It’s the question every startup must face on its go-to-market path: when to scale and how fast to go. Mark Roberge talks to Intercom's Kate O'Hanlon about the science that holds the answer.

Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital, Anna Baird, CRO at Outreach, and Devin Reed share insights and tactics for keeping deals moving forward. You'll learn how to arm your champion to sell internally, how to build an army of influencers, and how to win over your new economic buyer. 

Want visibility into your deals? It starts here: https://www.gong.io/revenue-intelligence/

Connect with Devin Reed here

Connect with Sheena Badani here

Today on the show we have Mark Roberge, Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital, and former Chief Revenue Officer at Hubspot. 

In this episode, we talked about the strengths of a successful CRO, the growth phases of a company’s lifecycle, and why retention is the one metric that defines product-market fit.  

We also discussed the pillars of a good go-to-market strategy, how Hubspot discovered their key leading indicators for customer retention in the early days, and more. 

As usual, I'm excited to hear what you think of this episode, and if you have any feedback, I would love to hear from you. You can email me directly on Andrew@churn.fm. Don't forget to follow us on Twitter.

Mark joins me today to talk about his book "The Sales Acceleration Formula".

You’ll Learn:

1. Why data is necessary for predictable growth. 
2. Why world-class sales hiring is the biggest driver of sales success.
3. The importance of coachability. 

About Mark

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 is currently a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School.

As SVP of Worldwide Sales and Services for software company HubSpot, Mark led hundreds of his employees to the acquisition and retention of the company's first 10,000 customers across more than 60 countries. His book outlines his approach and provides an action plan for others to replicate his success, including the following key elements:

• Hire the same successful salesperson every time — The Sales Hiring Formula
• Train every salesperson in the same manner — The Sales Training Formula
• Hold salespeople accountable to the same sales process — The Sales Management Formula
• Provide salespeople with the same quality and quantity of leads every month — The Demand Generation Formula
• Leverage technology to enable better buying for customers and faster selling for salespeople

Mark Roberge is the MD @ Stage 2 Capital, Prof @ HarvardHBS, former CRO @ HubSpot & author of best seller "The Sales Acceleration Formula"

We explored:

• Lessons from the 2008/2009 crisis & the bold decisions business leaders must make in 2020
• The premature obsession with revenue growth versus go-to-market fit & customer retention
• How to hire a CRO with the ability to deliver SUSTAINABLE revenue growth 
• The data required to ascertain if you truly have go-to-market fit
• How “group film reviews” can help businesses uncover strategies to navigate the COVID19 crisis
• How to deliver sustainable differentiation through network effects, algorithmic differentiation & an ecosystem of deeply embedded partners 

 For more insights into Stage 2 Capital check out https://www.stage2.capital & for advice on hiring world class talent for B2B start-ups & scale-ups head over to http://alpinasearch.com

There’s no shortage of talk about uncertainty right now. So what’s a sales org to do? If Mark Roberge, Managing Director of Stage 2 Capital, could make only one recommendation, it would be this: Pivot boldly. Fortunately, he shares even more recommendations. SalesLoft CEO Kyle Porter, serving as a special guest host to celebrate our 100th episode, also warns against the danger of late pivots and provides a neat formula for measuring customer retention from short-term data. Visit SalesLoft.com for show notes and insights from this episode.

Mark Roberge is the former CRO of Hubspot, a marketing enablement company to which he contributed a revenue increase of over 6,000%. He now delivers his Sales Acceleration Formula at Harvard, in his book, and in this podcast. 

Here are some of the topics covered in this episode:

• Why we should all dedicate time to personal development 
• How to fit your buyer’s needs and be a better seller
• The step to follow to draft an efficient sales process
• The impact of technology in the sales funnel 

About the Guest:

Mark Roberge is the former CRO of Hubspot, and now a lecturer at Harvard BS and MD of Stage 2 Capital, a venture capital fund. He is also the bestselling author of the award-winning book, “The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to Go from $0 to $100 Million”. He was named one of Forbes' Top 30 Social Sellers in the World, Mark has also won the Salesperson of the Year award at the MIT Sales Conference in 2010. 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markroberge/

Listen to more episodes of the Outside Sales Talk here and watch the video here!