What to expect when working with IMPACT

What is required to be successful with IMPACT?

In order to be successful, you need to meet these five criteria:

1. You must be committed to earning the trust of the people who will buy from you. Today’s buyers use online content to educate themselves before they reach out to a salesperson. They are skeptical of sales pitches and self-promotional advertising. To win over these potential customers, you must be willing to address their questions in the most truthful and unbiased way possible. This includes writing about things like cost, problems, and your competitors.
2. Senior leadership must be willing to make this initiative a top priority. Leadership must be willing to take the time to learn what successful inbound marketing looks like, and they must serve as vocal champions of the program to ensure complete buy-in, especially from the sales and marketing teams.
3. Every stakeholder needs to trust the process. This includes senior leadership and anyone, like the sales team, who interfaces with customers. Everyone must show an eagerness to learn and try new things. They must do the work and follow the framework, accepting accountability at every step along the way.
4. You must devote the necessary resources. You will need trusted employees whose full-time focus is planning, writing, and publishing written and video content to educate your buyers and build trust with your audience. Your team will need the right tools to get the job done — as well as access to the data they need to make smart sales and marketing decisions. We highly recommend HubSpot for every client we work with.
5. The sales and marketing teams have to work closely together. Because buyers today do so much research before they enter your sales process, marketing and sales need to work together to ensure that the customer experience is smooth and consistent. Neither team can be successful without the help of the other.

What will working with IMPACT look like?

Your work with IMPACT will look very different from what you may have experienced with past agencies. We’re not going to try to impress you with strategies, campaigns, or deliverables. Instead, we will give you the tools and knowledge to generate your own success.

We will provide the strategy, the framework, and the guidance — you will provide the expertise and the execution.

Your coach

An IMPACT coach will guide you and your team through our program of training, goal setting, and skill development.

You’ll meet your coach before signing a contract to ensure a great fit.

Your coach will be equal parts cheerleader, visionary, and drill sergeant, planning the steps to help you reach your goals — then holding you accountable along the way. Your coach will be supported by a group of specialists who will work directly with your team on content strategy, HubSpot implementation, video production, and advanced sales techniques.

You will develop in-house marketing and sales expertise so you won’t need to rely on IMPACT or any other agency for your success in the future.

Your program

You will start with an in-depth planning session that maps out your first 90 days and sets the foundation for your success. Working with your coach, you’ll establish your vision for the next 12-24 months. Then, your coach will work to identify the areas that need the most improvement and create a plan to get started.

Several times each week, your team will work directly with IMPACT experts to develop the skills and processes they need to accomplish the priorities you’ve set. Beyond the meeting sessions, you will have regular access to your coach and trainers for questions and feedback.

Planning sessions repeat every 90 days to confirm alignment, set goals, and check in on team progress.

Your future

Step by step, your company will learn to run a high-performing sales and marketing operation. After 12, 18, or 24 months of our guidance, you won’t need us anymore — and you’ll no longer be dependent on an outside company to generate your leads.

Can IMPACT help me with my aggressive, short-term goals?

It depends on what you’re looking to accomplish. When you meet your coach, you'll talk about the goals you have for your business. Together, you will decide whether our program is the best choice for what you’re looking to achieve.

Once your program kicks off, IMPACT begins working with your sales team to start improving close rates. Most clients see better results within weeks.

That said, we know that short-term success doesn’t mean much if you can’t sustain it next quarter, next year, and beyond. Our framework is designed for both short and long-term growth.

Will IMPACT’s services work for a company like mine?

If you’re willing to do what it takes to earn the trust of your customers, our framework will almost certainly work for you, regardless of what type of business you are or what industry you’re in. You could be B2B or B2C, product- or service-based, local or regional, or big or small. IMPACT will help you drive more sales from your inbound marketing.

Our coaching model and framework have helped thousands of companies achieve incredible sales results from their inbound marketing efforts.

We have a library of case studies that show the breadth of our client pool.

Will I need a new website?

It depends. If your current website is not set up to do the basics of inbound marketing, such as publishing content and landing pages, then you’ll likely need some website work early on in the program. IMPACT has a full-service web team that can help.

However, in most cases, we find that a significant website project is not needed at the start of the engagement — and sometimes not at all.

As clients ramp up and their content catalog and website traffic grows, many need some improvements to their website, or even an entire website redesign, in order to get the most out of their inbound marketing program.

Your coach will serve as your guide for any website project you need.

How can IMPACT help me with HubSpot?

From portal setup and data hygiene to complex reporting and integrations, we can help your team get more out of your HubSpot investment.

We believe that it’s critical that you develop HubSpot expertise in-house. This is why we teach your team to be HubSpot masters, guiding you with hands-on, customized training.

If you have HubSpot or you’re looking to start using it at your company, IMPACT can help you with any of the following:

• Setting up your HubSpot portal
• Cleaning up old contacts, lists, reports, and workflows
• Onboarding and training for your sales team on the HubSpot CRM and sales tools
• Building reports and dashboards to measure sales performance and marketing ROI
• Developing a new website on the HubSpot CMS that is beautifully designed, optimized for lead generation, and easy to update
• Completing custom or complex integrations

Why can’t I hire IMPACT to just do our inbound marketing for us?

We have seen, time and time again, that outsourcing all of your inbound marketing to an agency is expensive and ineffective — and it rarely delivers the results clients are looking for.

Any agency you choose is going to need a lot of time to get to know your business, your customers, and your industry. And because they’re not living in it like you and your team are, they’re never, ever going to understand your business as well as you do.

As a result, content from agencies often misses the mark. Costly hours of back and forth quickly add up, everyone gets frustrated, and the outcome is disappointing. Many businesses find themselves paying each month for lackluster results. They bounce around from agency to agency in search of one that can finally deliver on its promises. This means more wasted time and money.

We believe there is a better way.

Businesses should learn how to do great inbound marketing themselves so they never have to be dependent on an outside agency ever again. In fact, almost every company that’s doing inbound marketing well is doing it in-house.

In-house inbound marketing is less expensive and more efficient — and the results are significantly better.

With our guidance, you’ll produce content that resonates with your buyers. Then, we’ll teach you how to use this content in the sales process to close more deals. You’ll do it all at a much faster and less expensive rate than if we did it for you.

And in the end, you’ll have the expertise in-house to maintain this momentum yourself, without having to pay IMPACT or an agency in the future.

What kind of results/ROI can I expect when working with IMPACT?

If you follow our framework and our direction, you will see a pronounced improvement in sales performance within weeks.

Thousands of businesses have used our framework to spur significant growth. We highly recommend you check out our library of case studies and hear about the incredible transformations these businesses achieved.

How much does it cost to work with IMPACT?

IMPACT offers a range of services in addition to our core coaching and training program. We address all aspects of cost in great detail in our “How much does it cost to work with IMPACT?” resource.