Smack in the middle of the launch of The Comfort Zone, the presidential election and a heartbreaking loss in the CMG family, Donny, John and I took a couple of days to soak in some truly leading-edge marketing and sales advice at HubSpot's annual Inbound conference in Boston. Not to mention, Boston's best pizza, which has become a primary draw for Donny and me.

So what did I learn at Inbound that is important to HVAC contractors? Here's my top 10 list. Some of this we already knew, some of this is new to us.

#10 - A solid understanding of your target customer personas is essential to everything that flows from your marketing. (Already knew this.) Think you know who your buyers are? Everybody "thinks" they do, but often, a little diligence in this area can be shockingly informative. Do the detail work on this and get it right to lay a solid foundation for your messaging.

#9 -  Improving web page conversions is the easiest path to significant revenue growth. You are already getting traffic from interested buyers. Figure out what they want and give it to them where they land to begin the conversation. (We have a pretty good handle on this.)

#8 - Create buyer's journeys designed to maximize your customer relationship. What's the average lifetime value of a [good] customer? How much are you willing to invest to improve and ensure that number while you win more new customers? (We knew this, but have room for improvement all the way around.)

#7 - Google delivers answers to questions based on topics of your website content, not simply based on the words on the page. By creating clusters of website content around your products, services and the value propositions they offer homeowners, you increase the likelihood of being found in search, which should be delivering you 30% of your highest quality leads. (We kinda knew this, but new data demonstrates that Google delivers the highest quality answer based on what it "thinks" the searcher is trying to find.)

#6 - It's tremendously effective, and possible, to incorporate social media into your lead nurturing recipes, but it's a labor-intensive process that requires proper data analysis and detailed planning to ensure you're making the right offers to the right people at the right times. I've always thought I was missing something here and figured you could automate this process if you paid for the right tools. Not so. It takes a whiteboard and a knowledge of the tools to get this done, but it's worth the effort.

#5 - Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages) is something that contractors must comply with if you want to remain relevant in search. This is a fairly new thing, and must be considered whenever building new web pages that you want homeowners to find in search. Click Here to learn more.

#4 - 98% of marketing qualified leads do NOT result in sales revenue. This is not as applicable to the HVAC industry because most HVAC leads are Sales Qualified Lead (SQL). Very different from a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). But, everybody who visits your website is an unidentified MQL. Refer to takeaway #9 and identify more of those website visitors, then refer to takeaway #8.

#3 - 54% of sales reps will NOT make quota in 2016. Supply is up while demand remains steady. Buyers have changed but salespeople continue to do things the same old way. 

#2 - Implementing a sales enablement strategy can result in an effective improvement in close rate, and a shortening of your sales cycle such that the impact to your numbers results in a 30% improvement in revenue, which is on the order of adding one new salesperson for every three you already have. Read that again.

#1 - Technology will not be the reason you succeed, but increasingly, a lack of technology will be the reason you fail. This is about using data to make decisions. Contractors who don't measure the results of their activities and continue to make business decisions based on their gut will lose out to contractors who know how to measure and act on data.