Happy Customers Are the Key to Growth

It's the end of the year, so I'm delighted to have you all in the room to focus on essentially the inbound opportunity, which is something that we're going to talk about today. In particular, happy customers are the key to growth. So does everybody agree or does anybody disagree with this statement? So just hands up who agrees with this? About 90 percent. OK, anybody disagree? OK, other people just want to put up their hands. OK, so just to kick off, my name is Cara Kennedy. Not too much about me, but just to break the ice, I've worked in HubSpot for about nearly five years and I've worked on five different teams in HubSpot. I'm a big fan of starting on a new team. So at the moment, I'm working on managing HubSpot for startups. Has anybody heard of HubSpot for startups? Yeah, OK, great. A few startups at the back. Is there anybody in the room that is a startup or a small business? Nice. Anybody looking for funding right now or in the process? So, yeah, that's the team I'm currently working on. So in HubSpot, you've got the direct team that are selling into direct clients, enterprise, small biz. We've got the partner side, which is Clued, reselling into different markets. And then we've got the HubSpot for startups. Team, which would offer support to people that are actually starting and essentially don't have a lot of money to do so. So we support them on that. But besides that, today, the focus is very much on the customer. OK, so HubSpot in the last, I think, four months, Clued, we've made a major play towards the platform, which is focusing on this here. Does anybody know what the name of this is? Yeah, go for it. Excellent. The Flywheel. Historically, businesses are obviously built to grow big and fast. And what happens is post sales isn't always a priority. OK, so this is something that HubSpot, like we depended on the funnel for years. And this is something that we got a lot of value of, like the gentleman there said, attracting people into the funnel, converting, closing and delighting. But now, just with the changes that have happened, we've got a lot of value. And essentially, how people are actually quite impatient today. They don't have a lot of trust. I think the generation Y now can't even read emails. They're only able to look at videos or audio. And due to this, we've changed the model to focus on this Flywheel model. Whereas in the past, the funnel, the customer was always the outlier. Whereas now with the Flywheel, essentially, we're going to focus at the customer as the core of every step of the journey. The idea of trust and essentially with the idea of still referrals are the top in terms of actually generating customers. And so we've got to focus on this Flywheel model. And essentially, how people are actually quite impatient today. I think the generation Y now can't even read emails. They're only able to look at videos or audio. And essentially, how people are actually quite impatient today. I think the generation Y now can't even read emails. And essentially, how people are actually quite impatient today. I think the generation Y now can't even read emails. I think the generation Y now can't even read emails. I think the generation Y now can't even read emails. Starting a company has been easier than ever. Scaling a company is extremely difficult. I started on the startup team. I moved from enterprise, where people had a lot of money, to a business where people had no money. And at the time when I moved, I realized that startups were very similar to kind of like puppies. They were very excited about getting involved in multiple tools. And what I found a lot of was people had 15 different tools and no actual visibility into actually what was happening with the business. So there's a lot of people managing 15 tools as opposed to managing the business to grow and scale with the customer at the forefront. So to be able to get visibility and start correctly and grow with say a system like HubSpot or integrate with different tools like Circle Loop and have that closed loop reporting is extremely important as opposed to having a system that's built on top of a system and you have no clear visibility. So again, we started HubSpot. There were six competitors back in 2004 that were in the automation market. Now there's 6,000 companies that are in that market. So that just is an idea of the amount of companies now that are in the same level, giving freemium, etc. So being able to start right is extremely important. Okay, so today the focus and the importance is on the customer and how we actually develop our customer. How many guys in the room have created maybe buyer personas? This is a common terminology in the inbound world. Okay, not everybody. Has anybody created a negative buyer persona? Not yet. Has anybody created more than one buyer persona? Okay, interesting. So let's hone in on four key factors. Okay, so how do we find potential customers? What do we ask them? HubSpot's customer development from when we started as a startup to how it looks now. And why is this important? And most importantly guys, why is it important to your business and what you can do today to actually action any of these items? Quite often, especially in the startup community, people have very niche products, very niche ideas, and they always want to know, okay, where do I find potential clients? Okay, so the first thing is these are key tips to looking for these potential clients. If you're, say, Red Bull, your audience is probably going to be looking at videos, YouTube, as opposed to if you're selling, I suppose, consultancy for accounting, it might be a white paper. So find out where they live. About four years ago I was working for a shipping company and I spoke to the head of marketing in the shipping company, it was a Finnish company. And the guy said, Cara, like there's nobody online wanting to talk about this tanker that's under the water. I'm not going to be able to, like marketing this is madness, you know. And I said, okay, well, what we can do is try to find where these people are living online. So turns out, on Cora, has anybody used Cora? Yeah, on Cora there's a large group of these people that are talking about this underground tanker that they put for this ship in Finland online. So on Cora what he did is he said, hey guys, I'm thinking of, you know, writing a white paper around this, you know, shipping tank underwater, what would you like to hear? So everybody started discussing it and essentially he wrote that white paper and he gave that, published it, and they started downloading in that generated traffic, leads, and ideally clients. I always try multiple channels. I remember working for an Irish company down in Cork. I don't know if you know where Cork is, but they were selling Aran jumpers into Germany and the United States. And it turns out in Bing, is everybody familiar with Bing? Search engine. This was the default browser on a laptop that was bought by people who like Aran jumpers in the US. So what we did was we advertised on Bing and we dinged a load of deals from that. So if you're able to know where these people live, where they circulate, this is a great start. Okay, so again, like the industry events today, tap into your network, DM on Twitter, ask the guest blog. Multiple channels will create a multiple channel approach to understanding who your customer is and essentially where they live. So how do you make contact? So tell me who and why. Obviously in today's world things are a lot easier. We've got Google, we've got Context, like this lady said, in order to make a consultative first call. But like share who you are when you're contacting the person. So again, my name is Kara Kennedy. I'm the product manager for HubSpot for startups. That's not true, but that's just example. And Neeti Shaw suggested I talk to you about. So get in with a connection from LinkedIn, etc. And this is another way to kind of connect with your potential buyer persona or your customer. Okay, so this is a real story. So currently my day to day is I have to convert new business and new business for me is an incubator accelerator or VC. In Dublin, we get to work into EMEA and Latin America. And traditional incubator for me would be in this case was Wira, which is run by obviously Telefonica. It's got 32 centers globally, which means I need to talk to and create a partnership with all of those contacts globally. So in my situation, we have a great relationship with Madrid at the moment. We have a great relationship with Wira UK, rock and roll relationship with the Germans. But for some reason, Mexico won't talk to me. So what I did, I started my career working in Wira in Madrid. So I was able to speak Spanish. That was something a bit different. And I was obviously able to use sorry, guys, this is a direct competitor of somebody in the room. So I was able to use a video system and while you speak Spanish, but I don't write it very well. But I was able to use this video recording to describe what I was doing with the other partnerships. I put it to Augustine, who's managing partners and thankfully speaks English via LinkedIn. And we immediately were able to connect on this. Okay, we have the contact. We're developing the relationship and that's all about the customer and the development in terms of how you can connect. And I was really skeptical when I started using video and when I had no other choice, because again, I learned Spanish, not in the stereotypical way where you go to college. So I had to use video to communicate to my audience in Latin America. But then I started doing it into Europe and I thought, God, if somebody's in their forties or fifties, I might get sick of me like doing high. This is Kara. But people loved it. And again, with the generation below, like things like video were a lot easier to watch than reading a long email. So I think this is definitely something in terms of a takeaway to test with your audience to see how you can connect. Okay, so people, I suppose, maybe aren't too busy. It might be the fact that you're not maybe asking correctly. Okay, so what do you ask? Okay, you want to ask what do they want? So I was asked the pendulum summit about three years ago. Has anybody heard of the pendulum summit? It's an Irish event. It's nothing serious. But I met this guy. I personally didn't meet him. But he was a guy who had made 10 million euros. He'd lost 10 million euros and he made 10 million again. So I was like, wow, this is really interesting. Like, and he kept his presentation really simple. But he got on stage. He'd written an acronym. And he said, basically, very simply, at the end of the presentation, he goes, you know, if you want to do what I did, you just find out what these people want. You go get it and you give it to them. And that's it. That's it. There's no more to it. And that's how he made lost and made 10 million again. So understand, I suppose, number one, what are you trying to get done? Okay, so these are like the five whys developed by Toyota, which is understanding what are you trying to get done? Build a fence. Why? So I can surround my front yard. Why? So I can plant a garden. Why? So I can grow my own food. Why? So I can save money on groceries. So this is just a use case in terms of when you're employing the five whys. We always said in my family that my mom would be a great sales rep because she creates pain like that. And I remember, like we always say to her, and recently my brother Kevin moved back from Australia and he got a letter into the post. And my mom rings up straight away and she says, Kevin, you have a brown letter from Australia. And Kevin said, Oh, that's fine. You know, I'll look at it later. And she said, Well, do you not want to look at it now? It could be bad news. So he says, Okay, open the letter. And she said, Oh, God, Kevin, it's tax. And he said, Well, forget about it. I'm not living in Australia. And she said, Well, Kevin, what happens if you have kids in the future and they want to live in Australia and you have to pay tax? And he said, Okay, Mom, send up the letter. But creating the pain, understanding what that pain is, you can offer someone the solution to their problem. Is is an extremely important way in order to kind of understand your customer as well and obviously develop on, you know, finding a solution for that customer. So what I'm going to do now is I'm going to bring you to something you've probably seen before. But ideally, we're going to talk about it just a little deeper for your own business. Okay, so this is the persona profile checklist. Has anybody seen this before? Okay, it's quite new to a few people. Okay, so just bring it back to the people who had created multiple personas, which are your ideal clients. So, I mean, the first thing is having one persona is a great start. Remember, like the puppies, you want to stay focused, you want to stay focused in order to actually scale the business. So generating one persona who is your ideal client is a starting point. I'd recommend MakeMyPersona.com. That will help you ask the questions you need to generate your first persona. When we started HubSpot and right up to today, for example, in the Dublin office, you'll have the corporate team talking about corporate Cathy on the floor. You'll have the small business team talk about marketing Mary. You'll have the partner team who are reselling talking about agency Ian. And you'll have now the new team, which is salesperson Sam. So these are all personas that have developed over time. When HubSpot started back 14 years ago, Clued, is it? Okay, we were just an automation system. We were new and we didn't have any customers. So we knew that we could potentially sell to Enterprise Aaron, who was the marketing person in say Coca-Cola with access to a large pool of money and a team that could execute on using HubSpot. We knew that we could focus on marketing Mary, who was second in line to the actual decision maker. So she would essentially use the product, but she'd be in a very small business. And then guys like Clued, it's very important to kind of obviously have your go to market for Italy, Germany, different countries. And agencies are going to take you that level to scale because they'll resell into those countries. The problem was there was only four people on the team. So what we had to do is choose one direction. So after multiple debates as, okay, Enterprise Aaron will give us a great boost, but she's a long sales process, marketing Mary was the final decision. Is there any reason why we chose marketing Mary to focus on in terms of buyer personas to start the business? Any obvious reason? Advocate your product to more and more people. I'm sure she networked with others as well. Yeah. Larger market, huge market in North America where we started for small businesses. Exactly. She was closest to the decision maker or maybe a decision maker herself because she was at a small business. Any other reason? Shorter sales cycle. So we could be talking to Enterprise Aaron until the cows come home, as they say in Ireland. But yeah, shorter sales cycle. We were a startup. So our main focus was to grow. So to bring in money and to bring in customers early days in order to get to that next step, we chose marketing Mary. Okay. Marketing Mary is still spoken about in HubSpot, but now we've got marketing Michelle. So what's the difference with this lady? Any idea? She's more senior. She's more senior? Yeah. So marketing Michelle, about a few years ago we realized marketing Mary has actually turned into marketing Michelle. Okay. So marketing Mary has grown up. So she's now like actually not living like out in the suburbia. She's living near the city. She's got more experience. She's aspiring CMO. She's using different systems now like Uber, etc. And she's evolved. So the takeaway here is as the business evolves, your buyer personas will evolve, your markets will evolve. So you need to make sure you're consistently evolving on your persona development. When I started HubSpot for startups in Dublin, I went after growth Gary. I didn't want to talk to marketing Mary or Enterprise Aaron. I wanted to focus on guys who actually ran startups. So is anybody a growth Gary in the room? Only one growth Gary? Two growth Gary? Half a growth Gary? But yeah, I developed this persona, somebody who was working in a seed series A company that was being funded in the startup world. The takeaway here guys in terms of I suppose what customer development can do for you is making sure that you understand what your customer eats, breeds, ice cream they like in order to get to them on a day to day basis. Now people are using brands like this. Is everybody familiar with these brands or two or three of these brands? Is there any reason why these brands are so important or what makes them different on the market? And yeah, recently this Dollar Shave Club was bought by anybody know? Unilever. Yes. Any reason why Unilever would buy this company that's only three years old? Maybe an older? Unilever is huge, but this Dollar Shave Club has data which always speaks reams ahead of the rest and has a reoccurring revenue model where you'll get blades every month and this is almost built into this persona's life. This isn't just a one off deal, this is something that when whoever used Dollar Shave Clubs wakes up in the morning, this is the brand at the forefront. It's like the Starbucks. You're part of that person's day, it's not just a once off product. Then they'll get into the car and use a Lyft or an Uber or a MyTaxi, so it's the brand, maybe not Uber, but it's the brand at the forefront because the brand has put the customer and the customer experience at the forefront. So Unilever bought this Dollar Shave Club because they've developed this data over time around their persona, around their customer, so they don't just know that it's a male living in Dublin, they know it's a male living in Dublin that uses Lyft every morning at 9 o'clock and works in HubSpot and doesn't like eating, I don't know, sushi. And they leverage that then to their advantage to become a part of that person's life. So why is continuous customer development important? Because happy customers are the key to growth. So I'm going to end on this, and again this is not the end of our conversation, we're here for another few hours, so feel free to reach out to me, we can speak in more detail. But let's end on the data. So happy customers are the key to growth. So it costs 5x to 25x more money to acquire new customers than to keep existing ones happy. Referrals are still the number one most common source of new leads for business around the world. And finally, engage customers by 90% more often and spend 60% more per transaction. So that's food for thought. So thanks very much for your time. Any takeaways? Execute. And yeah, enjoy the rest of today.