How to Know When You’ve Outgrown HubSpot Sales Hub Starter

For companies looking to get their sales team started with HubSpot Sales Hub, the Starter tier offers a great balance of function and affordability. (After all, it’s called Starter for a reason.) 

Even getting your sales team to use a CRM (or customer relationship management software) can be a challenge for many businesses, so any step in the CRM direction means progress. 

Because some organizations anticipate hesitancy from their sales reps to fully embrace a CRM, they don’t want to plunk down more money than they need to.

For those in that position, Sales Starter is a good solution. But, I’ll say it again: It’s called Starter for a reason. Many sales teams find that they begin feeling the limitations sooner than they might think.

Jess Palmeri is a lead HubSpot trainer here at IMPACT. She notes: “Some of our clients begin with Starter for the low financial investment, thinking an upgrade to Pro could happen way down the line. But they find themselves ready to jump to Pro in six to 12 months — way faster than they anticipated.”

If you’re using HubSpot Sales Hub Starter — or are planning to — here’s how to know if and when an upgrade to Pro is the right call for your business.

Is Sales Hub Starter a long-term solution for my team?

First off, it’s important to note that different companies can have very different HubSpot needs. 

Larger companies coming to HubSpot from another CRM such as Salesforce or Zendesk are likely to jump right into Sales Hub Pro. (In fact, we usually recommend our clients use the whole Pro suite, which comes with discounts.) They’re likely to know what they need, and it’s just a question of integrations and data migration that need to be addressed before they get up and running.

A smaller business might be coming to HubSpot after using spreadsheets or another home-grown organizational system. For them, Sales Hub Starter is a big step up, and it might actually be a fairly long-term solution. If they’re not growing rapidly, Starter could work for them forever. 

But for many businesses, Starter is just that — a way to learn HubSpot and get their feet wet before upgrading. 

And the price is right. 

According to Jess, “If a company is starting from scratch, the Starter rate of $25 per seat per month is much more palatable than $100 per seat per month for Pro.”

But when they’re ready, the functionality of Pro easily justifies the cost. So, let’s see exactly what it is that Pro offers that’s worth the extra cost.

3 key Sales Hub Pro features that cause people to upgrade

Although Sales Hub Pro offers dozens of capabilities and functions that Starter does not, Jess says it comes down to three features that make it a worthwhile investment for our clients.

1. Custom reporting and sales analytics

First up, with Pro you will have access to amazing reporting and analytics tools that let you easily look at data in ways that would normally take hours to compile.

Jess says “HubSpot has a sales analytics tool that almost eliminates the need to build your own sales reports.” There are numerous reporting options that can be configured to your team’s needs. 

If you want to look at a report on close rates or see how long your deals are taking, you can see that in a few clicks. Says Jess (affectionately), “It would take one of your nerdy people a good bit of time to build a report like the one you can easily get with Sales Hub Pro.”

So you can deploy your nerds elsewhere. 

2. Automation and sequences

“If you want to automate anything in your sales process,” Jess says, “you’ll need the functionality that’s available in Pro.” 

Automation improves your sales team’s performance from start to finish. Automation is generally used more by managers than by the sales reps themselves. When a lead comes in, that lead can be automatically assigned to one of your sales reps on a round-robin basis. 

Then, as a deal moves from one stage to another, that can trigger certain actions to occur, which could include emails being sent or notifications going to a manager.

These automation features keep teams running smoothly and give managers insights into each sales rep’s pipeline.

Sequences

Related to automation are sequences, which allow your team to more easily follow up with prospects in the sales process. Email sequences allow for nurturing campaigns to keep prospects engaged who are not yet ready to buy. 

For example, if a site visitor comes and reads several articles about a particular product, a rep could trigger a sequence that sends several helpful emails related to their needs — without the sales rep having to send each one individually. 

Sales reps find themselves sending very similar emails to client after client. Rather than having to write out the same follow-up email after each exploratory call, say, they can build a template and start a sequence.

Then, they don’t have to remember to send another email in three days if the first one didn’t get a response. The sequence automatically takes care of this.

For sales reps working dozens of deals at once, sequences help economize the process and prevent things from slipping through the cracks. 

3. Prospecting Workspace

HubSpot's Prospecting Workspace is the center of a salesperson's day-to-day workload. Here they can see their tasks, access their contacts, and stay up on what actions are the highest priority. 

(source)

For salespeople used to less sophisticated systems, Prospecting Workspace is a game-changer — and it's a compelling reason to upgrade. You'll see much more efficiency from your sales team almost immediately. 

How to know when the time is right for your HubSpot upgrade

Considering your unique needs, how will you know if or when an upgrade makes sense? Jess offers a simple solution to this complex question: Listen to your sales team. 

“If they’re just using the CRM to keep track of their pipeline,” she says, “you’ve probably not outgrown Starter.” But when they start using the tool more heavily — and mentioning how expanded functionality could help them — you might be ready to upgrade. 

“Once your sales reps are logging and tracking all of their deal activity, as well as all of their communication with prospects,” Jess says, “they’re going to start to feel the limitations of the Starter tier.”

The same thing can be said for data. If your sales team bemoans the fact that they can’t parse and analyze the HubSpot data because doing so is too labor-intensive, Sales Hub Pro is probably in your near future. 

Remember, an upgrade to your HubSpot CRM is a good sign!

Although no business wants to spend money it doesn’t have to, don’t be upset by the fact that you’re moving from Starter to Pro. If you’re in the market to upgrade, it usually has to do with three things:

1. Your sales team is fully bought into using the CRM. They’re tracking deals and logging call notes with it. This should be celebrated. Some sales teams are very resistant to getting even this far. 
2. You’re growing. More revenue means more sales reps, more deals, and more customers. You might just need a bigger and better system to keep track of it all.
3. You’re using data to make decisions. Paying for HubSpot is paying for data. When you have data you can make sense of, you can make better decisions about how you market and sell to your customers. Paying a little more each month to make more informed decisions sounds like a good deal to me. 

Still, you want to make sure you’re not overpaying to get what you need. Check out this article: Think you’re paying too much for HubSpot? Here’s how to get your money’s worth. 

When you’re ready to make the jump, though, you should see the upgrade to Pro as a clear metric of progress. You’ll be amazed by what you can do. 

Author: jbecker@impactbnd.com (John Becker)

* This article was originally published here

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Data-Driven Success: HubSpot Fuels Berry Insurance's Massive Growth [Endless Customers Podcast S.1 Ep. 32]

About this Episode

They say a decision is only as good as the data it’s based on. For Massachusetts-based Berry Insurance, better data means better decisions — and better decisions mean better outcomes.

Corin Cook joined Berry in 2019 as the company’s first content manager. At that point, Berry was early in its They Ask, You Answer journey. Corin focused on writing educational content that would be helpful to anyone in the market for insurance. Soon, traffic began to explode, bringing tens of thousands of visitors to the Berry website. 

With visitors come opportunities, but only if you have the necessary tools.

Berry began using HubSpot to track its website engagement. HubSpot became the platform where all digital marketing efforts could be centralized — from email communications to full website management.  

“HubSpot is just so user-friendly,” says Corin. “It was really a game changer being able to have all of our content up there, all of our videos, everything just integrated into the site and being able to look at the analytics of everything."

In time, Berry’s marketing team grew to include a videographer and another content writer. That means a lot of content spread out across Berry’s website, social platforms, and YouTube. "Over the past few years,” Corin estimates, “we've written hundreds of articles on insurance, and we have hundreds in the queue.”

Today, Corin and her team use HubSpot to publish their content — and they use its reporting capabilities to track how that content performs. 

In turn, they use this information to inform their future strategy. After all, better data means better decisions. 

Connect with Corin

Corin Cook is the Senior Marketing Manager at Berry Insurance — a 100-year-old business based in Massachusetts. 

Learn more about Corin

Connect with Corin on LinkedIn

Learn how Berry Insurance tripled its revenue by creating better content

Keep Learning

• Read: How to Know When You’ve Outgrown HubSpot Sales Hub Starter
• Learn: Best HubSpot Integrations: 22 to Supercharge Your Marketing and Sales
• Grow: Need a HubSpot Admin? Here’s How to Find and Hire the Right Candidate

Author: awinter@impactbnd.com (Alex Winter)

* This article was originally published here

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TikTok Is Testing a Collaboration Feature for Posts

A new way to expand your reach on TikTok.

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X Loses Lawsuit Against Data Scrapers

The laws offer limited protection over social media posts.

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WhatsApp Launches Refreshed UI Elements

A visual refresh for Meta's top messaging app. 

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X Will Soon Enable Advertisers To Create Ad Audiences With AI

The system will enable you to build audiences using conversational prompts.

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Report Shows Publisher Referrals From Facebook Have Declined by 50%

Meta's shift away from news and politics is having a big impact on publishers.

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When You're Spending on Marketing, Here's What You're Buying

As you’ve grown your business over the years, you've added staff to every department. But you've resisted handing off the important tasks to outside agencies. 

Hiring a sales agency to talk to your prospects?

No way!

Hiring an engineering agency to help you design your product?

Not a chance!

Hiring a customer services agency to help soothe upset customers?

Absolutely not!

Why do these options seem so off-target? I’ll tell you why: You don’t want some outside company you hardly know handling such an important part of your business.

Instead, you’ll hire salespeople, engineers, and customer service pros to join your team. If any department needs to expand its skillset, you’ll hire accordingly, or you might bring in a consultant to help train them.

But here’s what always confuses me: These same businesses think nothing of hiring a marketing agency to handle all of their critical outreach:

• Website messaging
• Content marketing
• Emails
• and Social media

The fact that this is so commonplace has helped me understand a dangerous truth: When we pay for an agency to do our marketing, we don’t really understand what we’re buying (or what we’re getting).

The implications of this miscalculation are alarming.

What you’re actually getting when you pay an agency

To me, hiring a marketing agency only makes sense in a fraction of circumstances.

In nearly every case, paying an agency to “take care of” your marketing is as absurd as hiring a sales agency to sell to your customers.

In the back of your head, you know it doesn’t totally make sense. You know you’ll be sacrificing authenticity, but you assume you’ll be getting expertise in exchange. 

Here’s the thing: You might not end up getting authenticity or expertise. 

Many agencies suffer from constant client churn and frequent employee turnover.

They overpromise in the sales process and then can’t deliver. Clients get angry and leave, cutting into profit margins and destabilizing the agency. 

And on top of that, those agencies often outsource their client work to freelance writers, designers, and video producers. So that expertise you were sold never turns into the results you need. 

How do we know all this? We were in this business for close to a decade. We came to see the traditional agency-client relationship as deeply flawed.

Today, we’re consultants and coaches, helping businesses bring marketing in-house. 

You think, ‘We’re buying deliverables — and expertise’

So, let’s say you shell out 10 grand a month, each month, to an agency. As an example, your contract says you’ll get three articles, two videos, several supporting materials, and a whole lot of 'strategy' each month.

What you think you’re getting with an agency is these deliverables: articles, ebooks, email copy, graphic design, and videos.

Then, on top of that, you think you're getting expertise: how and when to use each type of content to generate leads.

In your mind, it’s pretty clear. You pay, and you get the deliverables back.

But the truth is more complex. 

What you’re really paying for is agency overhead

Think about it like this.

How long does it take to produce a blog article? On average, around four hours, according to a thousand writers surveyed by Orbit Media. On top of that, there’s research and promotion. So, let’s call it six hours total.

Okay, so your agency delivers three of those each month. That’s 18 hours.

Next up is video: Let’s say each video takes 10 hours to produce, including planning, shooting, and editing. 

Two videos is 20 hours.

In addition, let’s say there’s some email copy, maybe a quick landing page design, keyword research, strategy, etc. In all, let’s call that another eight hours of design and planning work. 

Okay, got your calculator? That’s a total of 46 hours of work. On top of that, let’s throw in some meetings. Maybe another two hours. 

That’s 48 hours of work each month.

Your bill? $10,000.

That’s $210 an hour — for every hour the agency is working on your behalf.

That means that blog article is costing you $1,260. That video costs $2,100. 

Now, back up a bit. How much is that writer actually getting paid? How about that videographer?

According to payscale.com, the average content marketer makes $56K a year. A videographer is $47K. Factor that out and convert it to hours: That’s an average of about $25 an hour. 

Remember, you’re paying the agency almost10 times that: $210 an hour.

Sure, there’s equipment and software, there’s expertise and strategy, but ten times?

If the deliverables cost X, and you’re paying 10 times X, where’s all that money going?

To get more and pay less, hire a marketing team

The old benchmark is that a company should spend around 10% of its revenue on marketing. Research shows that it’s often a bit higher for B2B businesses. 

If you’re a $5 million business, 10% is half a million dollars. So, before you throw it all at an agency, consider a different approach.

Instead of paying an agency for questionable returns, build an internal marketing team. It’s less expensive, way more effective in our experience, and it keeps our investments in-house. 

Building your internal marketing team with a $500,000 budget

As a former COO, I’ve spent plenty of time around budgets and spreadsheets.

If I were to allocate marketing budget for a $5 million business, I would think about salaries first.

Anytime you hire someone internally, you’re going to get a lot more out of them without the agency serving as a middleman. 

Remember how the agency gave you three articles per month? Hire an internal writer and you’ll get three articles a week — and it’ll cost you much less.

So, my budget allocation?

• Marketing director: $100K salary
  Oversees all marketing, publication calendar, social posting, and email marketing
• Content manager: $60K salary
  Writes three articles per week, interviews subject matter experts, and starts a newsletter
• Videographer: $60K salary
  Films, edits, and publishes two videos per week, oversees your company's YouTube channel
• Marketing software: $25K
  CRM, video hosting software, and analytics tools
• Hardware: $15K
  Computers, cameras, equipment, and the like

Right here, we’re looking at $260K a year — and you’re paying salaries above the market rate. 

How you spend the rest would depend on your unique needs. I work with clients from more than a dozen different industries. You might need, for example:

• An SEO expert
• A social media manager
• A graphic designer
• A website strategist who can do design and development for your site
• Social media and search ads (especially if you’re in ecommerce)

And so on. 

The team you build can outperform any agency. You’ll get more content that’s authentic and sounds like you. You’ll get better email messaging and more engaging videos — all for a lot less money.

But in order to get your team on board and rowing in the right direction, we suggest coaching and training. This way, you can supercharge their skill development and production. 

Marketing is no different than any other department

When your company’s growing and you need a bigger sales team, there’s no way you’d ever contract a sales agency to have them speak to customers. Why not? Because they don’t know your business or your industry.

Yet we do this every day for our marketing needs. And we do it without batting an eye, writing checks to far-off agencies, expecting them to instantly onboard through a few Zoom calls so they can take control of all aspects of our messaging.

And the worst part of all is that we're spending way more than we need to — and often getting sub-par results. 

It’s crazy.

Your website, your content, your social media account — these are the first things every future customer will see about your brand. When you hire an outside expert to handle that for you, you hand over the keys to your own growth engine.  

Instead, hire an internal team and see the benefits first-hand. 

Want to learn more about how to do it? Talk to us. 

Author: cduprey@impactbnd.com (Chris Duprey)

* This article was originally published here

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Meta Tests Instagram To Threads Cross-Posting

An easy way to feed your IG updates through to Threads.

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Jack Dorsey Exits Bluesky, Marking the End of an Era

The Twitter founder is exiting the social media game.

* This article was originally published here

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Don't Be Held Hostage By an Agency [Endless Customers Podcast S.1 Ep.29]

About this Episode

Is your agency holding you hostage?

It sounds funny to use those terms, but that’s really what it is. 

Imagine this: Let’s say a company hires an agency to help them set up HubSpot. To get started, the agency takes control of all the login credentials and the seats that come what that HubSpot portal.

At first, this might make sense. The agency has the know-how to get everything set up. But as the months go by, the business might start to get uneasy. Their team can’t do ANYthing in HubSpot without the agency doing it for them. 

Run a traffic report?

Call the agency

Build a landing page?

Call the agency

Schedule an email?

Call the agency

In each case, it’s the agency that holds all the cards. 

And on top of that, all of the HubSpot knowledge remains with the agency. If they’re never teaching the business how to use HubSpot, the business can never do away with the agency. The business is stuck paying the agency, month after month, to see results. The business is a hostage. 

If this sounds familiar, maybe it has happened to you. We promise you’re not the only one.

As Connor Delaney explains in this episode, agencies can do all sorts of things to lock in their clients. From keeping login credentials to using their own servers or even a homegrown CMS that stores all of the client’s contact records.

All too often, businesses sign a contract without reviewing it closely, trusting that the agency is acting in their best interest. 

While we can’t force agencies to follow more scrupulous practices, we can equip you with the knowledge so you’re more informed the next time you ask an agency for help.  

Connect with Connor

Connor is a sales consultant at IMPACT who helps businesses understand how they can break free from unproductive agency agreements. 

Learn more about Connor

Connect with Connor on LinkedIn

Learn more about how we help break the cycle of agency dependency

Keep Learning

• Read: In-house Marketing vs Agency: What’s Best For Your Business?
• Read: Should You Hire An Agency to Create Your Content?
• Score yourself: Does your website build trust with buyers and bring in revenue?

Author: awinter@impactbnd.com (Alex Winter)

* This article was originally published here

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X Launches Grok AI Chatbot in the UK

X's Grok chatbot is now available to Proum subscribers in the U.K. 

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X Looks To Water Down Blocking To Increase Transparency

Elon and Co. are looking for ways to lessen the impact of blocking.

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Social Platforms Face Challenges in India Business Development

While more and more Indian users are coming online, the audience figures belie immediate business potential.

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Sales and Marketing Friction is Hurting Your Bottom Line – Here’s What to Do About It

Oil and water. Cats and dogs. The New York Jets and winning. Some things in this world just never seem to go together. 

Is sales and marketing in the same category at your business — destined to bicker, squabble, and storm off — when what you need is harmony?

If so, you’re not alone.

According to research from LinkedIn, 96% of sales and marketing professionals agree that strategic alignment between their teams is a persistent challenge. It makes sense when you think about it. By and large, sales and marketing teams:

• Report to different executives
• Measure success differently
• Use different KPIs
• Disagree about lead quality
• Don’t have regular meetings

At the same time, 87% of sales and marketing leaders believe that alignment between their teams is essential to business growth.

So, in summary — no one has it and everyone wants it. Why can’t we make this work?

Let's start by getting it all out in the open. Come on, this will be therapeutic. 

What do marketers (really) think about the sales team?

The work marketers do can yield fickle results, and every click, open, impression, and conversion is hard-won. To outsiders, the results don’t always seem worth the effort. 

According to Allison Riggs, a business coach here at IMPACT, marketing teams often feel underappreciated by sales. Sales gets the glory (and the commission), while marketing is seen as an expensive undertaking with questionable return. 

Working under a lot of pressure from company leaders, marketers produce and deliver leads to the sales team, only to have the sales team take credit for the good leads and complain about the bad ones.

“I feel like there is an unspoken competition that happens between the two departments,” Allison says. “Both want to provide value, but both feel siloed and feel that there is more friction than collaboration.”

What do salespeople (really) think about the marketing team?

Sales, too, is under pressure. The entire organization lives or dies by its sales team. Without revenue coming in, there are no paychecks. 

I spoke to one sales pro who's been in the game for years. She says she’s never worked on a sales team that has collaborated with its marketing counterpart. Ever. Not once. 

Marketing, to her, didn’t impact sales at all. “Sometimes we’d hear about marketing campaigns or get random leads from a form fill or a download,” she says, “but, in my experience, they’ve always been terrible leads, so we didn’t really see the value on what marketing did.”

via GIPHY

It’s no wonder sales teams see marketers as ineffective. They often create messaging and content in isolation from sales and then deliver subpar leads.

When two teams undervalue and misunderstand each other, resentment and disconnection are soon to follow. 

But sales and marketing alignment is not just about good vibes at the office. Misaligned teams are an expensive and inefficient liability. And that should concern everybody.

Why does this misalignment cost money?

Speaker and author Marcus Sheridan works with business leaders to ease their sales and marketing friction. 

He insists on actually bringing the teams together and forming a single team; a blended “revenue team” — the very structure and name of which acknowledges that both teams have a huge influence on the buyer experience. 

According to Marcus, a lack of sales and marketing alignment doesn’t just hurt morale, it hurts your bottom line. 

Here’s why: Both your sales team and your marketing team are composed of competent, intelligent professionals with an ever-increasing knowledge and skill base. If that knowledge never gets shared outside of each department, it doesn’t benefit the company the way it could.

Marketers can do their job better if they learn from sales. And sales can do their job better if they learn from marketing. Collaboration is mutually beneficial. 

Sales can help marketing do its job better

Sales has in-depth, first-hand knowledge of your marketplace. Marketers can’t do their job well without this kind of knowledge. 

• Knowing who your buyers are: Do your marketers know who you’re actually selling to? It’s your sales team that has its ear to the ground in your marketplace. “Unless marketing spends significant time with your sales team,” Marcus says, “they’re likely to become out of touch with your buyers.” Marketing materials that don’t speak to your buyers are less likely to bring in revenue.
• Objections that come up during the sales process: Sales hears these objections every day. If they’re not addressed in content or on the website, prospects are less likely to consider your solution. That means fewer conversions and leads.

Marketing can help sales do its job better

Marketing has technical know-how that sales can use to better connect with customers and close deals. 

• CRM use: Marketers are often CRM wizards. There’s so much lead intelligence in your CRM; marketers know how to access it, sales reps sometimes don’t. This means less effective sales calls. 
• Email best practices: Sales teams email all day long, but marketers are usually more adept at maximizing open rates and click-through rates. “It’s your marketers,” says Marcus, “who understand the technical details of getting people to open emails.” Unopened prospecting emails waste time and don't bring in money.
• Content production schedule: If new content is coming out or the website is going to be updated, sales needs to know. (Actually, they should have a hand in the process and be made aware of what’s coming.) When sales enablement content gets leveraged in the sales process, close rates go up.
• What campaigns are live and when: Is marketing planning a new offer or promotion? Is a rebranding effort in the works or a new service rolling out? Sales needs to know — with as much runway as possible. Otherwise, their pitch to clients might not match what’s being said elsewhere. 

Considering all of this, it’s fair to say that marketing and sales each hold keys to the other’s success. So, how do we make this work?

How do we actually fix this? 6 steps to take today

Let’s be honest: Completely un-siloing your business is not going to happen overnight.

If there is entrenched opposition, it could take some time. But, the fact remains: Both teams will benefit from what they learn from the other.

As such, Marcus says your organization can take these steps to start breaking down the walls. 

1. One marketer should attend every sales meeting — and vice versa

Start this way: Have one marketer attend a regular sales meeting. “Even if it’s a sales training meeting, a marketer should be there,” says Marcus. You’ll be amazed how much they take away. 

And this goes the other way, too. A sales rep should be at each marketing meeting — especially if they’re talking about content production. A sales representative can help marketing prioritize content strategy. 

2. Marketing needs to start an internal newsletter

At least once every quarter (and probably every month), marketing should let the whole company know what content has been published, who helped produce it, and how it has aided traffic and sales.

This helps with transparency and also gives credit to sales and service folks who were involved in the content creation process.

3. Expand your professional development

Want your sales team to be excited about the work your marketers are doing? Send them to a marketing conference. Have them read an important marketing book. Have your marketers do the same thing for sales. See what’s trending, what’s exciting, and what’s possible. 

4. Run a content brainstorm together

I know that people are wary of more meetings, but this is a crucial one. Once a month, have a content writer sit down with your sales team to brainstorm a list of content topics that speak directly to your buyers’ needs.

These meetings ensure that sales is invested in the content creation process — and knows what’s coming out. 

5. Plan internal teach-ins

Once a month, have an informal lunch-and-learn or other gatherings where one person can share tips or insights with another team: On Thursday at 12:30, Alice will be showing everyone how to build a reporting dashboard in HubSpot.

If people see the value, they’ll show up and learn. 

6. Have leaders lead

Look, we’re all busy. When we try to do something that's hard, it’s easy to fall back into old patterns. That’s why sales and marketing alignment can’t really happen unless leadership makes it a priority.

If the top brass is not checking in and keeping pace, meetings become less frequent, that newsletter peters out, and the whole thing falls apart. 

Take the first steps

It’s not easy. Sales and marketing teams are both filled with busy pros doing their best to build brand awareness and close deals. And it’s likely that they don’t totally understand and appreciate the work that the other is doing. 

All the more reason to work together.

Today, customers do a great deal of self-educating before they’re ready to buy. As Marcus frequently says, your customers are making up to 80% of their buying decision before they call you or walk into your store. That means that more and more customer acquisition depends on the marketing materials those customers can find.

Yet far too many companies see marketing as a lesser part of their operation. Says Marcus, “Sometimes you look at leadership team meetings and marketing doesn't even have a seat at the table, which is kind of unbelievable.” 

Bring your marketing and sales teams together to make sure your customer has a seamless experience, all the way from awareness to purchase.

The benefits are enormous. 

And if you need help, talk to us at IMPACT. We can't make the Jets win, but we can bring your teams together to drive meaningful growth.

Author: jbecker@impactbnd.com (John Becker)

* This article was originally published here

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Sell Better: How to Close Deals Efficiently and Effectively [Endless Customers Podcast S.1 Ep.28]

About this Episode

Ask your average salesperson the following question: Are there certain questions you find yourself answering on every single sales call?

Chances are, this will be met by a laugh or an eye-roll or a sigh of despair.

Yes, salespeople field the same questions from customer after customer after customer. 

Assignment selling can help change all that. 

Assignment selling is the act of using content during the sales process to address major objections and questions your buyers have — often before they come up during a meeting.

The idea was developed by Marcus Sheridan more than a decade ago when he was running his swimming pool company River Pools and Spas.

Marcus was writing a lot of marketing content for his website that was bringing in tons of traffic — and a good number of leads. He decided to dig through the data to see what conclusions he could draw about his customers.

Marcus realized he had two very different groups of people requesting sales calls — and he was seeing dramatically different close rates depending on which camp someone came from.

• The first group had only viewed a handful of pages on his website. They had a closing rate of around 25%. 
• The second group had viewed an average of 30 pages of his website and had a closing rate of around 80%.

In short, the more well-informed the buyer is, the more likely that buyer will close.

Marcus took this lesson and applied it more broadly. In the time since, he’s taught salespeople all around the world to use content to get questions out of the way ahead of time. 

So, rather than answering the question when it comes up in a meeting, a salesperson can say, “I know you’re likely going to have questions about X. I’m going to send you some resources that explain it thoroughly so you’ll feel more well-informed going into our next meeting.”

This is the beauty of assignment selling: better sales conversations, more attention paid to buyer needs, and deeper trust built between the prospect and the company.

Connect with Marcus

Marcus Sheridan is a writer, speaker, and business expert who’s worked with companies all over the world. Marcus is the author of They Ask, You Answer and co-author of The Visual Sale.

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Keep Learning

• Watch: What is 'Assignment Selling'? Using Content to Close Deals Faster
• Read: 5 Real-Life Sales Scenarios Where You Need Assignment Selling (w/ Templates)
• Learn: The 7 Most Common Sales Problems — And How To Solve Them

Author: awinter@impactbnd.com (Alex Winter)

* This article was originally published here

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