by Dan Tyre

From my earliest recollection, the sales profession has suffered from a tarnished image. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where this reputation started. In the late nineteenth century—the early days of the geographic expansion of the United States—settlers purchased essential goods from a peddler or traveling salesman basically because they had no choice. The sales profession wasn't so much a profession as it was just someone with a horse and wagon. Transportation was the differentiating factor; the product and quality were secondary. Faced with an option to sell to a customer once and likely never see the prospect again, you can guess how that turned out. Exactly. Unfortunately, this activity usually resulted in an awful customer experience, tarnishing the image of the salesperson.

As the early US economy matured, storefronts became a more acceptable place to purchase goods and salespeople or shop owners became a bit more accommodating. It was much more important to sell and support quality products alongside good service when your customers knew who you were, how to get to your house, and saw you every day.

Fast-forward to the 1950s. The inevitable changes in mass media and technology created the Golden Age of Marketing when the Mad Men era gave rise to a mass marketing of products and services to a wide population, mostly through radio and TV. At that time, marketing became more important than sales as a way to create demand, but most salesmen (mostly a male-dominated industry at this point) maintained relatively low or nonexistent ethical, honesty, and quality levels.

My Own Start in Sales: The Days of the Disenfranchised Buyer

When I started my sales career as a teenager in the 1970s, the sales occupation was decidedly dicey. Sales was the land for misfit toys, a vocation of last resort, and the place managers stuck people who had very little aptitude (and in some cases, intelligence). The sales role required a lot of hard work, but it did pay well, and in most cases, you didn't have to sit in an office all day working on spreadsheets or study and pass any difficult certifications. With a grade point average that made my parents wince, I thought it might be a reasonable way to make a living for myself.

My first sales job was selling dictionaries for the Southwestern Corporation in 1976 and 1977. It was a comprehensive education in people, process, human motivation, and hard work. I went to school in Upstate New York, but was assigned a territory in Bellingham, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. I was given no salary, one week of group sales training, and dropped off with two other sales recruits, 3,000 miles from home. Our bible at the time was Tommy Hopkins's How to Master the Art of Selling. The odds of success were steep. But I realized a few things that proved to be valuable lessons throughout my business career. First, people were very different and had very different reasons for purchasing a product, so a successful salesperson needed to modify behavior to increase the potential to close a deal. Second, there was an actual process to work through a sale—a similar, repeatable way that you could determine who to spend your time with and how to treat the prospect at every stage. And, third, the more times you repeated this predefined sales process, the greater your success.

In those days, we followed a very seller-centric sales process. We were indiscriminate in our approach and would sell to virtually anyone (although people with school-age children or grandkids were more qualified). Prospecting was an actual physical process, where you would knock on as many doors as possible to try to connect face to face (sometimes referred to as “belly to belly”) with people. This process included identifying prospects, doing a small bit of qualifying to determine fit, demoing a product, leaning hard into an emotional reason to buy, answering objections, and then going for the close.

Back then, we used sales techniques like the puppy dog close (let them hold the dictionaries so they wouldn't give them back) or the porcupine close (answering a question with a question). It was fascinating to learn these skills because the sales profession was shrouded in mystery and understanding how people made decisions regarding a product purchase gave you additional power and insight into human behavior that could be applied to other parts of your life.

In the 1980s, I went to work for a startup that sold IBM personal computers and learned an evolved way of selling—solution-oriented selling. Although this was still seller centric, it involved asking a series of questions to understand the problems a prospect wanted to solve and digging into her specific information and situation to provide a unique solution. It was transformative for several reasons: First, it involved discovery of what the customer was looking for rather than the product features you were selling. Second, it required you to know something about your prospect's business and how your product would fit into that business. And, third, it became a competitive advantage for building trust and closing the deal. It worked, and it worked well.

Sales at the Beginning of Content Marketing

For the first 25 years of my sales career, sales and marketing were diametrically opposed and almost always at odds. When you were running a company, and wanted to increase revenue, you would hire a hard-charging sales leader to come in and hire field salespeople to gain market share. In most cases, the more salespeople you added, the more revenue you generated. Marketing, however, was always in the doghouse with everyone. At the board of directors level, marketing was always an expense with little correlation to success. At the senior management level, marketing was “squishy” and hard to measure. In the trenches, marketing was always in the doghouse because they would create the brand and generate leads, but the leads were either not coming fast enough (therefore, they were in the doghouse) or exhibited questionable quality (so they were in trouble with that, too).

As virtually the entire world shifted its buying behavior online as opposed to in-person channels (2000–2010), marketing proved to be a much more important contributor to revenue generation for several reasons. First, the sheer efficiency for lead generation through a website dwarfed any type of manual lead generation process that a salesperson (or marketing department could produce). Second, the effectiveness and ease through which sellers connected with qualified buyers increased because a salesperson understood who was interested in their company's products or services. Third, inbound marketing eliminated the most time-consuming, low-value activity in the sales process (prospecting) and replaced it with a self-selection process to connect with higher value clients. Fourth, that enhanced sales process typically led to better results. Fifth, because of the online nature of the transaction, it could be accomplished via the web or phone, greatly reducing the typically high cost of most sales processes. Finally, with that high volume of transactions came an ability to capture valuable data and use it to improve the sale process itself.

In 2007, as the second salesperson for HubSpot, I was lucky enough to work with Mark Roberge and witness the dawn of the inbound marketing era. I initially cold-called to generate new business. I started with all my friends and family and connected with anyone who would listen and explained the HubSpot inbound marketing value proposition. People typically had two questions: What is inbound marketing? And, Will it work? I always smiled and explained that the discipline was new, but that it seemed to make sense to me and that I had experienced the value myself as an early HubSpot customer.

Moving from traditional sales to inbound sales was extraordinarily transformational. I went from meeting face to face at the prospect's office to meeting over the phone. I went from investing a lot of time and effort prospecting to working with people who were already expressing interest in my company's research, blog posts, and other content. I went from pushing a “pitch” to simply starting a conversation, armed with an understanding of what the prospect was likely looking for help with. Inbound was completely different because it was prospect centric, not seller centric. It was efficient, consultative, and just felt right.

Over the next 10 years, salespeople will have the same opportunities that marketers have had for differentiating their value based on the way in which they sell. Marketers who invested in inbound in the last decade largely saw a significant return on that investment. It will be the same for salespeople. In my opinion, it might be a bit harder for salespeople to change to the new way of doing things, but that does not make it a meaningless or worthless endeavor. In fact, quite the opposite is true.

The future is super exciting for the salesperson who is willing to learn this new way of selling, leverage the technology right in front of them, and ultimately transform the way they sell to match how people want to buy.

by Mark Roberge

When I interviewed and hired the author of this book back in 2012, I had no idea of the impact he would have on our company. Accelerating through the ranks, first as a top-performing salesperson, then sales leader, Brian exhibited a form of salesperson-ship that made me proud. Seeing him assemble this work and further the entire field takes pride to an entirely new level.

In 2007, I teamed up with a few classmates from MIT to help start HubSpot, a software company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I was the fourth employee and first salesperson. Using many of the concepts Brian has captured in this book, I successfully scaled sales to more than 10,000 customers, generating more than $100 million in annualized revenue, and oversaw a global team of more than 400 employees. It was an amazing ride. The pace was exhilarating. The impact we had on our customers' lives was enormously gratifying. However, hiring people like Brian, watching them develop in our organization, and now seeing the broader impact they are having on the field is probably the most satisfying aspect of the experience.

Since I left HubSpot, my perspective has expanded across a range of go-to-market contexts. I teach sales and entrepreneurship full time at Harvard Business School. I help large companies transform their go-to-market functions as a senior adviser for Boston Consulting Group. I help dozens of startups each year accelerate their revenue growth as an investor, adviser, and board member. Through these experiences, I have developed an appreciation around how broad the applications of inbound selling truly are.

The Internet-Empowered Buyer Made Legacy Selling Ineffective

As Dan noted, before the Internet, buyers had to talk to salespeople to make a purchase. They needed to understand the details of the offering, how the offering differed from the competition, how much it cost, the resources needed to install or use it, and so on. Some salespeople abused this information power. They used it to engage with buyers that were not a good fit. They manipulated the truth to get a sale. And they got away with it. Sales left a bad taste in many buyers' mouths.  

The Internet changed both situations. Buyers no longer need salespeople to make purchases. Online, buyers can read about the details of the offering, compare offerings across competitors, and usually understand how much it costs. Sometimes they can even try the product and often they can buy it, all without talking to a salesperson. Does that mean sales is dead? No, in my humble opinion.  However, this context shift dramatically changes the way sales must be executed.

Second, salespeople can no longer get away with jamming bad-fit products or services into buyers' hands, nor can they get away with overselling. Before the Internet, a small fraction of the addressable market would hear about this negative behavior. Today, a lot of buyers will find out and within minutes. Between the major social media sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and customer review sites like Yelp or G2 Crowd or even niche industry forums where peers across companies are well connected, word travels fast. Overselling is the kiss a death for a salesperson, their offering, and their company.

The Transformation to Inbound Selling

Because of these buyer context evolutions, some sales roles have been and will continue to be automated. Whether you call it “show up and throw up” or crocodile selling (big mouth, little ears), this basic form of selling will become extinct. These salespeople add no value. The information these salespeople provide is already accessible at the buyer's fingertips in a more trustworthy setting than the salesperson can provide.

For more complex selling contexts where automation is difficult, legacy salespeople will be replaced with inbound sellers. Complex contexts come in many forms. Perhaps the offering has many configurations, which makes it difficult for the buyer to understand which is best for them. Perhaps the offering is in a new, underdeveloped space and the buyer needs help understanding it. Probably most common, perhaps buyers are not sure they are framing their own business challenges or opportunities correctly. They need help from knowledgeable salespeople to understand how to frame challenges or opportunities before hearing about offerings.

In these selling contexts, inbound sellers will thrive. They will engage with buyers in a highly personalized way, turning the data accessibility of the Internet into an ally rather than an enemy. They will build trust with buyers and use that trust to understand deep buyer context. They will educate the buyer to help them frame their context even more accurately. They will present their offerings in a manner customized to the buyer's context, acting as a translator between the generic messaging available online and the unique buyer needs. These sellers will develop a reputational track record, both online and offline, that will fuel their sales success exponentially.

So, as a Seller, What Can You Do to Align with the New Selling Paradigm?

Walk in your buyer's shoes. It is not enough to understand your offering. Understanding your buyer's context is just as important. At HubSpot, every salesperson went through a month of training before they ever talked to a prospect. While they did receive some sales training, most of the training revolved around walking in the buyer's shoes. Each salesperson had to create a website and blog, publish articles, engage in social media, set up landing pages, develop email and lead nurturing campaigns, and analyze their marketing results, all using the HubSpot software. Salespeople developed a deep understanding of a marketer's challenges, related to these prospects more intimately, and could better help prospects through the challenges they were facing.

Contribute to the knowledge your buyer consumes. The best HubSpot salespeople invested time each week in engaging online where our prospects were congregating. They read the blogs the prospects read and commented on them. They followed the influencers our prospects followed and highlighted the best articles. They participated in the industry forums where prospects were active. Most impactful, they wrote guest posts on our company blog. Sometimes these efforts generated leads for the salesperson. However, more importantly, these efforts enabled these salespeople to develop trust with their prospects. They could point prospects to work they had done or work they had promoted that aligned with prospect's unique needs. These efforts also kept these salespeople on the forefront of the industry thought leadership.

Don't oversell. Be honest. Set accurate expectations. Be trustworthy. Rebrand the field of sales. At HubSpot, we measured, compensated, and promoted salespeople not just on new revenue acquisition but also on lifetime value of their customers.

Read this book. Brian helped us figure out this new mode of selling at HubSpot. He has now eloquently codified these principles into a valuable piece of work.