Experience the power of average lead to opportunity conversion rate for Life Sciences

How to create outlook signature

[Music] hey guys welcome back to the second season of let's get candid i'm your host randy gandhi from unbound b2b there are many misconceptions happening around the corner about the mqs and one of them is that mqls are dead but is it really so well that's definitely not true also have you ever thought that why you are not able to convert those leads maybe you are not able to culprit because of the vanity matrix or you are pitching them then they are not ready to buy if the lead is not sure properly then the discovery call will be a pleasant experience for both buyer and the seller now how to nurture those leaders the topic of discussion and for that today we have jordan benjamin the principal partner sales manager at hubspot and podcast host of peak performance on how you can nurture effectively the anchors and to squish away the myths around the corner about 10 years please continue to the main video thank you so much jordan for coming on the show and giving the precious time to our audience and finally from hubspot came on and they would be sharing the valuable insight as hubspot is the leader of our industry i'm happy to be here excited to see uh what i can share to help your community level up learn and grow great great great so let's break the eyes with a very basic question can you please share your uh you know experience with our audience about your career journey and everything we would like to know please go ahead yeah so i started out um in b2b tech about 14 or 15 years ago uh working with companies doing pay-per-click marketing at a startup um really helping them optimize how do they run their ppc ads all focused on lead generation uh i then moved over to a company doing influencer marketing so a little bit more brand awareness uh you know a little bit higher kind of uh level awareness strategy uh and then about eight years ago uh made my way over to hubspot to really help start understanding how do we drive that full funnel engagement how do we start moving away from having to blast out to people to drive leads and actually start you know attracting and engaging them bringing them to our business uh to help build trust to build valuable credibility uh versus just trying to push ourselves in front of other folks so uh i've been at hubspot working with our channel partners uh for the last eight years helping them develop their growth strategies and how they help other companies go out and develop growth on their side of things as well right great so i have seen your profile i was doing my little you know little bit of research and i just found out that your you know inbound marketing specialist then you involved into principal sales partner manager so how did that journey at hubspot was specifically i mean it for me it's really been something that i've been able to help work with these channel partners the these partners uh for a long time because it gives you this ability to talk to hundreds of different companies and really help them define and build their growth strategy and help manage that across these different individuals and different teams and so for me it's been something that has been this kind of continual path of growth of learning of development uh especially as a company as we start to offer more products more services higher level enterprise tools there's been so much development that's had to happen over the years to really keep up and also really stay in front of the other industries because the space that we're in is so highly competitive that we need to be out in front of it to really stay in the lead or to stay where we're at right definitely also that you have a podcast of yours peak performance which helps you know uh the sustainable mindset for the sales uh team and sales people so what was the concept behind this because you know there is there are loads of podcast out there who talks about how you can improve the sales but there is not a single podcast who you know who's actually there to help the sales people to have that mindset so where did the idea came from yeah i mean so for me i have gone and studied and explored all sorts of different things since i was really you know pretty young in my late teens starting to explore mindfulness and meditation and yoga and that opened me on this path of just continuous curiosity and learning and looking to develop more knowledge that i didn't get from my traditional education and most of what i got from school was how to do a thing or what to think but not how to think for myself and so i went out and studied and spent thousands of hours learning from all sorts of different people like seth godin uh and his program in the alt-mba that i helped support and coach to tony robbins and running for chart and so many different people around how do we perform at our best as well as how do we start understanding neuroscience and the development that we're seeing through science to actually help us see oh practice like gratitude actually really helps folks manage stress more effectively and so that's where i started coming up with my business my core os and my podcast peak performance selling to interview different sellers and sales leaders to go beyond just the tactic of what to do in the job you say well how do you think about it and how do you operate and how do you bounce back from struggles or challenges to really see how the best of the best think and operate from a mindset perspective versus just you know how do they do their social selling or whatever it could be right great so um i saw in one of your linkedin posts about three three one rule so can you please explain our audience about it because i've read the post i think it's a great you know to go for it so i think the sales audience would love that 331 rule and it would be really helpful for them i lost you a little bit oh okay sorry so i saw your you know one of the linkedin posts about three three one rule so can you please uh you know explain our audience the sales audience specifically that how one can establish that rule and can perform you know with high productivity or can develop that mindset yeah and so this is something that is really powerful as we look to develop a growth mindset and i i think this can work and apply for anybody it doesn't just have to be for sales but since i've spent so much time there that's what i know and that's who i like to talk to to have a target audience but for me it helps me reflect at the end of the week or even at the end of the day what are three things that i did well because so much of what our mind is programmed for is to look at the negative and find the fear and find the the negative things that happen and so by intentionally starting with well what did i do well i can actually celebrate and feel good about okay what are three things that went well for me today or this week and then i can start to say well what are three things i can improve on and i'm a big fan about the language that we use because it's very easy to say well what are three things i didn't do well and inherently in our brain that starts to move us towards this model of negativity a fear of i can't do this but if i start saying it what is something i can improve on it already sets within my mind that i can grow that i can improve that i can develop and then intention what's one thing that i want to focus on in the next day or week moving forward so i've got three things that i did well three things i can improve on and one thing that i really want to focus on that if i put my focus if i put my action and intention there i will be able to go and accomplish big things down the road and so that's how i started thinking about leveraging this framework to really help me develop for myself and it's something that helps me reinforce this growth mindset and helps me focus on where do i want to put my attention and my energy to help make the impact on the world that i'm hoping to make right so i was saying uh you know the problem with humankind is that we are always attracted to where the negative things and we build so much of negative things around us that even if there is there are much good things about ourselves about our job or about our life we tend to forget that and that develop an entire negative mindset you know that i'm not able to do this i'm not able to beat my kpis apparently my girlfriend or my wife is not happy with me or vice versa so i think this is pretty great rule and not only the salespeople as you said earlier but every person should apply this rule in their life to go ahead with a positive mindset because you know it's all about if you are thinking positive then positive things will happen to you it's all in the mindset it it is and they're you know i i i'm a realist i understand not everything's going to be perfect there are things that there are struggles that are going to happen but so much of what we do and what we've been programmed for for thousands of years is this negative stuff and so if we have more of this positive mindset we're going to see more positive things we'll run into more of those positive things and it makes it much easier to find them and that's really where i think about habit creation and development is how do we make what we want to happen easy for us and so that's one of those things that's been super powerful for me and you can start seeing these studies from neuroscience that are talking about how gratitude or how focusing on positive activities or actions in your life actually help you see more of that and rewire and retrain your brain for more of it as well right right right so you know before going to our very niche topic of employers marketing qualified lead uh can you please give the three tips that you would like you know people to have that in their mind if they are going somewhere wrong if they are feeling a little bit negative about themselves or apparently about the job what the three trips you would like to give to our audiences so one have what i like to refer to as a shameless self-promotion folder so there are things that you've done well in the past when somebody sends you a really nice note or maybe in sales you've done really well and you're at the top of the uh you know waterfall or the stack rank or you feel like you just did something really great that day take a note take a picture of that or write that down somewhere and put it in a folder because there are going to be bad days there are going to be times when you struggle and if you can go back and so e it's so easy to say oh i can't do this i'm not i'm not there i've got imposter syndrome so if you can have a little folder to say oh i'm going to go back on those days and give myself a little uplifting boost i find that is a really helpful way when things are getting tough to have actual proof that works against the negative stories going through your head the other one when we're on positivity practice gratitude my grandma told me about this all the time i thought she was crazy and now science is actually showing how powerful it can be so when you wake up in the morning opposed to oh gosh i don't want to wake up i don't want to get moving in the day say what's something that i can be grateful for right now and luckily you woke up many of us take life for granted and we believe that oh yeah i'm gonna wake up tomorrow yet none of us can tell anybody why that happened and so be appreciative of whatever it is when you start the morning and when you end the day it'll actually help you get into sleep and then the last thing is take care of the basics all of these things that we know we should be doing drinking water exercising are things that's eating good food are so many things that we all skip over because it's much easier to not do those things but take care of the basics because a healthy body equals a healthy mind and healthy mind is what enables us to go out and produce our best work all right that's an amazing three tips that definitely our audiences should focus on especially when we are working in you know a competitive industry where there is constant pressure on ourselves to perform better instead of marketing or sales let's just put that side away but there's a always constant pressure on the employees that you know you have to perform better you have to perform better that's no quitting that's not great for the audiences and the employees yeah okay all right so coming to uh the you know our topic of today the mql um i know this is going to be a bit tricky but since you have such a good experience with hubspot you know from the inbound marketing specialist to principal saints partner that you would be the perfect person to describe you know the side of both the things the you know aspects of both the things that where marketing is going wrong and well sales should uh you know improve orders you know that they can give a helpful hand to marketing to understand better audience yeah it's it's so fascinating because for so long sales and marketing have lived in two very different worlds and i think one of the biggest things for me was really realizing that if we're going to drive growth in any company it has to be a team sport growth happens not just with sales not just with marketing not just with product but with everybody working together in the same direction is how we really can accomplish amazing growth and so that's my first thought to anybody when they start to ask well what about marketing and sales and we need to get rid of the finger pointing at each other and start saying how do we actually work together because that's when we can actually accomplish amazing things right right right so coming to uh you know the topic that there are rumors around the corner since last year maybe and more than that that mqls are dead you know so what are your thoughts and if they are dead then you know what is the reason behind it yeah so i think we're seeing this really interesting evolution that's been happening for probably the last 15 years or so where buyers have so much more knowledge so much more insight before they ever reach out to talk to a seller or a company and so i think you know we're seeing this really interesting development in this area of product led growth where people can even go get a full demonstration before they ever talk to a seller they can see different reviews on third-party sites and understand you know how well does this product actually work for people and so i i don't know if it's killing the mql but i do think it's really evolving what that has to contain in order to hit the qualification criteria to really be a highly qualified lead because before it was maybe just somebody saying i want to get a demo or you know maybe it's oh they've hit enough uh points in a lead score to be considered an mql and i think we're getting further down that buyer's journey with many of our leads especially for a lot of the organizations i talk to their high volume lead generation machines where they're starting to say we can get more stringent on those criteria and so we can help people move all the way to an sql through more digital engagement before they ever get there and so i think as we're seeing this shift to more and more knowledge within our buyers or our prospects hands it is starting to really shift what does that mql consist of and how do we start to have better alignment to have our teams say okay great this is when somebody has had enough qualification to when we actually want them to drive a purchase you know i think that the one other part behind this that maybe we're talking about is you know hubspot is our example um you know we have this freemium strategy where anybody can sign up for our crm or our sales tools for totally free and they can actually start using the product and so they may actually trigger more of that what i'd think of as an sql when they say i'm ready to buy because i need to upgrade i need to move to that next functionality but sometimes that happens without them even having to talk to a sales rep especially for uh the you know entry level or the least expensive products that we offer and so i think those are some of these types of development within marketing and sales uh especially in tech businesses that that is starting to really shift pretty significantly how do we qualify those leads as you know whether it's marketing or sales qualified lead right it's true that you know marketing and sales alignment this is a very tricky thing but as we are progressing with the time companies are trying to align the marketing and sales department still many organizations are not able to achieve that so what tips you would like to give to this organization in you know in order to achieve the alignment because that's the base of every strategy if you're talking about content syndication you know if you are talking about abm demand generation all the strategies start with those alignment what tips you would like to give to them i think it's having really clear understanding between both roles and knowing where do we add value what's a good fit and having that feedback loop so they can pass back and forth really easily you know i think that is where those teams can actually align much better when the feedback loop is there and it doesn't have to be a oh i've got to go chase the team down to learn well how's that lead progressing what is happening there if we can have really clear understanding of here's what a great lead looks like here's some examples of maybe not so great leads and then how can we actually track how that moves through the process with an integrated system is where i think our teams start to move so much more effectively right right right so uh you mentioned about you know uh the low qualities of mkl that should be a criteria which has to be common between both the teams right so how one can shape the low qualities of mql say that again sorry how can we get the low quality yes how we can shape the low qualities of mql so i think this is where we have the opportunity to nurture these people okay and say okay great we want to start continuing to me it's all about how do we build trust add value and create credibility right with anything we're doing and so i think that's where when we see somebody that maybe is borderline on low quality mql okay great maybe we're going to put them in a nurture sequence maybe we're going to start to see okay if they actually take some engagement or take some of the right activities that move them a little bit further down the cycle or that journey that allows us to say okay now we're gonna move them over the hump to where you know maybe they visited five pages on our website they clicked on a link we sent them in the email we um see that when they filled out a form they told us they have this many employees or this much revenue in their business that can all be components of insight that help us kind of elevate that quality of those individuals and so we don't have to you know necessarily utilize salesforce rep's time with full you know outreach to those folks that maybe aren't quite ready uh for that conversation right also you know there is a constant complaint with sales department that marketing hey listen you are not sending the perfect qualified lead on you know that lead it's still in the first uh phase of the funnel that is the awareness stage right so every day stage is basically the work of marketing team entirely so how one company or an organization can measure the impact of marketing uh with respect to mqls so really this is where i come back to this integrated system you know typically in in many companies that i talk to the buyer's journey happens across so many different touch points in so many different areas that if we are working across 10 or 20 different tools it's very very challenging to track that journey and see what are all the touch points that led to them actually becoming that mql and then when the sales team is in some other tool it becomes really hard and so that's where after being a customer of hubspot multiple times i i find that having some form of integrated tools and technology there are many options out there i happen to to be biased towards one um but that's where we start to have that really clear impact where we can easily run a report to say well how many of our mqls actually became a deal how many of those deals actually turned into customers and dollars and that's where we can start to really come back to say well what are those things that we did from a marketing standpoint or from a sales touch point standpoint together that actually helped move those along the way and ideally we have the ability to put revenue on our deal associated to that person and then we can really start to map here's the direct impact we had and focus more on those activities that actually move the ball forward all right all right so you know when you mention about the lead to opportunity i have i've read a report or you know of i won't name it but then i read a report that lead to opportunity it was 13 of the entire conversion while opportunity to deal was only six percent and it took an average of 18 days so in that 18 days of entire process there are many numbers of customers or lead which are lost so what advice you would like to give to this thing so if you want to make your you know the entire cycle shorter because if you are talking about 18 days that more than half of the month and everyone is busy currently and everyone to have that quick problem to the solution what would you like to address to these companies so i think one it's about how do you make it easy for your prospects to engage and interact with you i'm a big fan of using something like a calendar scheduling link that enables them to meet with you on their time and so i could even be on a call now and yet prospects can be booking time with me so i don't have to do everything manually i also think from the sales enablement perspective having resources having content that you can share with folks that helps educate them moves them along the buyer's journey even when you're not on the call so whether it's you know demo videos or case studies testimonials or you know how-to articles to think about how do you leverage these tools uh these are the types of things that i have that i believe really help move deals along and again reduce friction out of that process so we can say great here's my calendar let's schedule some time and we don't have to you know go back and forth over email to make that part of the process a little bit easier on the buyer okay and then i also think a lot of that comes in an earl in the early stage discovery this is really where the most powerful part of a sales process is built to understand you know what are they trying to accomplish what is the pain that they have and how do we connect that to the solution that we provide to help them bridge that gap and understand the urgency and the impact that it will have on them by waiting and slowing down so i think those are a couple things that really help me accelerate my sales cycle by reducing friction out of that process all right all right so here we are ending the questions of the interview and there are two questions that are you know uh asked from our audience and i would specifically uh like to ask you those two questions the first one is how to increase mql to sql you know close conversions this other question that we got from our survey so please continue yeah so i think to me it starts early in the process uh it starts understanding early what is that great fit how do we understand who they are and how do we start driving more of them into that mql process and this is where feedback in conversation with both marketing and sales is so critical because as i get like a new bdr that i've worked with um so frequently they are so strict on the qualifications that they would have to schedule or book a meeting and i tell them to think about it opposite it's like send me over a bunch of meetings to start and then i can provide really direct feedback on well here's where this meeting wasn't great here's where this one had more opportunity and so for me it's about how do we let marketing say okay we're going to open the floodgates for a point in time and know that we're probably going to get some junk that comes through but it gives us the ability to then provide that feedback loop to say oh here's the one characteristic or quality that we're seeing really stand out defining somebody that creates a great lead for us or great prospect so for me it's all about the feedback across the teams so we can understand earlier in our process what do we need to do either on our forms or in our outreach uh or in our emails that we send how do we understand early who's going to be a great fit for us and so for me it's a lot about this feedback loop and connection across our teams i think feedback is the perfect way when you are talking about you know two teams when they're when there are many people are involved in this process because you never know how the human mind works and how you know one is perceiving our information on one is processing the information so this is really a good point our audience should definitely look out into this one i i think there's a lot of opportunity there and it's about creating this culture of feedback within your organization because in many cases it's seen as you can't do your job and and that's not really how we provide effective feedback effective feedback is when we can start asking questions and we can start working together and realize that we are on the same team even though i'm in sales and you may be in marketing we are still there to accomplish the same goal which is drive growth within our business and so if we centralize around that and move more towards how do we do this better how can we improve opposed to just trying to place blame that's something that really i think helps create that culture of feedback so we can all grow improve what we're doing and level up as a whole right i think asking the question here uh one thing which is faced by majority of the people is that they are scared to ask the question you know there is a mindset that if i'm asking the question it may sound that i am i'm not that eligible to be in this role or i'm not that eligible to be in this round table or anything but people are restraining themselves uh not only in the events but also in the meetings you know when you are in a brainstorming session people are restraining themselves to ask the question you know within the department itself so what are your thoughts questions are where we learn so much you know even i come on here and talk and talk questions where we actually learn that's how we actually grow that's how we develop as humans you can't learn too much when you are talking but when you actually ask a question and when we reflect on something that's what helps us see the world in a new way that's what helps us learn new new ideas and so i think a lot of people believe that oh i went to school and i got you know a degree in marketing so i know everything there is to know and so much of my learning has happened after school and realizing that if we can approach all of these conversations with what i like to call it an attitude of curiosity okay this is where we start to learn and this is how we may be right we may have the right answer we may absolutely know it but if we're curious we may be able to find that oh well people are more receptive to our ideas and they're more open to having that conversation again coming back to we're trying to do the same thing as an organization right i think when a people say that i have a degree in xyz field they are restraining that they are creating a wall within themselves and the knowledge that is that they are going to process the first basic rule of learning something is to unlearn everything that you don't know how a five-year-old kid come to you and ask a basic question right so that is how you start learning and you know that's a way you can go ahead uh with the knowledge to gain from everywhere it's so true i i think this ability to you know as i've gotten a chance to spend some time around my nephews lately watching them learn watching their wonder and sense of amazement and then you spend time in the professional world and you see that so many people i know the answer to this i don't want to learn something new i don't want to start over it's it's actually kind of sad because there is so much opportunity to learn and if you think about if we had a pie of all the information all the possible information in the world you know how much of that do we actually know maybe a very small piece and then there's a bigger piece that there's a bunch of information that we know we don't know i know i don't know how to write code i know i don't know how to speak french i know i know a lot of these things that i know nothing about but the biggest part of that pie are all things that we don't even know we don't know and so there's this opportunity to learn every single day and to grow and develop and then bring that information together with the things that you do know and you do understand to bring your unique perspective into the world and so i think you know trying to say how do i come back to this beginner's mind how do i stay curious and still be assertive still make sure i i can make decisions and move forward because we could get lost uh for hours just you know learning forever but actually taking action and then being open to feedback being open to reflect and say well knowing what i know now how might i approach that differently how might i do that better the next time because that reflection is where i think we learn the best as humans okay okay i think it's like you know you have an entire puzzle but you are missing two three pieces if you are willing to able to learn you can build the entire big picture and the puzzle you can complete the passage totally totally totally i agree with you for sure right so moving on to the second question of the audience that how to increase the win rate from mql so it to me is all about discovery and having a mapped out process being able to say here's what i know needs to happen to move from mql to sql or sql opportunity because if we can know all right once i know that i'm talking to the decision maker that they have a goal that they're trying to accomplish they have maybe we talk about budget or there's value associated to that goal ideally that's where we can start to say great our process has shown us that great they've met the exit criteria to say they can move to the next stage and i think for many folks in sales from marketing uh it's been this well we'll figure it out along the way and what i do works for me and somebody else does something different and that's okay there does need to be personality and humanity in how we work but really being able to understand here are the clear things that we need to see happening in order to move somebody to that next stage and having that clearly defined to say okay great we know industry we know we've got revenue potential we know we have the right person on the phone we know what their buying process looks like we know if we're going to have to go to a legal team or anything of the sort those are those types of almost non-negotiables that you can easily say once we know this we know we're ready to move to the next stage and that creates a much clearer map and that feedback loop to then say okay great here's how we get those folks earlier on and help us increase our win rate as we continue through our now a little bit more defined process all right all right thank you so much uh jordan for you know giving this valuable insight and specially answering those two uh questions from our audience uh the last thing i would like to ask that what is that one you know message uh you know that's always in your mind or you know that slogan which is always in your mind that you know takes you forward with such unrealistic optimistic mindset that you are doing an amazing incredible job uh not only at hubspot but also at my uh the peak performance yeah uh to me it's always about how can you add value how can you focus on giving how can you be somebody that learns and then gives and shares because that to me is what makes life rich and that's where we start to see so much more value built when you can actually share and give towards others to help them level up and be their best because i've had to learn and still have to learn from other people every single day and as i'm learning it's fun to share it because you also get to internalize it and learn it for yourself too right right right thank you so much jordan for coming on the show and giving the time and your knowledge and peace of information for our audience thank you so much thanks for having me great thank you so much guys for watching this episode let me know in the comment section below what strategies you implemented to increase the win rate of that also this podcast is available on spotify where you can listen it to anytime anywhere please subscribe to our official page to get the daily updates about the latest happening of the b2b world keep watching