The State of Sales

Enablement by Marketing

Agencies:Analyzing 50 HubSpot Diamond

& Platinum Partners

+ 429 Published Case Studies

By Remen Okoruwa

Co-Founder & CEO, StatusQuota

There’s been a lot of hype around sales enablement

lately. Every day, another startup launches another

product to help another company’s sales team

improve performance using automation/machine

learning/[insert buzzword here]. But this shift has

been a long time coming.

Ever since HubSpot launched the concept of

“inbound marketing”, the role of the marketer has

evolved. Digital marketing allowed for greater

accountability of what marketing activity led to

actual results. B2B marketers embraced the power of

social media channels to drive lead generation. In

essence, marketing became more accountable to

sales for generating business outcomes (=revenue).

Even the terminology has seen a shift. Sales and

marketing alignment (that’s a mouthful) has given

way to “smarketing”. And even the concept of

“alignment” seems quaint. The rise of account-based

marketing and sales requires a tight synchronization

of sales & marketing touches in order to identify,

engage, and close high quality accounts.

A Brave New World

Sales Marketing

SMarketing

This evolution has not gone unnoticed by the tech

companies.

In addition to the slew of sales enablement startups,

established players are getting in on the action too.

HubSpot has moved from a marketing platform to

offering CRM & sales productivity tools. Salesforce

launched Einstein, a machine learning engine that

analyzes CRM data to make suggestions for

improving sales & revenue generation.

But this got me thinking, have marketing agencies

also adapted to this new reality? Are they able to

offer real value to organizations who expect

marketing activity to drive sales results?

Technology Races Forward…

To answer this question, I reviewed the websites of 50 Diamond & Platinum HubSpot partners. These

are the best of the best in the HubSpot ecosystem, so I figured that they should be leading the way on

the sales enablement trend.

I was looking out for two things:

1. Do agencies explicitly offer sales enablement services (e.g., sales consulting, sales collateral)?

2. Do the agencies have case studies with quantifiable success for sales enablement services?

The results, as they say, may surprise you.

…But What About Agencies?

Agencies Reviewed:

Of the 50 agencies I surveyed, 34% mentioned

offering sales enablement / inbound sales services

on their website. For those playing along at home,

that’s only 17 agencies in total!

Two of those agencies offered sales enablement

services that were essentially inbound marketing, so

the real number is a tad lower.

Sales Enablement Services Are Not The Norm

17

33

Agency Offers Sales Enablement

Services?

Yes No

But offering sales enablement services and delivering

sales results are two entirely different things. So I

went one step further. If agencies are offering sales

services, they should be advertising sales results in

their case studies. So I reviewed 429 case studies

from 47 of these agencies and categorized the

advertised results into three categories:

• Traffic: marketing activity generated more

website visits, more pageviews per visit, lower

bounce rate, etc.

• Leads: marketing activity generated new

contacts, re-engaged existing contacts, drove

more email list subscribers, improved website

conversions, etc.

• Revenue: marketing activity directly linked to

new customers, increased revenue, or improved

sales outcomes

In this day and age, more traffic and leads from

hiring a marketing agency is a given. Good sales

enablement should result in more revenue-

attributable results. Yet they weren’t there.

Do Agencies Advertise Sales Enabling Results?

TRAFFIC

LEADS

REVENUE

Of the 429 case studies reviewed, 41%

cited improved traffic and 45%

enhanced lead generation. But here’s

the kicker: only 13% were able to point

to a revenue-related outcome. If the

proof is in the pudding, then pudding is

in short supply.

Let’s take a second to quickly recap the

research so far: 30% of agencies are

offering sales enablement services but

only 13% of case studies demonstrate

the agencies have actually client

revenue & sales.

This is a massive gap. If sales

enablement is the new normal, then

sales impact is the most important

metric to track.

Revenue Impact Is Not Being Demonstrated

40.8%

44.5%

12.8%

Improved Website

Traffic

Improved Lead

Generation

Improved Revenue

Generation

Case Study Results By Type

Now at this point, you may be thinking, “Hey –

lead generation is sales enablement. More leads

= more customers.” And while that is sometimes correct, it is ignoring the new competitive

landscape for marketing agencies.

In 2007, Paul Roetzer led PR 20/20 to be the very

first marketing agency using HubSpot. The

official agency partner program (then called the

“Value Added Reseller” program) wouldn’t be

launched until 2011. At that point in time,

HubSpot had fewer than 1,000 marketing

agencies participating.

These were the good ol’ days. Inbound marketing

was still a new concept, and there weren’t that

many competitors (or competing marketing

agency programs). For agencies who hopped on

the boat early, wowing clients with the power of

marketing automation and the inbound approach

was more straightforward. The name of the game

was convincing clients that inbound worked. If

you crossed that hurdle, the business was yours.

Why “More Leads” Isn’t Enough Anymore (1)

Now let’s fast forward to today. The world has

changed in two significant ways:

1. There are more than 3,400 HubSpot

partner agencies across the globe.

Nowadays, the HubSpot partner program is

less an exclusive club and more a big party

(and if you’ve been to INBOUND, you’ll know

it is one hell of a party ). In fact, HubSpot

partners now compete with each other for the

same client business. That was inconceivable a

few years ago. New partner agencies often

must specialize by industry, geography,

service mix (or some mix of the 3) to compete.

2. There are more HubSpot competitors than

ever before. According to G2Crowd, there are

now 107 different marketing automation

platforms. Many of these companies have

marketing agency partnerships. So even if

your agency is the only HubSpot partner

competing in a bid, you probably aren’t the

only agency using marketing automation to

deliver results.

Why “More Leads” Isn’t Enough Anymore (2)

1

800

2200

2900

3400

0

500

1000

1500

2000

2500

3000

3500

4000

2007 2009 2011 2013 2015

Total HubSpot Partners by Year

Net net, these changes mean that inbound marketing has

become more commoditized. Yet lead gen remains vital for

businesses and is something companies are willing to pay

for. So how can an agency stand out from the pack? Simple

– prove your leads are demonstrably better than the

competitions’.

That’s easier said than done. The case study survey

indicates that agencies are struggling to prove that their

services result in more revenue and customers for their

clients. But those are outcome-focused metrics. They rely

on sales team execution, which an agency has no control

over. These are important to track, but don’t tell the whole

story.

Instead, the big opportunity is to focus on process metrics.

In essence, the question you need to answer is “How do my

leads make a salesperson’s life easier?” To answer that

question, you need to start thinking like a sales rep.

Lead Generation Has Become Commoditized

At the end of the day, revenue generation can be boiled down into a very simple equation. You begin

with leads, the raw input of a sales funnel. These leads are converted into opportunities and deals at a

certain close rate. Not all deals are created equal: some will be bigger, others smaller. So the deal size

is really important. And finally, selling takes time, so you have to factor in the sales cycle length and

effort a salesperson puts into each deal.

Today, agencies focus almost entirely on the number of leads generated. The reason is simple: it’s easy

to track. A few agencies also talk about revenue generated. Yet the other components of the sales

equation are being ignored entirely. And that’s why this is such a huge opportunity.

Enable Sales By Proving Value in 3 Ways

Let’s take 2 hypothetical agency pitches – which one do you

think is more compelling?

Agency A: “We’ve successfully helped multiple clients generate hundreds of leads each month.”

Agency B: “For a typical client, our leads close at a 10% higher rate than average, deals generated from our leads tend to be 5% larger than average, and our leads close to deals 20% more quickly than average. And by the way, we’ve successfully helped multiple clients generate hundreds of these killer leads each month.”

To stand out as an agency, don’t just sell leads. Sell the

Glengarry leads.

The world of inbound marketing has changed. As the

agency landscape gets more crowded and competitive,

winners will be able to prove their services have sales team

impact, beyond just “more leads.” Is your agency ready?

Put Yourself In The Client’s Shoes

About StatusQuotaStatusQuota dashboards enable

marketers to measure and manage

marketing performance in terms of

sales-related outcomes. It integrates

data from the CRM & marketing

automation platform to provide a

complete view on which marketing

activities drive quality leads that convert

into actual sales revenue.

Unlike other dashboard solutions,

StatusQuota is built with sales-focused

marketers in mind. It comes

preconfigured with 40+ analyses

tracking:

• Customer acquisition costs reduction

• Customer lifetime value growth

• Sales cycle reduction

The result? Marketers can now monitor

sales metrics & take credit for their

impact on revenue generation.

Additionally, they can use these insights

to optimize their marketing campaigns

to achieve sales-related goals.

Sounds awesome, right?

StatusQuotaHarvard Innovation Lab

114 Western Avenue

Boston, MA 02134

statusquota.co

remen@statusquota.co