Podcast appearances and mentions of todd hockenberry

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!

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!

Todd Hockenberry is a business development strategist who consults with entrepreneurs and business owners with his company Todd Hockenberry, Inc using the inbound principles. His company has an edge on the industry by expressing the benefits of being customer centric and appealing to what drives better sales. Todd focuses on the theory that if a company can offer an unmatchable experience in all stages of the brand, compared to the competition, chances are the customer centric company will outperform. Todd knows his consultations can shake old habits of business leaders who focus primarily on numbers and benchmarks, and will bring about positive changes to increase profits. On this episode of American Real, Roger Brooks interviews Todd Hockenberry who they both passionately agree on topics including the inbound principles, driving value, and the roles an executive can play when creating a better user experience for the customer. Business owners, managers, or creatives within an organization can utilize this information shared by the guest to gain sales, customer satisfaction, and increase the chances of succeeding in highly competitive industries by focusing a majority of the energy to the overall environment a customer has to encounter. Listen to this episode and find the many tips and tricks from Todd Hockenberry on getting to know your customers.    Social Media:    Read Roger's books: https://amz.run/53UE  Check out the American Real website: https://www.americanreal.tv/  Follow Roger on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rogerlbrooks/  Follow American Real on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/AmericanRealTV/  Follow American Real on Twitter: https://twitter.com/rogerbrooks  Follow American Real on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/americanrealtv  Subscribe to American Real on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/AmericanReal    Timestamps:   0:00 - Intro 3:12 - Effects of the Pandemic on Orlando  5:28 - Working Remote 8:38 - Todd Hockenberry's Inbound Strategy 13:23 - Inbound Beliefs  17:00 - The Role of an Executive 20:54 - Driving Value 24:35 - Relationship Between Sales and Marketing 30:24 - The Roles of Other Company Departments  36:27 - The Importance of Culture 38:43 - Closing Remarks   Mentioned In The Episode:   Todd Hockenberry Website - https://www.toddhockenberry.com/about Todd Hockenberry LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddhockenberry/ Todd Hockenberry Twitter - https://twitter.com/toddhockenberry?lang=en

Richard Rothstein of Rothstein Consulting interviews Todd Hockenberry from Top Line Results for CPA Trendlines

Today's guest is Todd Hockenberry of toddhockenberry.com. Todd is a specialist on the idea of customer-centric selling: how to align your organization with your best customer. Todd typically works with the "Walts" of the world. Walt is anyone who owns a privately run company in the B2B industrial and manufacturing spaces, but are stuck in making the transition from traditional marketing and sales to digital marketing and sales. As a result, these business owners have difficulties generating leads and closing sales. For over 12 years Todd Hockenberry has led revenue growth at B2B companies with a focus on manufacturing, technology, and capital equipment. Todd Hockenberry educates and helps B2B companies adapt to the new realities of Internet-driven changes in buying behavior. Todd has earned over 30 years of experience in direct selling and leading companies selling technology and capital equipment to companies in global industrial markets. If you'd like to learn more about Todd and the many services his business provides, check out https://www.toddhockenberry.com/.

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  

Another vague COVID email asking how you can help isn't going to cut it. You should already know how you can help your customers. That's real customer-centricity, and it's the only way you're going to survive this pandemic. In this Takeover episode, Ethan Beute, host of The Customer Experience Podcast, discusses customer-centricity with Todd Hockenberry, consultant and B2B advisor at Top Line Results.

The economic impact of Coronavirus is as fearsome as the medical danger. But fear makes the economy worse - so here's what your company can do.

The economic impact of Coronavirus is as fearsome as the medical danger. But fear makes the economy worse - so here's what your company can do.

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.

THE BUYER ENABLEMENT PODCAST TODAY, our guest on The Buyer Enablement Podcast is Todd Hockenberry, and he laid down the real buyer journey rapid fire then went right into what that means for sales leaders. Sales reps are a channel not the channel for information. Buyers don't care where they get information so long as its fast, easy, and brings the future into the now. Reps can do it all if they recognize how buyers actually buy. Listen for more on how to map your sales process to the buyer journey. WATCH THE FULL VIDEO on our YouTube Channel. The biggest problem facing businesses today is not a selling problem it's a buying problem. Simple transitions or complex solutions, no matter what your business's approach to revenue is, it seems buyers never feel confident enough to move forward. That's where this podcast comes in. To bridge the growing gap between the old way of sales and the new way people buy. Host Josh Fedie Founder & CEO of SalesReach.io is here to connect you with real stories of buyer enablement. Get winning tactics and actionable takeaways from experts and revenue leaders. Learn More about SalesReach: https://salesreach.io Connect with Josh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshfedie/ ABOUT THE GUEST Todd Hockenberry, is a Consultant | Advisor | Coach (Industrial Inbound, Manufacturing Marketing, Inbound Marketing), helping B2B leaders drive growth, align with buyers, build marketing/sales strategies, and develop the mindset to grow. Todd's LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/toddhockenberry/ Learn more about Top Line Results https://www.top-line-results.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.

We got back to back on Todd with Todd Hockenberry of Top Line Results. Todd details his beginning in Inbound Marketing and Sales - before the term was even known - and explains how to build an Inbound culture at your industrial company through transparency, vulnerability, and a holistic strategy. --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

In this episode of the #CX series, Ethan Beute, Chief Evangelist at BombBomb, talks with Todd Hockeberry, a B2B sales and marketing consultant at Top Line Results, about true personalization, customer-centricity, internal alignment, and ... company survival. Listen to more CX conversations on Ethan's podcast, The Customer Experience Podcast by clicking through one of the following links to your favorite podcast player: Apple Podcasts Spotify Sticher Google Play Google Podcasts

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

Change. Sometimes we pursue it and sometimes it is forced upon us. Perhaps you are well settled in to your sales and marketing process but what is it doing for you now in this time of social distancing? Are you providing real value to your customers? On this episode of Make It Right Todd Hockenberry […]

Now is the time to get stronger, wiser, and better at how you engage with and market to your B2B customers. Todd Hockenberry of Top Line Results will share some effective approaches this week on Make It Right. Full show Friday March 27.

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/

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

B2B companies are missing out on a huge opportunity.  They're either not paying attention to it or don't know how to apply it to their specific situation: Using inbound marketing principles to influence and grow their existing clients.  Our guest today, Todd Hockenberry from Top Line Results, reminded us of a shocking truth: It costs you seven times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Seven times!  Chew on that for a moment.   On today's episode, we're going to teach you how to start applying your inbound principles to nurture and grow your existing clients over new ones. 

B2B companies are missing out on a huge opportunity.  They're either not paying attention to it or don't know how to apply it to their specific situation: Using inbound marketing principles to influence and grow their existing clients.  Our guest today, Todd Hockenberry from Top Line Results, reminded us of a shocking truth: It costs you seven times more to get a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. Seven times!  Chew on that for a moment.   On today's episode, we're going to teach you how to start applying your inbound principles to nurture and grow your existing clients over new ones. 

In B2B, it's critical to understand how buyers consume information digitally, and how we must align our sales and marketing strategies accordingly. Building a sales strategy, with a marketing mindset, that helps customers solve their problems is critical for long-term growth and success. Listen in with Samantha and her guest, Todd Hockenberry, Author and Founder of Top Line Results, as they discuss the importance of being attuned to your customers' entire buying experience and how customers buy online directly impacts your sales and marketing strategy.

The Make It Right podcast was incredibly fortunate in the summer of 2019 to have amazing guests who kindly took the time to share their stories and insights with us. From launching your first product, getting a factory on the path to world class, understanding all the big and little things that make a work […]

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 4th episode of the Manufacturing Series, Todd Hockenberry, Founder at Top Line Results talks to us about prospecting beginning with everyone. Want to know more about the world of Manufacturing? For similar topics, check out our new podcast: The Industrial and Manufacturing Podcast. Want to get a no-fluff email that boils down our 3 biggest takeaways from an entire week of B2B Growth episodes? Sign up today: http://sweetfishmedia.com/big3 We'll never send you more than what you can read in < 1 minute.

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

“It’s not just a marketing thing. It’s not just a sales thing. It’s a CUSTOMER thing.” Todd Hockenberry, founder of Top Line Results, is a consultant and advisor to B2B leaders helping them drive growth, align with buyers, and develop marketing and sales strategies. For over 10 years Todd and Top Line Results have led top-line revenue growth at B2B companies with a focus on manufacturing, technology, and capital equipment. He helps his clients understand the changes in buyer behavior to grow better, become more customer-centric, and align with their ideal buyer persona so that they can deliver exceptional customer experiences leading to competitive advantage. Todd is the co-author with Dan Tyre of the recently published book Inbound Organization. Todd has launched new products in domestic and international markets, extended existing ones to new sales records, and rescued dying companies by reinvigorating teams and re-launching products. Listen And Learn: Focusing on your customers’ needs. How marketing teams can rally sales teams to get behind the campaigns being deployed. Using sales marketing automation to pull out the behaviors and the people who need a company’s help the most. Differentiating a specific product or service. Creating an experience with your customers. How you can strengthen your company’s future by focusing on inbound principles. TO LEARN MORE ABOUT, TOP LINE RESULTS CLICK HERE. TO FIND TODD HOCKENBERRY ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.

In this 3rd episode of the Manufacturing Series, Todd Hockenberry, Founder at Top Line Results, talks to us about updating your media. Want to know more about the world of Manufacturing? For similar topics, check out our new podcast: The Industrial and Manufacturing Podcast. This week only, you can get Sangram's newest book ABM is B2B is available for just $1.99. Here are the 3 reasons you're going to want to get your hands on this book: 1) It has stories of 6 companies that took their ABM program from good to great 2) It introduces the TEAM framework that is time tested within 100's of companies 3) It shares 7 truths that every marketers and sales leader should know before they start doing ABM If that's not enough, they are giving away 100% of the profits and $10 per review of the book to New Story charity. Check it out here or just search ABM is B2B on Amazon.

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

In this 2nd episode of the #Manufacturing series, Todd Hockenberry Advisor at Top Line Results explains the importance of a streamlined website. Want to get a no-fluff email that boils down our 3 biggest takeaways from an entire week of B2B Growth episodes? Sign up today: http://sweetfishmedia.com/big3 We'll never send you more than what you can read in < 1 minute.

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

Tips on how to sell to buyers in the new economy with Todd Hockenberry Buyers have changed. The way you sell in the new economy has to change. It really affects everything. It's not just about marketing anymore. It's about how you really run your entire business. It starts with the mindset of leadership understanding how they connect with and create value for a customer, and then how they build a relationship moving forward. They created a lot more connections and ways for their customers and contacts to understand what they were doing and how they could help them. So instead of having guys on airplanes all the time knocking on doors trying to sell things, they had people available 24/7 that could answer questions, support their customers, and be the kind of partner they were looking for. Your tactics should be determined by your customers and by your target audience. I think most marketing people would understand what a persona is. It's kind of a fictionalized representation of your ideal customer. How can we make our business so attractive in every way that not only do we attract the best customers, we attract the best employees, we attract the best partners, the best suppliers, the best collaborative companies, right? _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BUYERS HAVE CHANGED. HAS THE WAY YOU SELL CHANGED? [just click to tweet] BUYERS HAVE CHANGED. HAS THE WAY YOU SELL CHANGED? Buyers have changed. The way you sell in the new economy has to change. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Doug: Well welcome back listeners to another episode of Real Marketing Real Fast. Today, our guest is going to share with us why the keys to business growth and selling in the new economy is a change of mindset and not a new set of marketing tactics. So today's guest is Todd Hockenberry. He is the owner, the founder of Top Line Results, which is a global leader in educating and helping B2B businesses adapt to internet driven changes in buying behavior. So translated, how are your customers or your potential customers buying online? Todd is the co-author of Inbound Marketing Organization, which is a book on how to build and strengthen your company's future using inbound principles, and it's scheduled for release this April, so the book is probably already out. And it was published by John Wiley and Sons. Doug: In his book, Todd shows leaders how to build their community, their company's future around inbound marketing principles, strengthen the structural foundations that are necessary to deal with the changes in buyer behavior. Todd helps business owners like you and I understand that mission matters, culture is destiny and that the way that the prospects and their customers want you to market to them, sell to them, and service them is changing, and most importantly, what you should do about it. So I would like to welcome Todd to the Real Marketing Real Fast podcast today. Hey, well Todd, I'm super excited to have you on the podcast today, so welcome. Todd H.: Thanks for having me, Doug. I'm very excited to be here and talk to you today as well. Doug: Well, it's interesting to see that you're working in a very similar space and you're working the B2B leaders and helping them to drive sales and work in the marketing field. It's an area that I absolutely love. So why don't you share with our listeners just a little bit of background on yourself and how you kind of got to this space in your life. Todd H.: Yeah, I started out in the factories of Central United States in the flyover territory in the automotive industry and kind of cut my chops working for industrial and manufacturing companies. And about 10 years ago in the middle of the Great Recession, I found myself looking for a job, and I said, "I'm never going to have another job again." So that's when I started Top Line Results with my wife. And what we did was, we started out with the premise that companies were going abo...

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

In the first episode of the #Manufacturing series, Todd Hockenberry, Consultant, Advisor, and Coach at Top Line Results, gives insight into how to grow a business. Want to get a no-fluff email that boils down our 3 biggest takeaways from an entire week of B2B Growth episodes? Sign up today: http://sweetfishmedia.com/big3 We'll never send you more than what you can read in < 1 minute.

In this episode we announce a brand new series with Todd Hockenberry.

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.

Guests: Dan Tyre (Hubspot), Todd Hockenberry (Top Line Results)Before inbound started to define the today’s status quo of marketing and sales, the contact with a salesperson was indispensable. Inbound is different. Its principles focus predominantly on helping people through education without knocking their door. According to inbound principles customers find a company and its product on their own while looking for answers on the web. In this episode of Sales Leaders Talks our guests Dan Tyre, Sales Director of Hubspot and Todd Hockenberry, an owner of Top Line Results, digital agency, will explain how your company can benefit from applying inbound principles. Download free episode materials here:https://www.salesleaderstalks.com/podcast/how-to-gain-clients-going-inboundSales Leaders Talks Podcast is brought to you by Callpage (https://www.callpage.io/)

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 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

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/

  Show Summary: Todd Hockenberry joins me on this episode.  Todd Hockenberry has been in the manufacturing business for almost 30 years.  He is the owner of Top Line Results, which specializes in leading top line revenue growth at small and medium sized companies with a focus on manufacturing, technology, and capital equipment.  Todd started Top Line Results after identifying a gap in the marketplace for inbound and digital marketing in the B to B world. On this episode, you will hear Todd talk about inbound marketing strategies.  Inbound marketing is about being able to be found by your prospects when they’re researching and evaluating their options via digital tools.  Inbound marketing also allows you to build engagement with the 97% of potential customers that aren’t ready to buy. You will learn that a website is at the core of a good inbound strategy.  Having a website allows you to tell your story through your website’s content.  Your website and content need to be up to date and tell what you do. The way you look and are perceived online helps with credibility. Data and analytics are very important to your marketing strategy. Data shows that over 90% of customers start an industrial search online.  60% of the business goes to the first company that’s helpful.  Search data can show you the gap between how many customers are looking for what you do, and how many are finding your site. Connect with Todd Hockenberry: Website: Top-Line-Results.com Todd Hockenberry on LinkedIn In this episode, you’ll learn: [00:46] - Todd introduces himself and shares his background. [04:11] - Todd describes the history of and philosophy behind inbound sales and marketing strategy. [07:47] - Todd shares that once a lead enters the sales side, it becomes about aligning with the marketing strategy that brought them to you through customization. [08:57] - Todd explains that inbound strategies impact your outbound marketing. [09:20] - Inbound marketing tactics are always changing. Todd teaches that you determine your strategy, but your target customers determine the tactics. You need to go where they are. [10:16] - Todd believes that a great website is vital for your company. You should tell your story through your website. [12:55] - There is a huge opportunity for manufacturers through inbound marketing because it is an untapped market. Todd explains that manufacturers need to view inbound marketing as part of their competitive advantage. [13:55] - Todd shares a case-study with us. He explains how this business found him and his business and what their issues were. [16:26] - Todd describes the process he and the firm went through to come up with a solution. [18:52] - In my opinion, people need to stop pitching the product and start sharing expertise. Todd says that customers have a different definition of expertise. [21:00] - You have a great opportunity to build trust by sharing pricing in marketing materials. This allows you to build a relationship on value and expertise. [25:01] - We go back to this idea of not pitching the product, but sharing expertise. Todd shares some ideas on how to overcome this type of thinking. [28:16] - Todd shares that Tube Form Solutions adopted these inbound principles to grow their business. [33:30] - Todd shares the results from this case-study and describes how the results were measured. [37:47] - I share that when you share expertise and knowledge with an inbound strategy, you get top of mind awareness, credibility, and reciprocity. [39:21] - Todd answers this week’s challenge question. This week’s challenge question comes from a Vice President of Sales and Marketing for a Midwest manufacturer of wood products.  This company has implemented strategies to generate more leads.  They are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars and not seeing results.  Todd shares his thoughts on this situation. [45:20] - Todd shares two takeaways Start outside and work your way back to your plan. The world has changed from “buyers beware” to “sellers beware.” Your Resources: Hubspot blog post on the Tube Form Solutions case-study - https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/how-a-27-year-old-manufacturing-company-grew-sales-by-million-dollars#sm.00006ngn6jmy7dbm113ulj20us7oh Send in your Challenge Question: If you have a challenge you’re facing or a problem, when it comes to sales and marketing, send it in as a challenge question and I’ll pose it to one of our guest experts.  Email your challenge question to bruce@mmmatters.com.

http://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/topic/podcast http://MakeEverySale.com * Help first * Treat your customers like people * It's a mindset first * Support your current customers like crazy! * Educate your customers * Engagement and sales will grow * Apply inbound principles to your new customers * Do secret shopping on yourself * Focus on your niche, stay in your lane * As a leader, you are responsible for growth! * You need to know your customers and create an environment for sales and marketing to thrive. * Customers want value Get all of the show notes for every episode of The Sales Podcast ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/podcasts/ ) with Wes Schaeffer, The Sales Whisperer® ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/ ). Use these resources to grow your sales: * Sell More This Month ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/30-day-sales-growth ) * Hire Better Salespeople ( https://talentgenius.simplybook.me/v2/ ) * Hire The Best Keynote Speaker ( https://www.wesschaeffer.com/ ) * Find Your Best CRM ( https://info.thesaleswhisperer.com/best-crm-quiz ) * Join the Free Facebook Group ( https://www.facebook.com/groups/theimplementors/ ) Check out early episodes of The Sales Podcast: * Episodes 1 to 10 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/sales-podcast-episodes-one-to-ten ). * Episodes 11 to 20 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/the-sales-podcast-episodes-11-20 ). * Episodes 21 to 30 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/sales-podcast-episodes-21-30 ). * Episodes 31 to 40 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/sales-podcast-episodes-31-40 ). * Episodes 41 to 50 ( https://www.thesaleswhisperer.com/blog/sales-podcast-episodes-41-50 ). Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/the-sales-podcast/exclusive-content Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy