HubSpot SVP Mark Roberge provided four main points to frame best practices in sales training today at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference. This was the encore performance after Roberge’s highly rated appearance at the SMB conference in September in Austin.

Roberge is an MIT trained data scientist who transformed HubSpot’s own sales training by bringing science to selling. In other words, the age of big data meets sales force optimization. His outlook is framed from a set of expectations (and their outcomes) when he started.

These expectations and goals were all based on the general principle of achieving predictable and scalable revenue growth. The predictability is a play at being able to replicate what is otherwise a dynamic science with countless variables (individual strengths, corporate cultures, etc.).

Some of these initial assumptions were affirmed over time and others were debunked, but with equally valuable learnings.

— Hire sales people with the same methodology
— Train them in the same way
— Provide them with the same quality of leads
— Have them work the sales leads using the same process

The right person for every company is different Roberge admits. He espouses a few criteria to define, score and analyze. At hubspot he statistically examined all of the factors of successful reps and mapped them back to how they performed in initial interviews.

He found there were 5 consistent attributes: Coachability, curiosity, work ethnic, prior success, and intelligence. So for HubSpot and its unique variables and sales environment, these factors became central hiring criteria. The key is to determine what these are within each organization then apply.

A longstanding sales paradigm Roberge debunked is having new reps shadow seasoned reps. Bad idea he says, as it’s a great way to pass along bad habits. Every good rep does a few things very well and everything else mediocre. This will do more harm than good in a shadowing process.

Conversely, he recommends training all sales people with a similar process that allows them to be more consultative to prospects. And the secret sauce is forcing them to know the product, live the product, use the product. etc.. This will help them know the prospects’ pain points.

“That’s where sales needs to get”, he said, “to be the thought leaders in the space.”

The post At Leading in Local: ILM 2013: Creating the Perfect Local Sales Organization appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

At Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media Dec. 10-12 in San Francisco, we are presenting 50 of local’s top players. Want some homework? We’ve pulled recent coverage of some of our speakers from our Local Media Watch blog. There’s plenty of great reading here, and you’ll experience — first hand — how fast things have been changing.

Patrick Barry, GM, Intuit/DemandForce
Intuit Acquires Online Scheduler

Matthew Berk, CEO, Lucky Oyster
Matthew Berk Rethinks WOM via Lucky Oyster

Brian Boland, VP, Facebook
Facebook/Google Vertical Wars: Facebook Grabs a Google Auto Exec

Suzanne Cooper, Managing Editor, SF Chronicle
SF Chronicle’s Cooper: The Fight to Save Journalism

Jeremy Geiger, CEO, Retailigence
Closed Loop Mobile Local Shopping: A Conversation with Retailigence

Dan Hight, SVP, xAd
XAd and Posterscope: Retargeting For The Real World

Ziad Ismail, SVP, Marchex
Marchex Maps Call Monetization Genome

Mark Roberge, SVP, Hubspot
BIA-Kelsey Briefing: Hubspot Points to a New Way of Selling

Chris Schroeder, Author , Startup Rising
Bookshelf: Christopher Schroeder’s Startup Rising

Sean Smyth, VP, Groupon
A Look at Groupon’s New Partner Network

Eckart Walther, CEO, CardSpring
Merchants Drive Their Own Transaction Marketing via Cardspring Connect

The post Reading List: Recent Blog Coverage of LIL: ILM Speakers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The clock is ticking!  We are just one month from Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, which is Dec. 10-12 in San Francisco. The event has shaped up to be the most exciting local event in recent memory – a 2 1/2 day extravaganza that focuses on local:  The Internet’s last and biggest frontier.

We’ve already announced a powerful lineup of 48 speakers, including local leaders at Google, Facebook, Go Daddy, eBay, Groupon, Hubspot, Intuit; and major thinkers and leaders, including Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, AllThings D‘s Kara Swisher and Startup Rising author Chris Schroeder.

Want more? We have some exciting new confirms.

• Amit Kumar, VP, and Head of SMB, Yahoo. Kumar is set to brief attendees on Yahoo’s local and SMB initiatives under CEO Marissa Meyer.
• Ralf VonSosen, Marketing Leader, LinkedIn. VonSosen is set to discuss LinkedIn’s approach to leveraging its vast network for marketing
• Joel Hughes, SVP, Constant Contact. Hughes joins SureFire Social’s  Chris Marentis to discuss ways to make social media really powerful for local.
• Jeff Folckemer, President, Local Edge. Folckemer joins a great Digital Agency session and will provide insight into Hearst’s view of what really works.
• Anna Zornosa, President, Ruby Rails. Zornosa, the longtime industry leader with prior stints at Knight Ridder Digital, Dealix and Women.com joins our special Women Leading in Local networking session.

Of course, it isn’t just about what’s on stage. We are staging the San Francisco edition of our Future Stars contest, which rewards talented local startups; and not one, but TWO great precon tours set. A limited number of attendees will be visiting with Yelp at its brand new headquarters in the historic PacBell building; another group will be meeting a super group of Bay Area startups at WeWork. More info on signing up is coming.

Will we see you in San Francisco?   Register here:

We’ll be touring Yelp’s new headquarters.

The post Leading Execs From Yahoo, LinkedIn, Constant Contact Added to Interactive Local Media (San Francisco, Dec. 10-12) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

How can you constantly top yourself? It is a challenge that leaders have, in whatever endeavor they are pursuing: whether it is sports, literature, academia, or business.

We are pretty sure this year’s Interactive Local Media event – BIA/Kelsey’s flagship – is going to top any other event we’ve done before.

The event’s handpicked keynotes, superforums and BIA/Kelsey research really do define the state of Interactive Local Media for 2013-14. We’ve just added Brian Boland, Facebook‘s VP of Product. Facebook is all over local advertising and commerce in ways that are obvious – and not so obvious. We can’t wait to hear his insights.

Other industry leaders we’ve added include eBay Marketplaces VP Jody Ford, who is helping lead the charge as eBay goes big in local (and against Amazon); and Go Daddy CEO Blake Irving, the visionary leader who is building a comprehensive platform to leverage GoDaddy’s 8 million SMB customers. Talk about disruption!

Kicking off the conference, of course, are two of the best: San Francisco Chronicle President Joanne Bradford and AllThings D Co-Executive Editor Kara Swisher. The insights don’t come deeper or faster.

And at LIL:ILM, it isn’t just about the “industry.” On Day 2, we are especially proud to be joined by Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, the political superstar (and ex San Francisco Mayor) who has focused on tech’s impact on local (see his new book, “Citizenville”).

The Lt. Governor will also introduce Chris Schroeder, the former Washington Post Newsweek Digital chief who has written this year’s top books on start up developments, Startup Rising. Attendees can jockey for signed copies that we’ll be handing out.

Other major speakers at the conference include Groupon VP Sean Smyth; Weather Company VP Denise Chudhy; Hubspot SVP Mark Roberge; and Intuit/DemandForce CMO Patrick Barry. They’ll join 40+ speakers and hundreds of attendees at what is truly “the industry’s largest gathering.”

What else? We have a special tour of Yelp headquarters before the event even begins. More info on that a little later on. Hey, does it sound G-R-E-A-T? We hope to see you in San Francisco!

You can register here.

The post Facebook, eBay, GoDaddy, Lt. Gov Join Leading in Local: ILM (Dec. 10-12 San Francisco) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

BIA/Kelsey has just published a Briefing that examines HubsSpot Sales SVP Mark Roberge’s presentation at last month’s Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing even in Austin, TX.

By all accounts, the 15-minute presentation was a clinic in how a local/SMB sales force needs to operate in today’s environment. The session went into detail on how HubSpot runs its sales organizations, while also exposing some of the big ideas driving sales transformation. This is a must read for anyone involved in local/SMB sales.

Key Takeaways

* The sales process has essentially flipped, with buyers approaching sellers having already traveled far down the path toward a purchase decision. Effective content marketing is therefore critical to winning the customer.

* Outbound selling is far too inefficient to be a sustainable model in local/SMB sales. Driving high volumes of quality inbound leads and then managing them efficiently is key to winning in modern local/SMB sales.

* Consistency is king. Sales organizations must have a consistent process for recruiting, training and managing the sales force. Otherwise success will be more random than repeatable.

Roberge will be expanding on his talk in Austin with a keynote address at BIA/Kelsey’s upcoming Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media conference in San Francisco.

Summary: In September 2013, BIA/Kelsey held its “Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing” conference in Austin, Texas. At the event, HubSpot SVP of Sales and Services Mark Roberge gave a compelling view inside his company’s cutting-edge sales and lead generation process; the latter driven by sophisticated content marketing. His core message was that the process of selling must be driven by data and analysis, so that success is repeatable and predictable. This scientific approach creates a much more efficient and effective sales organization. The notion of using robust data to drive sales efficiency is a breakthrough idea that makes it possible to attack the often intimidating local/SMB opportunity with a smaller sales organization than once thought necessary.

The post BIA/Kelsey Briefing: HubSpot Points to a New Way of Selling appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, BIA/Kelsey’s flagship show, is now set for San Francisco Dec. 10-12 and we couldn’t be more excited. This year’s edition hosts a totally fresh, new slate of industry leaders.

The show opens with BIA/Kelsey research and the dynamic duo of Joanne Bradford and Kara Swisher. Bradford, of course, has pushed local into new realms during her tenures with Microsoft, Yahoo and Demand Media. Now she is applying her knowledge as President of Hearst’s San Francisco Chronicle. And Swisher remains the fearless interrogator that has dominated tech journalism for over 20 years – the last eight spent as cofounder of All Things D, along with Walt Mossberg. Nobody cuts through the hype like she does.

Other top speakers represent our idea of real innovation (and real fun, too.) Startup Rising Author and former Washington Post Digital and Health Central leader Chris Schroeder lends a global perspective to what works with startups. In the same light, Intel senior researcher Lama Nachman – yes, Discovery Channel’s “Curiosity Expert” – talks about developing the next generation of mobile technologies.

Other initial speakers include DemandForce CMO Patrick Barry, talking about the next wave of one stop local platforms; Hubspot SVP Mark Roberge, going deep on sales organization effectiveness; Weather.com VP Denise Chudhy, talking why weather is the true model for national local; Five Stars CEO Victor Ho on the emergence of Transaction Marketing and Point of Sale integration; Groupon VP Sean Smyth on how Groupon leverages its millions of users in new directions; Telmetrics CEO Bill Dinan on how the new metrics are changing local; and Thumbtack CEO Marco Zappacosta on new ways to leverage directory models for leads.

Indeed, a lot of things have happened in local in 2013. The rise of collaborative consumption via AirBnB, Uber and other companies combining listings, social media and purchase capabilities might be the biggest thing to have hit the industry. As Interactive Local Media, we’re going deep on collaborative consumption with Airbnb director Joe Zadeh, Lucky Oyster CEO Matthew Berk, and two more great names that we can’t announce yet.

Other superforums will focus on mobile wallets and the rise of digital agencies. In the end, we’ll end up with 40+, hand-picked speakers.

Here’s an initial list:

Joanne Bradford, President, SF Chronicle
Kara Swisher, Co-Executive Editor, AllThingsD
Chris Schroeder, Author, Startup Rising
Victor Ho, CEO, FiveStars
Patrick Barry, CMO, DemandForce (Intuit)
Mark Roberge, SVP, Hubspot
Denise Chudhy, VP, Weather.com
Lama Nachman, Sr. Staff Researcher, Intel
Sean Smyth, VP, Partnerships, Groupon
Marco Zappacosta, CEO, Thumbtack
Joe Zadeh, Director, Airbnb
Matthew Berk, CEO, Lucky Oyster
Bill Dinan, CEO, Telmetrics

We’ve extended our Early DIscount rates through October 2. Please register here to save.

The post Just Announced: Initial Speaker List for Interactive Local Media (Dec. 10-12 in San Francisco) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Hubspot is an inbound marketing company whose sales force approach came not from an established playbook, but from their own experience utilizing their own inbound marketing platform and data. Mark Roberge subscribes to the old sales adage of “what you don’t measure does not matter to sales.” As a self described data junkie, Roberge captures sales data based on Hubspot’s hiring criteria to better identify how skills and traits translate to sales success. Over years of collecting data, they have isolated the characteristics of their most successful sales people which they now use in their hiring and evaluation process. By using metrics to diagnose key performance factors, Hubspot is able to coach and manage their sales force more successfully.

Once hired, Hubspot is a big believer that all sales people need to be trained in a consistent manner are continually managed to those criteria throughout their careers. Part of Hubspot’s training is to certify all sales people on the product and approach. Hubspot achieves this by having new sales trainees set up their own small business then utilize the Hubspot system to build a site, create a blog, develop and add content and track their progress utilizing the company’s dashboard. By working through the platform as a small business, they gain an insiders view of how best to leverage the system as a way of improving their salesmanship on every interaction.

Jeannie Parent of Digital First tackled the classic dilemma of transforming a legacy media sales force into digital sellers, and one that could adapt to new selling methods. Digital First also took a “home grown” approach to their transformation process by developing an approach that is self guided but built off of their own sales best practices. Using many of their own internal resources, Digital First was able to create an online, video based learning approach which minimized time sales people were away from customers but maximized the learning process. Utilizing a bit of gaming mechanics, Digital first created a sales bade system where reps are taught key digital sales and product knowledge in an online learning system that must then be utilized on a sales call and successfully closed for the sales person to earn the necessary certification badge. Once certified, sales people are supported by digital literacy and other just in time training to support on-going learning and re-certification to maintain their commitment to the new products and sales approaches.

Neil Salvage from Lending Tree rounded out the panel discussion by reinforcing the idea that ensuring sales has the best and most attractive product not only increases sales motivation it creates customers who want to engage with them to learn about and purchase those products. Coming from Bellsouth and other highly trained sales teams, Neil points out that “you need to specifically define what you want sales people to focus on, stick to those goals then provide the support necessary for them to effective accomplish those tasks.” Neil also observes that one of the key problems with sales messages in this product overloaded time is that features and products are pushed rather than selling solutions specific to the customer’s needs. Neil also felt that the value after the initial sale has also been neglected since this leads to longer retention and greater life time value of the customer. One of the key ways Lending Tree simplifies the sale presentation is to avoid the lengthy demo of the product and focus more on the outcomes of using the product and how it can solve specific solutions. Other tips shared from the Lending Tree playbook were keeping the needs analysis to a small set of critical questions and not being afraid to ask for the close if the sales person has done an effective job in position the solution to the customer’s needs.

What all of these leading sales organizations have one thing in common is the recognition that you can’t cut operational costs to build year over year revenue growth, it has to come from a more effective sales organization that retains customers. When asked, all three companies advised that the ROI impact of taking the time and energy to train, coach and manage an effective sales process far out weighed the impact of losing customers or continuing to sell products that decrease in value over time.

The post SMB Digital Marketing: Sales Transformation Takes Center Stage appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Tuesday at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local Conference, HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan emphasized that the local marketing game has changed – dramatically, secularly. Traditional “push” marketing techniques (usually requiring large budgets) no longer resonate with many consumers. Rather, small/medium businesses must be nimble and creative, qualities at the foundation of the company’s inbound marketing approach.

“It’s much harder to turn money into interest today,” Halligan said. Rather, for SMBs that invest in creating their own content that fosters engagement (rather than “renting space” from someone else), the Internet “can pull it like wind pulling the sails of your business.”

This content that drives inbound marketing can take several forms: blogs, articles, e-books, webinars, menus and more. Fresh content drives inbound links, and “links give you leverage.” The net effect of committed content marketing is a “new moat” around a business to shield it from competitors that aren’t as engaged with their customers. The new winning formula for SMBs: “fat brains, skinny wallets.”

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