HubSpot Guide: How To Follow Up After A Networking Event

Kim Walsh is the Global VP, Go-to-Market Partnership at HubSpot. On this episode of The Salesman Podcast, Kim reveals HubSpot’s strategy of following up after a networking event/webinar and nurturing the participants into a sales-qualified lead. Resources: GROW – A unique online event for leaders in Marketing, Sales, and Customer Service Kim on LinkedIn Chris Voss’ Book on Negotiation: Never Split The Difference Qualifying sales leads and increasing close ratios Transcript Will Barron: This episode of the show is brought to you from the salesman.org HubSpot studio. Kim, welcome to Salesman Podcast.   Kim Walsh: Thanks, Will, thanks for having me.   Hubspot’s Process of Closing Webinar/Live Event Attendees · [00:10]    Will Barron: You are more than welcome. We’ll dive into a topic today that could be incredibly timely for a lot of the people listening to the show, how to take someone who attends a, whether it’s a live event, a live virtual event, or a live webinar, how to get them from just an email address and a name to perhaps marketing qualified lead, sales qualified lead, and hopefully customer. So let’s not beat around the bush here. Let’s just get super practical. Do you have a process for this at HubSpot? Is there a step-by-step process that you can share with us? Or I guess it might take longer than half an hour to get through, so we’ll dive into chunks of it, but is there a process that you guys have created and found reliable to get someone from just email address to sales qualified lead, or hopefully a deal at the end of the day?   Kim Walsh: Yeah, well, great question Will, and I would say this context is probably pretty important for anyone who is in sales. I would just say, the way that I think about it, is I’m in a pretty fortunate position, because in being in sales and partnerships at HubSpot, we have a fantastic marketing team who runs a lot of our event strategy for us. So I know sometimes in sales, you’re not fortunate to have a marketing team that runs such a great event marketing playbook and event marketing process. So you can go between both. I’ve lived in both worlds, but I would say the world that I’ve lived in for the last 10 years has been with a remarkable marketing team, who helps us take those lead registrants through our process, and through our flywheel. So happy to talk about that, but just wanted to make sure I was giving the right context, that a marketing team does a lot of the work.   Will Barron: Sure, because I, we touched on before the show in medical device sales, I did tonnes of in-person events. Massive urology conferences, gynaecology conferences, and there was no marketing team. I was the person chatting with surgeons, emailing them beforehand, getting them to come over to the booth, so I don’t look stupid in front of my sales manager. I’ve actually had a few conversations during the day, before we go out. So let’s assume for the audience, to make things more simple here, that they’ve got a marketing team, at least helping with a lot of this. If not, as you in your own words there, Kim, a remarkable marketing team doing the upfront production, I guess, of the events themselves. So let’s make that assumption.   How to Turn a Marketing Qualified Lead Into a Sales Qualified Lead · [02:27]    Will Barron: Let’s briefly touch upon the marketing,