! Key Takeaways  The best way to grow in 2023 is to have a very narrow niche. Embrace the “freemium” model by using free stuff to hook potential clients, build trust, and create raving fans. For serious growth, your customers are more important than your sales team. Utilize your website to get a conversation started with potential clients, don't try to sell to them immediately. About Dan Tyre Dan is a 14-year-veteran of HubSpot, hired as employee number six. While initially the first salesperson, Dan has since helped expand the sales team through management, recruiting, and training. He is also a frequent contributor to the HubSpot Sales Blog and coined the term "Schmarketing" to describe the necessary alignment between sales and marketing. Outside of HubSpot, Dan leverages his 42 years of multidisciplinary business experience in sales, marketing, and service to help scale fast-growing companies and coach those that want to harness the power of Inbound Marketing to improve their bottom line. In April 2018, he published a book with Wiley Business Press with Todd Hockenberry called Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles, and he regularly shares his knowledge through guest appearances on podcasts and as a speaker at worldwide events. In his local Arizona community, Dan puts pen to paper with his life motto of “always be helping” and spends time advising startups and mentoring executives and young people with ambitions with the Arizona Commerce Authority and Galvanize location in Phoenix. He also demonstrates his commitment to social responsibility with mentorship at Seed Spot. Most proudly, Dan has been married to the beautiful, smart, and thoughtful Amy Tyre for 33 years, and they share two children, Eli and Sally, and a rescue pup named Stinson. In This Episode [00:00] Welcome to the show! [02:28] Meet Dan Tyre [04:17] Dan's interesting career background [22:55] Dan's books [25:55] Principles of an Allbound business [30:12] The riches are in the niches [34:29] The HubSpot Flywheel [38:55] Inbound marketing for your website [40:56] Using a CRM [41:50] Free resources [46:16] Connect with Dan [46:52] Outro Quotes  “Number 1 - treat people like human beings.” [26:07] - Dan Tyre “You help before you sell.” [27:00] - Dan Tyre “Never before has it been so easy for me to say, ‘here's exactly, not just what we do, but who we do it for.'” [31:48] - Ryan Koral “You can actually grow quicker in 2023 if you have a smaller focus, a niche focus.” [32:42] - Dan Tyre “Your customers are more important for new business than your sales team.” [34:42] - Dan Tyre Links  Get the The Lead Machine: Website Checklist for Filmmakers FREE Workshop Available "How to Consistently Earn Over $100k Per Year in Video Production While Working Less Than 40 Hours Per Week" Join the Grow Your Video Business Facebook Group  Find Dan Tyre online HubSpot's Free Website Grader HubSpot's Growth Grader Follow Dan Tyre on Instagram | Facebook | Twitter Connect with Dan Tyre on LinkedIn Follow Ryan Koral on Instagram Follow Grow Your Video Business on Instagram What's your question for the podcast? Share a video or audio response! Check out the full show notes page If you haven't already, we'd love it if you would take 1 minute to leave us a review on iTunes!

In today's episode, I'm talking with HubSpot Executive, Dan Tyre. This episode is all about perfecting your inbound sales to strengthen your companies future. This conversation is from one of our live sessions during Trainual's annual event, Playbook 2022. If you listen to my podcast, Organize Chaos, then you know I love every chance I get to talk with Dan Tyre. So we're bringing him back for another episode. I read once that you can never read the same book twice because each time you read it, you're a different person and so you receive it differently and you learn different things. And I think the same goes with interviews. So some of you may have heard Dan and I talk before, but every time we talk there will be new nuggets of wisdom, there'll be new questions, there'll be new stories that Dan tells. You can already see his energy in the chat. This guy's infectious. So let's talk about Dan, 15 year veteran of HubSpot. He was the first salesperson. He's expanded the sales through management and training the whole sales team. And he coined the term 'schmarketing,' which we talked about the first time I interviewed him. He's also the co-author of the book Inbound Organization. Awesome book, check that out. How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future. Find episode show notes, podcast blog recaps, and the best SMB news & tips on The Manual! Watch video highlights on Youtube here. Follow Chris Ronzio for more business insight. Learn more about Trainual, the world's top Business Playbook™ software. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/processmakesperfect/message

In this episode of the Growth Enablement Madness podcast, we sat down with Dan Tyre, an industry thought leader and author of the book "Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles." We discussed how businesses can get started building inbound strategies that go beyond the marketing department. We also discussed what inbound truly is (and isn't) and where focus points should be if you want to grow and scale your business with an inbound mentality.

Dan Tyre is the Director of Sales at HubSpot. He joined HubSpot as a member of the original team in May of 2007 and has led the recruiting, training, and growth of HubSpot's sales team with vigor. Dan is an authority on inbound marketing and sales and is a regular speaker, writer, and coach to those who yearn for inbound success. At HubSpot, Dan pioneered the concept of alignment between sales and marketing known as "Smarketing," a core tenet of inbound marketing now followed by thousands of companies around the world.  Outside of HubSpot, Dan leverages his 42 years of multidisciplinary business experience in sales, marketing, and service to help scale fast-growing companies and coach those that want to harness the power of Inbound Marketing to improve their bottom line. In April 2018, he published a book with Wiley Business Press with Todd Hockenberry called Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles, and he regularly shares his knowledge through guest appearances on podcasts and as a speaker at worldwide events.  In this episode, he shares why and how we can shift from "always be closing" to "always be helping" to drive sales success and revenue growth. Insights he shares include: What does it mean to be an inbound organization in today's worldThe underlying principles of inbound that make it work so wellWhat does it look like to always be helpful as an organizationWhy Dan suggests we move away from using marketing and sales funnelsWhy use sales flywheels as opposed to sales funnelsFrom an "always be helping" perspective - what does creating a sales flywheel entail and what does it look likeKey elements to scaling a business for an organization that is looking to always be helpingand much much more ...

Mike Montague interviews Todd Hockenberry, author of Inbound Organization and a HubSpot partner, on How to Succeed at Becoming an Inbound Organization.   Find Todd and the book at: https://www.inboundorganization.com/  The best attitude, behavior, and technique on how to sell to succeed at becoming an inbound organization Everyone in the organization is part of inbound marketing If you can't keep good employees, check your culture If your employees aren't happy, they won't treat your customers well If you don't like being marketed in a certain way, why would you market to others that way? The way you think is really your product Use technology to engage, not to hide The experience IS the relationship Map the journey with your clients The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler. SUBSCRIBE: https://podfollow.com/howtosucceed   Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a comment!

Mike Montague interviews Todd Hockenberry, author of Inbound Organization and a HubSpot partner, on How to Succeed at Becoming an Inbound Organization.   Find Todd and the book at: https://www.inboundorganization.com/  The best attitude, behavior, and technique on how to sell to succeed at becoming an inbound organization Everyone in the organization is part of inbound marketing If you can't keep good employees, check your culture If your employees aren't happy, they won't treat your customers well If you don't like being marketed in a certain way, why would you market to others that way? The way you think is really your product Use technology to engage, not to hide The experience IS the relationship Map the journey with your clients The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler. SUBSCRIBE: https://podfollow.com/howtosucceed   Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a comment!

Mike Montague interviews Todd Hockenberry, author of Inbound Organization and a HubSpot partner, on How to Succeed at Becoming an Inbound Organization.   Find Todd and the book at: https://www.inboundorganization.com/  The best attitude, behavior, and technique on how to sell to succeed at becoming an inbound organization Everyone in the organization is part of inbound marketing If you can't keep good employees, check your culture If your employees aren't happy, they won't treat your customers well If you don't like being marketed in a certain way, why would you market to others that way? The way you think is really your product Use technology to engage, not to hide The experience IS the relationship Map the journey with your clients The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler. SUBSCRIBE: https://podfollow.com/howtosucceed   Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a comment!

Mari wraps up her conversation with speaker, coach, and the author of “Inbound Organization,” Dan Tyre. In part two, Dan talks about his struggle with imposter syndrome and how his relationship with his wife has helped him with his life's mission.

Mari's first guest is the legendary Dan Tyre. Dan is a serial entrepreneur who launched five startups during his 40-year career. Dan is also a speaker, coach, and the author of “Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles.” In part one, Dan shares how he became employee #6 at HubSpot and how the principles of inbound marketing can have positive effects on life and business.

In this interview, Richard Rothstein (Founder of Rothstein Consulting) speaks with Dan Tyer (Author of Inbound Organization, Hubspot) about what recruiting looks like for accounting firms in 2021, and how Covid has affected things.This is a little different episode in that we are talking to a marketing professional about organizational trends and how that is affecting hiring in the accounting world.Dan tells us about how Inbound Recruiting began at Hubspot and how important it has become. He spends some time talking about how undervalued your digital footprint is and how being customer-centric is super important to your recruiting. He also mentions a blog post on Inbound Recruiting that can be found on rothsteinconsulting.com

Mike Montague interviews Dan Tyre, Inbound Fellow at Hubspot, on How to Succeed at Selling in a Hybrid World. Mike and Dan collaborated on a new free course in Hubspot Academy called Selling in a Hybrid World.   You can take the course by enrolling at https://www.sandler.com/hybridselling.    Dan Tyre is author of Inbound Organization and was employee #6 and the first salesperson at Hubspot. Outside of HubSpot, Dan leverages his 42 years of multidisciplinary business experience in sales, marketing, and service to help scale fast-growing companies and coach those that want to harness the power of Inbound Marketing to improve their bottom line.    In this episode: The best attitude, behavior, and technique on how to succeed at selling in a hybrid world Determine what will be done digitally and what won't Be a helper Contact prospects multiple times in multiple ways Listen, don't talk Stand up more and sit less Prep and debrief the call Don't stack Zoom calls without prep and debrief time in between   Podcast: https://howtosucceed.libsyn.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-succeed-podcast-by/id1097591566 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/00JoVzRtMzmQB5Ae5RWWQZ   The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler Training, the worldwide leader in sales, management, and customer service training for individuals all the way up to Fortune 500 companies with over 250 locations around the globe.   Find white papers, webinars, and more in our free Sandler E-Learning Library: https://www.sandler.com/sell   Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a comment!

Mike Montague interviews Dan Tyre, Inbound Fellow at Hubspot, on How to Succeed at Selling in a Hybrid World. Mike and Dan collaborated on a new free course in Hubspot Academy called Selling in a Hybrid World.   You can take the course by enrolling at https://www.sandler.com/hybridselling.    Dan Tyre is author of Inbound Organization and was employee #6 and the first salesperson at Hubspot. Outside of HubSpot, Dan leverages his 42 years of multidisciplinary business experience in sales, marketing, and service to help scale fast-growing companies and coach those that want to harness the power of Inbound Marketing to improve their bottom line.    In this episode: The best attitude, behavior, and technique on how to succeed at selling in a hybrid world Determine what will be done digitally and what won't Be a helper Contact prospects multiple times in multiple ways Listen, don't talk Stand up more and sit less Prep and debrief the call Don't stack Zoom calls without prep and debrief time in between   Podcast: https://howtosucceed.libsyn.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-succeed-podcast-by/id1097591566 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/00JoVzRtMzmQB5Ae5RWWQZ   The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler Training, the worldwide leader in sales, management, and customer service training for individuals all the way up to Fortune 500 companies with over 250 locations around the globe.   Find white papers, webinars, and more in our free Sandler E-Learning Library: https://www.sandler.com/sell   Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a comment!

Mike Montague interviews Dan Tyre, Inbound Fellow at Hubspot, on How to Succeed at Selling in a Hybrid World. Mike and Dan collaborated on a new free course in Hubspot Academy called Selling in a Hybrid World.   You can take the course by enrolling at https://www.sandler.com/hybridselling.    Dan Tyre is author of Inbound Organization and was employee #6 and the first salesperson at Hubspot. Outside of HubSpot, Dan leverages his 42 years of multidisciplinary business experience in sales, marketing, and service to help scale fast-growing companies and coach those that want to harness the power of Inbound Marketing to improve their bottom line.    In this episode: The best attitude, behavior, and technique on how to succeed at selling in a hybrid world Determine what will be done digitally and what won't Be a helper Contact prospects multiple times in multiple ways Listen, don't talk Stand up more and sit less Prep and debrief the call Don't stack Zoom calls without prep and debrief time in between   Podcast: https://howtosucceed.libsyn.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/how-to-succeed-podcast-by/id1097591566 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/00JoVzRtMzmQB5Ae5RWWQZ   The How to Succeed Podcast is a public and free podcast from Sandler Training, the worldwide leader in sales, management, and customer service training for individuals all the way up to Fortune 500 companies with over 250 locations around the globe.   Find white papers, webinars, and more in our free Sandler E-Learning Library: https://www.sandler.com/sell   Don't forget to subscribe and leave us a comment!

The irrepressible Dan Tyre is our guest for this episode, and he makes a compelling case that the Inbound methodology can and must be applied far beyond lead generation to make your company as successful as it can be. If you want to be jazzed up for 2021, this is the episode for you.Dan talks about how the flywheel, a model that HubSpot introduced to represent the integration of sales, marketing and customer success, is central to achieving goals in 2021 and beyond. He also talks about how the principles of Inbound apply to organizing your business internally as well, as described in his book, "Inbound Organization." It's a great listen.Resources for SaaS ExecsRecently closed a funding round and need to ramp growth?Check out our comprehensive "scale-a-saas" guide:Think your website could generate more leads?Get our inbound lead generation self-assessmentWant to be a guest on SaaS Backwards?Click to meet with Ken Lempit to talk about an episode.SaaS Backwards is a free service to the SaaS community.

JB:Dan Tyre founding team member of HubSpot Employee #6 joining in 2007 and first sales person. Held various positions in sales, management, recruiting, training and more.  He also created the term SMARKETING to help create alignment between sales and marketing.  Dan mentors so many reps aside from asking others to go mentor others and pay it forward.  Check out his best-selling book,Inbound Organization.  Learn from his experience working at 2 person startups to organizations of 45,000 people. Dan:BOOOOOOOOM!JB:You’ve had such an interesting career working with so many different people and recently training agency partners at scale on how to sell and grow their businesses. How did you get into sales?DT:Desperation.  Sold books door to door to work my way through college. Went to Colgate university in 1976 and didn’t have a lot of money, couldn’t go back sophomore year unless he made $5K. Southwestern Corporation, Nashville, TN. As long as I can make $5 grand, I’m in! Incredible sales experience.  COMMISSION ONLY! Sent to Bellingham, WA.  95% of people quit. I couldn’t quit because I didn’t have enough money to get back home.  I had to consult with bank Presidents to gas station attendants and it was a fantastic introduction to the sales process. We read Tommy Hopkins and learned consultative selling. I was a slow percolator and it took me a while to get it.  I was out in the field 2 weeks and I was scared, would fumble through stuff and didn’t have high confidence. A lady took me in, gave me a cookie as I stumbled through my sales pitch and said SHE WOULD BUY! Took the $25 and ran to McDonald’s to eat my first meal in a week!Door to door selling carrying his Dictionaries in a rolling case. Building rapport, at the time had to “wait for my husband to come home” DAN → that’s exactly what your neighbor said….Ms Joyce said the same thing, but realized she could spend the $$ because it’s her kids education → now his customers were ready to buy showing proof of sales from their neighbors. Last month using that strategy closed 40% of people after everyone knew him and got a deposit from most people! First year Individual Contributor $5,0002nd year 9 guys recruited, got a cut from that , 7 quit, 2 stayed and made $8 grand!Junior year went to Vegas playing pokerGraduated college in 1980  from Colgate University Played bass in heavy metal rock and roll band Being a bass player is a great foundation for being a great business person1982 tired of making $25/week - 14 computer stores in BostonWalked in to Computer Store, Roger Lund gave him a shot and Dan became #1 sales person in 3 monthsRoger left for Startup, wanted to take Dan with him and would pay dan $1,500/year more. Now Dan’s a startup guy!1983 left for Business Land $3Milllion next 9 years grew to $1.4 BILLION 10:00 Dan started as Rep → Sales Manager for 9 months → General Manager → LA ran 6 locations → San Fran training reps → NYC= 35% of corporate revenueBible = ART OF SELLING by Tommy Hopkins“I got addicted to hypergrowth”Back in the 1980’s and everyone had to buy computers. Talk to accountants and they WOULD CRY seeing how easy it made their life!The way you sold computers is you would put a sign out and people would come byMarried 31 YEARS! Dan all energy and enthusiasm, his wife Amy is the smart one and she was a great sellerAfter 9 years at Business Land. Started his own company as CEO scaled to $30 Million as a professional services locationBought training company that went Bankrupt, was AWESOME (learning)! Had to tell employees and their locations and tell people he had no money.  Learned humility at 40 and to always have a contingency plan4th startup, Groove Networks, bought out by Microsoft, his VP of Sales was Brian HalliganGot a call when Brian & Dharmesh wanted to start HubSpot because he had great energy and was the best salesperson they met!Mark Roberge - Sales Acceleration Formula - VP of Sales at HubSpotDidn’t miss our number for the first 27 months at HubSpot and everything I knew about selling and business changed completely after I joined HubSpot!15:00“I am by far the luckiest guy in the world, I’ve had dinner with Bob Marley,  taught Steve Tyler how to fire his manager met Muhammed Ali,  and met with  president’s. Things happen to me and it’s because I have a positive Mindset”“You’re (enter your name here), you can do anything”  It’s my mantra, I say it to 4,000 people in the world! Do you have an identical twin? No? Well then YOU ARE THE ONLY YOU OUT THERE!You can do anything, the key is to figure out what you want to do and WRITE IT DOWNIn 2020 we set goals and work backwardsMindset- you first need to believe you can do it, then you must know WHAT you want to doThis must be written downWrite out what you wantDantyre.comSucceed: How We Reach Our Goals by Heidi Halverson Why Goals?  What Goals?Written down goals are more effective, people are healthierMindset is 99% of SalesMy Prospecting now is usually in front of 100 people down at Stetson University - gotta raise $$ for crew to get a new boat“I’m Dan Tyre, I can do anything”“This Guy is Gonna Pickup and make a donation to your crew program!” They think he’s insane for picking up the phone, let alone believing he is going to get the $$!What kind of donation do you want?  I don’t know, what are you comfortable with? $100! A tremendous and wonderful feeling!“I look at the phone and say this person is going to pick up and I have some level of skills obviously, but this is MINDSET”JB: Was there a point where that mindset came about or did you always have it?DT:What I learned selling books and in my entrepreneurial experience is 99% of success is what we call a Growth Mindset. Never had a problem speaking in front of 10 people, even when I was an average speaker I knew I was going to get there, I was Bruce Springsteen early on, because “Nobody outworks Dan Tyre”All the young people think they can outwork the old man. I don’t drink so I’m full of energyI’ve got the positive mindset while young people are still working on itWhen I was growing up, when you turned 60, you diedNow Warren Buffet is 90, so he’s my new model and I have 18 years left, it’s going to be awesome!Dan Tyre 2.0 = Smart, empathetic, willing to helpMy Mantra = Do The Most Good For the UniverseThere’s nothing that’s better than having gratitude for where we are25:00I’m still at HubSpot because I love working with these young people straight out of collegeThe key is Proper Mindset, define what you want to doI’m not the smartest, wow there are so many smart people I’ve learned from and been supported by!How to engage sales people if they need re-engagement I’m your confidence before you have confidenceEveryone goes through their twists and turns When you eat the big dog, CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESSES! When the big dog eats you, you can’t wallow, you have to do recovery and understand this is a part of anyone's sales lifeThe Mental Mindset is; I’m at the top of the charts all the time and Nobody is going to outwork meWe’re top 2% because we will outwork everyone At a certain place in my life it wasn’t competitive with anyone else and it was being competitive with myselfGrowth mindset, you’re always improving.  There are things I can always be doing better and learning“I’m like a teenage girl, I just talk on the phone everyday”The great thing  30:005 things  Make sure you:Take Care of the Basics; Eat, Sleep & ExerciseGet a good playlist!You have to have a Vision BoardSSP = Shameless Self PromotionFind 3 people  that will tell you 10 great things about yourself when the big dog eats you!I can be your confidence before you have it. Some people are mental giants that can do things that I can’t do. My best attribute is I’m stubborn, you can’t beat someone that won’t quit35:00JB: As you’ve had a chance to train, mentor, coach thousands of sales people over the years.  What is the biggest hurdle you’ve seen?DT:People don’t understand how important it is.  If you don’t have your mindset ready it’s hard to win. You’re gonna stink for 30,60 sometimes 6 months.  Roleplay can accelerate it. But the only way you get good is PRACTICE.Once slow percolators get it, and they have a good process, the are locked in!The whole foundation of HubSpot & Inbound Revolution is sales has changed, used to be all about sales people and now it’s all about the customerAlways Be Closing is Dead, How To Always Be HelpingIf someone calls you to sell you something, or help you with something. Which one would you like to talk to?40:00The Riches are in the nichesBack in the old days you could be OK as a generalist, now it’s time to be a specialistStart with a nicheDo your researchNow you can figure out what they needWhat’s the 3 things I can help you solve that you’d buy me a breakfast sandwich next time I’m there? If I can help with 3 things, then we’ll do business or I can send them to someone who will help betterJB: You mention empathy, how do people build that?DT: Women are better at empathy than me.  Women are better at life than men!Give $10 to a man, they buy beer and get drunk.  Give $10 to a woman they buy diapers for the whole village. Women are better listenersGuys are taught to BS and push through, women are taught to socialize and are betterEmpathy builds better alignment. You can be encouraging when you know what they’re trying to accomplish. “I don’t care if you buy.  What can I do to help?”Empathy of understanding what it’s like to be in your prospects shoes. 45:00It’s harder to be a young adult now. When I was growing up I did so many dopey things and nobody knew about it.  It’s so hard now because everyone is judging and can see everything you’ve done.“Once you get to be 62 you realize none of this shit matters!”The only thing that matters is your relationships“The secret of life is strong relationships” - Warren BuffettRealize the more you help people, the more gratitude you have for your situationI made the decision I want to help people because that turns me onIt used to be; have fun, make money and learn stuff. NOW what I want to do is doing that for others!JB: More women coming into sales is so helpful and so many that helped meDT: Sales has always paid women similar to men because it would be crazy not to!  There are so many women who are great in sales and HubSpot is working so hard to reflect the demographics of women we sell to.  The folks from HubSpot like Katie Burke and others are doing so much good for the universe. www.DanTyre.com I stole my mantra from my kid, Eli. JB: What should someone do as a first time sales manager?55:00DT:It’s like being a new parent, there are new skills you’ve got to learn. You’re working with human beingsGo back to the beginning; learn about recruiting, interviewing, motivation, management, building trust, forecasting,  product, managing up/down and there is a TON of stuff you’ve got to learn. Sales management is the most difficult position in the company because sales people are weird.  They are numbers driven, highly emotional and all in their brain. In sales I always want HIGH TRUST.  How do I build trust with you? What kind of manager do you want me to be? → GO FIGURE IT OUTOne Minute ManagerYou don’t have trust in any relationship, you don’t have squatGot a problem. Do you have good problem definition? What’s your solution? → Go figure it outNew reps MY POTHOLE LIST - 3 things getting in your way?Secret of life, define what you want to do and then work as hard as you want to do with people to get there. Links:Dan TyreInbound OrganizationDan on HubSpot BlogLinkedInTwitter: @dantyreInstagram: Dtyre1One Minute ManagerAlways Be Closing is Dead, How To Always Be HelpingHow to engage sales people if they need re-engagement SucceedART OF SELLING by Tommy Hopkins

Dan Tyre is an authority on inbound marketing and sales and has become a regular speaker, blog writer, mentor and coach for those who want to harness of the power of inbound marketing to improve their bottom line. He joined HubSpot as a member of the original team in May of 2007 as the first salesperson for the company. Since then, Dan has held various positions in sales, sales management, recruiting, training, and expansion of the HubSpot sales team. He also created the term “Smarketing”, which is the alignment of both sales and marketing. Dan's favorite thing about sales is helping people, with a life motto of “always be helping”. His goal is to do the most good that he can for the universe. Dan loves helping local startups and serves as a mentor for executives and young people with heart and ambition, but a limited professional network.  In April 2018, he got to further share his knowledge with the world by publishing a book by Wiley Business Press with Todd Hockenberry called Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles. Dan has been married to Amy Tyre for more than 29 years.   Dan's Book Dan's Website Dan on LinkedIn  

To celebrate the 100th episode of The Customer Experience Podcast, I decided to make you an Epic Takes Mixtape.   I watched every video clip from the first 99 episodes and selected 10 that I thought were transcendent. They reach beyond the day-to-day and speak to our humanity, our goals, and our dreams.   I'm Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, and co-host of the CX Series on the B2B Growth Show, here today to share 10 amazing clips about being a better human.    In this episode, you'll hear from these 10 guests:   - Joey Coleman, author of Never Lose a Customer Again   - David Cancel, founder and CEO of Drift   - Levi Ayriss, VP of Northwest Field Operations at Dutch Bros Coffee   - Paula Hayes, founder, President, and CEO of Hue Noir Cosmetics   - Mat Sweezey, Director of Market Strategy at Salesforce   - Gil Cohen, Founder of Employee Experience Design   - Rachel Ostrander, Director of Runner Experience at Brooks Running   - Sangram Vajre, cofounder and Chief Evangelist at Terminus   - Darin Dawson, cofounder and President at BombBomb   - Todd Hockenberry, sales consultant, advisor, and coach at Top Line Results and coauthor of Inbound Organization   Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

We are in a major shift in a fundamental aspect of how businesses grow, how buyers purchase, and how businesses build meaningful conversations and customer relationships. Companies who align their mission, strategies, action plans, and tools with the way buyers think, learn, discover, and purchase will have a huge competitive advantage. Organizations need to adjust their mindset and build a strategic foundation to deal with these facts and not just update a business plan. Todd joins Maureen to discuss his book, Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company’s Future Using Inbound Principles and how leaders can focus their business on the customer and succeed at attracting and keeping the ideal customers.

Topics Discussed and Key Points: How the internet and social media changed the lead generation game Why marketing is more important than sales Qualities of an inbound organization The basic philosophy and foundational principles of inbound marketing What touchpoints to put in place to qualify leads as reliably and efficiently as possible Why having happy customers is more important today than ever before The difference between marketing qualified leads and sales qualified leads and how to advance each A primer on lead scoring Best practices around workflows and marketing automation Why use HubSpot?   Episode Summary: In today's episode, Debbie speaks with Dan Tyre on inbound marketing and marketing automation. Dan is the author of Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles (2018). He is a speaker, blogger, mentor, and coach for those who want to harness the power of inbound marketing to improve their bottom line. Dan joined HubSpot as a member of the original team in 2007, and today serves as the company's Sales Director. Potential buyers, both B2B and B2C, like to consider their options anonymously if possible, and oftentimes do their research well in advance of making their final decision (sometimes up to a year or so) depending on the size of the investment. What they see, in the absence of a salesperson (who they wish to avoid at all costs) is paramount to making the sale. This is why, according to Dan, marketing is more important than sales. As opposed to focusing purely on sales, “the attributes of an inbound organization is they like to help people,” says Dan. “They do things out of the goodness of their heart.” In fact, in 2014, Dan published an article titled “Always Be Closing Is Dead: How to Always Be Helping”. As little as ten years ago, there were more gatekeepers and other such hurdles to reach prospects. You had to pick up the phone and make calls. Today, the amount of online tools and platforms you have at your disposal makes inbound marketing an available option even for smaller companies. On the other hand, the average company has 44 competitors today. As Dan stresses, it is important to “add value before you extract value” if you want to stand out. Listen in as Dan unleashes a treasure trove of best practices for today's inbound marketer, including how to define your persona, qualifying (and disqualifying) prospects, creating an effective sales funnel, and HubSpot's competitive advantage over other growth platforms.   Reach out to Dan at https://www.dantyre.com or dtyre@hubspot.com, and order a copy of his book at https://www.inboundorganization.com/

HubSpot was founded in 2005 with zero customers. Today, over 78,000 businesses in 120 countries use HubSpot to grow. With the company pulling in $675 million in revenue last year, HubSpot is one of the most impressive growth stories of the past 15 years - from the raw numbers and thought leadership to their culture and transparency. What would you ask someone who was in the room where it happened that first year and has been instrumental at the company every step of the way since? Dan Tyre, director at HubSpot (HubSpot employee #6), is that person. I recently spoke with Dan about coaching sales reps and instilling the inbound mindset throughout your organization for the Modern Sales Management podcast. During this episode, we discussed increasing sales by teaching your sales reps to be more helpful, including: How has managing sales teams changed in the past few years?Should sales people expect to get inbound leads?How have video emails from sales people changed the game?What is the inbound sales methodology?Is there more revenue in being a generalist or a specialist in 2020?How do you systematize inbound selling values in your sales organization?What words can salespeople use to disarm buyers and create opportunities faster (hint: you have to mean it)?Does cold calling still work?What is warm calling in sales?How did the concepts, processes, and tips in Dan’s book, The Inbound Organization, get created?Who benefits most from reading The Inbound Organization?What does an “inbound organization” do differently than other types of companies?What is a MSPOT and how does it help your business gain a competitive advantage?How does a CRO or VP of Sales apply the principles of an inbound organization to increase revenue?What are the biggest pitfalls sales managers make when implementing an inbound sales methodology?Do introverts or extroverts make better sales people?What is the role of diversity and inclusion in creating a powerhouse sales organization?What is the number one question Dan gets as he speaks to groups around the world? Connect with Dan on LinkedIn or Twitter. If you would like to read Dan Tyre’s book (co-authored with Todd Hockenberry), visit InboundOrganization.com to purchase a copy today (bulk ordering available) or take the inbound organization assessment. Dan also runs a mentorship program for start-ups, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. The Tyre Mentor Program was created in 2013 to provide a framework for anyone who has the desire to connect with the right mentor and nurture the relationship in an effective low hassle manner. For more information about Dan Tyre’s program, insight, and public speaking visit DanTyre.com. You can subscribe and listen to all episodes of the Modern Sales Management podcast on your favorite podcast app or by visiting ModernSalesManagement.com.

No matter how many Amazon reviews you have on a product, you always need more. Colleen Quattlebaum of eComEngine joined me to chat about the power of Amazon reviews and why you shouldn’t be complacent once you’ve reached a high number. Now Amazon reviews versus buyer feedback are two different things and affect your listings in different ways. Reviews help boost your visibility and inspire others to buy when they are recent, well written, and come from a trusted source. Reviews once given also can’t be erased or changed. Buyer feedback on the other hand affects your Amazon SEO and a negative feedback can be changed. It is still extremely important to have amazing feedback scores. Listen as Colleen shares how eComEngine approaches the review process and why you should be asking your customers to leave reviews.  If this isn’t already an integral part of your process… then you have some work to do. Listen in to see how you can start implementing systems and processes around requesting reviews, today.   In This Episode: [00:29] Welcome special guest and Amazon Sellers group sponsor Colleen Quattlebaum.  [02:28] Hear a bit about Colleen’s background and her experience with EcomEngine. [04:10] How important is it to have reviews on amazon and why?  [05:46] What are the top things that differentiate very similar products?  [07:57] Are there best practices for getting reviews early on?  [09:29] Do certain products fare better with the early reviewer program?  [10:05] Aside from early reviewers, how else can a new seller get reviews?  [12:54] What type of verbiage is appropriate for requesting reviews from purchasers?  [15:15] Is the manual request a review button better for conversions than automated requests?  [16:45] How EcomEngine automated the request a review button.  [19:59] Can you keep the automated request a review action from sending out to someone who has already left a review? [21:47] What’s the best system for getting higher numbers of reviews?  [22:27] Learn other ways to get reviews for your products.  [23:26] What should sellers be aware of right now with Amazon and reviews versus feedback? [25:29] How does seller feedback impact your listings?  [28:16] Any parting feedback and advice from Colleen?  [30:01] What is Colleen’s favorite book and why?  Links and Resources: Wizards of Amazon Wizards of Amazon Courses Wizards of Amazon Meetup Text “Amazon” to 69922 Wizards of Amazon on Facebook Wizards of Amazon on Instagram Wizards of Amazon on LinkedIn Wizards of Amazon on Twitter   eComEngine colleen@ecomengine.com  Inbound Organization by Dan Tyre and Todd Hockenberry

Our ideas about customer experience have probably changed drastically due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Customer experience is no longer just about getting value from a service or experience. It's actually about helping each other survive.   When customer experience is that essential to keeping our livelihoods and lives safe, we have to revisit its deepest foundation: relationships.   In this episode, I interview Todd Hockenberry, Consultant, Advisor, and Coach at Top Line Results, about customer centricity and inbound organization.   What we talked about:   - Alignment is actually about teamwork   - True customer-centricity means knowing more about the customer than they know about themselves   - A traditional playbook is just frustrating your reps & customers   - We are all connected, and no one can succeed alone   Check out this resource we mentioned during the podcast:   - Dan's book is Inbound Organization   - His coauthor Dan Tyre was also a guest on the Customer Experience Podcast   Subscribe, listen, and rate/review the Customer Experience Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play or Google Podcasts, and find more episodes on our blog.

Sales and marketing are so important to the lifeblood of a company. Who sits at the center of these is their customer. As such, it is crucial for companies to think of how they are creating valuable content and experiences tailored to them. This is the principle of inbound, and in today’s episode, Domenic Rinaldi sits down to talk deeper about this topic with Todd Hockenberry, the founder of Top Line Results and an advisor and coach for B2B industrial and manufacturing companies. Through his book, Inbound Organization, Todd shares with us how you can build and strengthen your company’s future using inbound principles, especially during this time of uncertainty. He expands on the ways you can create that inbound culture through content that really touches your audience’s emotions and then move that marketing into sales. Ultimately, what organizations should think is how they can be of best help to their customers, putting themselves in their shoes and creating value from their perspective. Learn more about how you can transform into an inbound organization and more in this great conversation. Love the show? Subscribe, rate, review, and share! Here’s How » Join the M&A Unplugged Community today: k2adviser.com M&A Unplugged Twitter M&A Unplugged Facebook M&A Unplugged Instagram

Today we talk with Todd Hockenberry of Top Line Results about inbound marketing and what it means for the people and businesses who work in the industrial world. If you are an employee in hopes of transitioning to an independent role or a small firm looking to keep an edge on your marketing, this show is for you! Todd is the author of the highly rated book “Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen your Company’s Future Using Inbound Principles” and the podcast host of the "The Manufacturing Show". He is considered an expert in digital marketing, marketing consulting, lead generation, search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, blogging, and content strategy. You can find out more about Todd and all his ventures by following these links: LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddhockenberry/ "Inbound Organization" book - https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Organization-Strengthen-Companys-Principles/dp/1119482453 Top Line Results - https://www.top-line-results.com/ The Manufacturing Show - https://sweetfishmedia.com/industrial-manufacturing-podcast/

15-Minute Strategy Podcast EP20: Dan Tye [Sprocket Talk] In this episode, we talk with Dan Tyre from HubSpot about his Inbound Organization Strategy. He shares what you should focus on when it comes to adopting the inbound philosophy throughout your organization.

I never would have thought we’d do a show based on inspiration from a "renegade minister, a handyman turned political activist and naturalist, and an innovative educator and early feminist voice.” But we did. Thanks to John Jantsch, author of the new book, "The Self-Relient Entrepreneur: 366 Daily Meditations to Feed Your Soul and Grow Your Business.”   Although this book was written for entrepreneurs, who John traditionally serves, the lessons in this book apply to anyone. We talked about that, too. Because in his book John writes, “You can experience a spirit of self-reliance and independence no matter your profession or job title.” This is what we learned from Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. You know, those American transcendentalists.   Learn more about John: The Book: https://ducttapemarketing.com/the-self-reliant-entrepreneur/ John’s Website: https://ducttapemarketing.com/   Special thank you to Todd Hockenberry, author of “The Inbound Organization” and Helping Sells Radio guest (Ep. 136), for introducing us to David.    Link to Todd’s episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/136-todd-hockenberry-everybody-wants-to-grow-but-no/id1080713333?i=1000442760492 Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

I know what you’re thinking. I thought the same thing. “I work for an enterprise software company. We don’t have fans.” If it’s true that you don’t have fans, it’s because you haven’t created any fans. HubSpot has fans. Atlassian has fans. And to prove the point that any business can have fans, Hagerty Classic Car Insurance has one million subscribers to it’s YouTube channel.    David Meerman Scott, author of Fanocracy: Turning Fans into Customers and Customers into Fans, told us the story about how Hagerty Classic Car Insurance needed to figure out a better way to sell. The Hagerty CEO told David, "We specifically went out to create fans. That’s how we drive our business.”   Creating fans was a deliberate business model. It’s working for Hagerty. It’s working for HubSpot. It can work for you.    Learn more about David: David’s book: https://www.davidmeermanscott.com/books/fanocracy Special thank you to Todd Hockenberry, author of “The Inbound Organization” and Helping Sells Radio guest (Ep. 136), for introducing us to David.    Link to Todd’s episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/136-todd-hockenberry-everybody-wants-to-grow-but-no/id1080713333?i=1000442760492 Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

Human, helpful, and relevant. These are 3 attributes we need to create within our organizations to deliver great experiences for our customers. Dan Tyre, co-author of The Inbound Organization and HubSpot executive, came on this episode to share his insights from 35 years of experience in the business world—including why using video in your prospecting is approaching “must-have” status. What we talked about: Why you should never, ever, ever check your bags at an airport Why customer experience is the only differentiator in an age of ubiquitous technology The sky-high expectations of today's customers The importance of giving your team autonomy Why video is revolutionizing prospecting Why self-service equates to excellent service for the modern buyer Resources we talked about:   The Inbound Organization by Dan Tyre and Todd Hockenberry Rehumanize Your Business by Ethan Beute and Stephen Pacinelli   Incorporate Massage (and Founder/CEO Amelia Wilcox) How to Define a Customer Experience (CX) Strategy [HubSpot blog] dtyre@hubspot.com 

Todd Hockenberry returns to the Cold Star Project to share his experience with and views on how to make inbound marketing effective for service organizations. While many service companies believe they understand their ideal customer avatar and buyer's journey, the fact is they're often irritating their best customers. What those customers want is not what the company believes they do--or what the organization wants to "push." Todd Hockenberry is the author of "Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles." Learn more about Top Line Results and Todd through this Welcome Link: https://www.top-line-results.com/cold Talk to Cold Star: https://coldstartech.com/bookcall

In this episode, Stacy sits down with Todd Hockenberry, the owner of Top Line Results and the co-author of “Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company’s Future Using Inbound Principles.” The two discuss just how much a company’s success is dependent upon a well-developed mission, strategy, and action plan.

Today's guest is Todd Hockenberry, owner/founder of Top Line Results, a global leader in educating and helping B2B companies adapt to Internet-driven changes in buying behavior. Todd is the co-author of Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles, released in April 2018 by John Wiley & Sons. In his book, Todd shows leaders how to build their company's future around inbound principles and strengthen the structural foundations necessary to deal with the changes in buyer behavior. Todd helps business owners and leaders understand that mission matters, culture is destiny, and the way their prospects and customers want you to market, sell, and service them is changing, and most importantly, what to do about it. Resources HubSpot CRM Top Line Results: B2B Marketing and Sales Consulting Todd Hockenberry on LinkedIn Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles

Todd Hockenberry is on the Cold Star Project to share his experiences with growing industrial manufacturing firms through effective inbound marketing. He has many valuable stories to share about improving your results. Being overly focused on the product results in a way of thinking about your business that stops sales from happening. There is far more going on in your buyer's mind than wondering about a list of features. Todd's way of thinking about industrial manufacturing marketing begins with answering the question, "How does the buyer of this product actually buy?" And that leads to the strategy, then the tactics through the right inbound marketing content. The details of the situation around the buying decision are the key to this content, not features. Todd Hockenberry is the author of "Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles." Learn more about Top Line Results and Todd through this Welcome Link: https://www.top-line-results.com/coldstarproject Talk to Cold Star: https://coldstartech.com/bookcall

HubSpot changed the world of marketing and sales forever. Hear insights into the beginning of this incredible company from a man who has been there since the beginning. Join Guido Bartolacci and his guest Dan Tyre — Director (and employee number six) at HubSpot and author of Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles — as they discuss his journey to HubSpot.

Change is great. You go first. That's the first thing I thought about when Todd said, "Everybody wants to grow, but no one wants to change." That quote came from Todd Hockenberry's book, Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company’s Future Using Inbound Principles. What does this have to do with helping sells? Everything. The entire philosophy of inbound marketing is based on the premise of being helpful...producing helpful and educational marketing that gives value first, educates people, and draws people in. But inbound is not just about marketing. Or even sales. As Todd talks about on the show, what if you marketing and sales teams are practicing educational and helpful inbound marketing and selling techniques, but then customers sign up and the rest of the organization (think customer success, legal, support teams) do not? Easy, you start to lose trust with customers and might even lose their business. The entire organization must learn to embrace inbound principles. "How?" You might ask.  Todd gives one good example. What if a legal team could ask themselves, "How could we make our terms and conditions easy for customers to understand and useful enough that customers would want to sign them?" This can happen. With the right attitude and the right organizational culture that embraces a helpful approach to all customer interactions.  This is how organizations can change, do something new, in order to find new customers and create new markets.  Learn more about Todd Hockenberry: His book: https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Selling-Change-Match-People/dp/1119473411/ref=sr_1_4?keywords=inbound+organization&qid=1560274575&s=gateway&sr=8-4 His website: https://www.top-line-results.com/ On Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddhockenberry/ We write about all of our podcasts! Check out the full posts and learn what we learn from our guests at helpingsells.com.  Thanks so much for listening! If you like this episode, please subscribe to “Helping Sells Radio" and rate and review wherever you get your podcasts: Apple Podcasts Stitcher Spotify Follow us on Social Media: ServiceRocket YouTube Twitter Facebook Linkedin Instagram Bill Cushard Twitter Linkedin Instagram   Tell us what you think of Helping Sells Radio We'd love it if you'd: Write a review where ever you get your podcasts. Tweet us using the hashtag #HelpingSells. Comment below. Thank you for listening to the show. Get on the email list at helpingsells.substack.com

Excellent customer experience is vital to the success of your manufacturing business, and marketing automation solutions can help you not only sell your business but maintain your customer base as well. In this episode of MakingChips, Jim and Jason discuss the importance of utilizing marketing automation correctly with B2B consultant and advisor, Todd Hockenberry. Author of Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company’s Future Using Inbound Principles and host of “The Industrial Executive Podcast,” Todd shares how to customize your marketing automation to your customers and how to map customer behavior so that you can provide the best service to each individual. Connect with us:www.MakingChips.com/contact Understanding how the conversation works between your business and the customer “Marketing automation is using technology to facilitate conversations so that you can build relationships.” Todd explains that it all begins with the conversation between you and the customer. Many businesses aren’t even aware that the conversation is happening - how a customer found the business, what they were looking for, if or how they found the solution to their needs, and how they interacted with the people and media of the business. Without some type of automation system in place, you won’t be able to map out the journey that your customer is taking - and how you can best meet their needs. The role of the salesman is changing in the fast-paced world that we live in. Automated marketing is a necessity, and it is extremely powerful - if done well. Just as no one has time to invite a salesman in to talk and show off a product, no one has time to participate in poor marketing. Todd encourages marketers to consider whether the tools they are using are achieving the results that they want. Email, free downloads, and website forms have all been automation staples of the past, but they aren’t effective at speaking to the customer. Emails go unopened, downloads go unread. Marketing isn’t about how you want to communicate with the buyer. It’s about how the buyer wants to communicate with you. Familiarizing yourself with how the buyer acts and what they want can help you better serve them. Personalizing your automated marketing systems to meet your customer needs Everyone processes information differently. Some people absorb a message better audibly, visually, or through actual hands-on experience. Your automated marketing strategy must take this into consideration and be customizable to the buyer. Todd explains that he uses a myriad of mediums to relay a message and provide opportunity for conversation. Personalized video messages, pop-up chat boxes, marketing personnel available to answer phone calls, texts, and emails are all ways to make that personal connection with the customer. The key is to make sure that your customer needs are being met. Automated chat-boxes - or chat-bots - are a useful tool, if handled correctly. If customer questions are being answered then all is well, but if they aren’t being answered, how long does it take for the customer to reach an actual sales rep? Immediacy is vital in our fast-paced world of communication. If you do provide a phone number, make sure that there is actually someone there to answer it. Time is money, and people don’t want to wait for information. Todd gives some excellent insight into the importance of immediate gratification when it comes to your customer, so be sure to listen to the entire episode! Mapping out the journey of your customer is an extremely helpful step in understanding how to best serve them. Match technology with the needs of your customer - don’t just go shopping for technology and implement it into your systems without knowing if it is what your customers need to better communicate with you and vice versa. People want a seamless, helpful experience that helps them achieve their goals. Being able to track what an individual has downloaded, what they have clicked on or opened in your website or emails, and what mediums they have used to contact you - if any - are all part of the map that helps you locate what to improve in your marketing system. Matching the persona of your business with the right customer base People want to see themselves when they go onto your website - but you also want to see your business values in your customer. All relationships are two-way, and Jim and Jason understand the importance of aligning company values with the customer for an excellent, long-term relationship. Jim, for example, has set up filters that keep those he may not want to work with at bay. He doesn’t list his available machinery on his website - instead, he promotes the core values of his company and highlights what makes Carr Machine & Tool unique. His goal is to get people into a conversation with someone on his team as quickly as possible - whether that be through a chat-box, email, or phone call so that the relationship is built before anything is sold. Finding the right marketing automation solutions for your business While there are numerous tools out there to help you track and map customer behaviors, you don’t need every bell and whistle to get started. HubSpot is a favorite of Todd, Jim, and Jason. Automated marketing is a continuous task, needing a high level of attention. HubSpot helps cut back on time spent logging information and allows you to see what each website visitor is clicking on, if they signed up for a newsletter, or if they have opened an email once, never, or several times. Being able to see what a customer is interested in will allow you to better market to them so that they are given only what they need. CRM systems are also extremely helpful in building the relationship between you and the buyer. Don’t just use CRM systems as a place to drop email addresses to send automated messages to. Know the behavior of a person and send them the automated message that will speak to them personally. Keeping track of previous customers is another helpful aspect of a CRM system. If someone who bought your product a year ago is on your website again, then you know to reach out to them and update them on the latest and greatest that your company has to offer. Here’s The Good Stuff! Creating an optimal customer experience through marketing automation. Guest speaker: Todd Hockenberry - expert B2B consultant and advisor. Are you tracking the online conversation surrounding your business and product? Misuse of automation marketing. Ensuring a personable customer experience with marketing automation. The power of customization. Mapping a value stream: following and anticipating the journey of your lead. Creating a seamless experience for your customer. Aligning your company persona with the ideal customer. Content management systems are vital to your company’s performance. Tools & Takeaways Pro Shop ERP Top Line Results This Week’s Superstar Guest: Todd Hockenberry Todd on LinkedIn Inbound Organization The Industrial Executive Podcast Connect With MakingChips www.MakingChips.com On Facebook On LinkedIn On Instagram On Twitter On YouTube Subscribe to Making Chips on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, or Spotify

How can you increase your sales by 15% in one year just by communicating more with current customers? This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, I'm joined by Todd Hockenberry, who is the CEO of Top Line Results and co-author of the book Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound.  Todd is an expert in helping companies increase revenue and sales by improving the customer experience, and in this week's episode, he shares why simply improving communication with your current customers can increase sales by, on average, 15% - all within just one year. This week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, IMPACT Live,  the most immersive and high energy learning experience for marketers and business leaders. IMPACT Live takes place August 6-7, 2019 in Hartford Connecticut and is headlined by Marcus Sheridan along with special guests including world-renowned Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith and Drift CEO and Co-Founder David Cancel. Inbound Success Podcast listeners can save 10% off the price of tickets with the code "SUCCESS".  Click here to learn more or purchase tickets for IMPACT Live Some highlights from my conversation with Todd include: Top Line Results helps B2B, and particularly industrial and manufacturing, companies adopt inbound principles. Customer experience is a discipline of marketing applied after the sale, and very few marketers or businesses get it right. Great customer experience starts by getting in the heads of your customers and understanding how they view your company, product or service. Harvard Business Review did a study and asked customers how long they wanted customer service people to be empathetic, and the answer was seven seconds. They want to hear "I'm sorry" within the first seven seconds, and after that, they don't want you to apologize anymore.  Customer service can actually increase customer loyalty in the long run by fixing problems. If you've got good systems, CRM, and a good centralized view of the customer, along with people that are focused on that, that are paying attention to the customers after the sale, you can drive a lot more revenue just by being there and by being helpful and extending that thinking of inbound all the way through the lifecycle. One company that does customer experience very well is Fatt Merchant. They do it by building a customer-first culture in which someone from marketing participates in every single meeting that the company has and serves as the voice of the customer. One reason that many companies fail to deliver exceptional customer experience is that their marketing departments are measured solely by the number of leads they generate and not by any metrics relating to the post-sale experience. Todd says that over the ten years he's worked with clients on customer experience he sees, on average, a 15% increase in sales just by focusing on improving the experience of current customers. One of the keys to delivering great customer experience is having someone who owns it. You also need a good tech stack, including a CRM and marketing automation platform, that can provide your team with a "centralized view of the customer." Resources from this episode: Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS" Visit the Top Line Results website Connect with Todd on LinkedIn Follow Todd on Twitter Get Todd's book Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Listen to the podcast to learn what you need to do to ensure your company is delivering a top-notch customer experience. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm your host Kathleen Booth, and today my guest is Todd Hockenberry who is the owner of Top Line Results and the coauthor of Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound. That's available in just about every book store I've been to as well as on Amazon. Welcome, Todd. Todd Hockenberry (Guest): Thanks for having me, Kathleen. It is definitely my privilege to be on the Inbound Success show, and anything I do with IMPACT is always a lot of fun. Todd and Kathleen recording this episode Kathleen: Oh, well we love working with you too. It's a love fest today on the podcast. Todd: Oh yeah. Kathleen: You know, I've obviously had an opportunity to get to know you, but I would love for you to talk a little bit more about yourself, your background, your company, and your book so that my listeners can learn a little bit more about who you are and what you do. About Todd Hockenberry and Top Line Results Todd: Sure. Top Line Results was founded almost 10 years ago. A couple weeks it'll be 10 years. My wife and I founded Top Line Results because I got fired, I lost my job, and I decided I was sick of working for other people and I was going to go do it myself. So what we focused on for really the last 10 years is helping B2B and particularly industrial and manufacturing companies adopt what we're talking about as inbound principles. And I had come across inbound principles probably about early 2000s, actually I was working at a turnaround. A company was dead and buried and we were trying to turn it around, but I didn't have a big budget, so I was doing early SEO content creation in vertical niche industrial markets when nobody else was doing it, and we saw tons of success. So I kind of started doing inbound before it was called inbound, so when I saw it and I ran across HubSpot, it just was natural to jump in. So when we started our business, that's what we started to do. We started to teach industrial and manufacturing and B2B companies how to use content, how to optimize it, how to create campaigns around content, how to connect with modern buyers using digital platforms. And that's really what we've built our business on. So we've been very focused on our target persona, which is kind of the, I would say the 15 to $100 million industrial manufacturing companies. We've gone a little bigger than that lately, but we really are consultants now and advisors and coaches on these issues. We're small. It's my wife and I and my daughter, and so we're not a delivery agency as much anymore. We just don't have the bandwidth to do it, so we really focus on teaching, and coaching, advising, and consulting with people on how to do these things. Kathleen: Oh, I feel like you and I could do an entire separate podcast on family businesses- Todd: Oh yeah. Kathleen: Because I had an agency for 11 years before I joined IMPACT and I started it with my husband, so we worked together for 11 years, and we actually got married when we started the company, so we had never been married and not worked together, and I, to this day, always say to people that my proudest accomplishment in life is that I didn't get divorced in the 11 years that I worked with my husband. Todd: Congratulations. I would say the question I get asked a lot is, people look at me and say, "How can you work with your wife?" And I say, "Really, it's the other way around. How could she work with me?" But the answer is that we are different in terms of the skillset we bring. We have different personalities, and when we're in her world, which is more technical and detailed, she's the boss, and when we're in my world, which is more kind of the strategy and sales and marketing side, then I'm the boss, so it works. We don't play in each other's sandbox, so that's what keeps us going. Kathleen: You know what? That's exactly what worked for my husband and I. That and also our offices were never right next to each other. When we had our office space, we had about 13 people in the agency, so we were in an office suite. His was on the opposite end of the suite from mine, so we tried to be as physically far apart as possible and also not have any overlapping responsibilities. Todd: Got you. Kathleen: So there's something to that. Todd: My wife and I share an office, but I'm out of it a lot, so I think I give her some quiet time she needs. Kathleen: That is a good thing. Interesting. Well as I said, that could be an entirely other episode, but for this episode, I was actually really excited to talk with you because, like you, I've been in this digital marketing, inbound marketing space for a long time, and one of the things I've noticed is that it's definitely an echo chamber, and a lot of us spend the bulk of our time if not all of our time focusing on how are we going to turn strangers into customers? And many of us started as HubSpot partners, and there's that whole "attract, convert, close" cycle, and we're so focused on that that we forget that a big piece of marketing is customer marketing, and that you really have to look at the whole lifecycle of the customer experience and the whole business because most businesses do have repeat business. They have customers that come back. Or they're SaaS, where you want them to just stay with you and prevent churn. And I think as marketers, we do ourselves a really big disservice by ignoring the post-sale period, so I am so excited because I get to pick your brain on this topic of what happens after you make the sale, because this is very much what you covered partially in your book and you've talked about a lot. So I don't even know where to start. Customer Experience & Inbound Marketing Todd: Well first of all, I think you're absolutely right. I think you nailed it. Inbound clearly started out as a way to attract, right? That was the beginning. And while that's still important, it's gotten a lot harder. There's a lot more content out there. It's more difficult to just throw a whole bunch of content out there and see the kind of success you're looking for. There were two ways I discovered inbound success, and I love the name of your show because I think there are two ways to think about that. It's about using inbound marketing or inbound tools to be successful, but inbound success to me is about what happens after the sale. And you'll see a lot more books and a lot more talk about customer success being a job, and you see these functions, it really came out of the SaaS world, and I learned this from HubSpot. When I was working with Dan Tyre to write the book, we interviewed a bunch of HubSpot people, and one of the sharpest people I met was Mike Redbord who ran customer success for HubSpot. And they talked me through the process where they would understand essentially everything that was going on with that client well before renewal time came up. So this was a complex ... because it's software, they had a lot of data and they could automate a lot of this. But the reality is what I discovered was that it was a discipline of marketing applied after the sale, which most people didn't think of. I go to client where they're, say, an industrial company, and I'll ask them, "Well, how do you communicate with your customers?" And I'm not kidding, I've actually had customers tell me this. They'll say, "We don't know where all of our equipment is. We don't even know who they are." So how could you possibly market to them if you don't know who they are? So the gap, I think in a lot of companies, between what they could be doing and what they should be doing is huge, and I think it's a huge opportunity to grow your business. And if you go back to the old cliches, it costs seven times more to get a new customer than it does to keep one. This is what we're talking about. Use everything you know about marketing inbound and apply it to your customers after the sale. So you asked me where to start, you said you didn't know where to start. I think I know where to start. This is where I would have started and what I teach my clients to do to start. Start with your mindset. You've got to get your mind right around this and realize that the way you're viewed is not the way ... The way you think you're viewed or the way you want to be viewed, your positioning, right? That's in the mind of your customer. It's not in the mind of your marketing team or in the mind of your sales team. It's in the mind of your customer. So you've got to get out of your house, get out of your company, and go there, talk to your customers and understand how you're perceived. I'm an old sales manager. I used to run sales teams, and I used to just lose my mind when I would hear from a customer and they would say, "Oh, we just bought one of those. We didn't know you did that." Kathleen: Yeah. Todd: Oh, I hated that because that's just being lazy. And I would say to most companies that I run across that other than the SaaS companies who seem to really get this because they want to produce churn, and that's a natural, right? You've got to get that recurring revenue. Or anybody that's in that recurring revenue model, they kind of get this. But if you're selling, say, capital equipment like a lot of my clients do, their next sale may be three years down the road, right? And that's important, but it's an easy sale to get if you just do your marketing between the sale and the next one. And it starts with that mindset where you've got to put yourself outside of your own world and put yourself in their world and understand what's going on from their perspective. And ultimately, this is all about adding value all the way through the life of the company or the life of the relationship. Everybody has customer service departments, right? But I still see a lot of people, and I think a lot of customer service companies and leaders think of their customer service as, "Well, if something's broken, then help them fix it." And it's the opposite. That's a reactive mode. It's really about today, it's like, "Keep me happy as your customer. Keep me satisfied. Keep me on track. Make sure I achieve my goals. Make sure the promises you made to me in your marketing and sales process I actually achieve those goals. Hit that ROI." And I've been reading about this and studying it a lot, and it's interesting because we hear a lot about empathy and we hear a lot about customer service and after the sale being about empathy, but Harvard Business Review did a study and they asked customers how long they wanted customer service people to be empathetic, and the answer was seven seconds. So after seven seconds, they don't want to hear, "I'm sorry." They don't want you to apologize anymore. They want you to do what? Kathleen: Fix it. Todd: They want you to fix the problem. Solve the problem. Exactly. That's all they care about. And if you look at other studies, you can see that customer service can actually increase loyalty in the long run by fixing problems, not shuffling them around to seven people, not getting an answering machine, getting a real person, being able to get connected via email or chat or after hours, right? These things, you build a system. And those are all inbound things, right? They're all ways to communicate and connect and share content and be helpful, and if you really absorb this mentally, that this is what you're there for after the sale, then you can build a system that'll take care of those customers in a way that's just fundamentally different than they're going to see most other places. And we all have to realize that everybody's expectations today are like Facebook or Amazon. Amazon's probably a better example. You want that kind of level of service. Or Zappos or these retail companies. And if you don't give that to them as a B2B company or an agency, whatever you are, I think you're going to be at a big disadvantage. And again, the goal is to be in front of them being helpful with the right information at the right time. And again, if you've got good systems, CRM, a good centralized view of the customer, you've got people that are focused on that, that are paying attention to the customers after the sale, again, you can drive a lot more revenue just by being there and by being helpful and extending that thinking of inbound all the way through the lifecycle. Kathleen: I love that you talked about it being a mindset or a culture, and you mentioned the name of the podcast, which is interesting. So it's called the Inbound Success Podcast. It's not called the Inbound Marketing Success Podcast, and there's a reason for that, and that is that to me, inbound is not really about marketing. It's a mindset. We actually have ... at IMPACT, we wrote the Inbound Manifesto last year, which, if you tweet me and ask for a copy, maybe I'll send it to you. But we describe it as being a mindset and a culture and an attitude, and it doesn't have anything to do with marketing. It has to do with a belief that if you are helpful and authentic and trustworthy and honest, that that will come back to you in spades in the form of business, in the form of other good things. It's sort of a "pay it forward" mentality, and you can apply that to marketing, you can apply that to customer service, you can apply it to really anything. But what I think is interesting is that you touched on something that I really believe, which is that yes, we as marketers tend to neglect this stage in the customer lifecycle. I think it's because in many cases, the way we're measured by the organizations in which we work is fundamentally flawed. A lot of marketers are measured based on how many leads are you delivering to the sales team? So if you're just going to measure your marketing team on the number of leads they're delivering, why would they care about what happens after the sale? There's no incentive there. Now, I say that. I mean, a really great marketer will advocate to have a role post-sale, but I think the incentive system is off. So I know I have people who listen to this podcast who are marketers, but I also have people who are business owners, and I think for business owners almost even more so than the marketers, it's important for it to start at the top with the belief that marketing isn't just to deliver leads. Yes, that is an important part of the job, but you've got to measure success on more than that. It has to factor in what happens after the close. Todd: I couldn't agree with everything you said more. You're absolutely spot on as far as I can tell and in what I believe. And a couple things. One, how many of your business owners out there have their marketing sales and service people sitting in a room together working on anything together ever? Most of them are separate departments with ... I've got one client that has those three different departments and they all have three different systems to manage the data with the customers. They don't talk to one another. Kathleen: Yeah. Todd: They don't have any idea what's going on. And it's a big, successful company. So it's pretty common. So that goes back to that mindset and that belief, these people. That it's all a continuum. It's one connected thing and they're not separate departments because as far as your customers are concerned, they could care less about your departments, your bureaucracy, your processes, your rules. They don't care. They don't care. They want help. They want problems solved, they want to move forward, they're busy just like you are, and they don't care. They don't want to deal with your nonsense if that's what you're giving them. But let's go back to the beginning. That's why we wrote the book, what you talked about, your Inbound Manifesto, which is great by the way. I've seen it, and the idea that these are beliefs and principles, that the idea that modern buyers want to be helped first. That doing the right thing is helping them regardless of the short term economic interest in front of you. Treating people like human beings, right? You're not marketing to a demographic. You're talking to another person. I tell business owners all the time, I say, "Shop yourself. Look at your own marketing. Would you want that to be the way you're treated?" Kathleen: Right, and oh, by the way, all the things you just said about being helpful, treating people like humans, that will never go out of style. There's never going to be a technological advancement or a trend that makes us say, "Well, we shouldn't be helpful and we certainly shouldn't treat these people like humans." Todd: It's not new. Kathleen: Yeah. Todd: It's not new. My daughter's in college and she's reading Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. It's the same stuff. Kathleen: Yeah. Todd: That was from the '30s. It's not new. It's just the way human beings want to react to each other. But we've been throwing all this technology and all these tools at ourselves and we think that's the answer, and it's not. Success is us. It's being human and connecting with other people and helping them solve their problems. If your technology amplifies that, helps it, great. But it's not a substitute. It just is not. Now, if you're talking about transactional sales, I would say that Amazon is a real thing and in terms of, say, basic shopping, if I never step foot in a store again for the rest of my life, I'm happy. But if I'm buying, say, I was going to say a car, but that's not even good because my wife would buy a car online. But for a lot of sales, for professional service, any kind of complex sale, you're still talking about people and that's not going to go away. Kathleen: Well and even if you take Amazon, there are elements there that speak to what you're talking about. Helpfulness. This is why Amazon created Prime and eliminated shipping for a lot of things if you became a Prime member because they realized that that was a pain point for people, and there are elements in Amazon's business model that are purely about helping people and having a better experience as the customer. Todd: Sure. And the personalization and the specific recommendations are awesome. Kathleen: Yeah. Todd: But this is why we wrote the book. This is why Dan and I wrote Inbound Organization, it's because we wanted to take these ideas of inbound, and Dan's a senior HubSpot guy, I think he was the sixth employee, he's been around forever, so I've been doing this for 10 plus years, so we've been around this idea for a long time and have a lot of experience with companies that have done it well and not done it well. And we want to take these ideas and tell people essentially that these ideas aren't marketing anymore, and they're not even sales anymore. It's just your business, and we need to get back to these foundational principles and apply them across your entire business. We talk about legal departments being inbound and we talk about accounting and finance being inbound, think about every time you work with a potential ... somebody you bought from, and they made it hard to pay you, right? Kathleen: Ugh. The worst. Todd: How crazy is that? Making it hard to pay you. Or legal departments that just, if you go through this complex sales process and the legal departments throw up a bunch of red flags. Everybody sees them as like the terms of use. You just click the button. Nobody reads them. How bad is that? I mean, come on, lawyers. Can't you do better than that? Can't you somehow boil that down into a paragraph of real stuff that you've surfaced the garbage and don't try to feel like you're putting on over on me? That's starting to apply inbound to your entire business. And don't even get me started on IT departments and how bad they are being inbound. Don't even get me started. Kathleen: Yeah. You know, one little anecdote. When you were talking earlier about how customers don't care about your processes and all that stuff, they just want things to be fixed, all I could think about was actually IT, and I worked at this job about 15 years ago, and I'll never forget. We had this IT guy who was just the nicest guy as a person, but every time there was an IT problem and I would go to him and be like, "There's this problem." He would launch into a five minute long diatribe about why Microsoft, their business model made it so that these things happened, and I just remember sitting there, in my head I'm going, "La, la, la, la, la. I don't care. Fix it for me." And that's exactly I think what's happening most of the time. What Does Best In Class Customer Experience Look Like? Kathleen: So assuming that I'm a business and I have this mindset and I believe, but I really want to do this right and tackle the post-sale stage and give my customers a great experience, can you talk a little bit about what that looks like? And let's zoom in from the hundred thousand foot view way, way down to, like, what are some companies actually doing to nail this? Todd: That's a great question, Kathleen. There's a great story in our book about something called Fatt Merchant, F-A-T-T Merchant, and that's their website, fattmerchant.com. If you're into payment processing, they're digital, online, amazing company. It's a startup here in Orlando. The lady who runs it, Suneera Madhani is an amazing person and just building a great company that has a culture that's just ... and you would recognize it, right? You walked into their office, it would feel like being in the IMPACT offices. Just totally absorbed in inbound. Their motto is 'The best damn experience', and it's on their walls, it's in every room. And everybody in the company's goal is to create the best experience for their customers possible. Their competition, there are some online competitors, but there's a lot of old line financial firms, so they're competing with these big, old time firms. And they're doing this by ... the way they do it culturally is they have a marketing person in every meeting in the company. It doesn't matter what department it is, there's a marketing person in there and they represent the customer. And they advocate and make sure that the best interests of the customer are being accounted for and that everybody in that room is solving for the customer regardless of what it is, whether it's a financial meeting, a product development meeting. Doesn't matter. They're bringing the customer in there and making it a real thing. Again, that gets the mindset and saying that, "This experience is our promise and that our practice internally and culture is we're going to live by that and nobody's going to be exempt from making sure that every decision we make is going to be in the best interest of the customer." Kathleen: That's really interesting, but I have to admit that the prospect of having ... I have a marketing team. I have seven people on my team, and the prospect of having to put one of them in every single meeting in the company is terrifying because then I would think, "When will we ever get our work done?" So I'm curious, operationally, how do you make that happen? You need to have [crosstalk] marketing team. Todd: You need to have less meetings. Well, again, I'm not sure that's exactly how everybody should do it. Certainly the point is ... I think a couple other things. I think business owners need to elevate the marketing function to a higher level in most organizations. I mean, again, in my world, we're dealing with traditional companies, marketing is kind of a back water, all those guys to the trade shows, or they outsource the website stuff to people like Impact, right? It's back water. They are not looked at as production, or engineering, or design as kind of running the show. And a lot of business owners come from that background. What I see, and it's going to take time, I see more and more business owners are going to come out of the marketing disciplines and the sales side and they're going to just know this stuff in their bones because I think the reason that'll happen is that the idea of this customer experience, and the customer journey, and customer success, being a competitive advantage and really one of the few ways companies are going to be able to differentiate moving forward, that will necessitate more leadership in companies coming from that discipline, whereas in a lot of technical fields, product superiority was what won the day. So engineers, designers, developers ran the companies. Today, I mean, tell me you can't find an alternative to anything. Tell me you can't find 15 alternatives to anything in five seconds. Ask Siri, ask Echo, whatever. Look on your phone, do a search. You're going to find a million alternatives. So product isn't the winner anymore as much as it used to be, and in many cases ... and again, if you think about overseas competition, again, product doesn't win anymore, so the experience and the relationships, these marketing and sales-related things become more and more important all the time to basically build differentiation. And companies won't be able to win on product features anymore. So I think the shift in leadership which will bring the mindset will help, but for you old time, you engineers and you product folks who have been around and done this and you're going to becoming from a technical side, I think it's a mindset, it's eating some humble pie and saying, "I don't necessarily know what's best for our customer all the time." Sometimes our marketing people who are out in the field talking to those customers, and watching their behavior, and seeing what works and what doesn't work, they have something to say too. So leaders need to elevate those people that really understand the experience and are seeing your customers to a higher level and to a more prominent place in the organization because again, engineering can engineer something awesome, you can build it wonderfully, but if the customer service people or the after the sale process ruins the experience, they're not coming back. Kathleen: Yeah. Todd: They don't care. They'll go find somebody else. Kathleen: Yeah. So what are some specific things that you've seen companies do, marketers do within companies to improve that customer experience? Todd: Yeah. It starts with understanding the persona and really digging in and doing basic blocking and tackling, interviewing to understand the persona, map the buyer journey, and then do your thing. Build content that matches that journey. Think of your customer in terms of persona. Again, you can connect the dots. If they had this problem and they bought this solution, then they have these commonalities with other customers. Create great content for them. When's the last time an inbound marketer sat down and said, "I'm going to create an amazing video for my customers."? Or, "I'm going to create an amazing Ebook or an amazing tool for my customers."? Kathleen: Now, when you say content for customers, are you thinking content that helps them use the product? Because when I hear that, I think, "Oh, there's plenty of companies that have ongoing tutorials and things that help you get better use of their product." Or are you thinking about content that addresses other pain points? Todd: Yeah, I think you've got to think like a business owner. Think in business problems. The people that are buying your products or services, you should know their range of business problems that they have, and you should know how to extend the solution you sold into the next ones, the next sale. Think about the next sale. So create content that helps position you as the person or the company to come back to to solve that problem and extend the trust they gave you. They're basically buying from you, so they're saying, "I trust you." So therefore, you need to extend that. Again, I think things like training and product usage things are table stakes when it comes to this. You've got to have that. I'm talking about basically saying ... I'll give you a great example. The example we're talking about right now is a good one. How many inbound marketing agencies out there today offer a customer success program for their customers? Do you go to the leaders and the owners of your customers and say, "I can help you keep, retain, upsell, cross-sell, and extend your relationships with existing customers, and here's how I'm going to do it."? I haven't seen too many that do it. Most of them are still, "Hey, generate some leads. Get me more people to my website. Get me some top of the funnel stuff. Convert people so I've got more sales qualified leads." But how many walk in and say, "We can do all this stuff and we can help you grow your business with your existing customer base."? I do. I do. But I don't think a lot of other people do. Kathleen: So when you work with clients to do that, can you talk a little bit about some of the strategies that you advise them to use or give some examples of ... I would actually be really interested in, do you have any examples of where you've put that kind of a program in place and it's really generated measurable results? Todd: Yeah, I've got one client that we've worked with for a number of years, and they had a series of dealers where they sold some direct, but they also sold a lot through this dealer network, essentially just think of it as a distribution network. Well, they were frustrated because they had some dealers that were doing well and some dealers that weren't. It's kind of, you get a normal distribution of dealers, right? So what we did is we created a dealer health check system for them where we went through and we talked to the dealers and we looked at the behavior and the characteristics of the dealers that were successful. We created basically a check, they could create a score for these dealers so they could see which ones were successful and which ones weren't. Todd: Some of the obvious things were how much are they selling, how often are they buying, basic numbers like that. But we also included things like are they following the blog? Do they open emails? Are they consuming the content that we're creating that should be educating them about the opportunities and products and the customers? And then we also dug into CRM. How many communications were going back and forth between the sales people and these distributors and dealers? So we created this, basically we took all this data that we had and all the information and we created this health check system so it would show our client salespeople which ones were doing great, so then they wanted to keep pushing them and extend that, which ones were at risk, and which ones were really failing. So instead of guessing or wasting time, they were able to come up with a plan to use, again, some automated content as well as personal outreach to help those ones that were kind of in the middle, that's what we focused on. Getting the ones that were kind of in the middle that were doing okay but had some issues, move them up. And they've seen probably ... the latest I heard was probably about 15 to 20% increase in sales for that channel since they've started this, and it was about a year ago. So that is kind of combining things like CRM, content, sales teams. Putting it all together in a way that can give you a picture of what's going on, again, after the sale. So that was just one example. I've got lots of examples where companies have gone in and really, they don't do any marketing to their customers. Their after the sale marketing is basically, "Well, when the phone rings, we'll answer it." And I saw story after story where people just started a basic email campaign, just a really basic email campaign, like, "Here's what we're doing. Here's our new products." And all of a sudden, the phone rings, they get new orders. That's very common. I would say on average when we do that, we would see 10 to 15% improvement in sales just working with your existing customers. Not adding new ones, just applying these ideas to an existing customer base. I would say on average over the last 10 years of doing this that it would be 10 to 15% average increase of sales in the first year. Kathleen: Wow. Just by starting to reach out more. Todd: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Just paying attention to your customers, being intentional about it, using what you know about them to create content that would be interesting. If they bought this, then they might be interested in this. Kathleen: Yeah. Todd: If they bought this to solve this problem, then they also have this problem, so therefore, let's talk about that. I don't think it's all that complicated, I think it's just taking what you already knew about inbound marketing and inbound sales and just moving to the after the sale piece. Kathleen: It very much reminds me of how a lot of SaaS companies, software companies, have the concept of a product qualified lead. You talked about looking at engagement data and stuff, and I interviewed somebody several episodes ago about this, and in the SaaS world, they have, as you've pointed out with HubSpot, they have this wealth of data on how much people are in the product, how they're using it, and they can surface areas where maybe things aren't going so smoothly. But the best SaaS companies, especially the ones that are going from premium or free trial to paid versions, look really closely at that during that period to then try to upsell their customers, and I think that other industries and companies don't do nearly as good of a job at that, and I think we can all learn a lot from the concept of a product qualified lead. So we have people that are "already engaging with our product", and that product could be something that they purchased from us, like a thing, an actual tangible thing, or it could be a service. Like IMPACT, we're a marketing agency, how are people interacting with our service? What are the telltale signs that they're product qualified? Meaning they might be qualified to purchase something additional or to engage at a different level with us? Most companies fail abjectly at doing that. Todd: Sure. And if you're in the software business, a product qualified lead, if you have a popup that says, "We have this ad on." Right? And if you click it to get more information, there's some automated things, and if you sell equipment or even if you sell professional services, things like that, you don't have that kind of built in thing, so you have to create that. You have to create that product qualification, and you may know that if somebody's asking for accessories or follow on parts or upsells, you may have a good sense of it, but you should also know. You should know pathways for people. I had an example where a client has a piece of equipment, it was a pump. Really basic stuff, it was a pump. But they were selling it to contractors, and very quickly we found that by buying this one product to do this one job, it allowed them to do another job that they could also do. So instead of just pitching the pump on the special occasions, it was a business development opportunity. So anybody that bought that pump, we started to create content to share with their customers about how they could grow their business. If you have this to do this job, you can also do this job, so here's a way you can help grow your business. And again, that's adding value with, again, content, what you know. You have to kind of create that product qualified lead and it's out there. And I've seen it in every product I've ever been around in terms of selling. From very high end capital equipment to working with my clients with software. Metal roofs. You name it. It doesn't matter. There's always something new and there's always something down the road you can help somebody with. If nothing else, create raving fans. Get them talking about you. Get reviews and ratings, get them to give you referrals. If nothing else, you can get that. Structuring Your Company For Customer Experience Kathleen: I imagine that this has some implications for organizational structure because if you are bringing a new customer onboard, and if it's not a totally transactional business. In other words, if you have some kind of an ongoing business relationship with that customer, then I imagine if all of a sudden your marketing department is getting involved in marketing to that customer post-sale, you have to make sure that from the customer's standpoint it feels like the right hand is talking to the left, and they don't have this disjointed experience. So for example, if they have ... in our company, you'll have an account representative who deals with you on a day-to-day basis for your marketing, but then we have a sales team, and we have a customer satisfaction person, and then we have our marketing team. So how do you structure the company internally so that from the customer's standpoint it feels like a seamless experience and everybody understands what the touch points are and you're not competing with 10 different emails from different departments in the company? Todd: I would say obviously there's a range of answers for that depending on where our companies are today. So let's take a company that's not really doing this right now, and then we'll come back to your example of IMPACT. If you aren't really focused on ... if you have that traditional customer service department and that's your after sale focus, look at your expense reports. How much are you spending on sales? How much are you spending on marketing? Compare that to how much you're spending on customer service and after the sale work. Look at your hours, or if you can do it, figure out the resources you're applying across the buyer journey. The whole customer lifetime. Look at where your resources are going. And I bet you a significant portion if not 10 times more of your money is spent on generating new business than it is to keep old business or existing business. And everybody knows the cliché, I've said it once already. Seven times more to get a new customer than it is to keep another one. So if you're smart, you would flip that around. You would spend more on after sale managing your customers than you sell on front end stuff. Now, I'm not naïve enough to think that's going to happen any time soon, but the reality is, you should be moving resources towards keeping your customers happy, customer success after the sale. So if you're not doing this well, you need to look at that and start allocating resources that direction. I think if you've already got a structure like the one you just described there, Kathleen, about IMPACT is not an uncommon one. I think the key I've seen there is that somebody owns the process. Somebody owns that customer and is responsible for making sure all those pieces are connected. So if you've got an account manager, their job is to work day-to-day with that client and deliver what you've promised, right? So it's hard for them necessarily to step back and think about the next step in the future. That's probably your sales team or it could be your customer satisfaction team. And again, I don't know how you're coordinated, but somebody has to own that customer for the life of that customer. Somebody has to be looking at the entire thing and saying, "Okay, here's what's next." And I see chief revenue officers, which may fit that bill. I see more titles around that that are showing up, and I would hope that that's the goal, to get to a place where somebody internally owns that relationship top to bottom or owns all of the relationships top to bottom and then is coordinating elements to deliver the right value at the right time at the right place. They can't be walled off from one another, whatever that looks like. You've got to have communication back and forth. And a lot of people that have worked with HubSpot, you'll see this, you use HubSpot, right? You'll see emails coming out six months before your renewal is due and you'll get a phone call from an internal person that's asked about how you're doing. They may stutter, they're going to see if you're doing well or not, right? And if you're a partner, you're going to hear the same thing. "How's it going with these accounts? The renewals are coming up. What do you want to do? Let's work together." Somebody's owning that. I think that's the key thing. If somebody owns that outcome, the outcome being the ongoing relationship, then I think you're going to win. Kathleen: It certainly seems also that you would need to have the right tech stack in place because you can have somebody own it, but unless all of your different players have really good visibility into what have the communications and the touch points been, then it could get very messy, very quickly. Todd: It's actually impossible if you don't. Kathleen: Yeah. So having a good CRM, and then I would think, I'm sure you and I would preach the same thing, having a marketing system, a marketing automation system that is fully integrated with your CRM so that the sales people can see what marketing is doing, the marketing people can see what sales is doing, and your customer success people obviously bridge all of it. Todd: Exactly. Kathleen: Yeah. Todd: We would call that a "centralized view of the customer," where everybody can see it and know what's going on. And again, it sounds so basic, it sounds easy. The problem is a lot of companies I deal with have been around a while so they've got a lot of legacy systems. Those IT guys have been there since the '90s and they're used to servers and buy in software and they don't like the cloud. They've got all kind of biases, right? And they don't want ... they want these walls and they don't want information to get out and get shared because they're afraid of getting hacked, or losing it, or all these concerns. And they're legitimate, but there's answers. And if you don't have that centralized view of the customer, I would say, talking to the leaders of companies, I would put that right there at the top of your strategic initiatives. And if you don't have it, it makes it that much harder to deliver a great experience, which is the ultimate differentiation moving forward. Kathleen: Yeah. If you don't have a good customer list. I love that you said that at the beginning because it's true. It is so true. It sounds crazy, but I'm not going to name names, but I know a lot of companies that people might be very surprised to hear can't produce a list of their customers. Todd: I had a client a couple years ago that sold equipment that started at $250 thousand and went to well over a million dollars, and when I asked that question, "How good is your customer list?" They said, "We're not sure where all of our equipment is." Kathleen: Yeah. Todd: They didn't know where it was. I guess I was stunned. It's common, so again, that centralized view of the customer, it needs to be at the top of the list for leaders and owners. It sounds so basic and so rudimentary, but it's not. It's the beginning. You talk about the tech stack, that database is your business, and if you don't have it, then you can't build on it, then you can't build that experience. Or if you do, it's all over the map. One person may do it well, and over here it's not done well. Or this department does it well and this department doesn't because there's no connectivity. What's The Impact On The Bottom Line? Kathleen: Absolutely. So it's interesting as we're talking and I'm thinking about this whole conversation, the biggest takeaway to me seems to be that if all you do is get a good handle on who your customers are and start initiating regular contact with them, you have a good chance at increasing your sales by 10 to 15% within a year. Todd: Yeah. I mean, we would tell people follow up on your quotes, make sure you stay in front ... the basics. It's just, don't neglect those things. Those are relatively easy to do and just do those basic blocking and tackling. You're not going to go backwards if you do that. Number one, you're going to surface issues if you're talking to people and you're communicating with them, you're going to surface potential issues earlier and you're going to be able to deal with those. You're going to find new opportunities. If your sales team and marketing team are using content well, you're going to open up new opportunities and you're going to do something most companies aren't doing. So you're going to create differentiation right there in the after sale experience. So again, I think it's one of the easiest ways to grow your business without upsetting the apple cart or making a gigantic investment. Kathleen: Yeah. Agreed. So interesting. We could talk for hours about this. Todd: Sure could. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: But we don't have hours. So a couple of questions before we wind things up. My regular listeners know I always like to ask people, company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Todd: Well, there's a bunch. I mentioned FattMerchant. FattMerchant.com, it's a shameless plug for them if you need financial, payment processing services, they're awesome. Another company that was in our book is called Cerasis, C-E-R-A-S-I-S, and that's Cerasis.com. They're in the fleet management and shipping world. They compete with people like FedEx and UPS and they're amazing. They've created this amazing ecosystem and community around their business in a very traditional world where they're connecting people that are trucking companies with people who need to ship things. They are a wonderful example of it. And there's lots of individuals out there that are doing it well. On my podcast, it's called The Industrial Executive, I just interviewed Justin Champion, who is one of the inbound guys who runs the academy. In terms of a practitioner and teacher of inbound and inbound marketing, he's right up there at the top of the list. He wrote a book called Inbound Content, and he's just come out with a new blog strategy class and a video marketing class that I think are amazing. Kathleen: I love him. He's been a guest on one of our podcasts here at IMPACT. He's great. Todd: Yeah, big fan of Justin. And of course, IMPACT. You guys are at the top of the heap when it comes to agencies in the inbound world. You've been around it for a long time and I still read your blog all the time, and all the vlogs, so I'm still paying attention to what you guys are saying because I'm always learning from you. Kathleen: Well that is high praise coming from you, so thank you for that. If somebody is listening and they want to learn more about this whole topic or get in touch with you or if they want to buy your book, can you rattle off a few different ways that folks can get in touch with you online? How To Connect With Todd Todd: Sure. I'm easy to find. Todd Hockenberry. @ToddHockenberry is Twitter, LinkedIn. Happy to connect with people on LinkedIn, just search for my name. The book, InboundOrganization.com is our website for the book. Tons of info there, you can connect with all of our social accounts there. We've got a really cool thing on that website. It's InboundOrganization.com, no spaces. It's an assessment. You can take a 33-question assessment to see where you are in terms of your adoption of the inbound ideas across your entire organization. So it's free, you just fill it out and we'll send you the results, and it's been very interesting seeing the hundreds of people that have done it to kind of see where people are doing well and where they aren't. The answers are pretty insightful and a lot of the people that we know do it really get a lot of good feedback, so check that out. You can find me just Top Line Results or Todd Hockenberry, I'm all over the internet, and I would love to connect with you and answer questions and help you in any way I can. Kathleen: Love it. And I will put all those links in the show notes. And I'm assuming if they want your book, they can just go onto Amazon and get it there. Todd: Yeah. Amazon's great and a lot of Barnes & Nobles carry it, and a variety of other places you buy books. Inbound Organization. Check it out. You Know What To Do Next... Kathleen: Great. Well thank you so much, Todd. This has been fun, and I'm now inspired to take a closer look at how we're communicating with our customers at IMPACT. If you're listening and you enjoyed what you heard today or you learned something, take a minute, go to Apple Podcasts, and leave a review. It makes a big difference for a podcast like this one. It helps us get in front of more people, and I would be so personally grateful if you could do that today. And if you know somebody who is doing really great inbound marketing work, tweet me @WorkMommyWork because I would love for them to be my next guest. Thanks again, Todd. It was great chatting with you. Todd: Thanks for having me. It was my pleasure to be on Inbound Success, Kathleen, and I wish you lots of inbound success. Kathleen: Thanks.

If you REALLY want to be above average with your inbound marketing then you should check out the insights from our interview with Todd Hockenberry, founder of Top Line Results and co-author of the book Inbound Organization. “Every single person in your organization has to consider how their role influences the customer journey and whether either enhances it or takes away from it because it's going to do one or the other,” says Hockenberry. To learn more, listen to the podcast link.

In this episode we talk to the writers of the book “The Inbound Organization”. The book shows leaders how to build their company's future around Inbound principles and strengthen the structural foundations necessary to deal with the changes in buyer behavior.Check out the The Inbound Organization: https://www.inboundorganization.com/Check out the Inbound Growth Lab: https://www.techweb.no/inbound-growth-lab/ See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is it, the last episode of Inbound2Grow. It’s been a great year, and we want to thank everyone who has listened to, reviewed, read, or otherwise enjoyed the show. Inbound2Grow allowed us to explore the concepts we laid out in Inbound Organization, but we feel like we’ve covered the bases and it’s time for something new which brings us to the Industrial Executive. The Industrial Executive podcast will pick up where we left off in Inbound2Grow except we’ll be focused on talking to actual leaders and executives in the industrial manufacturing space. The goal of the new podcast is to focus on our primary persona, B2B executives, and their issues, which certainly include inbound and inbound organization concepts, but not exclusively. Industrial Executive will feature a new, interview format but we’ll also have an episode here and there with a format similar to Inbound2Grow, including the voice of Dan Tyre. We hope you choose to follow the new combined show at theindustrialexecutive.com. Links Industrial Executive New! Take the Inbound Organization Assessment Online (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.  

An inbound operating system consists of all of the systems, programs, and tools your company uses every day. An inbound operating system keeps everyone in the organization on the same page and working toward the same mission. [4:50] Question: Why is an Inbound Operating System Important? An inbound operating system is important because it provides a framework for cohesion. When you think about your organization your mission is the why, the strategies you employ are the how, and the operating system enables the what. The operating system provides the tools, systems, and process you need to follow through on your mission and your MSPOT. “Transparency without context is chaos.” – JD Sherman Want to learn more about inbound operating systems? Check out Episode 11: What is an Inbound Operating System? [19:00] Todd’s Truth Inbound leaders hold teams accountable, but the teams come up with the plans and execute. The Inbound Operating system keeps them on track along with the MSPOT. [19:34] 3 Takeaways You can’t impose culture; you can only guide and influence culture Document culture Evaluate your operating system Links Industrial Executive (https://www.top-line-results.com/theindustrialexecutive) Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Every company, regardless of what they sell, is impacted by technology. From the technology you use internally to track sales to the chatbot your clients use to talk to you, technology has the potential to create a superior, remarkable, and memorable customer experience. [1:29] Question: What do Inbound and Technology Have to do with One Another? Every piece of technology you use and your customers use to interact with you should be simple and accessible. Technology should be simple to use out of the box, easy to set up, and easy to figure out. The easier it is to use, the happier your customers are going to be. And the same goes internally. Giving good people bad systems is a recipe for employee churn. You should also be leveraging technology to automate redundant and low-value work. Things like follow up emails, lead intelligence, lead notifications, sending emails through the CRM, and meeting tools are all opportunities for your internal technology to support and enhance the customer experience by supporting your employees. You should be using technology to create a centralized view of your customer. Externally, tools like chatbots, knowledge bases, and conversations are opportunities to curate your customer experience. Technology should be enhancing the experience of your customers, clients, and leads. “Inbound thinking pervades everything for us from product development to customer service to technology. We built the product based on the specific feedback of our members and the problems they wanted to solve and the relationships we have, and how we make their lives easier, so we end up having a sticky connection with them and their struggles. It all goes back to the inbound idea. It’s all about people and relationships.” Liz Connett, Fattmerchant [20:43] Dan’s Rant This is the year. Now is the time. [21:00] Todd’s Truth A centralized view of the customer is a must.   [21:23] 3 Takeaways This doesn’t have to be hard. There is a lot of great software and tools out there There is a huge risk if you ignore the role of technology Shop yourself! Links Industrial Executive (https://www.top-line-results.com/theindustrialexecutive) Is there a marketing person leading the IT team? - https://seths.blog/2018/11/is-there-a-marketing-person-leading-the-it-team/ Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Very few companies think about how their accounting, finance, or legal departments impact their customer's success. But if you’ve ever had a bad experience wading through a 20-page legal document or spent hours on hold trying to correct a bill, you know that those interactions impact how you feel about a company as a customer. A bad enough experience with a back office department can make a customer walk away, but conversely, a great experience can support and add to the customer success journey. And that is why an inbound back office is a critical part of building an inbound organization. [0:43] Question: What is an Inbound Back Office and Why Does it Matter? A department is part of the back office if it is a non-customer facing department. This covers departments like operations, legal, and accounting as well as support staff and IT. Back office departments aren’t traditionally customer facing, and so they tend to be less connected to the buyer, the buying journey, and the customer experience. An inbound back office pulls all of those departments into the work of curating the customer success journey. An inbound back office takes the position that it is essential that it is easy for customers to opt-in, buy, pay, leave, understand legal requirements, access account information, and get questions answered. An inbound back office makes these processes easy and is essential for creating a unified customer experience. In an inbound organization all of the systems in place enable your employees to help, they exist to support and solve for the customer. Often back office systems get put in place to support the company, not the customer, but every interaction builds a customer experience. Your products and customer-facing people are important, but the back office is also part of the experience and relationship. It is important that interactions with the back office are supporting the relationship and building an amazing customer experience.   “We see legal as being a supporter of the inbound culture by helping employees prepare for and manage the responsibilities of transparency. Transparency also imposes a burden on legal. We cannot only say no but must explain our decisions regarding the culture code and the business objectives. We must be transparent with our team, including partners and vendors because we know this process builds trust.” - John Kellenher [20:54] 3 Takeaways Audit each touchpoint in the customer journey that the back office influences Make sure all of your employees know your buyer persona and how they impact the buyer journey Build MSPOTs for each of your back office teams Links Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Ecosystems are easy to overlook. Most often the business of running a business, building and maintaining a thriving company culture, and building an inbound organization take center stage. But whether you know it or not, you’re already in an ecosystem. All of the people and companies you work with, everyone your business touches, form your ecosystem. The greatest choice you have is whether you nurture and actively build that ecosystem or simply exist in it passively. [0:45] Question: What is an Inbound Ecosystem? So, what is an inbound ecosystem? Your ecosystem consists of: Employees Customers Vendors Suppliers Partners Channels Industry groups Stakeholders Competitors Anyone and everyone you work with, collaborate with, or share the same space with is in your ecosystem. What makes an ecosystem inbound is actively engaging with and working toward making your ecosystem a source of value for everyone in it. The work of creating an inbound ecosystem begins with your employees and then moves to your customers. Employees are first because you can’t have happy customers without happy employees. We’ve spent a lot of timing talking about why employees are essential, so we won’t rehash it here but if you want to learn more check out this episode (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound2grow/episode-109-putting-people-first) or this episode (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound2grow/what-is-a-culture-code). Your customers are second because your customers are already connected digitally, you can either engage with and support those connections or ignore them. It is beneficial to you to acknowledge and engage with them. Bringing your customers into your inbound ecosystem as active participants allows you to create more value for them. Creating value is at the heart of the inbound ecosystem. When everyone involved works to create value, everyone benefits. There is value in the connections that are made, sharing experiences, and working together to solve problems Inbound ecosystems are strategic. Understanding them and nurturing them allows you to not only create the most value for yourself but also for everyone involved. [22:57] Todd’s Truth “It takes a network to defeat a network,” Stanley McChrystal Because everyone is interconnected, you need to create a network or ecosystem that is better than your competitors to succeed in your marketplace. [23:15] 3 Takeaways Identify the ecosystems you’re already in Find ways to share or co-create content Co-marketing with others in your industry Links Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

If you’ve ever connected with someone on LinkedIn or got a new follower on Twitter and then immediately got a direct message asking you to check out their product/service, set up a call, or any other pitch you’ve experienced a sales fail. [0:35] Todd’s Rant Too often modern salespeople utilize outdated tactics that fall flat in the age of inbound. Time wasting cold calls, unsolicited emails, and cold outreach of all kinds are holdovers from the 90s era of spam and like Smash Mouth’s All-Star, most people in 2018 would rather not. The worst part of pushy sales tactics is that they don’t just annoy people, they make your prospects loath you. Time wasting cold outreach where the salesperson has done zero research is less likely to land you in a spam folder and more likely to result in a prospect that will never work with you and is more than happy to tell anyone who will listen how awful you are. Cold calling is high-risk behavior. And your prospects can tell when you haven’t done your research beforehand and are doing your qualifying on the phone. If you don’t know who you’re talking to, what they do, what they need, and how to help them, then you’re not ready to pick up the phone. All of this isn’t to say that you can’t reach out to someone you don’t have a personal relationship with, but how you approach cold outreach and set the stage makes all the difference. If you know your prospect and can speak immediately to their problems may be, they’ll listen. For instance, don’t start talking about your product. No one cares! Everyone cares about their problems, and if you want to succeed you need to explain how you will address/help with their problems. If you know who they are, what they are doing, and you have connected with them in a personal way then it’s much more powerful and more likely they will be receptive to your outreach. The goal is to build trust. Doing your research, listening to your prospects, and respecting their time are key. If you can’t check off all three of those boxes, then you’re deploying an outdated tactic that is more likely than not going to fail. Your tactics should show that you respect your prospects, their time, and their needs. In short, your tactics need to be inbound.  [17:45] Dan’s Rant Dan’s top 3 sales fails: Talking not listening! Demoing, not discovering Calling everyone – The riches are in the niches. Don’t call everyone it’s a waste of time [20:29] Todd’s Truth Help early. Help often. Focus on your customers. “Inbound selling is a modern, buyer-centric form of sales where the seller prioritizes the buyer’s needs ahead of their own. Inbound salespeople focus on the buyer’s problem and context above all else. The inbound salesperson customizes their sales process and solution, should one exist. Smart leaders will take the time to learn about it, teach your sales reps how to become inbound sellers, and start using this method as a competitive advantage for your company in the age of the empowered buyer.” Brian Signorelli [21:15] 3 Takeaways It’s so important there is only one takeaway this week: Senior leaders need to shop themselves – experience your sales and marketing experience for the point of view of the customer Links Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

This week we sit down with our friend Jill Konrath to talk about the biggest issue facing sales and marketing people today. Everyone Jill talks to is overwhelmed. Everyone is too busy and feels like they aren’t getting enough done. And in today's business world everyone is also expected to always be on, responding to emails, actively engaging in social media, and generally being instantly available. The result of all of this overwhelming work and always-on culture is that distractions are rampant, we’re getting less done, and it’s hurting our ability to make sales and meet our goals. And as the work piles up, we all get farther away from the things outside of work that are important.   Luckily Jill has some practical suggestions for how to minimize the distractions, manage your time effectively, and get more done with less. Our Guest! Jill Konrath’s career is defined by her relentless search for fresh strategies that actually work in today’s sales world. Jill Konrath is also a frequent speaker at sales conferences and kick-off meetings. Sharing her fresh sales strategies, she helps salespeople to speed up new customer acquisition and win bigger contracts. Her clients include IBM, GE, Microsoft, Wells Fargo, Staples and numerous mid-market firms. Jill is the author of three bestselling, award-winning books including Snap Selling and Agile Selling. You can find Jill on: LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jillkonrath/) Twitter (https://twitter.com/jillkonrath) Jillkonrath.com (https://www.jillkonrath.com/) Latest book:  More Sales Less Time (https://www.amazon.com/More-Sales-Less-Time-Surprisingly/dp/1591847265) Links Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Inbound customer service is more than reactive platitudes. Customer service used to be customers calling in and spending hours on the phone waiting to tell every person they talked to the same information in the hopes that someone could fix the problem. Customers still have problems, of course, but inbound customer service and success means that the customer service people you talk to know who you are, your history with the company, and are empowered to actually solve the problem. Inbound customer service and success are built around helping customers in meaningful ways. [1:41] Question: What is Unique about Inbound Customer Service and Success? No matter how good your company is at what it does things will go wrong. They won’t always be your fault, but your customers are going to look to you to provide solutions either way. Applying an inbound approach to the process of customer service helps you to create happy, loyal customers. Typical customer service, on the other hand, often leaves people less loyal. And it’s not surprising. People don’t want a stress ball or empty, “I’m sorry to hear that.” People want solutions, and inbound customer service works diligently to provide them. Your customers don’t expect you to solve every problem immediately, but if you are empathetic and proactive in providing help customers are understanding. Airlines can’t control weather delays, but they can control the way they respond to and treat their customers who are impacted by those delays. No one needs swag; they need solutions. No one wants an airline t-shirt, but they wouldn’t say no to a free drink and a travel voucher. And getting your customer service and success right is critical. People trust reviews, ratings, and comments and if your customer service is dropping the ball, you’ll see it in what people are saying about you. “The goal is to align the promise of value, made during the earlier stages of the buyer journey, with the achievement of success by the buyer once the customer success journey begins. The promise of value must align with what the inbound service and success teams manage, so the buyer’s expectations are met.” Michael Redbord [16:30] Dan's Rant You need a customer success manager! Lean into customer service and make sure your customers are happy. Customers word of mouth is the best way to generate new business. [17:32] Todd's Truth The best way to grow in the age of buyer control is to create successful customers who become your best salespeople. [17:39] 3 Takeaways Align your service teams with your marketing and sales Map out the customer service/success journey steps Build a customer success mindset and team Links Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) Inbound Organization Audiobook (https://www.audible.com/pd/Inbound-Organization-Audiobook/1469098903) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

In the old days, we create qualified leads by offering up lots of content. Our prospects found our content, filled out a form, downloaded the content, and then we reached out to them. This strategy still works, but over the last few years, we realized that what people like more than free content is free stuff. And it turns out that giving away software, a product, or service is an even more effective way to qualify leads and move prospects through the buyer journey. [0:43] Question: What is a Code Funnel? The code funnel is an engagement strategy that allows people to have an experience with your product or software before you ask them for any commitment. This try before you buy (TBYB) strategy allows users to begin extracting value from your product quickly while creating product qualified leads (PQLs). If you’re not sold on giving away your product or service, don’t worry. It’s not uncommon for this strategy to run into some resistance at first. Embracing a code funnel or TBYB strategy has a lot of benefits. First of all, it allows you to help more people. Your product or service is solving problems and helping your customers, so the more people who are making use of it the more people you are helping. Hand in hand with this, TBYB means your product has a quicker time to value. Everyone wants solutions and help right now. The faster you can put your solutions into the hands that need them, them better.   And the more prospects use your software or product, the more qualified they become. Qualified prospects rise to the top because the people who are actually using the software are more qualified than those who aren’t. This means that when you do reach out to these PQL’s you’re less disruptive because they are already qualified and ready to talk to you and you know exactly what to offer them and when to offer it. [11:13] Dan's Rant You can make a code funnel out of anything! Don’t say X product/service can’t be given away so we can’t use the code funnel. There is some way to implement try before you buy for every product or service. [16:23] Todd's Truth “The best way to engage buyers is to anticipate what problems they want to solve, diagnose how they research solutions, and help them solve those problems is a fast, comprehensive, and personalized way.” Companies that make it easy will be the ones that win. [19:02] 3 Takeaways Review your engagement process and strategies now Ask buyers what they want to see before buying Think of three ways people can try before they buy Links Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) Inbound Organization Audiobook (https://www.audible.com/pd/Inbound-Organization-Audiobook/1469098903) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Everyone says they are customer-centric, but, like most things, being customer-centric is more difficult than just saying it. Further, what passed for customer-centric five years ago doesn’t cut it today. Today’s modern buyers expect more from the companies they work with and buy from. For a company to be truly customer-centric, they need to be solving for the customer across all levels of their organization. In other words, to be customer-centric, you need to be an inbound organization. [0:37] Question: What Does Being Customer-Centric Mean? Being a customer-centric business means that your organization is built from the mission up with your customer's success in mind. Your mission shouldn’t be about you; it should be about your customer. The decisions you make should be based on your customers best interests. The content you host on your website should be tailored to every stage of the buyer journey (even customers), and it should be personalized. Being custom-centric is more than just having great service. Customer service is reactive, customer-centric means proactively ensuring your customers are solving their problems and succeeding. If you just pay lip service to your customers, you’re not customer-centric. [17:08] Todd's Truth Employee experiences lead to customer experiences. [17:48] 3 Takeaways Check your mission, is it up to date and customer-focused? Ask your employees what barriers are in their way Ask your customers if you’re delivering what they really want Links Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) Inbound Organization Audiobook (https://www.audible.com/pd/Inbound-Organization-Audiobook/1469098903) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Back in the day, in the 90’s, selling used to be boots on the ground, go out, and educate clients and prospects face to face. You would take them lunch or snacks and hope they wanted to sit down with you. Marketing wasn’t involved with demand generation or awareness; their role was more about supporting sales people. And there were lots of sales people, typically men, and very few marketing people, typically women, because salespeople were seen as a way to drive revenue (more field salespeople = more sales) while marketing was an expense. Fast forward to today, and the landscape looks nothing like this. [0:45] Question: Why is Marketing More Important than Sales in 2018? Buyers have more control than ever before. With the internet at their fingertips, buyers self-educate and qualify companies long before they ever want to talk to a salesperson. And buyers have access to you and all of your competition with equal ease. Which is why in today’s market, you can add salespeople, take out an ad, etc. but the biggest impact on growth happens when you focus on the customer journey, and that’s where marketing lives. Marketing creates the content prospects find, the education material they are digesting long before they call you, and marketing shapes the buyer journey from the first touch onward. Marketing should be the part of your organization that understands the customer and the buyer journey better than anyone else. In the old days, leads came from sales prospecting. Now, cold calling and traditional prospecting is the least effective way to find leads. Marketing should be doing the initial qualification through the buyer journey so that salespeople are talking to prospects who have already done their research, know what they want, and what you can do to help them. Now, sales prospecting should look like networking, working connections with existing customers, and working within your ecosystem. Marketing aligns the company with what they buyer wants; they’re the voice of the customer. There isn’t anything more important than that! [10:05] Dan's Rant Sales spamming is terrible! If you reach out on LinkedIn and immediately pitch the person you’re connecting with, you are spam. Worse, you have now ruined all of your credibility, and the chances of that contact ever doing business with you just went into the garbage. This tactic is just plain stupid and counterproductive. [17:03] Todd's Truth “Customer experience is the new marketing.” Brian Solis Marketing needs to have a seat at the table. [17:18] 3 Takeaways Where is marketing in your hierarchy? Is marketing an investment or a cost? Ask senior leadership if marketing is driving your strategic direction Develop a plan to understand your buyer persona and journey Links Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) Adele Revella - Buyer Personas (https://www.amazon.com/dp/1118961501) Inbound Organization Audiobook (https://www.audible.com/pd/Inbound-Organization-Audiobook/1469098903) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

For all of the companies out there dedicated to being inbound organizations and helping their customers succeed, there are ten more who aren’t. It is not uncommon for inbound to enter an organization through the marketing or sales department first. This means that often the first hurdle to becoming an inbound organization is getting leadership buy-in. [0:43] Question: What do You do if Your Leadership Doesn’t Buy into Inbound? Education is often the first step on the road to becoming an inbound organization. The sales or marketing department (or even just one of two people internally) are faced with the task of educating leadership and selling inbound internally. Understanding what inbound means and the changes that precipitated it are key steps to securing leadership buy-in. One of these changes includes increased competition, a fact that most leadership is keenly aware of. Most companies today have more competition than they did in years past, and buyers find that competition faster than ever before. With the internet at their fingertips, buyers are empowered to educate themselves and discover options like they never were in the past. This has fundamentally changed the buyers and the buying process itself, which is something many leaders don’t believe. Or, rather, they don’t believe it of their buyers, although they might admit it’s true of buyers in other industries. For older, larger companies it is not uncommon for leadership to persist in this belief that their buyers are the exception to this change. Often, they are still enjoying success and growth, so why should they believe that their buyers have changed? Unfortunately, the more time goes by the harder and harder it is to maintain previous levels of growth and success. So, how do you convince leadership that their buyers have changed, they face more competition, and the answer is to adapt and adopt inbound? The first step, as we said above, is education. Get your leadership team the resources they need to learn about inbound. There are plenty of books out there (you can find links to some of our favorite in the Links section of this post), but a quick google search for inbound + your industry should return any number of industry-specific articles and resources. Once you’ve secured some tentative buy-in, you can begin exploring other avenues like reaching out to an advisor or consultant. We also recommend taking the Inbound Organization Assessment on our website to see where your weaknesses are and where you can improve. Ultimately the goal is to get buy-in from all departments, not just leadership, and begin creating MSPOTs, Culture Codes, Inbound Operating Systems, and becoming an inbound organization. Leaderships support makes that much easier, however. [14:35] Dan's Rant Inbound is a pivot point. Yes, this is how your customers think, and yes, you do need to change. Every week you don’t become inbound your competition is, and they are getting farther ahead and reaping the rewards. [15:13] Todd's Truth “Inbound is about the size of your brain not the width of your wallet.” Brian Halligan in Inbound Organization It’s not necessarily about how much you spend; it’s about how strategic you are. [17:46] 3 Takeaways Here are three steps you can take to begin the process of convincing your leadership to buy into inbound. Tell a story – Show specific results and tell the story of where you are and where you could be. Bonus points if you can hold up a competitor as practicing inbound. Get sales buy-in – If you can get sales to buy in, it helps convince leadership of the potential of inbound. Run tests – Test a campaign or piece of content and use the results to prove the efficacy of inbound internally. Links Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) Bonus chapter – IMPACT Branding Case Study (https://www.inboundorganization.com/impact-case-study) Inbound Marketing – Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah (https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Marketing-Found-Google-Social/dp/0470499311) Inbound Selling – Brian Signorelli (https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Selling-Change-Match-People/dp/1119473411/) Inbound PR – Iliyana Stareva (https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-PR-Agencys-Transforming-Business/dp/1119462215/) Inbound Content – Justin Champion ( https://www.amazon.com/Inbound-Content-Step-Step-Marketing/dp/1119488958/) We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan! Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review)  P.S. Are you enjoying the podcast? Did you read Inbound Organization? Taking a quick moment to rate and review Inbound2Grow and Inbound Organization on whatever service you use is the best way to let us know how we’re doing. Your ratings and reviews make a big difference, and we appreciate you taking the time to provide your feedback.   Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

On this episode of the Freight Project Podcast, Todd and Cerasis Marketing Manager, Adam Robinson, will first define what is an Inbound Organization. Then we will talk about how the initial steps of becoming an inbound organization start with culture and mindset and how the organization interacts with customers all the way thru the buying cycle, utilizing inbound marketing practices, especially as the mantra of business today is to provide the best possible customer experience.

At the beginning of every organization's journey to becoming an inbound organization, there are inevitable potholes in the road. The good news is that these potholes are completely normal and can be overcome. Potholes to becoming an inbound organization can look like strategy mistakes, content pitfalls, sales stumbles, or mission blunders. Whatever potholes your organization finds in its road, the most important thing to remember is that they represent opportunities to become a better inbound organization and there is no need to fear them. Show Notes [0:39] Question: What are the Potholes to Becoming an Inbound Organization? Every organization will inevitably run into some form of pothole. Not every organization will run into every single pothole, or even most of them, but over the years there have been some common potholes we’ve seen. One of the first potholes organizations can run into is skipping their mission. We’ve talked a lot about the importance of mission, but for some companies taking the time to create a mission can seem like a waste. Or, worse, they’re an older company, and they think that just because they wrote a mission fifty years ago, it’s still relevant today. A mission has to be focused on how you are going to serve your customers. Typically, a mission will serve you for three to five years, but a 100-year-old mission is unlikely to reflect modern buyers, their needs, or the best way to help them. Your mission needs to be more than a statement on the wall. Another pothole is neglecting strategy or valuing tactics over strategy. You should be using an inbound operating system to keep everyone on track and focused on your mission. Your MSPOT should be clearly communicating the plays you will be making to achieve your overall strategy, and your inbound culture should be creating an environment in which everyone in your organization is working toward the same goals. If any of these pieces is missing, there are going to be problems. If that’s the case, don’t worry. Take a step back, figure out which piece is missing or failing you, and work on it. You need to take the time to establish these building blocks of inbound before you rush out and act. Another major area for potholes is content. There are three types of content potholes we’ve seen: Content Strangulation – The inability to put out content. Often the content creation process is a bureaucracy-heavy process that creeps along at a crawl. This long, drawn-out process doesn’t add anything to the content. Content should be a part of your everyday life. Do make sure it is well written and polished, but don’t get so bogged down you never put anything out there. Content Asphyxiation – This happens when you have taken the fun out of content and are taking it too seriously. You don’t have to be the next great American novelist to create content. Your content should be useful and relevant to your prospects. The goal is to help, not win writing awards. Content Discombobulation – This is when your content is all over the map or focused too heavily on one kind of content, all top of the funnel for instance. Content should be matched to every stage of the buyer journey, and you should have plenty for each stage. Sales is another area of common potholes. It used to be that the goal of sales was to close deals, and we’re still seeing sales people pick up the phone and qualify. An inbound organization strives to start relationships, and you should know who you’re talking to before you pick up the phone. Not having your customers best interests in mind is another sales pothole. Not every prospect would make a good customer, and you should have their best interests in mind and let them go. Similarly, not letting the customer move at their own pace through the sales funnel is a common sales pothole. If your prospect is in the education phase of their journey, don’t try and close them. [19:30] Dan's Rant Don’t fear the potholes! Everyone experiences them, but they aren’t the end of the world. Take the assessment and submit your MSPOT and you’ll be able to progress through the pot holes. [20:07] Todd's Truth Start at the beginning, follow all the steps, and don’t skip any steps along the way. You can’t skip mission, culture, strategy, or anything else because everything builds on each other. Links We’re extending the MSPOT contest! You can download the MSPOT template, submit it for review, and anyone who submits an MSPOT will be entered into the contest. The first-place winner will win an hour to review their MSPOT with Todd and Dan!  Download and Submit Your MSPOT (https://www.inboundorganization.com/mspot-review) Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) Thanks to Rebecca Miller our podcast editor, social media coordinator, and blogger and to Zachary Jameson for producing the audio for the podcast. Check out Zachary on Upwork if you need podcast audio services.

Segment 1: Dr. Heidi Grant is a social psychologist who researches, writes, and speaks about the science of motivation. She is the author of "Reinforcements: How to Get People to Help You".  Segment 2: Michael Ventura is the founder of Sub Rosa, a strategy and design studio that has worked with some of the world's largest and most important brands, organizations, and start-ups—from GE to the United Nations. He is the author of the new book "APPLIED Empathy".Segment 3: Rich Gallagher is a successful non-fiction author, freelance writer and ghostwriter. He's the author of the book "The Million Dollar Writer: How to Have a Legitimate - and Lucrative - Career as a Writer".Segment 4: Murray Nossel, Ph.D. is a psychologist, performer, and Oscar nominated filmmaker. He has taught storytelling for 25 years in more than 50 countries with more than 10,000 people. He is the author of the new book "Powered by Storytelling: Excavate, Craft and Present Stories to Transform Business Communication".Segment 5: Todd Hockenberry is the co-author of "Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles". Todd runs Top Line Results, a management consulting firm specializing in helping companies change and grow with inbound marketing and sales.Sponsored by Nextiva and Finagraph.

How to Transform Your Company Into an Inbound Organization written by John Jantsch read more at Duct Tape Marketing Marketing Podcast with Todd Hockenberry Podcast Transcript My guest for this week’s episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is Todd Hockenberry. He is the founder of Top Line Results, a management consulting firm, and the co-author of the book Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company’s Future Using Inbound Principles, which we discuss today. Founded nearly 10 years ago, Top Line Results guides B2B companies who are struggling to adapt to the changes in buying behavior. Using online tools, they help clients stay ahead of the latest tech-driven changes. Todd writes regularly about industry and technology trends, and has been published in trade magazines such as The Fabricator, Industrial Laser Solutions, Modern Metals, Modern Application News, and others. He also co-hosts the podcast Inbound2Grow with Dan Tyre. Questions I ask Todd Hockenberry: What’s new that you are bringing to the subject of inbound? What is the “inbound organization”? How do you encourage your employees across all departments to embrace the inbound culture shift? What you’ll learn if you give a listen: How the idea of “inbound” goes far beyond the reaches of marketing Why you need to stay focused on the customer throughout their entire interaction with your company How to shift your perspective from business owner to prospective client Key takeaways from the episode and more about Todd Hockenberry: Learn more about Top Line Results. Listen to the Inbound2Grow podcast. Read Inbound Organization. Follow on Twitter. Connect on LinkedIn. Follow Top Line Results on YouTube. Like this show? Click on over and give us a review on iTunes, please! This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Gusto! Payroll and benefits are hard. Especially when you’re a small business. Gusto is making payroll, benefits, and HR easy for modern small businesses. You no longer have to be a big company to get great technology, great benefits, and great service to take care of your team. To help support the show, Gusto is offering our listeners an exclusive, limited-time deal. Sign up today, and you’ll get 3 months free once you run your first payroll. Just go to Gusto.com/TAPE.

The Inbound Organization and How Sales is Changing with Guests, Dan Tyre and Todd Hockenberry This week HubSpot's Dan Tyre joins us for his second appearance on the podcast. We are also joined by the co-author of The Inbound Organization, Todd Hockenberry.   We discuss a number of topics, including what it means to be an Inbound Organization, how the sales profession continues to change, why the buyer should be your focal point, and the difference between understanding the desired outcomes of your client vs being a "problem solver". Questions Addressed "Everyone wants to grow, no one wants to change" - what does this mean? How do I handle the internal conflict? What is the difference between "Change" and ongoing implementation/adoption of "Tactics"? What are some of the things we can do within our organizations to improve alignment? "To DO Inbound, You have to BE Inbound" - what does this mean to Todd & Dan? What is the inbound ecosystem? How does the inbound organization impact us at an individual rep level? How does this approach translate into other roles within the organization? What does the future look like? Show Links Dan Tyre Todd Hockenberry Rachel Leist Link to MSPOTs article referred to during the podcast InboundOrganization.com Assessment MSPOT Territory Planning that Works Catalyst Sale Workshops & Training Thank you Thank you for rating and reviewing the podcast via iTunes, Google Play, or your favorite podcast platform.  Ratings & reviews help others discover the podcast - thank you for helping us get our message out to the community. Please send listener questions and feedback to hello@catalystsale.com or contact us directly on twitter, facebook or LinkedIn. Catalyst Sale Service Offerings Growth Acceleration - Plateau Breakthrough Product Market Fit ---------------------- Subscribe to the Catalyst Sale Podcast Subscribe via iTunes Subscribe via Google Play Catalyst Sale In every business, in every opportunity, there is someone who can help you navigate the internal challenges and close the deal.  There is a Catalyst.  We integrate process (Catalyst Sale Process), technology and people, with the purpose of accelerating revenue. Our thoughtful approach minimizes false starts that are common in emerging markets and high-growth environments. We continue to evolve our practice based on customer needs and emerging technology. We care about a thinking process that enables results versus a process that tells people what to do.  Sales is a Thinking Process.    

Inbound marketing is a proven concept but what is an inbound organization and what does it look like? Dan Tyre, formerly of Hubspot and author of "Inbound Organization," explains why the inbound approach really needs to start within the culture of a company if you want to maximize that strategy with your customers. Tyre also discusses the key attributes of an inbound organization and how to determine the right personnel for making that change.

Companies create culture either intentionally or unwittingly. Creating a culture code allows you to take an active role in purposefully and mindfully creating your culture. Your culture code signals, both internally and externally, the values and beliefs your company is committed to. So, what is a culture code?   Show Notes [0:42] Question: Question: What is a Culture Code? Directly from Inbound Organization, a culture code is, “an outline or slide deck that shows the key aspects of your beliefs, values, and aspirations and the type of environment you want to create. The culture code helps prospective applicants, employees, partners and vendors and even customers understand how you view your business and people.” A culture code serves a number of functions both internally and externally. From the standpoint of internal leadership, it forces your leadership to be clear and transparent about the kind of company they are trying to create. It also sets expectations for your employees. Your culture code also functions as a measure of what you say versus what you do and holds your organization accountable. Externally, your culture code signals your beliefs and values as a company. A culture code helps to differentiate you from all other companies. This can play an important part in attracting and retaining the kinds of employees you want to work with. Additionally, the process of documenting your culture code is important in and of itself. Having it shows people that the culture you are creating is something you value. [14:06] Dan’s Rant What is a wiki? A wiki is a website that allows everyone in the organization to collaborative edit the content and structure of the site. And Dan thinks that every company needs one! In this week’s rant, Dan tells the story of a HubSpot intern who posts a reply on the company wiki that drastically changes the course of a major change at the company.  [16:33] 3 Takeaways Document your culture code Start a wiki and start sharing information with everyone in your company Learn about and implement an employee net promoter score (ENPS) Links Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) The HubSpot Culture Code: Creating a Company We Love (https://blog.hubspot.com/blog/tabid/6307/bid/34234/the-hubspot-culture-code-creating-a-company-we-love.aspx) The HubSpot Culture Code Slide Deck ( https://www.hubspot.com/jobs/culture ) IMPACT Branding and Design (https://www.impactbnd.com/) What is a Wiki? ( https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/wiki )

In this episode, Dan and Todd explore how an authentic, inbound company culture fosters and allows employees to provide excellent customer experiences. While there are no shortcuts for creating a company culture, your company culture is an essential part of delivering the best customer experience. Show Notes [0:40] Question: What is the Connection Between Company Culture and Marketing Execution?  Inbound Organization begins with a case study about a payment processing company, Fattmerchant, who made their mark in a traditional industry by thinking outside the box and becoming an inbound organization. Fattmerchant built a company culture that helps their employees provide, “the best damn experience.” You can feel the difference an inbound culture makes when you go into companies like Fattmerchant and HubSpot because they’ve built a company culture that permeates the business. And that culture isn’t something you can fake. It must be authentic. Having an authentic company culture is a key part of how you deliver outstanding customer experience. By hiring for people who fit your culture and building your culture into every aspect of the business, you create an environment that fosters and allows your employees to provide the kind of customer experience you are aiming for. [13:53] Dan’s Rant Dan gets asked on a regular basis how they do it at HubSpot. The short answer is that people treat customers the way that they are treated, another reason why company culture is so important. [14:38] Todd’s Truth A modern buyer values a relationship with a company that shares her values without sacrificing any quality or utility. Buyers want to do business with companies that share their values and companies live out their values through their culture. [15:26] 3 Takeaways Check out Dan and Todd’s speaking schedule on inboundorganization.com. Buy the book, if you haven’t already. Here's the link: http://a.co/1UTyN96 Leave a review, we really appreciate it! Links Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) https://www.inboundorganization.com/resources-and-articles https://fattmerchant.com/

In episode 102 Dan and Todd talk about what inbound is, the assessment that can help you put a number on how inbound your business is, and what to keep out of your mission statement. Show Notes   [0:52] The Question: What is the first step to becoming an inbound organization? Dan and Todd hear this question from entrepreneurs, business leads, and senior managers all the time. Everyone wants a quick jumping off point into the tactics of inbound, but the problem is that no two businesses are the same, so no two businesses begin their inbound journey in the same place. To help address this question, and give everyone some metrics to measure, they developed the Inbound Organization Assessment. The assessment gives companies a way to compare themselves against a standard, gives them an objective measurement they can track, and guides leaders as they progress towards becoming an inbound organization. [5:17] What is Inbound? As they wrote the book, Dan and Todd asked everyone they talked to what inbound was. The only universal answer they got back was that helping others first was the core of inbound. Is your biggest goal to move people through a sales funnel, get them off the phone, get their details in your system? If the answer is yes, then it doesn’t matter if you’re employing inbound tactics you’re missing the heart of what it means to be inbound, and your prospects can tell. [7:17] Todd's Story If you’ve ever been to Florida, you know that all the sun and rain and beautiful weather leads to one thing…bugs! This is the story of how one bug guy earned himself a customer for life and countless referrals because he was helpful. [8:44] Dan's Mission Statement  Dan’s mission statement is doing the most good that he can for the universe. Helping people solve their problems is at the heart of what HubSpot does, so working for them makes Dan the luckiest guy in the universe. [9:39] Focus Beats Bandwidth The riches are in the niches. There’s so much competition out there that specializing in the smallest niche possible is how you’re going to stand out from the pack. [10:50] Data Drives the Best Decisions HubSpot is known for being data-driven. That’s a strategy that any business can implement to help make better-informed decisions. The Inbound Organization Assessment can be a first step to help businesses generate powerful, impactful data about where they are in the inbound organization journey. [12:35] Dan’s Rant If your mission statement is full of buzzwords, no one is going to like it. Focus. Innovation. Customer satisfaction. Buzzwords. Weed out meaningless buzzwords to craft a mission statement that actually means something. [14:16] Todd’s Truth Inbound is the ways your prospects and customers want you to treat them. It is up to you whether you give it to them or not. [14:39] 3 Takeaways Download the Inbound Organization Assessment Take the assessment to identify the areas where you are strong and where you are weak Buy the book! Links Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) Addtional Resources and Articles (https://www.inboundorganization.com/resources-and-articles) Inbound Organization Website (www.inboundorganization.com)

In this episode, Dan and Todd talk about what makes a good mission statement. From the things to avoid to an example of what to strive for, this episode dives deep into why mission is critical for an inbound organization. Show Notes   [1:20] The Inbound Organization Assessment The Inbound Organization Assessment is a simple to use, handful of questions that help companies build the right foundation for becoming inbound. Taking the assessment will help you gauge how much work needs to be done, familiarize you with the concepts and terms of inbound, and give you actionable steps you can take to become an inbound organization. [4:26] The Question: Why are leaders and executives so important to building an inbound organization? Leaders and executives are vital to building an inbound organization because they define a companies mission. That mission is the foundation and guiding values and principles you want your people to follow and share. Your mission is so important in today’s world because people want to do business with people who share their values and principles. They want to work with businesses that mirror their beliefs, and the same holds true for employees. People want to work for a company that they can believe in. Caring about what you’re doing for work and whey you’re doing it is why people go the extra mile and invest their time and energy into their employers. [9:16] What is a Good Mission? “A mission is how your company uses your resources, people, products, and service capabilities to help a certain set of people in a specific target market solve a specific problem.” – Inbound Organization An inbound mission begins with the why and works backward to how you are going to help people. [12:35] Dan’s Rant Today’s rant is an example of an excellent mission statement which comes from Forge, a San Francisco based startup. “Forge is creating a new contract between employees and employers that offers workplace and schedule flexibility to those working in the service industry.” Stacey Ferreira   [13:22] Todd’s Truth A good test of your mission is to ask yourself if any other company could use the same mission statement to describe their organization. Also, no buzzwords! [13:43] 3 Takeaways Review your mission and test it Identify your organizations why Download the MSPOT template Links www.joinforge.com startwithwhy.com MSPOT Template (https://www.top-line-results.com/hubfs/MSPOT%20template.xlsx) www.inboundorganization.com/resources-and-articles Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment)

Welcome to Inbound2Grow, the podcast for leaders who want to grow better and become inbound organizations. In our inaugural episode, Todd and Dan talk about who they are, why they wrote Inbound Organization, and why everyone wants to grow but no one wants to change. Show Notes [0:40] Todd and Dan introduce themselves From HubSpot to patents, Todd and Dan have a lot of experience in the world of marketing and sales. [6:58] The Inbound Organization origin story “What do you mean you don’t have a culture code?” and “How do you run a company in 2018 without an MSPOT?” Speaking together at a tool and die event in southern California, Todd and Dan saw that there was a lot of room in the world of business for a better understand and implementation of inbound principles to make a big impact on success.   As Todd sold inbound as a methodology to c-suite executives, Dan had been working the problem of sales acceptance of inbound as an insider at HubSpot. Together they saw the same disconnect between marketing utilizing inbound tactics and limited success because of a failure of the greater organization to make changes that reflected the modern buyer. So, the idea of writing the Inbound Organization was born. [13:34] Dan’s Rant Short and sweet, Dan thinks everyone should buy and read Inbound Organization. [14:02] Todd’s Truth Everyone wants to grow. No one wants to change. Everyone wants to grow their business, but modern buyers demand more from companies. Unfortunately, a desire for growth doesn’t always translate into a willingness to make real changes to your business, culture, or mindset. [15:04] Three Takeaways The three takeaways from this episode are: Check out inboundorganization.com to find free resources, upcoming events, our press kit, and HubSpot partner resources Take the Inbound Organization Assessment (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound-organization-assessment) Sign up to receive new episode updates either through our blog  (https://www.inboundorganization.com/inbound2grow) or through your favorite podcast service! Links www.inboundorganization.com www.top-line-results.com www.hubspot.com  Connect with Us Connect with Dan: Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook | Instagram | Google+ Connect with Todd: Twitter | LinkedIn | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Google+

Inbound or outbound? One of the questions you may be confronted with when it comes to marketing is whether you should have an inbound or an outbound strategy. This is especially important considering the investment required when implementing these marketing strategies over a period of time.  At the end of the day, what you need is an effective technique that does not only attract potential customers but also helps build trust that will lay the foundation for a long-term relationship with them. Inbound marketing could be a good fit for your company. But beyond marketing, an inbound revolution has been taking place - making inbound a philosophy to guide and direct your whole organization and business toward success. Discover the principles of Inbound Organization in this episode of The Digital Slice Podcast and learn how to live it and breathe it in your business. Dan Tyre is one of the original team members of Hubspot. Dan is a recognized authority in inbound marketing as well as sales. He is also a senior level software executive, writer, speaker, investor, mentor and coach for inbound success. His expertise is in inbound sales, inbound marketing, and inbound service. Todd Hockenberry is the owner of Top Line Results, LLC specializing in leading revenue growth in small to medium-sized companies and focusing on capital equipment, technology, and manufacturing. Todd is a published author for industry and technology trends specifically in magazines such as Photonics Online, The Fabricator, Modern Application News, Industrial Laser Solutions to name a few. He is also a sought-after speaker in trade shows and tech conferences.  In this Episode: How Todd started to unknowingly use inbound principles while working with an industrial company How effective quality content, SEO, and email campaigns are in engaging customers as Todd discovered in 2002 How Todd founded Top Line Results, partnered with HubSpot, and agreed with Dan to write a book on Inbound Organization How inbound has evolved into a philosophy that can be applied to the rest of your organization and your whole business How Todd and Dan synergized to the writing of the book, Inbound Organization How HubSpot and its leadership team lent support in the writing of the book How decision-making and buying power has been turned over from the sales person to the buyer How change has to start within the organization first in order to grow as a business How being helpful from end to end is central to an Inbound mindset and strategy Why transforming into an Inbound Organization is relevant today How leadership is critical to the transformation to an Inbound Organization How sales and marketing has to work together to create a satisfying customer experience How referrals are still the best source of leads making the customer journey critically important How the MSPOT or Mission, Strategy, Plans, Omissions, and Targets is a helpful tool for focus and execution How to create the buyer persona from a behavior standpoint more than demographics How Gary Vaynerchuk is right about the importance of content How helping and establishing a relationship with potential customers is the key to selling  How to make the Inbound Operating System work for your organization from hiring, to cultivating a company culture, to the customer experience How transparency should work in an Inbound Organization as a core value

Inbound Organization: How to Build and Strengthen Your Company's Future Using Inbound Principles by Todd Hockenberry and Dan Tyre Click here to view the show notes! https://www.salesartillery.com/marketing-book-podcast/inbound-organization-todd-hockenberry

So, you have an awesome product or service, but for some reason, customers aren’t flocking to you for it.   Maybe you feel like your marketing tactics are successful on paper, but they’re just not producing the results you need.   Your marketing and sales teams each have no idea what the other is doing, but you’re not sure how to align them.   Basically, you like the idea of being an inbound organization, but you don’t know how to execute the strategy. Or maybe you don’t even know what inbound is.   If this sounds like you, then you need to tune into this episode of Video Marketing Mastery.   In this episode, I interview Dan Tyre of Hubspot. Yes, THE Hubspot. And we talk about the ins and outs of inbound and why every organization needs to understand this important and powerful concept.   In fact, Dan’s such an inbound expert, he just wrote the book on it, literally. So we’ll discuss the concepts of the book in-depth as well.   If you want to transform your organization and provide value to your customers and prospects alike, you don’t want to miss this episode.

Today on Agent of Change, we welcome my friend Dan Tyre, Director of Sales at Hubspot. Dan has a 38 years career in business which started with is first start up in 1983 (which went from $20M to $1.4B), all the way to being the first salesperson at Hubspot 11 year ago. As you will hear, Dan all about helping entrepreneurs Dan was kind enough to record this podcast as he just finished, with co-author Todd Hockenberry, wiring his new book "The Inbound Organization". The book will be publish in April of 2018 by Wiley. You can find Dan here: - https://www.linkedin.com/in/dantyre01/ - https://twitter.com/dantyre - https://www.instagram.com/dantyre1/