This is the second half of our interview on Inside Sales methods, metrics & strategies with Mark Roberge, VP of Sales for Hubspot (read the first part).
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What technologies are in place to support your team's efforts?
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Hubspot - for attracting prospects to us, converting these prospects to leads, and automatically qualifying them
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Salesforce.com - to manage our funnel
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Gotomeeting - to execute on our demonstrations
What metrics do you capture and how do you use them to measure performance or make business decisions?
The simple framework we use is sales success is a product of activity level and quality of activity. We start with:
- Leads worked
- Demos
- Customers
- Conversion rates across the two
Monthly we look at peer-to-peer comparisons to help us dive into where is the most upside in development in each sales person. We are looking to identify one development baby step for them to work on.
We look in 2 different ways. We look qualitatively and quantitatively. If it's a prospecting issue because the prospect to demo ratio is off, we look at:
- Connect to demo conversion
- Total attempts per lead
- Emails sent vs. dials
We compare these metrics against the most successful reps to see if there is different quantitative behavior. Then we do prospective call reviews to look at quality.
What percentage of your team makes goal?
80%
How do you motivate your reps?
There are a lot of perks that come with being at or above quota continuously.
We are really big on recognition. When someone is over performing, we'll turn to them to lead development exercises. They love to be seen as an expert and coach the team.
We use individual and team sales contests with a different twist to what we are trying to work on today. For example, recently we were focusing on forecasting. We ran a contest around gaining and losing points based on forecasting accuracy.
We have also run complete team contests. We win only if everyone hits quota, the entire team loses in anyone misses quota. If they get it, they all get a limo to Manhattan, individual hotel rooms, dinner, etc.
Another spif is if they make quota 75% of the way through month, they get dinner with the co-founders. As Hubspot has grown, there has been less exposure for the individual reps with the co-founders. These "Champions Dinners" are a great way to get that exposure and the reps really want it.
What is the career path for inside sales?
We are growing so fast we try to keep a 9:1 ratio of reps to managers. So you can imagine how quickly we need to promote. Anyone here can step up to be a leader.
If you come in here, build your credability through results and have the behavior of a Sales Manager you will be promoted.
What does the hiring landscape look like in your area?
It is hard because of pace of our growth. We've hired a sales recruiter to assist. For Hubspot, the landscape is good. We are in a really hot space, the role involves no cold calling and we are getting great press in the Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and other major publications.
Also, we have built our own predictive index. We evaluate all candidates pre and post hire on over 40 different criteria and behaviors. For our hires, we run regressions between these criteria and success in the HubSpot funnel to continually refine the index.
If any readers are interested, you can apply at http://www.hubspot.com/company/careers/account-executive/
What issues would you be interested in brainstorming with your peers about?
Leadership development. It's my biggest concern right now. I think we have a good formula for bringing on rep talent, but nurturing managers fast enough to be able to run a 9 person team will likely be a challenge. I would be interested in knowing how others have addressed that challenge.
Thanks Mark. You have shared great information and we really appreciate your time!