Kim Walsh is the Global VP, Go-to-Market Partnership at HubSpot. On this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Kim reveals HubSpot’s strategy of following up after a networking event/webinar and nurturing the participants into a sales-qualified lead.
Featured on this episode:
Resources:
- GROW – A unique online event for leaders in Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service
- Kim on LinkedIn
- Chris Voss’ Book on Negotiation: Never Split The Difference
- Qualifying sales leads and increasing close ratios
Transcript
Will Barron:
This episode of the show is brought to you from the salesman.org HubSpot studio. Kim, welcome to Salesman Podcast.
Kim Walsh:
Thanks, Will, thanks for having me.
Hubspot’s Process of Closing Webinar/Live Event Attendees · [00:10]
Will Barron:
You are more than welcome. We’ll dive into a topic today that could be incredibly timely for a lot of the people listening to the show, how to take someone who attends a, whether it’s a live event, a live virtual event, or a live webinar, how to get them from just an email address and a name to perhaps marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead, and hopefully customer. So let’s not beat around the bush here. Let’s just get super practical. Do you have a process for this at HubSpot? Is there a step-by-step process that you can share with us? Or I guess it might take longer than half an hour to get through, so we’ll dive into chunks of it, but is there a process that you guys have created and found reliable to get someone from just email address to sales qualified lead, or hopefully a deal at the end of the day?
Kim Walsh:
Yeah, well, great question Will, and I would say this context is probably pretty important for anyone who is in sales. I would just say, the way that I think about it, is I’m in a pretty fortunate position, because in being in sales and partnerships at HubSpot, we have a fantastic marketing team who runs a lot of our event strategy for us. So I know sometimes in sales, you’re not fortunate to have a marketing team that runs such a great event marketing playbook and event marketing process. So you can go between both. I’ve lived in both worlds, but I would say the world that I’ve lived in for the last 10 years has been with a remarkable marketing team, who helps us take those lead registrants through our process, and through our flywheel. So happy to talk about that, but just wanted to make sure I was giving the right context, that a marketing team does a lot of the work.
Will Barron:
Sure, because I, we touched on before the show in medical device sales, I did tonnes of in-person events. Massive urology conferences, gynaecology conferences, and there was no marketing team. I was the person chatting with surgeons, emailing them beforehand, getting them to come over to the booth, so I don’t look stupid in front of my sales manager. I’ve actually had a few conversations during the day, before we go out. So let’s assume for the audience, to make things more simple here, that they’ve got a marketing team, at least helping with a lot of this. If not, as you in your own words there, Kim, a remarkable marketing team doing the upfront production, I guess, of the events themselves. So let’s make that assumption.
How to Turn a Marketing Qualified Lead Into a Sales Qualified Lead · [02:27]
Will Barron:
Let’s briefly touch upon the marketing, and then I want to talk about more on the handover and what happens after the fact. When perhaps we go from marketing qualified lead, or MQL, to a sales qualified lead, or SQL. Let’s touch on the marketing first, what happens when, what does that machine look like? What happens when I sign up for GROW, which is on next week, I’ll be speaking at it, which we’ll touch on it towards the end of the show. What happens when I sign up to attend that event, and what does marketing do to, I guess, nurture the lead?
Kim Walsh:
Sure. So prior to signing up for the event, well, maybe it’s important to say that, for us, a landing page needs to be built. Today, whatever platforms you use, a sales person can build a landing page today, but let’s, getting back to the example of us, our marketing team builds a landing page. Really creating content around what is the event. Who are you? Who’s our audience? Why should you attend? What you’re going to get from it? And probably features a bunch of, great speakers that are going to pull you in. Remember the goal is to make it simple to follow up after a networking event. So often in sales, maybe we find ourselves in the speaker seat, and maybe marketing has created the landing page for the event. So once you have a landing page or a webpage for the event-
The Key Elements of an Effective Landing Page · [03:42]
Will Barron:
Let’s … Sorry to interrupt you there, let’s touch on this. Because I think this is … I, in the events that we’ve done in the past, we failed on this. I think you guys, HubSpot did very well. Can you touch on the, in sales we want qualified leads. We want someone, whether we’re using bands, whatever analogy we’re using. Does the qualification process start at the landing page of, “Attend if you are this person, if you have these problems, that inadvertently we’re going to solve,” or proactively, we’re going to solve in the event, but inadvertently we’re going to solve with our product at the end of it. Is this whole process to narrow down and only attract the right people, at the right time, at the right place. Is it thought out as thoroughly as that from the very beginning when we start with a landing page?
Kim Walsh:
Yes, great question, Will. I would say, so much in sales, it’s like, cast a really wide net and then start to spend time with people who are qualified. What’s really interesting to your point, is in today’s world, there’s so many things going on, so many virtual events now. Yes, it starts with the landing page. It starts with the content. It starts at the question of like, “Who do you want to attend? Why do you want them to attend? What do you want them to leave with?” And then, “How are you going to interact with them once the event is over?” So that’s the framework we would follow on creating the landing page and creating the right content.
“The purpose of events, obviously, is to acquire customers. That’s great, but not everyone coming to the event is going to be a customer.” – Kim Walsh · [05:18]
Kim Walsh:
Or to take a step back thinking about, “Okay, what’s the purpose of this event?” The purpose of events, obviously, is to acquire customers. That’s great, but not everyone coming to the event is going to be a customer. So that’s just a little bit of a framework we use to think about setting up the landing page, and not casting a super wide net, but casting a net that brings in more qualified at the beginning.
How to Generate Leads From Your Event Attendees List · [05:41]
Will Barron:
Yeah. I don’t know your experience in, not necessarily HubSpot, but the wider seller marketplace, but over at salesman.org, we’ve got a training programme. And one of the first questions I ask people when I go back and forth, or do any coaching in there, is, “Who is your customer?” And nine times out of 10, salespeople don’t really know. They’ve got a rough idea of an avatar that’s been flung at them by the sales manager or a marketing department, but getting super clear on who you want to speak to, so that you’ve got criteria to qualify against, clearly super important. So we’re making a few assumptions here. We’re assuming we’ve got a great marketing team. They’ve created a great landing page, and they’ve started this process of qualification for us. What happens then, I guess, when does someone become a lead versus just someone who’s attended, or going to attend the event?
Kim Walsh:
Sure. So I’ll answer this in the context for us. So for us, marketing qualified lead or an event qualified lead, maybe a [inaudible 00:06:38]. That may be interesting. And we’ve all been in a lot of different sales positions. That may be enough, that may be the world that I live in, as I just have a registered qualified lead. A marketing qualified lead maybe would be post the event, and you’ve had some email interactions with them. A sales qualified lead, is essentially someone who’s ready to say, “I want to talk to sales. I signed up for a free trial. I signed up for your free product, or I want a demo.” that’s what an SQL means to us.
Kim Walsh:
An SQL would only happen post event, when we’ve done some nurturing and we’ve done some personalization about the event to that individual. So I’m sure there’s a lot for you to unpack there, all kinds of stuff there. But it depends if you want to just spend your time on the people who have registered, or if you want to go a little bit further along after they’ve had a chance to listen to the content of the event
The Dos and Don’ts of Nurturing Sales Qualified Leads · [07:42]
Will Barron:
Sure, For context here, I think I know where you’ll go with this, Kim, but is a sales qualified lead perhaps someone who has put their hand up for a demo, whatever it is. Let me say that back. Is it … I’m trying to frame this up here, knowing the answer that you’re going to give. I’ll make it super obvious, right? Do you have a team of salespeople hounding people the day after the event? So, “Hey, you attended the events, blah, blah, blah. Let’s jump on a demo.” Or is there a period of nurture? Is that always, whether it’s a day, week or month, is that nurture always in place, to say, again, hounded by salespeople. I can’t put any of it any way other than that.
“People don’t want to be hounded by salespeople.” – Kim Walsh · [08:28]
Kim Walsh:
Yes, there’s always nurturing. There’s always a process, because we fundamentally believe that people don’t want to be hounded by salespeople, right? It’s all, that’s the content behind inbound selling, and it’s really about how we’re selling, not why we’re selling. So it’s how we’re engaging with people that matters to us. So no, we would not create a list of those registered leads and call them. But I would just say a caveat, I understand that sometimes, in a sales role, you’re not in a position where you have that marketing team to nurture those event attendees down.
The Best Sales Qualifying Questions to Nature, Qualify, and Filter Leads · [09:10]
Will Barron:
So let me put you in that position then? Let’s say we have a marketing team that can put on the event, can pass on a marketing qualified lead that has attended, they’ve clicked a few options within an email or two, within a seven-day nurturing campaign after the fact. Then they’ve just been dumped onto sales. Sales, now, perhaps have 5,000 email addresses, it was blow out even, they did really well. And sales manager goes, “Hey, here’s a list of people get calling, get emailing.” What would you do to either further qualify these leads, if you have to, it’s clearly not ideal, but from a salesperson’s perspective, how would you begin to nurture them further even? What would you do if that was just dumped on your desk, Kim?
Kim Walsh:
Yeah, so I would do the sales automation piece of it myself. So, there are a lot of tools out there today that you can create nurturing and trigger, in a CRM, as a sales person. So you can take that list and do your own sales nurturing. Or if you don’t have a system or a CRM that you can do that, you can do that in an email. Just as simple as like, “I saw you attended the event.” One sales email that I have seen work really well in the past, is when you just ask maybe three questions, like, “You attended this event, I’m sending you an email. I hope that’s okay.” Or you don’t even maybe say, “I hope that’s okay.” But like, “I’m sending you an email. Option one, would you like to talk to me about my product or service? Option two, I’m ready to receive a demo. Option three, I don’t want to talk to you, please take me off your list.”
Kim Walsh:
So then, that response rate as a sales person was always super high. You don’t have to ask yourself the question “how to follow up after a networking event”, it’s too simple. So I just think, salespeople are really creative and can do a lot on their own, even if you don’t have that marketing person. Even just an option in an email sometimes helps you save time as a salesperson, because that’s our most valuable thing. Or allows the prospect and the attendees of the event to maybe write back option C, “I’m not interested.”
Will Barron:
For sure. So we do webinars over at salesman.org, that all clearly towards our trading product at the end of the day. It’s very clear about all of this. We have an automated email that goes out 24 hours after the webinar, if people attended and watched like 40% of it, [inaudible 00:11:37] of it. And the email is from my personal account, “Hey, Will here, did you enjoy the webinar? Let me know if you got any questions.” And we get an 80 odd percent reply rates to that email, of most people saying, well, I guess, splits off, “I didn’t quite get it all. I’ll jump on the next one.” Or, “Didn’t quite understand this and this,” and there’ll be a few questions. Or it’ll be, “Yes, it was great.” And then they’re [inaudible 00:11:59] you up, and baiting you to talk about the product, because they’ve heard all about the product that we offer. What I find with that, just that’s automated.
Post-Virtual Event Sales Conversations and Lead Naturing Ideas · [12:09]
Will Barron:
That’s pretty much the end of the automation, from our perspective, because then that drives a conversation, which is where I think salespeople can thrive, and salespeople can compete versus marketing. If marketing can do all this clever automation, well, typically salespeople are better at doing one-on-one engagements. I’m sure that’s coming, marketing further down the line of automation, that’s cleverer than what our sales people can put together right now. But that is the goal here, to start driving conversations, as opposed to having just massive automated cadences, that we hope pop out at a customer at the end of it.
Kim Walsh:
Yeah, absolutely. I’m not a fan of massive automation for this, just a general subset of people. I totally agree with you that, and I would say the inner sales person in me wanted to jump on and create another workflow when you were like, “I got X 50% of the webinar, or the content from the webinar,” and I’ll jump on the next one for the remaining question, the salesperson in me wanted to do sales automation in there and say like, “Ah, what did you miss?” And, “Oh, can I send you a blog article that Will put together last week. It touches on exactly what your questions are.”
Kim Walsh:
Or that type of personalization, because as a sales person, I’m a big fan of like, “Let me give you the articles. And let me give you the potential homework, that if you are interested, you’ll read the blog article. You’ll download the white paper. You’ll take that action, because you told me you wanted to learn more.” So that’s an example, the salesperson in me just wanted to jump in there. I was like, “I could do so much more automation on that statement.”
Inbound Marketing: Hubspot’s Rich Resource of Helpful Sales Enablement Content · [13:46]
Will Barron:
HubSpot are the kings of inbound, and content, kings and queens, champions, however, framing [inaudible 00:13:52], absolutely just killing the game of content. Are you spoiled at HubSpot to be able to say, pretty much any question you get inbound in from a sales lead, you can say, “Here’s my thoughts. Here’s also an article, a video, a post.” Are you guys spoiled for that? Because it seems like whenever I share stuff, it seems to come from HubSpot somewhere along the line, even when I’m selling our own products.
Kim Walsh:
So I would say absolutely, yes. And that’s something that HubSpot did, 2008, when it started, it started creating really helpful content for who we were selling to, who we were helping. It was back then, it was the marketer. So, I did sales at HubSpot in 2010, 2011. I also went in person, and every marketing team that I either had a meeting with, or saw, I would walk by their desk, and I would see a HubSpot blog or a HubSpot infographic. Back then, not a lot of people knew what we did. They were like, “Oh, we’ve heard of HubSpot before, but I don’t really know what you guys do. But wow, your content is helpful.”
Kim Walsh:
“It helped me get a seat at the table with my VP of sales,” said the VP of marketing. So, yeah, and then, I mean, I would [inaudible 00:15:08] say, another quick little, I guess fortunate situation we’re in, is if we’re on the phone with a prospect and they ask us a question we may not know the answer. If we Google it real quick, chances are, our great marketing team, or someone has created a pretty cool article about it that we can send.
Why It’s Okay to Share Other People’s Content When Creating Value for Prospects · [15:25]
Will Barron:
So that’s great for the 20, 30 people that are watching this who work at HubSpot. What about everyone else? Is it fine to share a, let’s assume we’re not selling a competing service to HubSpot, let’s make that assumption. Is it fine to send a HubSpot article, a relevant one to what we’ll talk about? Does the sales person, is their value in them creating their own content? Or is that a waste of time for salespeople? Should we be pestering our own marketing team to be creating relevant content? What would you suggest to a salesperson listening to this? A quote-carrying, bag-carrying sales person who goes, “Well, I don’t have access to the content that HubSpot has directly, to just send out when questions are asked.”
Kim Walsh:
Absolutely, I don’t think it needs to be your own company created content, or HubSpot created content. Prior to HubSpot, I started a marketing agency, and HubSpot’s free tool, The Website Grader, was the number one way I acquired customers. That was me being a non-HubSpot person leveraging HubSpot’s content. Fast forward to 2021, there’s so many companies out there who have created great content, who are their own domain experts, as a salesperson, I would borrow the expert all the time in helping my prospect solve a problem. I would just say, “Make sure you read the article, and make sure you’ve qualified the article and you qualified the source.”
“It’s okay to borrow someone else’s content because someone else may be better at that domain expertise or have better domain knowledge than you do.” – Kim Walsh · [17:09]
Kim Walsh:
Because again, I’m sure we could talk a lot, but there’s so much content out there today. It wasn’t like HubSpot back in 2010 when people were just starting to create content. So absolutely, to your question, Will, borrow someone else’s content. Because someone else may be better at that domain expertise, or have better domain knowledge than you do. I think great salespeople are really creative.
Will Barron:
For sure. And there’s a layer that you can add in there as well, of your email. If you say, “Look at,” it’s more difficult with a blog, it’s probably … Tell me, you might know this, there might be a tool that does this, of you can send the link via a tool that will highlight parts of the article that goes out, like you would with a book. If that doesn’t exist, it should exist, because that’d be great for salespeople.
Kim Walsh:
Yeah, truly.
Will Barron:
But a tool-
Kim Walsh:
[inaudible 00:17:38] Oh, sorry. I was just going to say, yeah, if it exists. I don’t know if that one piece of highlighting the content exists, but I agree with you, it should. The other piece is, as a sales today, you could see if the article you sent was clicked on, or the video was watched, or it was read. That’s cool too.
Hubspot’s Lead Scoring Process · [17:58]
Will Barron:
Do you do anything along those lines of sales enablement and tracking content, what works, what doesn’t from a sales perspective? Do you factor any of that into how qualified a lead is? Or let me ask you this from a different perspective, is a sales qualified lead at HubSpot a sales qualified lead, or do you have a scale of how qualified that individual is?
“As a salesperson, I think you’re the best judge of what type of qualified lead is really worth it to you.” – Kim Walsh · [18:35]
Kim Walsh:
We have different types. I think we use the sales person to decide what type is most important to them. So yes, we have a scale, but I would say, as being a salesperson, and speaking to salespeople, I think you’re the best judge of what type of QL is really worth it to you. You should use the data and now be so worried about how to follow up after a networking event. So for me, when I was selling, I love the pricing page. So if someone viewed the pricing page, to me, that was a notification that I really wanted as a salesperson. I could pick up the phone and say, “Hey, I saw you viewed the pricing page.” Then the prospect on the other end would be like, “Whoa, how’d you know that?” But we have a bunch of different ones. There’s contact sales, we talked about. Raising their hand in the product to say, “I want to speak to a salesperson.”
Kim Walsh:
There’s a demo request. So many product-led growth companies today have a free trial, or a free product. So whole free [inaudible 00:19:14]. That’s cool. A hand-raise, we call them, someone who speaks on with our chat team. So the whole concept of a BDR, or an SDR, now we also have, and a lot of companies have chat consultants. And like, “Can your chat person facilitate how qualified the lead is, and then pass it along to your closer?” So there’s just all these different types that have evolved. And then bringing it back to the salesperson, I think you’re the best judge of what type of QL comes your way, and your selling style. You can match with the type of QL you get.
Using Engagement To Solve Customer Pain Points · [21:21]
Will Barron:
For sure. Okay, so let’s run through what we’ve been through so far. We’ve got, assuming, hopefully a hot-shot market team, if not, a pretty good marketing team. They understand the fact of qualifying the people coming into the event. So we’re getting majority of people, somewhat qualified to purchase a product or be involved in the buying processes somewhat. We’ve passed that on from a marketing qualified lead, we’re now a sales qualified lead. Is there anything that salespeople can do, post event, post nurture, conversation starts, whether that’s been via email or chat or whatever it is, a phone call, is there anything that sales people can do to leverage the fact that these individuals have consumed content in a live event, or a live webinar setting?
Will Barron:
Is there any questions we should be asking to leverage that fact? Because clearly, well, maybe that’s not clear. I assume that someone who’s attended a full day or two day event is going to be a hotter prospect than someone who downloaded one white paper? Is there anything that we can do to leverage the fact that they’ve been surrounded by it at an event?
Kim Walsh:
Yeah, I think it’s a great question. I would say on the concept of engagement from the event, is what I’d want to get out of my prospect. Then the intellectual curiosity I have as a salesperson, combine those two to say, “Okay, I’m curious, you just spent a day out of your time, what pain point were you trying to solve? And then there’s two different kinds of pain, there’s personal pain and business pain of the prospect.
Kim Walsh:
So that from an intellectual curiosity perspective, as a salesperson, measuring engagement, it’s like, “What did you like the most out of the event?” Or, “What did you learn? Or, “Where you they’re trying to solve a personal or business pain point and did it happen for you?” Because I think some of those questions could lead to a really interesting answer, that then you can take as an initial piece of context around, are they looking to buy the product or service? Or can the product … Or flip it a different way, can the product or service that I represent, help them?
Will Barron:
For sure, So the way we typically frame this up in all our content, is the buyer will have the current reality that they’re living in. They’ve got this future reality they’re trying to get to, and hopefully our product can bridge them from one place to another. So if we’ve done this process, which I won’t through again, because I’ve said it about 15 times, of qualifying at the top of, essentially, the funnel and getting the sales qualified lead at the end of it. At this point, we should have a pretty good idea that they’ve got one pain, they’re trying to get to somewhere else. Our product hopefully bridge them from one place to another.
Understanding the Challenger Sales Model · [22:36]
Will Barron:
Is there any other questions that we could ask? I don’t want to beat a dead horse here, in that I feel like the question you just posed then, Kim was perfect. Sets up a sales conversation, it sets up an opportunity for us to add value, share insights, and get that person to go from one place to another. Are there any other questions that we should ask, perhaps in that initial phone call, post-event, post-nurture, to really cement this idea that, “We know you, the attendee, is on the right track. We’re just trying to, we want to be there to guide you, to be your guide from kind of one place to another?”
Kim Walsh:
So I would probably in that situation, the one we didn’t talk about, was almost a going-negative tactic, “Was there anything that you were hoping to get that didn’t get?” And then I would probably go [crosstalk 00:23:23]-
Will Barron:
What would you prefer? Kim, clearly you’re a pro at this, you’re on a call, what would be the first question you’d ask with someone after the pleasantries? Would you go positive or would you go negative? Because I know we’ve had Chris Voss on that podcast a bunch of times, wrote a book that blew up about negotiations, Never Split The Difference, and he talks about going negative, or his own spin it.
Kim Walsh:
Love that book, yeah.
Will Barron:
Would you go that way, negative, or would you start positive? I feel negative might be more effective, but maybe it’s a more difficult question to ask.
“The best sellers are the ones that can be their own authentic self.” – Kim Walsh · [23:58]
Kim Walsh:
I think it’s about your selling-style. I think the best sellers are if they can be their own authentic self. My selling style would probably be two positives. If I wasn’t getting where I wanted to get in qualification and like, “Is this person opening up to me? Are they telling me their pain points?” I would use going negative as maybe third, but I would say there are some great sellers that have been on my teams, that go negative right from the get go and wow, are they effective? Sometimes listening in makes me a little uncomfortable in my chair, but if that’s your style and it’s effective, great. I probably would do two positives. Just in terms of metrics and it making sense, I want to try it out.
Will Barron:
Sure. I tend to go slightly neutral, positive, get a conversation going, make sure that the person doesn’t think I’m too crazy, and then I’ll go down that negative route. We can reframe negative as the challenger-sale. So pushing to share insights, pushing to teach, and everything else the challenger-model puts across. Being negative sounds like we’re being negative here. We’re not really, we’re just challenging the customer on their assumptions, and hopefully opening an opportunity for us to add value to them.
“On the challenging side, in my opinion, if trust is high, you can challenge. If trust is low, challenging might not land right.” – Kim Walsh · [25:31]
Kim Walsh:
One thing I would just say though, real quick, Will, on the challenging-side is, in my opinion, if trust is high, you can challenge. If trust is low, challenging might come across too, not land right.
Will Barron:
I’ll say. I’ll use, excuse my French, you come across like a bit of a dick if you don’t have that trust.
Kim Walsh:
Okay, you can say it.
Will Barron:
But I feel like after an event, especially, if it’s branded, if it’s our event, if they’ve had success, if they’ve wanted to get on a call with us after some nurture as well, and we’ve not totally put them off by this point, at that point, I feel like … Not all the time, but obviously you can judge this, this is a feel-thing. This is the art of sales, I guess, versus the science of it. But at that point, I would want to be accelerating the process, because the buyer clearly, unless they just like chatting with everyone, and they’re just bored in the office, which is becoming increasingly less likely in the fact that their office is probably the kitchen table at the moment, they’re probably looking for the pain points to be accelerated. I might, clearly, this is a feel-thing, but is that fair to say?
Kim Walsh:
Yeah, I would agree with you. I think it’s super fair to say.
Kim Explains Why Personalization is the Key to Solving Customer Pain Points · [26:26]
Will Barron:
Cool. All right then, anything that we’ve missed, Kim, is there anything that you guys do at HubSpot, which is particularly effective that we’ve not covered? Is there anything that you want to double back on? Because I know this topic is just so timely for the audience at the moment.
“Now more than ever, I think we’ve realised our time is so valuable. So, what you talk about with someone else has to be personal.” – Kim Walsh · [26:55]
Kim Walsh:
I think we touched on it, maybe just say personalization is key, right? What does that person want to get from attending? As you mentioned, I think, Will, that’s a great point. Now more than ever, I think we’ve realised our time is so valuable. So it’s got to be, what you talk about with someone else has to be personal. Is it solving their personal pain, or their business pain? Because no one has a tonne of time to wait. I’m not saying they may have had a tonne of time to waste in the past. But I think we just realised, if you’re sitting at your kitchen table, you’re probably going to talk a little less than you did before, and try and get to the point.
How to Instantly Connect with an Attendee Before a Webinar or Virtual Event · [27:19]
Will Barron:
For sure. Give me your thoughts on this? The first email that goes out pre-webinar, it’s been the same email, I think it’s actually got a grammatical error in it. I’m a terrible speller. Okay writer once it’s been edited, but terrible at spelling and grammar. It’s been the same email for four years now. It’s essentially, “Hey, look forward to speaking with you on the webinar. In the meantime, what’s your biggest problem? What you think we can help with? What content should we create?” And we get, maybe, I’ve not checked in a while. I don’t want to be asked on the numbers, but I’d say about 30% reply rate to that.
Will Barron:
It automatically just goes to a folder in my Gmail, it’s a direct reply to myself. Every quarter or so I just go through, it takes a day, and we just go through every single one of them, have a tally chart, and just narrow it down and see if there’s a shift in the content that we should be creating. So we do it more for content marketing as opposed to selling, but is that something that marketers should be doing at the top end of all this? Or is it something that salespeople should be doing mid-funnel?
“An innate part of a salesperson’s DNA is that they’re so good at digging into pain.” – Kim Walsh · [28:53]
Kim Walsh:
I mean, it sounds like you and I have a lot of, I mean, we would care about a lot of the same things, from the selling perspective. I mean, I love that. It’s one of the biggest questions we asked early on, was, “What is your biggest challenge?” And that answer really helped me as a salesperson spend time. So I think if you can pull that up to your marketing team, you’ll probably qualify better. But I would say that’s what makes, that’s an innate part of a salesperson’s DNA, that they’re so good at digging into pain. Yeah, if you can bring that up to marketing, and marketing can facilitate that a little bit more at scale. Because again, you mentioned, Will, that sales is really great at one-on-one. I think, yeah, I think you’re creating a pretty good qualified process for yourself.
Kim Shares Her Thoughts on B2B Sellers Biggest Pain Points · [29:17]
Will Barron:
I’ll put you on the spot here, because I’ve never shared, it’s never come up in conversation, but I’ve never shared this before. So we’ve had literally thousands, I’m trying to visualise my inbox at the moment, the number next to the unread email number next to the folder. There must be two or 3,000 replies, and I have a couple of thousand I’ve not been through yet. What do you think, Kim, is the most commented, to the question of, “What’s your biggest pain point in your B2B sales job?” What do you think the biggest pain is for a B2B sellers?
Kim Walsh:
Now you’re putting me on the spot. I don’t want to get it wrong, but I don’t know. How do you qualify?
“By a massive long shot, salespeople’s biggest pain point is motivation.” Will Barron · [30:00]
Will Barron:
I assumed it would be qualifying, sales process, getting rejected. It’s motivation, by a massive long shot, salespeople’s biggest pain point, is motivation. And it’s an open-ended question. So people talk about motivation and frame it in different ways. But yeah, that’s the thing that we seem to be battling in the day that we’re living in, the age that we’re living in, is just pure lack of motivation for sellers.
Kim Walsh:
Oh, now that you said that, I mean, it makes sense. And I think the empathetic side of us wants to try and help that, but yeah. I mean, if a sales person gets 10 no’s and one yes, and we’ve just been through a global pandemic for the last 14, 15 months. It was hard before, imagine it now. Oh, yeah.
Kim and Will Talk About Hubspot’s Grow Event · [30:37]
Will Barron:
Well, there we go. With that, why don’t you tell us a little bit about GROW? I’m going to be speaking at the event as well, so I’ll touch on that in a second. But it’s next week as this show goes out … I’ll just be clear with you, is we prerecord all the content. So we’re talking about this as if it’s going to happen next week, but it’s slightly earlier. But next week, GROW is happening, the HubSpot event. Tell us more about the event, Kim, and where we can find it as well?
Kim Walsh:
Oh, I didn’t put together the landing page.
Will Barron:
Okay, I’ll talk about it, GROW, it’s for … I’m talking about it, I’m doing an ask-me-anything on podcasting for marketers. You’ll be able to jump in there, ask me, very literally, any question and whatever I can get away without being told off by the organisers and HubSpot, I’ll do my best to answer it. There’s tonnes of other speakers there as well. I think there’s 20, 30 speakers. I think there’s four or five keynotes unlimited networking. If you just Google HubSpot and GROW, it’ll come up and we’ll link it in the show notes to this episode over at salesmen.org as well. Sorry, Kim, I feel like I threw you that at you then, unexpectedly.
Kim Walsh:
That’s all right. I can talk about it now, [inaudible 00:31:41].
Will Barron:
Cool, anything else you want to add to that?
Kim Walsh:
I would just say there, to your point, there are amazing speakers at the GROW Europe. Scott Galloway I follow, his newsletter, awesome. Hopin, we’re talking about events, Johnny, their founder and CEO is there. Yamini our chief customer officer, wealth of knowledge. So many, Aircall AWS, Google. Will, you, but anyways, yeah, I’m looking forward to it.
Will Barron:
Amazing stuff. I will link to the event over in the show notes over at salesman.org. You’ll find anywhere, it’s all over HubSpot’s websites, hubspot.com. And if you just search HubSpot GROW, it will be on there as well. And with that, Kim, I enjoyed chatting with you. I appreciate you being, and I’ve had this with everyone I’ve interviewed at HubSpot, open and honest about your own internal processes. That’s really valuable for the audience. So with that, Kim, I want to thank you for your time, your insights, and for joining me on the Salesman Podcast.
Kim Walsh:
Thanks for having me. Thanks, Will.
