Many sales teams sheepishly admit they’re not the greatest when it comes to following up with trade show leads.

I get it, believe me. When you attend an industry trade show, your time there is a whirlwind of introductions, conversations, and contact info exchanges. You come back with an overwhelming stack of business cards, set of notes, and host of new LinkedIn connection requests. Not to mention the stack of unopened emails in your inbox and other work that has piled up while you've been out of the office.

To be clear, highly-qualified leads that are ready to make a purchase right away are not usually a problem. Where many sales teams fall short, though, is in the follow-up, management, and nurturing of qualified trade show leads who are not ready to buy just yet.

Luckily, this is an area where marketing automation tools like HubSpot can really shine. Here’s how sales, marketing and technology can work together to master the art of trade show lead follow-up and turn trade show leads into customers.

Sales teams often face a special set of challenges. Technology has fundamentally changed the way that people buy, and sales teams in every industry are feeling the impact. Cold calling is often ineffective, and many other traditional sales approaches are returning diminishing results as well.

With constant pressure to hit their numbers, sales teams start to panic, and performance starts to dip. As a sales leader, you must act quickly to resolve the issues your team is facing in order to improve sales performance. 

Your first step should be diagnosing the problem that your team is struggling with. Read on to explore four of the most common struggles of sales teams and ways to solve them. 

A poorly put together marketing plan will generate poor results, even if it's perfectly executed by a top-notch team.  

Marketing teams often don't realize they are stuck with a badly designed marketing plan until they are months into execution, when results have ground to a halt or even tanked. As a result, a tremendous amount of time, energy and resources are wasted.

Whether you’ve created your marketing plan in-house or you’ve hired an agency to help you, you can quickly identify whether you’re working off of a sub-par marketing plan that is destined to disappoint if you know how to spot key red flags.

Here are five of the most common signs that a marketing plan is destined for failure.

Too often, companies make the mistake of laying out their website page architecture in a way that makes sense to them, but not to their visitors. The results are confused prospects and lost sales opportunities.

When a user lands on your website, you need to provide them with a clear path to take the action that you want. Don't leave anything up to chance or ever make your users guess what action they're supposed to take.

Use these tips to optimize your web page architecture for best results.

Creating an effective content strategy doesn’t have to be overly time-consuming or complicated. You just need to know what pieces to use and how to assemble them to create the results you want.

Below is a framework for a content marketing strategy that can usually be built in anywhere between an afternoon and a couple of weeks. 

Of course, the more time you spend focusing on each of the areas below, the more comprehensive and effective your content marketing strategy will be.

Follow the seven easy steps below to build a content strategy that generates leads for all stages of your funnel.

INBOUND, HubSpot’s annual conference and the epicenter of all things inbound marketing and sales, is approaching fast. This year’s conference is September 4-7 in Boston.

This will be our fifth year in attendance, and every indication is that that this will be the biggest, baddest INBOUND yet.

With over 21,000 expected attendees and more than 250 educational sessions, there’s something at INBOUND for every marketing and sales pro serious about stepping up their game.

Here are our top six reasons we’re super excited about heading to INBOUND 2018.

Great marketing content requires input from special subject matter experts. Whether you're sitting down with someone inside of your company, a thought leader in your industry or an agency client, running a productive copy interview can be the difference between success and failure when it comes to producing great content. 

While some experts are just naturally more well-suited to being interviewed, there is a lot an interviewer can do to make the most productive use of everyone’s time. Below are some tips on how to conduct an outstanding copy interview.

INBOUND is HubSpot’s annual user conference and a community celebration of all things inbound marketing and sales. This year’s event is September 4-7 in Boston.

INBOUND is always full of interesting educational sessions on the future of tech in marketing and sales, and this year is no exception. In fact, this year’s agenda is more packed with new technologies than ever before. From sessions featuring AI and machine learning to blockchain, it feels like the only thing missing from the INBOUND 2018 agenda is a lesson in quantum computing.

Read on to learn our top picks for INBOUND 2018 sessions featuring emerging technology to check out in Boston this fall.