The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million

Praise for THE SALES ACCELERATION FORMULA

"A new breed of disciplined, data–driven leaders are re–shaping the field of sales. The Sales Acceleration Formula explains why."
Tony Robbins

"A lot of factors go into building a great sales force, but those factors don′t have to be a mystery. Roberge breaks down the moving parts of a sales force recruitment, hiring, training, compensation, and performance evaluation and describes the metrics and methods he has applied to these components to make his company a success. If you want to engineer sales success, this book, written by an engineer–turned–sales–leader, is for you."
Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell is Human and Drive

"The Sales Acceleration Formula provides the most powerful, practical approach yet to the total marketing and selling process from lead generation to close. It helps senior sales and marketing executives understand how to work in concert to satisfy customers, quickly close sales, and grow revenue exponentially."
Ben Shapiro, Malcolm P. McNair Professor of Marketing, Emeritus, Harvard Business School

"In The Sales Acceleration Formula, Roberge provides a prescriptive blueprint for scaling a modern sales team. It should be on every sales leader′s reading list."
Kevin Egan, VP of Sales, Dropbox

"Mark has been at the forefront in figuring out the new sales methodologies around inside sales, leveraging metrics for insights, and web technologies for increased rep productivity. I′d highly recommend this book to anyone running a sales organization."
David Skok, General Partner, Matrix Partners

"Predictable scale is on every CEO and sales executives′ mind. However, it is rarely achieved. Roberge provides a great tactical approach toward reaching this goal."
Brian Schmidt, Global VP of Sales, TripAdvisor

"Early in my career, I worked as a sales representative at a Wall Street economic consultancy. Back then the salesperson had the information and therefore the power in the relationship. Now, because of the wealth of content on the web, traditional selling doesn′t work so well. In this important book, Mark shares his radically successful formulas for how sales needs to change in order to be successful in our new buyer–driven world."
David Meerman Scott, bestselling author of 10 books including The New Rules of Sales and Service

"It′s time to rev up the revenue engines! The Sales Acceleration Formula transforms the mystique of selling into a scalable methodology that savvy leaders can implement."
Jill Konrath, author of Selling to Big Companies and Agile Selling

"Mark Roberge and Hubspot are one of the few places I go myself to study up on what′s new and working in sales, as a legend in the making."
Aaron Ross, author of Predictable Revenue

"An engineering mindset arms the modern sales leader with an unfair advantage. The Sales Acceleration Formula explains why."
John McGeachie, VP of Sales, Evernote

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Part #1: The Sales Hiring Formula

Chapter 1: Uncovering the characteristics of a successfulsalesperson

Chapter 2: Five traits great salespeople have and how tointerview for them

Coach–ability

Curiosity

Prior Success

Intelligence

Work Ethic

Chapter 3: Finding top performing salespeople

Build a Recruiting Agency within Your Company

Find Quality Passive Sales Candidates in LinkedIn

Find Quality Passive Sales Candidates through Your Team:  The Forced Referral

Understand the Sales Talent Pool in your Area

Chapter 4: The Ideal FIRST Sales Hire

Part #2: The Sales Training Formula

Chapter 5: Setting up a predictable sales trainingprogram

Defining the 3 Elements of the Sales Methodology: The BuyerJourney, Sales Process, and Qualifying Matrix

Create a Training Curriculum around the Sales Methodology

Adding Predictability to the Sales Training Formula

Constant Iteration on the Sales Process

Chapter 6: Manufacturing helpful salespeople your buyerstrust

Part #3: The Sales Management Formula

Chapter 7: Metrics–driven sales coaching

Implementing a Coaching Culture throughout theOrganization

Creating the Coaching Plan Together with the Salesperson

Examples of Metrics–Driven Skill Diagnosis and Coaching Plans

Peeling Back the Onion

Measure the Coaching Success

Chapter 8: Motivation through sales compensation plans andcontests

Criteria to Evaluate a New Commission Plan

Involve the Sales Team in Compensation Plan Design

Promotion Tiers: Removing the Subjectivity from Promotions andCompensation Adjustments

Using Sales Contests to Motivate the Team

The Best Contest I Ever Ran

Chapter 9: Developing sales leaders Advantages of a promote from within culture

Pre–requisites for Leadership Consideration

From the Classroom to the Real World

Common Potholes from New Sales Managers

Part #4: The Demand Generation Formula

Chapter 10: Flip the demand generation formula – Get buyers to findYOU

How Can Your Business Rank at the Top of Google?

This Does Not Happen Overnight

Create a Content Production Process

Complement Content Production with Social Media Participation

Long–Tail Theory

Chapter 11: Turning inbound interest into revenue

Marketing s Role in Converting Interest intoRevenue

Sales Role in Converting Interest into Revenue

Chapter 12: Aligning sales and marketing The SMarketingSLA

The Marketing Service Level Agreement (SLA)

The Sales Service Level Agreement (SLA)

Part 5: Technology and Experimentation

Chapter 13: Technology to sell better, faster

Accelerate Lead Sourcing with Technology

Accelerate Sales Prospecting with Technology

Accelerate Lead Engagement with Technology

Automated Reporting with Technology

Chapter 14: Running successful sales experiments

Generating Ideas for Experiments

Best Practices of Experiment Execution

Chapter 15: HubSpot s most successful salesexperiments

The HubSpot Value Added Reseller (VAR) Program

GPCT

MARK ROBERGE served as HubSpot′s SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services from 2007 to 2013, scaling the customer base from 1 to over 12,000 and his staff from one to hundreds of employees. Mark holds an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management and an engineering degree from Lehigh University. He has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Inc Magazine, The Boston Globe, and Harvard Business Review. Mark currently serves as the Chief Revenue Officer of the HubSpot Sales Division.