The Journey to the Top
Patrick Biddiscombe has taken a unique route to becoming the CEO at New Breed Marketing.
Out of college, Patrick started as a social media strategist at New Breed. After climbing the agency ladder into account management, his next step took him away from inbound agency life to Morgan Stanley. About a year and a half after leaving for the financial sector, he returned home to New Breed.
The company that he came back to after his time at Morgan Stanley was very different from the one he had left. The economy had taken its toll on New Breed and they had shrunk down to just 10 people.
Shortly after rejoining the New Breed team, Patrick attended INBOUND 2011 in Boston.
At the relatively small INBOUND conference, Patrick was able to chat with the HubSpot team and eventually decided to become a HubSpot partner agency. For 6 months, his team practiced inbound on themselves and then began offering inbound services to clients. This helped them fully grasp inbound before bringing clients into the space.
Building Packages that Deliver Delight to Clients
Like most HubSpot VARs, New Breed started out using the Fast, Faster, Fastest model that HubSpot recommended when it came to their inbound services packages. That model worked for a while, but it didn’t take them long to see that this model would only take their clients so far.
Today, New Breed has expanded their offerings and Patrick shared about their demand gen package. With this approach, they analyze the client’s entire funnel and then determine what package they should use to move forward. If they have a client on HubSpot or another marketing automation platform, they will first do a Gap Analysis to see where they need help.
This Gap Analysis examines the client’s whole funnel to determine where they have holes that need filled and in what priority those needs should be addressed. From there, New Breed recommends the best packages to help improve the overall health of the funnel.
Building Sales-Ready Websites
Designing websites on the HubSpot COS is a core part of New Breed’s offerings. Their own company site was the second website ever launched on the COS and they had the opportunity to be featured by HubSpot at INBOUND 13 following the announcement of the COS.
Here they again used the tool on themselves before offering the service to clients. In 2014, Patrick’s team launched 52 websites. Yes, that is one per week! This year they’re on pace to deliver a similar number.
Revenue Team
Since his return to New Breed, Patrick’s role inside the agency has shifted dramatically. Today he finds himself at the head of the Revenue Team. A core aspect of New Breed’s value proposition is the fact that they help clients unify their sales and marketing teams.
For themselves, they combined the sales and marketing departments into one department responsible for revenue.
Building the Team that Build the Systems
Efficient operations that run the company have allowed New Breed to scale quickly. To help implement these operations they’ve reached outside the traditional marketing agency talent pool and tapped into people with a strong tech startup background. This strategy has payed off two-fold.
First, these hires bring with them the understanding of how rapid-growth companies operate and they can transfer that perspective into the operations that power New Breed.
The second benefit is that these team members bring with them an understanding of the customer. Since New Breed partners with a lot of clients in the tech space, a team made up of former tech-startup employees is an asset.
Now they have a VP of Product, Head of Customer Success, and Head of Operations as part of their leadership team.
Growth Within Several Verticals
Reacting to the pains their customers were experiencing, the New Breed team launched a variety of new programs targeted towards the SaaS space specifically. Their Demand Generation Program is designed to help companies through the inbound Buyer’s Journey and onto lifecycle marketing for software companies. This support not only delivers leads to clients, but also helps them transition free trial users into paying customers.
New Breed Culture Code
Patrick and his leadership team built the New Breed Culture Code when there were 18-20 people on the team and he wishes that they had it in place since the beginning of the organization. The Culture Code has turned out to be a great recruiting tool becasue it sets the expectation for the type of persona they’re hiring.
Delivering Happiness shared a framework that helped Patrick and the team build a code that fit what they were looking for at New Breed. Check out the New Breed Culture Code:https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/embed_code/key/tAsNS2uaCNe2g7
Inbound Recruiting
Hiring the right people and creating a passive recruiting model is something that is a new focus at New Breed. The goal is to have potential team members pick New Breed as the place where they’d like to work while they’re still at their current job.
To date, employee referrals have driven the growth of the New Breed team.
Resources and Ways to Connect with Patrick
- New Breed Culture Code
- Twitter: @pbiddiscombe
