It was 2008. I was based in Dubai, working as a Senior Program Manager for SAP. The world's economy was about to fall off a cliff. My job was a high-stakes role with a massive quota. I was flying five days a week, trying to rescue failing projects and sell new ones. The money was incredible. More than I had ever seen in my life. But I was miserable. My wife was in Madrid, an eight-hour flight away. I was living out of a suitcase. This life, this definition of "success," left me feeling empty.
This experience was the start of my inbound marketing journey, although I did not know it at the time. What happens when you get everything you thought you wanted but still feel completely unfulfilled? You start searching for a different path, which for me, was a whole new inbound marketing journey. One which, ultimately, led me to write a book.
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I was constantly on the move. My body started to protest the endless miles. My wife of 25 years and I had never lived apart, but my consulting jobs always involved travel. At first, it seemed manageable.
By the second year of this grind, though, I was deeply unhappy. The monthly commute between Dubai and Madrid was wearing me down. The eight-hour flights in economy class became torture, especially after a serious injury.
During a trip home, I tripped and fell down a flight of stairs. An MRI later revealed a dislocated vertebra. The lower back pain became a constant, unwelcome companion, one of my most significant personal pain points. Imagine being crammed into a middle seat on a 15-hour flight with that kind of pain. It was brutal.
The turning point came during lunch with my boss in Madrid. He wanted me to take a permanent role, which was code for a pay cut. I was already looking for a way out. My back was screaming. When he asked if he could count on me, I gave him my resignation right there.
Quitting was a leap of faith. But both my brother, also an SAP consultant, and I knew something had to change. We were successful, but we had hit a ceiling. There's a fundamental flaw in the consulting business model. You only have so many hours in a day to sell. You are trading time for money, and that is not scalable. We wanted to build something bigger than ourselves, something that didn't depend on our direct involvement for every dollar earned. We needed a new marketing strategy that went beyond the traditional consultant hustle.
This realization is common for many service-based small businesses. The outbound marketing approach of cold calls and constant networking has its limits. We needed a system that could attract prospects and generate leads even while we slept. We wanted to build long-term relationships with clients, not just chase the next contract.
We did not see our skills as a simple commodity. Some people believe consulting work can always be done cheaper offshore. But that is only true if there is zero risk involved. Every single project we ever worked on had risk. Risk management is a core part of project management for a reason. So, we needed a new model. A way to deliver value that was not tied directly to our time. We wanted to attract and train more people just like us.
Every year at SAP, I had to submit a business plan. My plan always included a section on marketing. And every year, the director of marketing would tell me the same thing. "Do more inbound marketing," she would say. She could not really explain what it was, but she was insistent. Her advice planted a seed that would later define my career.
One day, she invited me to a HubSpot software demonstration. It was interesting. The idea of generating leads without constant travel and networking was appealing. After quitting my job, that idea became a necessity. I had to figure out how to generate a lot of leads, and I had to do it fast and on a small budget. Trade shows and traditional advertising were out; a past event cost $50,000 and gave us only nine leads. I remembered my former colleague's advice about inbound marketing techniques. The inbound marketing methodology focuses on attracting customers through valuable and relevant content. It felt like the perfect solution.
We needed a constant stream of leads without breaking the bank. So, we signed up for HubSpot. I had an MBA and years of business experience. But I was not a trained marketer. I started working my way through all of HubSpot's training, learning how inbound marketing worked could transform our business. We set out to turn our website into a digital lead generation machine.
The journey was far from smooth. We made plenty of mistakes along the way. We had some things right, but we missed the mark on some very important parts of our inbound marketing strategy.
When we first signed up, HubSpot was primarily a marketing platform. It did not have a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This was a huge problem for our data management needs. We were supposed to track opportunities inside the marketing system, but this process simply did not scale.
We spent over two years looking at CRM software like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics. None of them felt quite right for us. We were one of the first businesses to sign up for the HubSpot CRM when it launched. It made a world of difference. A smart CRM became the core of our operations, allowing us to manage customer data effectively and provide better customer service.
Looking back, we should have started with a CRM and worked our way back to marketing. Having a central hub for all customer data is fundamental. Without it, leads fall through the cracks and the customer experience suffers, preventing you from building lasting relationships.
Our single biggest error was not having a content plan. We were publishing content without a real blueprint. We didn't have clearly defined buyer personas, so we weren't sure who our target audience really was or what they needed at each stage of the buyer's journey. There was no simple way to visualize a content strategy back then.
This meant our content creation efforts were scattered. We wrote blog articles and created guides, but they weren't connected to a larger marketing funnel. We needed a plan to create content that would convert visitors into leads and then nurture them into customers.
Years later, when HubSpot released its content planning tools, it was a major revelation for us. By then, we had already produced most of our content that we still use today. We eventually went back and remapped everything into highly optimized funnels. A clear plan would have saved us years of effort and shown us how to optimize content for the search engine from day one.
As a service provider, this mistake was massive. We were so focused on the sales side of the marketing work that we forgot about the delivery side. We were getting great consulting opportunities. But we did not have enough consultants to staff the projects. This bottleneck meant we had to pass on business we had worked hard to get.
It looked like our sales process was broken. In reality, it was our delivery process that needed help. This highlighted how a good marketing playbook needs to account for the entire business, not just lead generation. The flywheel spinning for sales is useless if the fulfillment side can't keep up.
We finally realized we were in the recruitment business just as much as the consulting business. This insight changed everything. We started applying inbound marketing strategies to attract talented professionals, using engaging content to showcase our company culture and opportunities.
The core concept of the inbound marketing methodology is straightforward. You create a valuable piece of content, like an ebook or a checklist. You put that content behind a form on your website. Then you write blog posts and use calls-to-action to drive traffic to that content. When a visitor fills out the form, you get a lead.
As senior business consultants, we did not have "marketing content" ready to go. But we knew we could create it. Our HubSpot consultant told us to start by turning existing documentation into helpful guides and content offers. We created assets like "The 10-Step Checklist for the SAP ASAP Project Preparation Phase."
Over the years, we built a massive library of great content. We published nearly 400 downloadable guides. We developed 17 online calculators. We even made several online product selectors. Our approach combined different marketing strategies, including email marketing campaigns to nurture the leads we captured. We focused on helping people search for answers and providing clear solutions.
One of our most popular pieces was an SAP Mindmap. It was downloaded thousands of times and simplified a very complex topic. This was the key. Our audience dealt with difficult situations all day. We gave them simplicity and clarity. As a result, we became a HubSpot Gold Partner, and our brand awareness grew significantly. Our little consulting shop was now helping other businesses with their sales and marketing.
| Traditional Consulting Model (Outbound) | Our New Model (Inbound) |
|---|---|
| Relied heavily on networking and cold calls. | Focused on attracting prospects with helpful content. |
| Time was directly traded for money. | Created scalable assets that generated leads 24/7. |
| Growth was limited by personal bandwidth. | Built systems for lead generation and nurturing. |
| Marketing was an expensive, short-term activity (e.g., trade shows). | Marketing was an investment in long-term assets (e.g., blog articles, guides). |
Pro-Tip: Turn your SAP documentation into downloadable inbound marketing journey resources—checklists and calculators—to attract qualified leads.
Any consulting business needs systems. You need a way to handle timesheets, expense reports, and payroll. In my corporate roles, I had seen how big companies like SAP and Accenture used marketing automation and other tools to handle these tasks. But their systems were far too expensive for a startup.
So, I built our own. I used my knowledge of enterprise systems as a reference model. I stitched together a Business Operating System (BOS) using various cloud-based tools and management software. We used things like QuickBooks Online for accounting and HubSpot as our marketing hub and sales platform. This created a unified data platform for our business.
My goal was to build a system that was infinitely scalable, something our management team could rely on. It needed to work whether we had one consultant or ten thousand. And to a large extent, it worked beautifully. In fact, some of our customers implemented our BOS in their own companies. One was later acquired, and the new parent company kept our system because it was so efficient. This proved that even small businesses can build powerful, scalable operational systems.
Pro-Tip: Connect your inbound marketing journey data sources by integrating cloud CRM and accounting to ensure your system scales efficiently.
My shift from an exhausted SAP consultant to an inbound marketing leader was a long road. The journey was full of wrong turns and valuable lessons. Ultimately, this entire inbound marketing journey was about solving one huge problem. I had to find a way to stop trading my time for money. The system we built is designed to solve the common challenges every business faces, from tiny startups to giant corporations.
The core difference between starting a business today versus 50 years ago is simplicity. Today, technology makes everything easier. This also means more competition. Marketing and sales are the factors that set successful businesses apart. It's how you build long-term relationships and establish trust in a crowded market.
In the end, every business is now a digital business. Your inbound marketing efforts must be tightly integrated with everything you do. My inbound marketing journey taught me how to build that integration from the ground up, creating a sustainable model for growth.
Pro-Tip: Review and adapt your inbound marketing journey each year to stay competitive and relevant in the SAP consulting landscape.
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We use our custom version of the Inbound Marketing Methodology, literally decades of industry experience and a never ending search for the competitive edge, to help you achieve new levels of business success. Please our book a meeting service to get started.