The Center for Sales Strategy is proud to share that we’ve been named a HubSpot Platinum partner, one of only twelve platinum partners in the world.
Patrick Shea, HubSpot Senior Manager of Channel Marketing, spoke highly of The Center and this accomplishment, “Achieving this exclusive status of becoming a HubSpot Platinum partner represents the highest standards of inbound marketing success and we are thrilled that The Center for Sales Strategy has reached that level. They not only specialize in delivering exceptional client results, but in sharing their expertise with marketers and business owners through world-class educational resources.”
How We Got Involved—and Grew—with Inbound Marketing
The Center for Sales Strategy is a sales performance company with a simple mission statement: To help our clients turn talent into performance. Our clients implement a seven-step process we created, called How Selling. Of course, we eat our own dog food and follow the same steps:
- Find the strongest potential leads
- Select the best prospects using the Ideal Customer Profile
- Approach these prospects using a Valid Business Reason
- Define the prospect's real needs using the Hourglass Needs Analysis process
- Solve the prospect's specific problem with a collaboratively developed plan
- Confirm the sale
- Deliver better-than-expected results
That process is only as strong as its weakest step. Two years ago, we realized that our weakest step was the first one: Finding strong leads and nurturing them to the point that they might be genuine prospects. For us, as for many companies, the best way to produce a strong lead flow was to bolster our thought leadership within our area of expertise.
I buried myself in an online search for expertise on how to accomplish thought leadership on the Web. It soon became apparent that we needed all of the following:
- A content-publication (blog) platform
- A premium-content strategy to harvest leads
- A distribution channel
- A way our readers could easily share our content with others
- A way that we and our content would be highly ranked by search engines
- Seamless integration of email marketing with our content publication
- Smart analytics that follow a visitor as they become a lead, and tracking and nurturing their online activity with us, letting us know when it's time to pick up the phone
- A plan to accomplish all of the above!
That’s a lot of capabilities. When I discovered HubSpot and their inbound marketing platform, I knew I had found the best all-in-one solution out there. Sure, I could have patched together several different software solutions, but I would have spent more time trying to get various software systems to work together than actually producing great content and harvesting good leads.
We jumped with both feet into an inbound marketing program, and within a few months, started seeing results. At the same time, it became apparent that our clients had the same need—to produce more and better leads to funnel through their otherwise-strong How Selling process. So we opened an inbound marketing practice within our company, bring our thoughtware together with HubSpot’s software.
In two short years, we have expanded this practice substantially. How much? HubSpot can tell you: They’ve moved us from Silver Partner to Gold, and now from Gold to the rarified air of Platinum Partner. And we’ve expanded our inbound marketing staff so much we now call this practice a division of our company. We have clients throughout North America, and as with our sales performance services, they’re seeing success and coming back for more and more.
We’re Proud of Our Clients' Successes
One of the most rewarding aspects of the inbound marketing program we've established is seeing the results our clients are enjoying. Inbound marketing works, and our clients have seen the following success:
- Hubbard Radio in Washington, DC, went from having almost no B2B presence online to ranking for more than 50 keywords and generating 30 leads per month in less than six months.
- After just two months establishing themselves as thought leaders in the Tampa staffing market, Hiregy saw an email from someone who'd researched them online, read a few blog posts, and wanted to know when they could sign a six-figure deal.
- Mayfield Plastics in Sutton, MA, noticed that someone downloaded one of their eBooks, and before they were able to pick up the phone to reach out to them, the customer called them and placed an order.
We've seen this success in every industry: media and marketing, insurance, software, technology consulting, medical software, security – even nonprofits have seen measurable success from starting an inbound marketing program. To learn more about the benefits of inbound marketing and the thoughtware-software Platinum partnership between HubSpot and The Center for Sales Strategy, contact us here.
