Agency Unfiltered

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.