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.