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The State of Sales
Enablement by Marketing
Agencies:Analyzing 50 HubSpot Diamond
& Platinum Partners
+ 429 Published Case Studies
By Remen Okoruwa
Co-Founder & CEO, StatusQuota
There’s been a lot of hype around sales enablement
lately. Every day, another startup launches another
product to help another company’s sales team
improve performance using automation/machine
learning/[insert buzzword here]. But this shift has
been a long time coming.
Ever since HubSpot launched the concept of
“inbound marketing”, the role of the marketer has
evolved. Digital marketing allowed for greater
accountability of what marketing activity led to
actual results. B2B marketers embraced the power of
social media channels to drive lead generation. In
essence, marketing became more accountable to
sales for generating business outcomes (=revenue).
Even the terminology has seen a shift. Sales and
marketing alignment (that’s a mouthful) has given
way to “smarketing”. And even the concept of
“alignment” seems quaint. The rise of account-based
marketing and sales requires a tight synchronization
of sales & marketing touches in order to identify,
engage, and close high quality accounts.
A Brave New World
Sales Marketing
SMarketing
This evolution has not gone unnoticed by the tech
companies.
In addition to the slew of sales enablement startups,
established players are getting in on the action too.
HubSpot has moved from a marketing platform to
offering CRM & sales productivity tools. Salesforce
launched Einstein, a machine learning engine that
analyzes CRM data to make suggestions for
improving sales & revenue generation.
But this got me thinking, have marketing agencies
also adapted to this new reality? Are they able to
offer real value to organizations who expect
marketing activity to drive sales results?
Technology Races Forward…
To answer this question, I reviewed the websites of 50 Diamond & Platinum HubSpot partners. These
are the best of the best in the HubSpot ecosystem, so I figured that they should be leading the way on
the sales enablement trend.
I was looking out for two things:
1. Do agencies explicitly offer sales enablement services (e.g., sales consulting, sales collateral)?
2. Do the agencies have case studies with quantifiable success for sales enablement services?
The results, as they say, may surprise you.
…But What About Agencies?
Agencies Reviewed:
Of the 50 agencies I surveyed, 34% mentioned
offering sales enablement / inbound sales services
on their website. For those playing along at home,
that’s only 17 agencies in total!
Two of those agencies offered sales enablement
services that were essentially inbound marketing, so
the real number is a tad lower.
Sales Enablement Services Are Not The Norm
17
33
Agency Offers Sales Enablement
Services?
Yes No
But offering sales enablement services and delivering
sales results are two entirely different things. So I
went one step further. If agencies are offering sales
services, they should be advertising sales results in
their case studies. So I reviewed 429 case studies
from 47 of these agencies and categorized the
advertised results into three categories:
• Traffic: marketing activity generated more
website visits, more pageviews per visit, lower
bounce rate, etc.
• Leads: marketing activity generated new
contacts, re-engaged existing contacts, drove
more email list subscribers, improved website
conversions, etc.
• Revenue: marketing activity directly linked to
new customers, increased revenue, or improved
sales outcomes
In this day and age, more traffic and leads from
hiring a marketing agency is a given. Good sales
enablement should result in more revenue-
attributable results. Yet they weren’t there.
Do Agencies Advertise Sales Enabling Results?
TRAFFIC
LEADS
REVENUE
Of the 429 case studies reviewed, 41%
cited improved traffic and 45%
enhanced lead generation. But here’s
the kicker: only 13% were able to point
to a revenue-related outcome. If the
proof is in the pudding, then pudding is
in short supply.
Let’s take a second to quickly recap the
research so far: 30% of agencies are
offering sales enablement services but
only 13% of case studies demonstrate
the agencies have actually client
revenue & sales.
This is a massive gap. If sales
enablement is the new normal, then
sales impact is the most important
metric to track.
Revenue Impact Is Not Being Demonstrated
40.8%
44.5%
12.8%
Improved Website
Traffic
Improved Lead
Generation
Improved Revenue
Generation
Case Study Results By Type
Now at this point, you may be thinking, “Hey –
lead generation is sales enablement. More leads
= more customers.” And while that is sometimes correct, it is ignoring the new competitive
landscape for marketing agencies.
In 2007, Paul Roetzer led PR 20/20 to be the very
first marketing agency using HubSpot. The
official agency partner program (then called the
“Value Added Reseller” program) wouldn’t be
launched until 2011. At that point in time,
HubSpot had fewer than 1,000 marketing
agencies participating.
These were the good ol’ days. Inbound marketing
was still a new concept, and there weren’t that
many competitors (or competing marketing
agency programs). For agencies who hopped on
the boat early, wowing clients with the power of
marketing automation and the inbound approach
was more straightforward. The name of the game
was convincing clients that inbound worked. If
you crossed that hurdle, the business was yours.
Why “More Leads” Isn’t Enough Anymore (1)
Now let’s fast forward to today. The world has
changed in two significant ways:
1. There are more than 3,400 HubSpot
partner agencies across the globe.
Nowadays, the HubSpot partner program is
less an exclusive club and more a big party
(and if you’ve been to INBOUND, you’ll know
it is one hell of a party ). In fact, HubSpot
partners now compete with each other for the
same client business. That was inconceivable a
few years ago. New partner agencies often
must specialize by industry, geography,
service mix (or some mix of the 3) to compete.
2. There are more HubSpot competitors than
ever before. According to G2Crowd, there are
now 107 different marketing automation
platforms. Many of these companies have
marketing agency partnerships. So even if
your agency is the only HubSpot partner
competing in a bid, you probably aren’t the
only agency using marketing automation to
deliver results.
Why “More Leads” Isn’t Enough Anymore (2)
1
800
2200
2900
3400
0
500
1000
1500
2000
2500
3000
3500
4000
2007 2009 2011 2013 2015
Total HubSpot Partners by Year
Net net, these changes mean that inbound marketing has
become more commoditized. Yet lead gen remains vital for
businesses and is something companies are willing to pay
for. So how can an agency stand out from the pack? Simple
– prove your leads are demonstrably better than the
competitions’.
That’s easier said than done. The case study survey
indicates that agencies are struggling to prove that their
services result in more revenue and customers for their
clients. But those are outcome-focused metrics. They rely
on sales team execution, which an agency has no control
over. These are important to track, but don’t tell the whole
story.
Instead, the big opportunity is to focus on process metrics.
In essence, the question you need to answer is “How do my
leads make a salesperson’s life easier?” To answer that
question, you need to start thinking like a sales rep.
Lead Generation Has Become Commoditized
At the end of the day, revenue generation can be boiled down into a very simple equation. You begin
with leads, the raw input of a sales funnel. These leads are converted into opportunities and deals at a
certain close rate. Not all deals are created equal: some will be bigger, others smaller. So the deal size
is really important. And finally, selling takes time, so you have to factor in the sales cycle length and
effort a salesperson puts into each deal.
Today, agencies focus almost entirely on the number of leads generated. The reason is simple: it’s easy
to track. A few agencies also talk about revenue generated. Yet the other components of the sales
equation are being ignored entirely. And that’s why this is such a huge opportunity.
Enable Sales By Proving Value in 3 Ways
Let’s take 2 hypothetical agency pitches – which one do you
think is more compelling?
Agency A: “We’ve successfully helped multiple clients generate hundreds of leads each month.”
Agency B: “For a typical client, our leads close at a 10% higher rate than average, deals generated from our leads tend to be 5% larger than average, and our leads close to deals 20% more quickly than average. And by the way, we’ve successfully helped multiple clients generate hundreds of these killer leads each month.”
To stand out as an agency, don’t just sell leads. Sell the
Glengarry leads.
The world of inbound marketing has changed. As the
agency landscape gets more crowded and competitive,
winners will be able to prove their services have sales team
impact, beyond just “more leads.” Is your agency ready?
Put Yourself In The Client’s Shoes
About StatusQuotaStatusQuota dashboards enable
marketers to measure and manage
marketing performance in terms of
sales-related outcomes. It integrates
data from the CRM & marketing
automation platform to provide a
complete view on which marketing
activities drive quality leads that convert
into actual sales revenue.
Unlike other dashboard solutions,
StatusQuota is built with sales-focused
marketers in mind. It comes
preconfigured with 40+ analyses
tracking:
• Customer acquisition costs reduction
• Customer lifetime value growth
• Sales cycle reduction
The result? Marketers can now monitor
sales metrics & take credit for their
impact on revenue generation.
Additionally, they can use these insights
to optimize their marketing campaigns
to achieve sales-related goals.
Sounds awesome, right?
StatusQuotaHarvard Innovation Lab
114 Western Avenue
Boston, MA 02134
statusquota.co
remen@statusquota.co
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