INBOUND 2018: How Do You Grow Better?

As we previously shared, the entire LeadG2 team is currently in Boston at INBOUND, an annual marketing and business conference hosted by Hubspot. Tuesday was opening night kicking us off with a keynote speech from Deepak Chopra, and yesterday was the first full day of sessions jam-packed with insightful information, industry updates, inspiring messages, and of course all things sales, marketing, and business. We've put together a few key takeaways that our staff found interesting, inspiring, or helpful from Tuesday's sessions in this post. 

LeadG2’s Dani Buckley shares some insights on the evolving sales funnel after Day 1:

READ ON FOR key takeaways and insights:

Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah, Founders of Hubspot, shared how they believe the sales funnel has evolved to more of a 'flywheel,' adding the service aspect to the traditional business model. We were also encouraged and challenged by Dharmesh to grow better as businesses (not just bigger). Wise words from them both:

"We've moved from a better product era to a better experience era."
- Brian Halligan

"In order to grow better, you need a culture that puts the customer first."
- Dharmesh Shah

HubSpot made some exciting announcements about new product updates for their marketing, sales, and service hubs to help your entire business grow better, as well as continue to cater to companies of all sizes (from small start ups to enterprise). You can check them all out here.

Erin Keiles (of Square 2 Marketing) shared in a session on leveraging a data-driven buyer's journey for revenue generation, "The customer journey is not a rigidly linear sales funnel - it's a circular network of touch points, decisions, and opportunities." Which aligned with much of what we all know to be true today, but the big question becomes... what are we going to do about it? 

Alison Elworthy (of HubSpot) told us about how you "need to decrease your CAC (customer acquisition rate) by increasing your LTV (lifetime value of a customer)." It's all about customer service and delivery, and something we know to be true is that your best prospects are your current customers. 

Maryna Hradovich (of SEMRush) reminded us that you have to be thinking mobile first or you're going to be left behind when it comes to search. Some fun facts shared in her session: 

• 58% of searches are on mobile in the US
• $93.5B sales happened on mobile

Patrick Campbell (Founder and CEO of ProfitWell) spoke on the "State of Retention". He provided extensive data to back up his recommendations including how there are three ways to grow:

1. More customers
2. More revenue per customer
3. Keep customers longer

Most everyone focuses on more customers, but that can be the lowest return of the three approaches. The highest? Increase revenue per customer. He went on to tell the group how, and it lies with identifying what features are both important, and that customers are willing to pay more for.

In the Tuesday morning keynote, Beth Comstock left us inspired with a lot of great soundbites including:

• No = Not yet. Be relentless.
• Change is a part of your job. Take time for discovery.
• Strategy is a story well told.
• A good discovery question: “Tell me something I don’t want to hear.”
• If you’re an agent of change, you must lead the way. Tell your story.
• Failure is the F-word of business.
• Risk is the will to act on imagination.

In a session called “100+ Ways to Differentiate” by Emil Everett (of New Amsterdam) he shared the following:

• Differentiate and you’ll be remembered when needed.
• Think about the things that are right in front of your face that you can use to differentiate from your competitors.
• Don’t just tell your prospects how you are different – tell them a story.
• Be weird. Be different. Be successful.

Plus, some nuggets of advice from Karl Sakas, a management consultant, who spoke on  “Speed Dating: How to Close Deals Faster”:

• Salespeople should try to fail fast. Identify bad fit prospects before you waste too much time on them.
• Try moving from BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe) to CRUX (Compatibility, Realistic, Urgency, X-factor) when qualifying prospects.
• Don’t be afraid to share minimum investment requirements with new prospects. You may get less leads, but you’ll waste less time.