The way we sell has changed.

Sales used to be ruled by people who were seen as being naturally good with people. People who were good at schmoozing and getting their prospects to like them in order to buy their product or service. The way reps prospected for clients was totally different. There were much more prevalent direct marketing and sales methods, such as door-to-door and cold calling. And after a sale, there might not be much interaction besides the occasional "checking in." To quote Roger Sterling from Mad Men, the series based on the advertising industry in the 1960s, "The day you sign a client is the day you start losing them." That was the old mentality.

Smarketing meetings are regular meetings between sales and marketing departments, often held monthly. The meetings are a time for the two teams come together to review conversion rate and activity level goals, celebrate successes, and discuss next steps to improve.

Welcome back to our series on smarketing (sales + marketing). In our first post we explained what smarketing is and then we shared a Q&A with Hubspot sales rep, MJ, on how inbound marketing campaigns help her sell. This week we want to touch on some system set up items that should be done before your first smarketing meeting, to make sure it's productive.

Enter, "closed-loop marketing."

Connected Systems

What is closed-loop marketing, in non-jargon speak? It means we can easily see who is a visitor, lead, or customer in your online marketing database.

In the first post in our Smarketing series, we gave a general overview of what Smarketing is and some tips for building buy-in with your staff. This week, we have a Q&A with our HubSpot partner sales rep, Mae Joyce Gay. Now you can hear straight from someone at the company pioneering these new ways of marketing and selling what works for them—specifically her, as a sales rep. Here it is: 

In the previous blog, Are You Planning for Failure, I discussed some conversion rates to consider when determining whether your business is doing enough marketing to generate enough leads—to generate enough sales—and to hit its profit and revenue goals for the year.

This week, I want to introduce the concept of Smarketing, which is a fairly new concept just like inbound marketing, that can help guarantee you're getting the best quality leads and that those leads are turning into sales.

Smarketing stands for sales and marketing. The key shift here by smashing the two words together is *alignment.* Traditionally, sales and marketing teams have mostly been at odds. Sales thinks marketing is out of touch and marketing thinks sales doesn't follow up enough on leads.

Well the first quarter of 2015 is over. Tax liabilities are rolling in and Q1 reports are being analyzed. Are you on track to meet your 2015 goals? Revenue and profit aren't the only factors to consider here. So are leads and conversion rates.

Look at Conversion Rates

The average Hubspot conversion rate from visit to lead is 5% and from lead to customer is 2%. So if your goal is to get one customer per month, your website would typically need 1,000 visits in order to reach that goal.

Other numbers to consider are average revenue per client, in relation to your company's revenue goals. If one of your goals is to get $500,000 more in revenue this year and your average monthly revenue per customer is $10,000, then you would need about five to ten new clients, assuming they don't all sign up January 1.

How many leads would it take to get there? About 500 with a conversion rate for lead to customer of 2%. Obviously referrals have a higher close rate, which is why they're so sought-after, but if you're just counting on referrals alone are you really going to grow as fast as you'd like? 

When I originally planned this post, I had more of a marketing angle in mind. We usually blog about content marketing and are always trying to provide useful and relevant information to business owners. Keeping this in mind, I also know that it’s crucial to write about not only what you're knowledgeable about, but also what you're interested in. While I'm definitely a marketer first and foremost, I'm also a business owner. That’s why I decided to focus this post on my business goals for 2015 as a co-founder of DMD.

Even if you don’t own a business these should still be highly relevant to someone in the workforce, and—while I may not be an official expert—I’ve learned a lot since starting DMD. Above all else, I have learned that no one has all the answers in running a business because industries and best practices are forever changing.

It’s already 2015! The past year was a whirlwind; packed-full of incredible happenings, fresh ideas, and a digital transformation of algorithms across the board.

Users are getting smarter and companies are too. We’ve learned what we want to see, what we don’t, and how annoying it is to receive unsolicited ads again and again. 2015 will empower consumers to be even more selective about which ads come into view. This freedom to choose is great on a personal level, but demands marketers to develop (even more) thoughtful digital strategies. Here are some tips to make sure you're reaching the people who want to hear from your brand by optimizing your email, social media and website. 

Do you ever feel like you and your graphic designer are from two different planets?

You need each other to thrive, but sometimes there’s a break in communication, causing yet another inefficiency in the already complex world of content — a string of emails so full of attachments, revisions and terms so confusing, you’ll never swim your way to the top.

Here at DMD, we’ve experienced both sides of the time warp. We are happy to announce that there are some easy ways to reduce the confusion and shorten those email chains from the start. 

Blogging appears to be a permanent resident in the house of great marketing, but writing something helpful for your readers can be much more difficult than you’d think. Your audience is probably drowning in irrelevant search engine results, social media posts and spam already, making it exceedingly difficult to stand out amongst the clutter.

Fortunately, there are ways to check your writing to ensure it will not only be visible, but easily understood and actionable.