Business Acumen Flashcards
What is Business Acumen?
- Convincing your prospect that you and HubSpot are the right solution to help them grow effectively and achieve their goals.
- Business Acumen is an understanding of how businesses make money.
What 3 things to look for in Business Acumen.
- Identify their business model
- Determine how revenue is generated
- Look at what stage the business is at
Identify the business model & determine how revenue is generated
- Understand the company strategies to help better consult them.
- You’ll need to understand how the company makes money to better align with prospect goals.
Look at what stage the business is at
& Specify their industry
- Are they new and just building clients, or have they been a company for years? This can help you better understand past and future goals.
- by learning about the customers industry, you can discuss their current challenges and terminology.
If you are having a hard time finding the customers business model, ask yourself these questions:
- Who are their customers?
- How do they make money?
Business Acumen: What 4 things to look for for Revenue
- Customers
- Selling Mechanics
- Additional Revenue
- Timeline
- Customers
- Selling Mechanics
- Additional Revenue
- Timeline
- Who do they sell to? B2B or B2C?
- Do they go after one-time sales? Repeat sales (customers come back to buy more)? Recurring sales (like a subscription service)?
- Do they offer services? Upgrades?
- Do they focus on a few sales with a long sales process and high value?
A lot of quick sales with low value?
Business Acumen: What 2 things to look for for Profit
- Current Profit
- Current Operation
Current Profit & Current Operation
- How much profit do they make? What’s their profit margin?
- Are they operating at a loss? How long can they operate at a loss? How long will it take until they expect to reach profitability?
Business Acumen: What 2 things to look at for Costs
- Expenditure
- Cost Break Down
Expenditure & Cost Breakdown
- What do they need to spend most of their money on?
- Do they focus on cost per user? Cost per sale?
What are the 3 business stages?
- Startup
- Scaleup
- Established
Startup, Scaleup, & Established
Startup: tend to be focused on bringing their product to market and growing their customer base as quickly as possible. Often have small teams that wear many hates vs dictated sales and marketing teams. Probably have not invested heavily into their tech stack beyond product development
Scaleup: have identified their product market fit and have generated a steady revenue stream. Typically they are focused on improving their products or services and looking for opportunities to expand them. They are interested in automation to help continue scalable growth.
Established: looking to expand their market share and are most likely generating a profit. Their processes are established and engrained. Efficiency is a buzzword to improve margins. They may look to expand and try new business models.
What to research…
Common challenges: what typical issues are faced in this industry?
Terminology: How can you speak the same “language” as your prospect?
Regulations: what rules in this industry may slow down a deal or the implementation of solutions?
Success stories: can you show other companies seeing success with HubSpot in the same industry?
Digitalization: what is the industry history of adapting online solutions?
Business Acumen is not just about knowing how business is done. It’s getting to the core of that business and deeply understanding how it operates. As a rep, you will need to use your research skills and identify the following for each of your prospects:
- What is their business model?
- How do they make money?
- What business stage are they at?
- What is their industry type?
- What size is the company?
