HubSpot's Global Director of Sales Engineering and Customer Sales Michael Currie discusses the resources and strategy a SaaS business needs to upsell to its existing user base.

1. Perspectives from selling back into the
customer base
Upselling and cross-selling the HubSpot portfolio

2. Expansion MRR is upselling and cross-selling

3. • Started the INBOUND marketing
movement
• MIT-born, Boston-based
• Content including Ads, Marketing
Automation, CRM, Productivity and
Reporting
• 20,000+ small and mid-size
customers
• Price-points from free to $10K/mo
• $250M subscription-based revenue
• Global Director of Sales
Engineering and Customer Sales
• Engineer by training
• Came to sales by way of sales
consulting in the enterprise space

4. Designing a upsell /cross-sell team
Sizing up the opportunity (Strategic)
Points of lead capture (Tactical)
Staffing the sales team (Tactical)
Goal Setting & Measurement
Lessons we’ve learned

7. • Determine your target
persona/company?
• How many of those personas exist in
your customer base?
• How fast do you expect them to adopt
the solution?
Sizing up the opportunity

9. Sizing up the opportunity
● Determine your target persona/company?
○ Marketers that value SEM and social ads -- 50-60%
● How many of those personas exist in your customer base?
○ 50% had connected social accounts
○ 15% had paid sources for referring sites
○ 5% used URL conversion tracking
Initial guessimate was 10% adoption --
● How fast do you expect them to adopt the solution? NO IDEA

10. Points of lead capture
Who communicates with your persona and what is their incentives?
• support team on an ad-hoc basis - no natural incentive
• customer success team on a quarterly basis - strong incentive
• marketing via content marketing campaigns and tool creation - it’s their job
What does your persona do in the app?
• performs keyword planning, create content, publish and measure results
What constitutes a lead?
• customer currently running ads or looking to start in the near term
• customer with a successful content marketing program
What is your desired call-to-action (CTA)?
• drive inbound demand to a DEMO or TRIAL

11. Staffing the sales team

12. Staffing the sales team
● Triangulating quota, tenure, velocity and skills
~500K ARR
quota
1-3 years
experience

13. Staffing the sales team
● Velocity of the cross-sell -
○ $100 MRR, 1-2 hour sale, 40-60 deals closed per month
○ $200 MRR, 2-3 hour sale, 20-40 deals closed per month
● How difficult is it to close a deal internally?
○ Out-of-box Terms-of-service (TOS)
○ Minimal order management overhead

14. Staffing the sales team
● Skill-mix
○ Product-oriented sale
○ Shorter duration
○ Less touch-points
Functional Sales
TechnicalProduct BDR/S
DR
HUNTE
R
SALES
ENGINEER
CROSS-SELL
FARMER

15. Goal Setting
● Start with the hi-level adoption goal, e.g.
○ Achieve 10% adoption in 24 months → 80 deals per month
● Achieved by 4 quota carriers @ 20 deals per month w $200/mo ASP
Each Rep:
● ACV: $2400 (<$5K)
● Annual Quota = $576K
● Tenure Range = 1-3 yrs
● Transactional sale of 20 deals per month

16. Goal Setting
● Start with the hi-level adoption goal, e.g.
○ Achieve 10% adoption in 24 months → 80 deals per month
● Achieved by 4 quota carriers @ 20 deals per month w $200/mo ASP
Each Rep:
● ACV: $2400 (<$5K)
● Annual Quota = $576K
● Tenure Range = 1-3 yrs
● Transactional sale of 20 deals per month

17. Goal Setting
Allocate lead goals to
marketing and customer
success (50/50)
● Marketing lead to
close - 5:1 -> 200
leads
● Customer success
lead to close - 2:1 ->
80 leads

18. Measurement

19. W1 = 50%, W2 = 75%, W3 = 90%, W4 ->Over-achieve

20. Lessons Learned
• Align to lead sources
• Specialists vs. Generalists
• Automate as much as possible
o Email automation
o Meeting Automation
• Make the reps part of the larger sales org
• Let’s them sync with product, let them sync with marketing
o Pointy edge of the spear
• Have a mini-onboarding service
• Connect everyone on collaboration services

21. QUESTIONS?