Agency Unfiltered

Daryn Smith, CEO of Huble, shares how his team became HubSpot's 2024 Global Partner of the Year—not by verticalising, but by chasing complexity. From early SMB roots to winning multinationals, Daryn explains why global reach, process re-engineering, and strategic patience are the new currency of scale. He also unpacks their shift to value-based pricing and how AI is reshaping—not replacing—their services.

Get ready for Owning The Outcome, a podcast that unpacks how HubSpot's most successful partners are leading with AI and owning the outcome in this new era.

Adi Jagannathan, the CEO and co-founder of OpenFlow, joins the show to talk about OpenFlow's journey from being a CRM software and industry agnostic firm to deeply specializing in the cannabis and dispensary industry. Adi shares the challenges he faced while operating agnostically, the evolution of his agency's business model, and how his category specialization (RevOps), industry specialization (cannabis), and software specialization (HubSpot) came to be. He also shares the unique opportunities that are present within the cannabis industry—especially around CRM, customer platforms, and the power of integrating dispensary point of sale data with customer data.

Lara Triozzi and Terri-Lynne Anderson, CEO and Sales Manager at Market Launcher respectively, join the show to talk about prospecting and lead generation. With both perspectives, we get to talk about both the broad evolution of B2B prospecting and the cyclical nature of how sellers must change their approach to reach prospective buyers and the tactical approaches that work best from someone on the front lines. We talk about the current state of prospecting, what businesses are looking for from sales reps and sales conversations, and what the Market Launcher team does today that can help others improve and/or accelerate their own prospecting efforts. And based on Market Launcher's expertise in the enterprise, Lara and Terri-Lyne also discuss how these early sales conversations change as you move upmarket.

Angela Pointon, President of 11 out of 11, joins the show to talk about employee extended leave—and offers tips on how you can plan for things like parental leave without destroying your P&L or the client experience. Angela walks us through her approach staff-wise, how she manages a mix of both full-time and contract employees to maintain flexibility, and when, where, and how redundancies and coverage models are established. We also talk about how it's handled on the client-side—how they're made aware, how the transition is positioned, and how Angela's team mitigates any client concerns or reservations. Lastly, apart from staffing, we hit on the other operational measures and processes she's put into place to ensure continuous service delivery.

Carlos Corredor, CEO and cofounder of Condor Marketing and Staffing Agency who's here to talk about how he's grown his agency past 70+ employees primarily through a delivery team based in Latin America. We discuss the history of Condor and its growth trajectory and Carlos's philosophy on building a LATAM-based delivery team while targeting and working with US-based clientele. We get into employment types, full time vs. contract vs. freelance, and the key benefits for tapping into this LATAM talent pool: both financial and skill-based. And for other US-based HubSpot partners looking to follow suit and grow a team outside of the US, Carlos offers his perspective on how to do it successfully—including how to anticipate the necessary changes across operations, communication, collaboration, and more.

Matt Smith, CEO and Founder of 1406 Consulting here to talk about two things: first, his entry into the HubSpot partner ecosystem via the old sales partner program—which we now know as the Provider program. We talk about 1406's origination and beginnings, how they started as a HubSpot partner, and how its navigated the ecosystem through today. Second, we talk about tech stack and platform consulting—and how important it is to go to market with a recommended tech stack for his clients. So we talk about Matt's approach to building that list, the qualification process he uses in determining what apps and integrations he wants to add to the list, and the relationships he makes with the app partners themselves. We also talk about how this manifests in the sales process—from discovery questions to inform his app recommendations, objection handling and navigating pushback or potential aversion to increased software costs to accelerate the sales process and close new deals.

Brian DeKoning and Duncan Craig, partners at Raka, join the show to talk about Raka Health—a new verticalized sub-brand launch geared towards healthcare and life science brands. They discuss the launch and how they made the call to formalize this specialization into its own brand. And with the launch of Raka Health, they share the changes they had to make structurally, operationally, within their processes and to their overall GTM strategy. Lastly, we dig into their expertise within healthcare to talk HIPAA compliance. Specifically with HubSpot, we talk about implementation for their healthcare clients that supports and meets their needs regarding HIPAA and privacy.

Hannah Collins Lee, co-founder and CEO of Second Mile, joins the pod to talk about one of the hottest topics in the business world: the four day work week. Hannah shares how the team ideated on, tested, and then fully implemented for Second Mile—and she walks us through what it now looks like in practice. She outlines exactly how the processes, operations, and employee expectations had to evolve to allow for this shift and how it now manifests in the team's client engagements. Specifically with clients, she talks about the announcement out to clients, the initial receptiveness, and the increased accountability she now had to deliver results. We wrap with impact to the business—from the trickle down impact on numbers and KPIs over to the culture, work-life balance, and employee experience.

Ryan Burkett, Director of Marketing and Operations at BrandGen.io, and Galen Dow, Director of Business Development at BrandGen.io join the podcast to talk about ”ABR”, or an account-based RevOps strategy, which presents a significant revenue opportunity for solutions partners and agencies as the next evolution of account-based marketing (or ABM). Ryan and Galen start by contrasting ABM vs. ABR, including the importance of having it orchestrated within a CRM, and then they walk us through what ideal ABR strategy execution looks like with HubSpot—both with the functionality available natively and with their recommended apps and integrations plugged in. They then share how this can manifest in the sales process, including the value propositions to use, the right discovery questions to ask, the blockers you can remove, which opportunities to seek out first, and the ABM tools you should integrate in first.

Matt Bolian, CEO and cofounder of Supered, brings his unique perspective from both the solutions partner and now app partner side on why managed services, agencies, and other people-centric organizations can be difficult to scale. Matt shares why a scaling strategy is so important, how partners should be prioritizing pathways towards scaling, and what opportunities are in front of those partners who are able to leverage the right systems, teams, processes, and technologies for scale. We then hone in on the idea of “tech-enabled” partners, where technology across the app ecosystem (specifically tools like Supered) can enable and support the growth of partners by increased capacity, improved margins, and higher client adoption of the platforms they implement.

This week's guest is Tom Richard, CEO and Co-founder of Unlimited Tech Solutions. As his organization knocks on the door of becoming an Elite-tiered solutions partner, Tom shares the selling and servicing frameworks that have proven to be successful in aiding his team's growth. We start with how he frames his organization in the ecosystem (and the name Unlimited Tech Solutions provides a great hint). We talk about the win-win approach his team takes to selling—regardless of whether it's pitching net-new services, reselling software, co-selling with HubSpot, or all of the above. He goes into detail as to how he prioritizes transparency and proper expectation setting. On the servicing side, he talks about his approach to scoping integrated tech stacks and complex configurations of HubSpot, something I know is top of mind for many.  And although it can present a great revenue opportunity, we also discuss the occasional headache-inducing experience of being hired to "rewire” the work done by others in a customer's HubSpot portal. 

Christopher Nault, Founder and CEO of Growth on the pod to talk about balancing small teams and sustainable growth. Chris walks us through how his team navigated the transition from traditional marketing agency to revenue generation and ops consultancy, a move that I know many partners are either thinking about or actively doing themselves, including actionable insights for others to apply to their own organizations. We then get into sales, where we learn about how Growth's sales efforts have evolved over time and the approaches and methodologies the Growth team uses today when actively prospecting, generating and connecting with leads, and working deals through their pipeline. We wrap with his point of view on the HubSpot ecosystem, the opportunities that exist for small services providers, and how best to carve out your piece of the HubSpot pie.

Tyler Samani-Sprunk, Chief Marketing Officer at Simple Strat, joins the show and pulls the curtain back on HubSpot Hacks—the highly successful YouTube channel the Simple Strat team manages to the tune of 18,000+ subscribers and 1.2 million video views. Tyler opens up to the history of HubSpot Hacks, where and how it began, and how it operates today. We discuss those early days, how the initial pilot was structured, how they measured success, and the methods used to accelerate its growth and scale their efforts. Tyler then explains how it's been integrated into Simple Strat's systems and other go-to-market strategies, and he walks us through how a video view on YouTube turns into a paying client of Simple Strat. He also shares the quantifiable impact Simple Strat has seen from the channel across lead generation, opportunity close rates, revenue, and more.  We wrap with Tyler's perspective on how others can uncover and leverage growth strategies like the one Simple Strat built with HubSpot Hacks—and he shares actionable tips for building your own growth playbook—whether it's through video-based content or otherwise. 

Dan Moyle, HubSpot Advisor at Impulse Creative and the instructor for HubSpot Academy's community building bootcamp, joins the show to share his perspective on community-led growth and why it's such an important concept and strategy for solutions partners to anchor to. We dig into the specifics around building communities, around your organization and as a paid service for your client's organizations, and Dan gets into the tactics for turning community into a powerful growth lever. We discuss what is and isn't community, where we draw the line between content and community, and more. We also talk about ICPs and how these ideal client profiles can help manifest into a community strategy—specifically, where & how you can be a contributing member to the communities that may already exist. We wrap with a look at how communities can be built and hosted on HubSpot with tools like Impulse Creative's Cohortium.

Gemma Price, CEO of HubGem, shares the history of HubGem and the path that led her towards specialization around the education space. We talk about the benefits of niche alignment for her team, her clients, and for the relationships she's cultivated within HubSpot's sales organization. Gemma also shares the risk partners face when making the decision to niche and the important considerations for after the fact—like hiring and training employees and resourcing accounts, to prospecting, sales conversations, and GTM strategies. Gemma also provides her perspective on the differences between “picking a niche” and “deep niche alignment” and what that looks like for HubGem. We wrap with Gemma's approach around HubSpot configuration for an industry that doesn't have a traditional “sales” function you would envision adopting HubSpot—including some of the cool things she's been able to build for her clients.

Kevin Barber, founder of Lean Labs, joins the pod to share his POV on the opportunities in front of HubSpot solutions partners with generative AI. He shares the ways in which his team has begun leveraging AI, what's been replaced in their internal processes, and what's been augmented and improved. We talk about the AI-prompt-powered solutions the team has both piloted and formally rolled out, like the Outline Optimizer and the Script Scrutinizer, and how Lean Labs handles the integration of these tools across their team and into their processes—from initial ideation, to test usage and prompt optimization, to ownership and involvement across the team, defining the completion criteria, and standardizing its usage and implementing it formally into their processes.

Neil Clarke, Digital Director at Quattro, joins the pod to discuss his process for building, maintaining, and prioritizing a small team—and how a lean operation has its advantages to both selling and servicing clients. Neil walks us through those advantages, value propositions, and how it manifests into Quattro's go-to-market—including why & how it can be an attractive option for prospects comparative to larger organizations. We also talk about the intersection of team size and technical aptitude, the approach Neil's team takes for more complex engagements, and how team size isn't indicative of a partner's ability to effectively design and implement complex configurations of HubSpot.

Dan Tyre, a 16-year veteran of HubSpot, head of the Lion community, facilitator of Academy's bootcamp strategy (most notably the Pipeline Generation Bootcamp), and longtime advocate, resource, and friend to many in the solutions partner community joins the pod to talk about the two things he says are the most important aspects of scaling your business as a HubSpot partner: culture and growth.For culture, he shares actionable steps and the things you can do *right now* to improve your ability to recruit, hire, motivate and retain the right executives, employees and partners. And for growth, Dan Tyre shares his own experiences in sales, marketing, and as an owner of a managed services provider himself—and the concrete steps partners can take themselves to sell better, scale effectively ,and address stagnant growth.

Dani Buckley, Vice President and General Manager of LeadG2, joins the show and shares with us her team's strategies for securing sustainable growth as a services provider. Our primary discussion is around sales enablement, and while they offer sales enablement services to their clients, Dani shares what sales enablement looks like for her team, including the methodologies, resources, playbooks, processes, and technologies that have been put into place.  And as a remote, distributed team, we discuss what sales enablement, team management, and sales performance management looks like for them, what works well, and what tips she has for others.

Tara Gearhart, owner of T Media Consulting, joins the show to discuss (1) established relationships with “sister agencies” and (2) the strategies that have allowed Tara, as a small business owner, to achieve sustainable growth and to carve out success as a Platinum tiered solutions partner. For partnerships, we talk about how & why she's sought out relationships, how these help support her menu of services, protect her key areas of focus, and how these relationships appear on the client-facing side. We also talk logistics—including how these are originally scoped & made, how payments and invoicing work, and how optionality is presented to the customer. On the strategy side, we talk about building and positioning contracts for long-term engagements, the means for establishing trusted advisor relationships, and her talk track and value proposition for HubSpot in competitive sales situations with other CRMs,

Jeff Bell, President of Mindscape, joins the pod to talk about Service Hub—and how they built in a client portal through Knowledge Base and Help Desk where clients can access embedded reports unique to their business, viewing recordings of trainings and videos custom built for them, submitting tickets to their points of contact at Mindscape, and more. Jeff shares structurally how it was built, how his developers unified the UX and menu with the Mindscape website, how private content is hosted and made viewable, and how client access is provisioned through automation. After we discuss what it looks like, Jeff shares the value his team now sees by transforming the way clients engage with the team—including time savings and efficiency gains, streamlined communications with clients and between departments, and improved visibility of work in production. We wrap with how Mindscape rolled this out, how they onboarded both their teams to the new processes and how they incentivized adoption from their clients.

Christopher Barnett, Founder of WORQFLOW, joins the podcast to explore solutions-based selling as a catalyst for scaling small sales teams. He explains its intersection with RevOps and how it can give partners an edge in competitive scenarios with other CRMs. Christopher also delves into multi-Hub selling, shares how it enhances the value of HubSpot, spotlights his favorite Hub "pairings", and compares it with the common "land and expand" strategy. The episode rounds off with his approach to software demos, where they live in the selling process, how they're structured, and how he provisions hands-on access to prospects.

Bryan Byler, Director of Solutions Architecture at Mole Street, is here to talk about artificial intelligence—specifically, how partners can navigate the growing proliferation of AI-powered solutions and technologies. He outlines a number of use-cases that partners should consider incorporating into their work streams, tools that enable those use-cases, and how he keeps pace with the rapidly evolving AI landscape. We then move over to Mole Street's performance within the HubSpot ecosystem, and after coming in 2nd for North American Partner of the Year, Bryan shares his insights on the team's sales engine—including their digital transformation initiatives and emphasis on expanding existing client relationships. We wrap with his recommendations for how small teams can find success in HubSpot's partner program—including the resources, approaches, and GTM strategies that can yield great results.

Rich Wood, CEO of Six and Flow, joins the podcast to share his team's experimentation with generative AI. He discusses what drove the initial interest, the guardrails he's set for his team, and how he's begun integrating it into his workstreams, processes, and more. Rich also shares some thoughts on how to onboard a larger team to generative AI use and upskill a team's “AI-savvy-ness”—including prompt creation, templatization, and the human “sense check” reviewal of outputs. We then discuss how generative AI has helped the team—including the efficiency gains uncovered and the pull-through impact onto the client experience.

Samuel Banks, Head of Implementation at Fuelius—a solutions partner who has been awarded three accreditations, joins the podcast to share how he identifies the work his team does as being well aligned with a specific accreditation, and how others can determine their readiness and eligibility. He shares the actual application preparation process, including who was involved across the team, the project management approach applied, the time and bandwidth required, and how to leverage the preparation resources made available. He also goes into application design, with his tips and strategies for building applications with a greater likelihood of success. And we wrap with a discussion on prerequisite certifications, and how Fuelius assigns, tracks, and manages that process.

We're less than ONE WEEK away from World Certification Week 2023—so George B Thomas, owner of George B Thomas, LLC and longtime HubSpot Academy advocate, joins the show to walk us through the role HubSpot Academy has played throughout his career and life journey, and the impact he's seen from achieving certifications by the dozens. We get into this year's World Cert Week event, what his plan is, and his recommendations for others to approach it with intention. And knowing George has navigated nearly all of the HubSpot Academy catalog, he offers up his tips for operationalizing the pursuit of certifications—including how he keeps up with new additions and updates, how he determines what to take and in what order, how to keep recertifications manageable to maintain certification status, and how to improve exam pass rates overall.

The countdown to World Certification Week 2023 has begun! From May 15th through the 19th, HubSpot will donate five dollars for every certification awarded during that week to nonprofits dedicated to expanding access and opportunities for education around the world. So it makes sense that for this week's episode, Penina Shtauber, a Director of Digital Marketing at ScaleOps, comes on the show to talk about her team leverages HubSpot Academy certifications to scale new hire onboarding efforts and reduce the ramp up time for the team. She shares the benefits behind certification assignments, both for the team and as a pull-through to their clients, how assignments are handled between company directives and self-selection, and how they continue to layer in for continued employee development.

Rod Moynihan, CEO of B.A.C., joins the show to share insights from his years of experience sitting on both sides of the SaaS partnership table. He offers his perspective on what solutions partners need to operationalize to be ready to engage with corporate, enterprise, and upmarket buyers—and how they can “earn the right” to have a seat in those discussions. We discuss the importance of deeply understanding your customers, domain, and industry—and how those evolve from serving SMBs and midmarket organizations. Rod also shares what partners looking to move upmarket should anticipate on changing—from their service offerings, sales process, and overall go-to-market strategy. We wrap with performance management and how success tends to be defined in upmarket engagements—and how citable % shifts in efficiency gains can go a long way.

Sam Anderson, CEO and cofounder of Origin63, joins the podcast to discuss her journey in becoming a technical consultant for upmarket HubSpot customers. Sam walks us through the team's original pivot to technical consulting services and how the needs of upmarket business change, become more specialized, and require thorough, post-implementation support. As Sam mentions, the actual implementation of technology is only 50% of the actual rollout—and successful change management is what truly ensures long-term success for businesses—so she explains her team's approach to change management and post-implementation support, and how it positively impacts Origin63's bottom line.

Yamini Rangan, HubSpot's Chief Executive Officer, joins the show to share her vision for the HubSpot solutions partner program, HubSpot's own strategic objectives for 2023+, the opportunities ahead for solutions partners, and her recommendations for how partners can thrive in the ecosystem. We start by checking in with her original vision statement for the partner program from a few years ago—and get her take on how HubSpot and partners are doing in realizing that vision together. We then dive into the big bets HubSpot is making in its long-term strategy development—from product development (including generative AI), to its upmarket strategy, to its own flywheel strategy across marketing, sales, and services teams. We wrap with her recommendations for solutions partners, including recommendations around depth of knowledge on things like CRM customization and extensibility, collaborative selling and servicing of customers with HubSpot, driving customer value with deep connection and engagement, and a ton more.

Jim Delaney, CEO of Traction.ai, who's here to talk about his perspective on revenue operations, HubSpot's Operations Hub, and the importance of a connected platform. We start with Jim's definitions for both connection and revenue operations—and the relationship between the two. He also shares how businesses can self-evaluate when their business may be ready for RevOps support (or the types of questions partners should be asking to uncover the need). Jim also shares how he sells the value proposition and key benefits of outsourced RevOps support, including tips on how others can improve their own offerings and positioning. We then pivot over to Operations Hub, where Jim shares some of his favorite Ops Hub-powered automations and RevOps activities, what it's been able to do for his clients, and the types of powerful use-cases other partners should be seeking out.

This week, we have on Dustin Brackett, CEO and Founder of Hive Strategy, and author of the brand new, just-released book “Market Like a Human”. In our conversation, Dustin explains what it means to "market like a human" and how a focus on quality over quantity can solve the problems prevalent today in marketing and sales strategies. We also talk about the crisis of disconnection and how Dustin's methodology helps reestablish connection with your audience. He also shares how he thinks about the underlying pillars and values of this framework, like authenticity and transparency, and how they should manifest in GTM strategies. We wrap with his read on the current servicing landscape—and how other partners can leverage human-centricity to cut through the noise of a saturated market of inbound services.

This week, we have on both Connor Jeffers, Founder and CEO of Aptitude8, and Brandon Greer, Head of HubSpot Ventures, to discuss the launch of hapily. Last week, HubSpot announced an investment into A8 Labs, the app studio founded by Aptitude8, to launch as its own software company—which has now been rebranded as hapily. Brandon walks us through the history of HubSpot Ventures and his perspective on hapily's addition into our investment portfolio. He shares what sort of criteria the team looks for when analyzing investment opportunities and what the relationship looks like between HubSpot and the companies within the HubSpot Ventures portfolio. He then shares what he's most excited about and the value he sees the hapily investment bringing to the HubSpot ecosystem. Connor then walks us through the hapily announcement from his side, including both the rebrand and the launch as its own, independent company. He shares how the team has historically positioned itself within the HubSpot Ecosystem—and how, if at all, he sees that changing with this investment. The one thing that remains unchanged is hapily's goal to enable partners in building higher margin services, an expanded menu of services, and improving their capabilities to both sell and service better. We then look ahead to the hapily roadmap for 2023 and beyond, thoughts on how other solutions partners should be thinking about the app ecosystem at large—including the opportunities that exist for them as both app builders and technical consultants.

We're joined by Patrick Biddiscombe, CEO of New Breed, who just recently was announced as HubSpot's North American Partner of the Year. Patrick joins the show to talk about New Breed's shift from traditional marketing agency to a revenue performance management firm. He offers his perspective and definition of revenue performance management, what led to New Breed's shift, and how it has impacted service offerings, ideal client profiles, prospecting and pipeline management processes, and his team's overall go-to-market strategy. Patrick then discusses how his team has interpreted, and pivoted alongside, the shifts within the HubSpot ecosystem over the last decade—and how others can plan to do the same. He revisits some of the most impactful changes he's seen in year's past, how his team adapted, and how others can codify a means for keeping pace. We then look ahead and discuss his expectations and predictions for the future—and how he, and others, can prepare themselves to survive and thrive. We wrap with big bets Patrick has in mind—and what HubSpot's NAM Partner of the Year has their sights on next.

This week, we have Patrick Thorp, co-founder and CRO of Ebsta, on the podcast to discuss the move upmarket and the importance of deep, actionable sales and revenue intelligence. Patrick starts the episode with tips and tactics for go-to-market teams looking to effectively engage upmarket businesses, including moving from lead-based to account-based strategies, the importance of phone calls over emails (and other saturated channels), the right metrics for measuring productivity, and the value of multi-threaded, multi-contact relationships. We then move into revenue operations and its role in enabling an upmarket sales motion. We discuss how a successful revenue operations function yields revenue intelligence—which increases sales velocity. Patrick references “Closed Won DNA”, and speaks to the impact the visibility into what drives revenue for a business can have for how it can generate more revenue. It isn't just about reaching more prospects—it could be pulling the right levers for the prospects already in your pipeline. Patrick wraps with the implications for customer success teams as well, and how this level of intelligence can improve retention and create expansion opportunities.

Katie Street, founder of Street Agency, comes on the podcast to explain that marketing is oftentimes the solution to a business's sales problem. Katie starts off by explaining why, and how marketing (specifically, content and brand marketing) can meaningfully contribute to an org's sales efforts. We also talk through, and unpack, the successful event-led strategy Katie and her team leverage, through both in-person and virtual, webinar-based events, to accelerate her sales efforts—and how other agencies can replicate the same playbook. She goes on to share her recommendations for measuring the impact of marketing campaigns in terms of its impact on sales, the elements and considerations to maximize impact and ensure successful campaigns, opportunities for repurposable content and micro-content creation, and how organizations should be thinking about ensuring sales and marketing team alignment.

This week, we're joined by Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, who breaks down the emergence, and seemingly overnight sensation, of ChatGPT and how it's set to disrupt agencies, services providers, and HubSpot solutions partners in 2023. Paul starts by explaining what ChatGPT and generative AI tools are, what they allow users to do, and how to design your prompts for the desired outputs. He then shares how AI tools like ChatGPT present an immense opportunity for agencies today—and a threat for any laggards. He breaks down the impact and implications it can have on process efficiencies, creativity and productivity, and more. Paul explains that ChatGPT will force agencies to rethink their pricing models and billing strategies, and opens the door for agencies to bring new, innovative products and services to market. We wrap with a look ahead—and where machine learning language models, generative AI, and AI use-cases are going in the not so distant future.

This week, we're joined by Emma Lynch, Managing Director and Founder of BBD Boom, who comes on to discuss her team's growth through a successful apprenticeship program. Emma starts with where and how it started and carries us through what it looks like today. She shares what she looks for when seeking out a local college or university, and the things she finds make a good college partner. We discuss the programs and candidate pools, and effective ways for finding and selecting the right candidates. Once they join the team, Emma shares her approach for onboarding new apprentices, the type of work they're responsible for, and how they plug into client engagements. We talk about the evolution of these candidates, from green, fairly inexperienced apprentices to client-facing, strategic contributors on the team. We wrap with discussing the impact BBD has felt from this apprenticeship program—from the growth of their team, the growth of their culture, and the growth of their leadership tier of employees. Knowing what we know about the talent shortage partners are facing, this program has helped BBD Boom with employee happiness, employee engagement, employee retention, and more.

Stuart Balcombe, Product Marketer at Arrows, joins the podcast to discuss how organizations can run customer success functions in HubSpot and why it can be so valuable in delivering a connected customer experience. Stuart highlights the benefits of using HubSpot for customer success, including ease of process creation, cross-org visibility of data and the customer journey, efficiencies and opportunities automation, and more. We discuss customer-facing plans, what they are, their importance in driving action, and orienting the customer journey, and how organizations can build their own. We then spend time diving in tactically to the configuration of HubSpot for customer success. How to set up your company, contact, deal, and ticket objects, how to customize and structure your contact timeline, how to facilitate the customer success handoff from sales, how to structure onboarding flows, how to manage renewals, and how to automate repetitive work.

Phil Vallender, Director of Blend Marketing, joins the show to discuss changing B2B buyer preferences and his team's method for adapting. As Phil notes, buyers are attempting to remain as anonymous as possible, with a strong partiality for data privacy, the avoidance of cold calls and spam messages, and a general disinterest in a seller's “lead nurturing events”. Phil offers his read on changing preferences and what his team does to enable buyers to self-serve through the buyer's journey and what this means for his team's GTM and approach to inbound for themselves and their clients—a strategy he's coined “inbound demand generation”. Phil explains inbound demand generation at the tactical level and what it means for the deployment of HubSpot and the associated strategies executed within. Specifically, Phil shares how the HubSpot CMS can be such an impactful tool to account for, and align with, this shift to yield positive results.

Mandy Thompson, Founder and CEO of Digital Reach Online Solutions, joins the show to talk about both her approach to building a globally distributed team and a big bet the team is making on productizing the complex end of HubSpot services—like API integration deployment. Mandy starts with her approach to building global teams, including the human-centric principles the team anchors to, the methods for establishing a company culture, and how she drives accountability across the team. From there, we talk about HubClub—her team's platform for productized, self-service HubSpot services. However, via HubClub, Mandy's team executes more advanced, technical HubSpot tasks—a contrast to the normal “rinse and repeat” style of productized offerings. She shares how HubClub is operationalized to be able to offer these services in a scalable way—and how she factors in the technical consultation, business analysis, and change management functions required.