Lessons from Mark Roberge

Mark Roberge, the former CRO of HubSpot and a senior lecturer at Harvard Business School, is a prominent figure in the world of sales and marketing. His data-driven approach to building and scaling sales teams has been influential for many modern businesses.

On Hiring Salespeople

"World-class sales hiring is the most important driver of sales success." [1]
"Hire the same successful salesperson every time." [2]
"I realized that every salesperson has her unique strengths. Some are great consultative sellers. Some crush their sales activity goals. Some deliver exceptional presentations. Some are amazing networkers. Some just know how to make their customers feel like family." [1]
The five traits Mark Roberge looked for in HubSpot sales candidates are: Coachability, Curiosity, Prior Success, Intelligence, and Work Ethic. [3]
"Great salespeople are naturally curious. They ask great questions, listen intently, and probe into points of interest." [4]
"Evaluating prior success becomes more challenging when the candidate does not come from a reasonably sized sales organization or does not come from sales at all. In these cases, I evaluate prior success through other activities in the candidate’s life. How did the candidate perform academically in school? What was her class rank? What were the candidate’s standardized test scores? Was the candidate a standout performer on a varsity sports team? Was she the captain of the team? Perhaps she contributed to a major championship?" [4]
"Don't hire a recruiting agency. Don't build a corporate recruiting team. Build a recruiting agency within your corporation." [2]
"Great salespeople never have to apply for a job...Great salespeople are passive candidates, meaning they are not being proactive about changing positions. Shaping a passive recruiting strategy that caters to this demographic is a necessity." [2]
"It is better to hire a top seller who lacks direct experience with your product category and your industry than a mediocre seller who has that experience. A smart, technical, business-savvy, curious, hungry, coachable seller can learn your product and your industry." [5]
When interviewing an enterprise sales rep candidate, ask them to tell you about a big win they are most proud of. You are looking for them to describe a complex, multi-stakeholder deal. [5]

On Sales Training and Coaching

"Train every salesperson in the same way." [2]
"Defining the sales methodology enables the sales training formula to be scalable and predictable. The three elements of the sales methodology are the buyer journey, the sales process, and the qualifying matrix." [1]
"Every top-performing salesperson succeeds in her own unique way. Heavy reliance on ride-alongs during the training process jeopardizes a new hire's ability to shine using her unique strengths.” [2]
"The sales compensation plan is Batman, the sales contest is Robin." [1]
"[I wanted] sales managers to spend as much time as possible coaching and to use metrics to drive the diagnosis and the personalization of the coaching plan." [6]
"The really good coaches and managers appreciate where the salesperson is, and know the one or two things that would get them [to the next level], and they hone in on that." [6]
"When managers close deals for reps, it takes away the confidence from the rep and it also makes them lazy. It just doesn't scale. What I realized was that our best sales managers were coaches." [6]
"Effective sales training and coaching can significantly improve sales team performance." [7]
"Successful sales leaders create a culture of continuous improvement and experimentation." [7]
At HubSpot, every new salesperson spent a significant portion of their 30-day training building their own website and blog on the HubSpot software, generating a social media following, and ranking in Google. This helped them understand the customer's world. [8]

On Sales Process and Methodology

"You have to start with the buyer and build out that buyer's journey, then build a sales process that supports that buyer journey." [6]
"The stages in your CRM, ideally — it's not always possible, but wherever possible — should be based on buyer actions not seller actions." [6]
"Hold our salespeople accountable to the same sales process." [2]
"A common mistake agencies make is taking an “inside-out” approach to selling; that is, they try to force buyers to understand their services, rather than understand how to help buyers."
" [9]Instead, we should think about designing the process from the 'outside-in'. Start with the buyer and forget about your agency and forget about your services." [9]
"Bottom line, the top salespeople in the industry speak less than 50 percent of the time in the first meeting. The worst talk over 70 percent." [9]
"Great salespeople educate potential customers through the questions they ask. Their questions are thought-provoking and elicit introspection." [4]
"Modern sales feels more like a Doctor/Patient relationship than a Salesperson/Prospect relationship." [1]
"Successful salespeople are proactive and take ownership of their success." [7]
"Salespeople should focus on building long-term relationships rather than short-term wins." [7]

On Scaling and Growth

"Scale is a privilege and not a right." [10]
"You can't scale a team until you know you have a scalable funnel (or model)." [11]
"I just don't think sales have anything to do with product-market fit. I think that's message-market fit. I mean, you told the buyer a story, and they gave you some money. Fine. This has nothing to do whether your product solves the problem or not, or whether they still have value." [12]
"Do unscalable things early... you should be generating your sales through your venture capital or your advisor network that does not scale but that's what you should be doing." [10]
The three stages of revenue growth are: Product-Market Fit, then Go-to-Market Fit, and lastly Growth and Moat. [8]
"Churn is a silent killer. You can be marching around and thinking you've got it all worked out... But a year later, half of them cancel. Churn is a lagging indicator, and as start ups... we can't use churn as an indicator to learn." [13]
"Our work in the product-market and the go-to-market phase of finding our lead indicator to customer retention, our lead indicator of unit economics, becomes our 'speedometer' as to how fast we can actually scale." [12]
"When you're thinking about scaling your business, it's essential to answer these two questions: When to scale sales and how fast?" [3]
"There were three critical support staff that I needed to scale. By support staff, I mean not quota-carrying people. For me, the big three were recruiter, trainer and ops." [9]
"Tell the big story, but build the MVP that could potentially get you to $10 million... and then that gives you time to test the next market or test the next product or both." [14]

On Data, Technology, and Alignment

"Provide our salespeople with the same quality and quantity of leads every month." [2]
"When I look at a rep, there are 80 things that I could possibly coach them on. The metrics guide me as to where to focus that time that's going to make the biggest difference." [6]
"I think lead scoring is great. I'm not sure that it's the best model to use to decide when a lead should be passed to the sales team, nor how many leads the salesperson should get." [6]
"Sales acceleration requires aligning marketing, sales, and customer success teams." [7]
"All marketers think sales people are overpaid spoiled brats, and all of the sales people think that marketing does arts and crafts all day... and that's the kiss of death in today's environment." [15]
To achieve sales and marketing alignment, Roberge and his team at HubSpot established a service-level agreement (SLA) where marketing committed to a specific quantity and quality of leads to sales each month. [14]
"A modern sales team needs strong data-driven processes to succeed." [7]
"Sales leaders should embrace technology and automation to streamline their processes." [7]
"The goal of sales should not be revenue at all costs. It's our job to find people we can make successful through the value prop we're pitching." [16]
"Statistics suggest salespeople who are intelligent and helpful, rather than aggressive and high-pressure, are most successful with today's empowered buyer." [1]

Learn more:

Lessons from Mark Roberge

On Hiring Salespeople

On Sales Training and Coaching

On Sales Process and Methodology

On Scaling and Growth

On Data, Technology, and Alignment

Written by Antoine Buteau

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