Mark Roberge

Companies have access to exponentially greater amounts of data than ever before – and yet they are not sufficiently making use of it. Seeing the opportunity for companies to harness this data, Mark Roberge developed a data-driven approach to hiring, training and managing talent for HR executives and functional leaders. Using this approach, Roberge hired more than 500 employees, scaling HubSpot from a startup out of MIT to a publicly traded company. In this presentation, Roberge illustrates the detailed tactics he used in sourcing, hiring, training and onboarding talent, as well as the linkages between these talent management stages. He also explains how these concepts are applicable to roles beyond sales, including engineering, marketing and customer service.

Sales and marketing have been transformed by the internet, but established organizations have not always adapted. Today’s startups are disrupting incumbents because they reach customers where they are – online – rather than at trade shows, through traditional media or with travelling salespeople. As dynamism is the key to survival in the digital era, sales teams need to be able to disrupt their own companies before a competitor does. Sales and marketing expert Mark Roberge shows your company how to experiment with new capabilities and develop high-velocity, cross-functional internal sales teams at minimum risk to the broader organization. Roberge draws on his background with HubSpot and as a consultant with Boston Consulting Group to reorient firms’ sales teams from the comfortable (but unsustainable) to engaging in constant testing of new ways of reaching and converting customers.

Mark Roberge, a Harvard Business School senior lecturer of business administration, has been a leading voice on how to use data to hire, train and manage talent for years. Now, he’s taking a data-driven approach to successful business scaling. According to Roberge, companies are failing because they are choosing the wrong time and pace to scale. In this illuminating presentation, Roberge elaborates on his popular e-book, “The Science of Scaling,” to reveal how organizations can use their own internal data to calculate how to scale, and more importantly, when to scale. By learning how to harness data that organizations already have, Roberge provides leaders with a potent plan for scaling success that will better position organizations for rewarding growth potential.

It is a cliché to discuss the power and opportunity of social media platforms in generating interest in and demand for products and services. And yet, most salespeople fail to understand how to use those platforms in a methodological and consistently successful way. According to Mark Roberge, “social selling” is often merely substituting internet spamming for cold calls. Now, Roberge has utilized his experience in developing successful sales formulas to fashion a new methodology used by 65,000 sales people daily for social selling, one that turns a digital crapshoot into a precise science. In this presentation, Roberge reveals how you can end digital cold calling and start building your own demand. Social selling is how businesses, especially startups, are going to generate success in years to come. It’s essential to understand how to harness the opportunities afforded by these platforms rather than merely becoming another irrelevant and ignored voice among millions of others.