How Sales Teams Should Leverage Technology to Maximize Their Time
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by silo departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace, Lord Lack, lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge. Never fear, hub heroes.
Intro:Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, educate, empower, and execute. Hub heroes, it's time to unite and activate your powers.
Liz Moorhead:Chad, it's just you and me.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Can we land the plane? That's the question.
Liz Moorhead:I have the I have the I have the plane landing button this time.
Chad Hohn:Okay. Good.
Liz Moorhead:So I know that. The
Chad Hohn:plane lander, then we're good.
Liz Moorhead:I'm very happy about that. But Yeah. Now that we've really done a deep dive into a case study of what it means to be a professional in podcasting. Welcome back to another episode of the Hub Heroes podcast. What I am really excited about today is that we've got our guy, Bastian Paul, back from Hubly.io.
Liz Moorhead:How are you doing, bud?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Welcome back. Great. Thanks thanks, guys, for having me too again. And, this time, I I took my headset to have a better sound with the mic.
Bastien Paul:Oh. It was for the PlayStation five at the beginning for the headset, but, it was also on Mac. So so that's perfect.
Liz Moorhead:Wait. Just like you sound like
Chad Hohn:you're transitioning noobs. Yeah.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of it's just expensive, but, for preference what? Sorry, please.
Liz Moorhead:I said, is that what that crunching noise was? The crushing noobs?
Bastien Paul:Yeah.
Chad Hohn:I said it's I said it sounded like he's crushing noobs. Yeah.
Bastien Paul:He's crazy. Crushing noobs. I think I'm more crushed by, boys for for 14 yards now than before. I know.
Liz Moorhead:Oh, man.
Bastien Paul:I don't want to hear that voice. You know?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Well, you know, there is something about when you're just a teenager, how good you are at video games for no apparent reason.
Liz Moorhead:Bastian, I'm hearing some trauma in your voice. Do you need hug or perhaps the consult of Yeah.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. When I will come back here in The US, I will ask you for for helping me, guys.
Chad Hohn:Oh my gosh. It's incredible.
Liz Moorhead:Well, Bastian, for those of you for those of our audience members who may have missed you the first time around, can you tell us a little about yourself, who you are, what you do? Sure.
Bastien Paul:I've been
Liz Moorhead:crushing noobs and crying about
Chad Hohn:14 year olds.
Bastien Paul:We obviously obviously, the the audience, heard that I'm French. So live in France, Paris. It's pretty cold here. And, CEO and cofounder of Hublid. Hublid is, a Chrome extension to track, sales activities from LinkedIn inside HubSpot.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
Bastien Paul:So we are doing, like, kind of HubSpot LinkedIn integration. And, in few words, you can import contacts, conversation, invitation activities inside of Spot and draw, incredible, I would say, incredible dashboard, report, list, whatever you want, with LinkedIn activities inside of Spot.
Chad Hohn:Hey, everybody. Yeah. So, Liz's connection's cutting out a little bit there. So she's turned off her camera, but she's still here for the episode. But just thanks so much, Bastian, for giving us a, you know, a intro to you know, what it was that you talked about last time.
Chad Hohn:It's definitely really awesome to have that LinkedIn activity inside of your HubSpot. I mean, really having everything completely in HubSpot is the most important thing if you want to be able to truly report on your sales activities like you guys, you know, do. So super important piece for people who are leveraging LinkedIn as a platform. And we couldn't be more excited to have you back.
Bastien Paul:Thanks. Thanks for having me. Excited too. Last time, it was a good talk, so I Yeah. Yeah.
Bastien Paul:Think we have we'll have a good talk now.
Chad Hohn:Yep. Yep. Do you wanna should we move on to the next one?
Liz Moorhead:Yeah. Hi. Can you hear me okay?
Chad Hohn:Yep. Yeah. Yeah. We can hear you great. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:That's good. Yeah. Yeah. So, one of the things that we've heard a lot is, you know, from other sales teams is that they really struggle to tap into, like, HubSpot's automation and CRM functionality. Right?
Chad Hohn:And, to allow those automations to increase, their selling time rather than just spending time manually managing their data. You know, why do you think that is? And is this something that, you know, can be fixed in the in the sales team land?
Bastien Paul:I guess, like, you can bring a lot of data. And since you have AI now, you can do a lot of automation really easily, especially with AI. Like, you can create your own charge g charge GPT custom GPT, or you can create now custom GPT by API. So you can create a specialized GPT with your knowledge plus accessing some some knowledge and performing API, request for you. So you can really trigger some automation.
Bastien Paul:But Mhmm. At the end, they access to the data online, but they can't they can't access to your data. So you have to, to have let them the opportunity to access to your data. And I think today yeah. The major thing the major problem.
Bastien Paul:I think you you will be with me on this one, but it that, like, most of automation and workflows don't work because data is missing in the CRM or data is not up to date.
Chad Hohn:Like, missing from the front end, like, data entry standpoint on the front end or just in general?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. I mean, like, as we spoke last time, like, for example, salespeople and marketing people don't speak the same language. Like, salespeople prefer to when you when you hire salespeople, what you want to maximize is time spent on the phone speaking with customers. You don't want to maximize the you don't want them to to do the data entry. And, of course, like, for example, when I'm doing sales call, I don't want to do data entry too.
Bastien Paul:I just want to perform and say the best speech, I don't say.
Chad Hohn:Or Yeah. Well, you wanna be present with the customer. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Sure. Asking the best question. You know? Mhmm.
Bastien Paul:And so at the end, you you you you might miss some, data to if you want to do automated follow-up, post demo Right. Task. And if you do automation that doesn't work, that based on the wrong data, you might overtask your salespeople with the wrong task. So at the end, they don't like the task they get. You know?
Bastien Paul:And they were like, hey. HubSpot is working against me and not with me. Mhmm. And and if you do some automation with your emails yeah. Yeah.
Bastien Paul:You know, like, the sales adoption is really hard, when you have too much automation. So at and at the end, you you will remove that kind of automation, and you lose the benefit of having HubSpot going back to do everything manually.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm.
Bastien Paul:So I think, yeah, from the front end, we do have a problem. But with AI, with maybe more into, like, using that just for mining the information from Salesforce, because you get more and more information now. And this is terrible, and this is more accessible. But before, you didn't know how to treat them, how to transform that, and now you have some possibilities. Like, last time, I wanted to for every call I made, create get the transcript, of course, having to log inside the spot, but maybe having some properties feed automatically or an, next stack task created automatically plus an email personalized.
Bastien Paul:You know? Mhmm. But this was, again, a bit tricky to to implement. I don't find any if you have any ideas. I'm I'm I'm all over it, but I didn't find a tool or a simple way to do that.
Bastien Paul:You know?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Well, I think, one of the just a HubSpot tech thing since I'm the HubSpot tech guy, they just recently launched call based workflows, right, which is actually a really, really cool thing. So, like, you can trigger a workflow when call properties are updated. So let's say, like, when the recording URL is known or when the transcript is complete, you can start a workflow now. And then you could theoretically run that through a GPT and identify pain points and then put that into a property and then run that same transcript through another GPT identifying something else.
Chad Hohn:Right? But, like, that's a huge step in the right direction when it comes to being able to try and alleviate some of, like, the bulk data that just gets stored in your sales calls or in your meetings. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. And I think I think when when when you when you're doing sales call or CSM or it's kind of when you're speaking with clients, as a client, you expect that person in front of you to have all this information. And the next step, you know, you don't want to spend your time to reexplain what you're looking for, what is your use issue also. And, normally, CRM has been invited invented before for that. You know?
Bastien Paul:So Mhmm. I think, for example, this kind of automation should be one of the the main thing to do right away because you will save save a ton of time because every rep going back to the company, knowing, like, okay. What we did we do with this company? What was the last time we contacted and so on? And, you see some opportunities, and these opportunities are easier to implement than before.
Bastien Paul:Right. But it's still hard to get data, be sure the data is correct, and then transform it.
Chad Hohn:Well and to make sure it's in front of the right people at the right time. Because just because it's in your activity timeline doesn't mean that somebody's going to go dig through it. Or even if it's in a couple of properties in your HubSpot, that doesn't necessarily mean that that's gonna benefit somebody unless, you know, you have really thorough training processes and things like that. But yeah, man. I think, when when you were saying, like, oh, yeah.
Chad Hohn:Even in customer success or when you're talking with clients, they expect you to know the last thing you talked about. Like, I mean, how frustrating is it to call, like, CenturyLink Internet support, and then they have no clue who you are. You just got disconnected five seconds ago, you know, and then you have to call them back and reexplain your whole life story about this thing that's going on. Good gravy, man. Is that just frustrating?
Chad Hohn:You know? Like, it's just so because, like, it's just such an awful user experience on the customer side. And, like, when it comes to support, but even sales, it's like, oh, yeah. Well, your buddy just called me if you have more than one sales rep working leads. Right?
Chad Hohn:I mean, that's frustrating too. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Sure. Like, so it's so funny we speak about that because last Friday, for one week, I was still I was trying to reopen an account, for a content tool that I closed, like, one month ago. And I wanted to reopen to reopen it. And I tried to reach out to the support team.
Bastien Paul:No answer. It was very hard and so on. At the end, I got someone, tell me, like, yeah. Someone will call back. On Friday, someone call back, explain all everything I I know I have, and say, okay.
Bastien Paul:You have to see with your account and so on. We we cannot note that for you. Fair enough. And this morning, I received a call at ten p 10AM by the same guy telling me, like, did I answer to you? I say, okay, man.
Bastien Paul:I don't know. Take your notes or something. You know? Oh, okay. Like, the, the the the the the opinion you will have to the brand after, you can you you will speak to your friend and say, yeah.
Bastien Paul:This brand is good, but the support is is not good and so on.
Chad Hohn:Right.
Bastien Paul:This will affect the brand. You know? So so I think, like, yeah, especially for sales, of course, because this is the first touch point when you're when you're prospecting. But, of course, for the customer service, it's really important.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. %. Well, when it comes to, like, HubSpot in general, one of the things that HubSpot really has a ton of is integrations. Right? And because of their super robust integrations platform and how they support app partners, I'm sure Max will have something to say about this.
Chad Hohn:It's too bad that he's not here. But how they they try to do their absolute best to support app partners as much as they can. I'm sure there's small gripes in between we need this and we need that. You know? And I totally totally understand that, because Roofing Business Partner also has, like, one public app that we support.
Chad Hohn:So I get it. You know? But, they do have a like, compared to most any other CRM, I mean, they're definitely industry leading, if not the leader, when it comes to the, like, robust ecosystem of integrations. Right? What are, like, e tools or integrations that teams should prioritize?
Chad Hohn:And, obviously, I know Hub lead is in there. But is there anything else you see? And then we absolutely. I think we should talk about Hub lead in that in that, stack for people in that particular b to b space. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Sure. Like, as you said, first of all, the integration is way easier than plenty of other CRMs. Of course, compared to Salesforce, there is no, no talk about that. Like, Salesforce, something horrible when you want to integrate.
Bastien Paul:But HubSpot
Chad Hohn:Well, it's because of they're, like, so many different chunks of softwares that make up the software. That's what makes it difficult, I think.
Bastien Paul:It's pretty silo. It's really hard. Yeah. Yeah. It's very silent, and, I've spent documentation is kind of accessible.
Bastien Paul:It's really straightforward. So integration is way, way easier. For sales tool so first of all, before picking the tools, I think one of the most important thing salespeople or sales team, rev ops teams, they want to build new tools or going on going to HubSpot, for example. They need to redefine what are their needs.
Chad Hohn:But
Bastien Paul:also their their strategy. You know? Like, for example, the sales tax, sales tax, sorry, won't be the same if you want to talk with 10,000 customer, a year or 1,000, for example. And I think I think the point of targeting how many peep how many companies, sorry, we want to speak with per year is something really interesting, because, like, for example, you you if you say, like, on the I have, I want to have 10 clients. For that, I have I have to have 100 deals.
Bastien Paul:For that, I have to have 100 companies. So I need to speak with one one thousand new companies per month. That's Mhmm. Right. First because at the end, in three or four months, you will be speak with the same company you spoke, like, again, like, on January, for example.
Bastien Paul:Sure. So it's more about, like, how many companies you want to to outreach on the on one year, and then you can select the right tools. So if you if you aim for, like, I don't know, you have, like, two, three sales team top, maybe five top, and your market is kind of big or so, your TAM to the other at the service market is kind of high. I think you can go for, like, Lendly's or a gross machine for email, LinkedIn automation. You have also some LinkedIn automation tool doing only that, like Walexin.
Bastien Paul:They have a good integration with with HubSpot. You can, like, sync your emails, LinkedIn, outcome, and so on inside HubSpot. Actually, we we are using your LambList, with Hublit. And, so these automation are really good. And, of course, for finding phone numbers, of course, you have Hublit, but you can use also Casper or Lucia.
Bastien Paul:If you want to do call calling, that's that's kind of mandatory, I guess. Mhmm. For if you want to do some if you're doing a lot of email automation, I really suggest to have an outbound an email warm up. You know, this kind of tool that Mhmm. Is warming up your your emails.
Bastien Paul:Mhmm.
Chad Hohn:Like, I've heard of, like, Mailgun or some different email warm up tools. Basically, just trying to get your email domain and just for, like, people and, you know, who may never have heard of this before. But to make sure that your domain isn't immediately flagged as spam, because it just came out of nowhere. And then all of a sudden started sending 1,000 emails and boom, insta spam. So you got to like, kind of send a few emails and then a few.
Chad Hohn:Yeah, and a few emails and a little more emails. And then it warms up that so that all the servers don't just immediately flag you as spam. But just for Yeah. People who've never had that.
Bastien Paul:For for Hubly, we use Mailreach. So but there are also others. Yeah. It's really important. It's kind of a bit expensive when you you're adding the cost, you know, when you have, like, four, five, six emails.
Bastien Paul:But if you're sending emails if you have one email, one domain that is in spam, you, at the end, losing money. So that's really important to have it.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. You gotta protect your main domain. I mean, I think that's something that people don't really think about as much.
Bastien Paul:This one, like, using HubSpot.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly.
Bastien Paul:And, you
Chad Hohn:know, you can use your, you know, your HubSpot email health tool, and you really need to make sure that it's only your people that you know, need to hear from you with your, you know, within your HubSpot, right? Those are the people who are like, they're already buying things from you or, you know, stuff like that, and you're not bothering them too much. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Because
Chad Hohn:you really gotta protect that main domain.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Main domain, you shouldn't do, like, of course, if you're if you're starting, you can do some automation, but not not so much. But at the end, like, for for hybrid.io, we don't do any automation on it,
Chad Hohn:because if
Bastien Paul:you're getting spam and you want to speak with your customer, you will be, it will be a bummer. If you have your tech team. So you may not work internally, something like that. It will be, you you will have some people against you at the end of the day, so you have to be careful. Yeah.
Bastien Paul:And and, like, for me, the again, depending of your time and how many people you want to target in month on the yearly basis. But Mhmm. If you want to source companies, of course, if you're going to, like, most of our clients and prospect are using LinkedIn and LinkedIn says they're allowed to find, companies to target. No? Sure.
Bastien Paul:But I'm not sure for for these tools for for this, sorry, step. I don't I don't I don't have any preference in term of sales tag because I do have a preference for having something that is scrapping LinkedIn sales navigator on a daily basis. Why? Because for me, this is the primary database in the world, and you cannot get closer to the truth with this platform with another platform. But you can of course, it's harder to to scrap.
Bastien Paul:So you can use Apollo, you can use Clay and so on, or AI agent, to create your companies and so on. So for the beginning, I do advise, most of my customer, I do advise them to use Clay or things like that. If if so if your time is is is big and you don't have a lot you like, for example, your time is, I don't know, 10,000,000 companies and you want to have a switch only a 10 k companies per per year. You don't care to have this kind of big database. You know?
Bastien Paul:Right. But for us, for example, we do have a target of 200 k companies, clients of HubSpot. And we want to reach, I don't know, like, 10 k per per year, for example. Sure. So let's say you use an AI agent.
Bastien Paul:You're asking for companies, and at the end, they give you, like, no more companies or fewer companies or companies with, a scoring that's not working or something like that. Mhmm. And at the end, you don't own the process. You know? You don't you don't know because when you ask to a client or something like that, you don't know where it where's the data come from, and, you don't know if it's, still up to date, something like that.
Outro:Sure.
Chad Hohn:So I prefer to call companies on LinkedIn, you know, some of the company records there are just orphaned. Right? So there's nobody there. Right? It's just, it's, like, hey.
Chad Hohn:We made a company on LinkedIn, and we've never updated it because, you know, some people don't actually, like, do much with their LinkedIn company. Right?
Bastien Paul:So I prefer to own the process internally. And for that, Sofony, because, I spoke to Liz, like, two weeks ago, and we're still working that on that on the Hublit. You you we this if you want to to have it internally, it brings, like, a lot of pain and a lot of things you need to think about. So for example, how do you scrap sales navigator? Because you can use some Phantom Buster or tool like that that is using your cookie.
Bastien Paul:Everboot, I think the, tool like I like a lot. They're using your cookie, your app sales navigator, and they scrap the the list for you and export as a CSV. These one are really good, but sometimes if you want to go at scale, it can be harder because if you have the LinkedIn detection, you know. One thing I'm trying right now is, I'm trying it's working. You get, for example, the list a list of company, and you're doing a query on Google, and you're trying to scrap, people from a certain company
Chad Hohn:with a certain job profile. Associated contacts.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. With a with a Boolean search, that's what we do. Sure. It's easier to it's cheaper and easier to scrap LinkedIn. But Mhmm.
Bastien Paul:I prefer to have the list of full employees inside, companies, especially the one you want to show targets. Because at the end, you can use ChargeGPT, for example, by API Mhmm. Telling him, like, for example, hey. I have this list of of people. Here's my decision makers.
Bastien Paul:Here's my target. Can you pick one of them? Craft a copywriting and then send to him.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm. Yeah.
Bastien Paul:And if you want to do something, like, really scalable for outbound, I do think sometimes you need to, use BigQuery kind of SQL database Mhmm. Outside of HubSpot because Mhmm. There's there is one limitation I do, from a store that is very sick very not good is when you're doing the search API to search contacts, you have a limit API request limit plus you have a number of Yep.
Chad Hohn:Of searches that you can pull back. So Yeah. Seriously, have you attempted to use the GraphQL API? It may be able to return more. I'm not sure if it can
Bastien Paul:or not.
Chad Hohn:I mean, I've found GraphQL particularly helpful for getting from one association to another association all in one API call.
Bastien Paul:Okay. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:But I wonder how many how many, because there's a a maximum weight that you can have to your GraphQL query. So, like, it gives you a certain number of points you can spend per call, and that may be more than the search API limit. So that might be worth
Bastien Paul:Yeah. It might be worth
Chad Hohn:exploring briefly.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. I need to explore because the second thing they had is that, but I think they raised up. But, last year, it was when you're doing the search API, you are limited to only three filters.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm. Right.
Bastien Paul:Properties. But I think they they now added up to five. But maybe
Chad Hohn:with the GraphQL, you can do a lot.
Bastien Paul:Okay.
Chad Hohn:Right. In in GraphQL. Yeah. You can you can really drill down into the very specific information you're looking for.
Bastien Paul:Okay.
Chad Hohn:From my understanding, often, it's used for, like, CMS actually in web pages so that, like, you're making less API calls on somebody's browser side. Right? Or, like, to populate the data of a web page. Because, like, often in a web page, you need to know information about a company and a contact and their support tickets. Right?
Chad Hohn:And or something along those lines. Right? And so you need to be able to make those associated queries, but GraphQL lets you just get right to what you're looking for By formulating the query in a certain way when you're on a certain page, right? It could be possibly useful for what you're saying. Just throwing again, you know, since I'm in the driver's seat, we're doing we're doing tech and sales today.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Yeah. Since that's that's
Bastien Paul:my jam. I did I did so I did see that, that announcement, but I didn't, I didn't try it. But now I'm reading the doc. It can't be interesting. So Mhmm.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. If you go to the CRM development tab inside of your HubSpot, there's a GraphQL builder.
Bastien Paul:So you
Chad Hohn:can build your GraphQL. You can just click through all your objects and go down further. So you can build your GraphQL query before actually having to, like, try and do it in a development environment. And you can actually even test your calls. And you just paste in your ID and the the ID that you're looking for or or the filters you're looking for search or whatever.
Chad Hohn:So, often, though, you start from an object. So, like, you'll notice you're gonna start from a specific contact, and then it'll give you all of its associated stuff. But it it may be worth, you know, exploring, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. But I guess, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. But I guess, you know, like, as far as integrations, you know, I know Hub lead is, like, very surrounding all of these different types of sales activities.
Chad Hohn:Is there anything that you wanna dive into specifically on that that assists with that, you know, streamlining of the process? Right? I know it's, like, the extension and all that. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Sure. So as we spoke, like, for example, when you're when you're scrapping a ton of list, when you're doing Mhmm. This amount of work, when you're I don't know. You you have a new market, you you're opening your company, you you market is blank, you you did nothing, you can easily do a lot of automation, like scrapping in JT instead of sorry.
Bastien Paul:Sorry. But when you're when you're on companies, you're already, called qualified. You said we're interesting for you, but not interested right now, and you want to to go back in three or four months for for this kind of nurturing part when you need to follow your account, when you need to go for the dream 100 customers, for example, really the biggest customers. For me, there was no real tool for that, and Vistas was not for the marketing team, but for the sales team. And that's why we created
Chad Hohn:prospecting is nurturing. Right? Like, it's somebody you know who's already like, the right kind of business, but you need to get them across the finish line.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. And for me, this was more for the salespeople, and most of the tools we want we we saw in the market was very marketing oriented, because marketing and salespeople does not have do not have the same, skills plus the same, processes when they are working. So we created Hubly to be on top of LinkedIn or LinkedIn sales navigator to import contacts, conversation also to track the activities, invitation sent, and accepted inside of Spot and with all the time inside of Spot. So you have, like, for example, the the last invitation sent date, last invitation, accepted date, things like that. Mhmm.
Bastien Paul:And one, it's saving time for salespeople. Second, you can really stay organized inside link inside of Spot from LinkedIn, so inside LinkedIn at the end. And the other thing was people and salespeople, I mean, they need to, be more into the networking system. Mhmm. Like, for example, when we when we develop more and more SaaS, you know, or b two b consulting online and so on, we were okay.
Bastien Paul:There are plenty of people. We can we can email everyone. We can you can do plenty of thing automatically and get leads. But at the end, if you want to grab, if you want to get, like, a high value company, high value high ticket company, something like that, it's all about networking. It's all about knowing people, getting referrals,
Chad Hohn:and so
Bastien Paul:on. And LinkedIn, it's the place for that. It's a place Right. Like or and, of course, in person event in person events, but LinkedIn is really the place for that. And, that's why we we, added the contact, messaging import, capabilities to import conversation.
Bastien Paul:And that's what's seeing your your invitation because how do you, pilot your network, and how do you, handle your network as a salespeople or salesperson, sorry, or a founder? It's very hard in LinkedIn, but within HubSpot, it's easy because in, in HubSpot, you know all your ICP, your targets, you have everything, your calls, and no. So we bring back the data from LinkedIn inside HubSpot for salespeople to be really the owner and so they can work on their network. Because at the end, for me, that's that's a true added value from a salesperson. It's a network they can build inside the industry.
Bastien Paul:So so the relationships they can have, and, and that's that's how they can bring the best customer first to the company.
Chad Hohn:Well, that that's, and it brings it completely inside of HubSpot, so you have an accurate accurate picture of, really, all the interactions that your team has had. Right? And one of the things I've noticed recently that's been particularly helpful is at the top of different record pages, the summary of activities that have been recent. That has been really helpful before I go dive into you know, dealing with a company or a customer if I'm working inside of HubSpot. And with the HubSpot sales extension offering, like, your Breeze AI in on any domain has been particularly helpful when you actually go to somebody's website to take a look at it.
Chad Hohn:You can kind of get that associated activity and some summaries there. Have have those particular features been, like, insightful, or is that something that, you know, because, like, sounds like HubLead is helping you get all that data back to HubSpot. But getting that complete summary, I think, will be, you know, particularly useful for people. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. So, I didn't try right now because I don't think, I mean, maybe now I have access, but I didn't have time to to check.
Chad Hohn:Sure.
Bastien Paul:But I know that, say, I did the personalized sequence for one one person. Mhmm. And, normally, one of the product manager told me, like, we can take into account the LinkedIn activity. You know, when you when you have activities, you have active LinkedIn activity type. And this one, that's how what we we fill in, for the message and so on.
Bastien Paul:So, technically, if they can really use that, technically, you can use a LinkedIn conversation to build, this, personalized sequence. But I didn't test it, myself right now, so I need to verify that. But when I wanted to do that was, like, end of the last year, and they so so beta was still closed. Yeah. But not for everyone, but I think maybe now it's for everyone, so I need to try it again.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Unfortunately, we do also, log the limitation, you know, as a property, but also as a time and event. I'm not sure if they use that in I don't think so that use that inside the personalized sequence, but maybe, pervy, one day.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Well, you can log LinkedIn messages specifically. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah.
Chad Hohn:Like and that is that currently restricted to the LinkedIn integration only, or can you log those via the API now?
Bastien Paul:You you mean about the native integration with LinkedIn?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Like, the the actual, like, LinkedIn timeline activity. So, like, you know, the timeline is Yeah.
Bastien Paul:We we look come from an integration,
Chad Hohn:but then the activities can be LinkedIn type.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Yeah. The activity of, LinkedIn type, we do Mhmm. We do create and update that one. So so for me, this one should be reusable inside the personalized, CPAs from Breeze.
Bastien Paul:So I think that one can be really handful. And, of course, like, since our product is on top of LinkedIn and we try to match the LinkedIn contact to HubSpot Perfect. You have now the Breeze enrichment where you can enrich your contacts. Of course, I guess, you can enrich with the LinkedIn URL. And the more you have the URL, the more you can do things.
Bastien Paul:For example, when you go back on the contact, it will be automatically identifying, reducing the number of duplicate and so on. But, of course, if you have the LinkedIn URL, you can do it to be sure and plenty of things like that. So that's perfect because most of our customers are going using a grid. They say, hey. You don't recognize this contact and this, this HubSpot contact with this LinkedIn contact.
Bastien Paul:And I said, yes. So you don't have the LinkedIn URL, so we have to try to guess with the first name, last name, company name, and so on. Right. But if you if if the company domain is different from the LinkedIn page or the name is not not the same in the LinkedIn page, then we cannot be sure it's the same. No?
Bastien Paul:So I hope one day, all HubSpot CRMs are from all customer will have the correct LinkedIn in your head, but this is not not in place. You know, like It's one of the most
Chad Hohn:difficult things to solve. Like, even even just, phone call, like, getting phone numbers formatted properly in such a way that you can link up for your VoIP system to make sure that the people that it thinks are you know, like and that's just one number. Like, it's a number, but they're and it's you know, like, you think, oh, it's not that hard to format it with regex or something, but it's just dirty data, man. Like, I mean, how it comes in and how it's stored on the Internet and you know? Anyway, it's just it's no a notorious issue for HubSpot admins around the world to try and figure out how to make all that all that junk line up with the integrations that are feeding it data.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. It's it's really hard because with CRMs, and I think more with HubSpot because it's really open. You can do plenty of things. But at the end, it's really hard to know, like, okay. You don't have any framework.
Bastien Paul:You can just follow and say, okay. We will report like that. We will do the life cycle this way. The list touches this way. You know?
Bastien Paul:You can really personalize plenty of things. And at the end, you try to personalize so it stick to your business. Mhmm. That's really important to have the take the time to simplify what's what your people are doing in the real world so you can translate in CRM, you know, in CRM world. And this is the hardest part.
Bastien Paul:Instead of Yeah. Really knowing, like, HubSpot, how to use workflow and so on. But the hardest part is how do you simplify your process so it's easier for everyone to to understand and then having inside of Spot.
Chad Hohn:Mhmm. Well, I think one of the interesting things to think about is just because you can do it doesn't mean you should. Right? Just because Yeah. It's possible doesn't mean it needs done.
Chad Hohn:And I think that all you know, especially what you're just mentioning, leads really nicely into this next little segment, which is, you know, for teams that are overwhelmed by the amount of things, the amount of tools out there, you know, like the different email scrapers, the different or, like, warm up tools. Like, there's all these different integrations. There's all these different things. You know, and you were talking about, like, well, there things are so customizable. There's not quite a framework.
Chad Hohn:But what would you say might be a simple framework for helping decide which HubSpot native or integrated solutions to invest in or which ones to avoid. Right? So, like, there's so much stuff out there. Like, for everyone who's overwhelmed, how would we try and determine which things we wanna use more easily? Do you have maybe a framework for deciding on integrations and for sales
Bastien Paul:teams? So first of all, everything inside HubSpot. The more the more you can, the better. And Mhmm. For me, HubSpot should be always a source of truth.
Chad Hohn:Right.
Bastien Paul:Everywhere you you every application you want to work with, whatever, the source of truth should be HubSpot. So you need to be sure that the integration works in both way, and most of the integration works in one way. HubSpot Mhmm. To their app, but not their app to HubSpot. Mhmm.
Chad Hohn:And I
Bastien Paul:think that's the most important thing to do not forget for the, reverse when they are coming back to HubSpot with the information. So if you want everything inside of Spot, when whenever you are evaluating a link, something intention to HubSpot, you need to think to ask for, okay. I can access to my data from HubSpot, but can I access the data from the app is now generating inside my HubSpot? And then you can look at it. Do do you have to do it, is there any negative interaction, or do you have to do it on your by yourself and so on?
Chad Hohn:Right.
Bastien Paul:So this is the, most important thing. And second one, I will say so. It's a bit linked. I would say the more you stay inside the spot to manage everything, the better. So especially for your salespeople, you don't want to give them, like, five or 10 tools.
Bastien Paul:You want Yeah. I mean, five or 10 dashboard, 10 things, 10 different web app. You want to stick to HubSpot and, of course, LinkedIn to prospect, for example, or I don't know, if you want to listen to conversation for for training and so on. But if it's in HubSpot, that's that's the best. So how do you how can you manipulate this tool from HubSpot or from the website you're targeting people at?
Bastien Paul:So, like, does it integrate inside the sales flow on a daily basis, or do do you are are you adding a new web app, a new thing to do for the salespeople? Really important. And, yeah, I think I think that's kind of the main things for me. Mhmm. And, of course, like, just preventing that duplicate error, things like that.
Bastien Paul:But if you have a good intuition, if you're evaluating a good the good intention, as I said, like, going back to HubSpot, getting back the data inside of Spot Right. Then inside of Spot, you can manipulate the data. So be sure you don't have duplicate, having your dashboard to to be sure that you're not doing you're not doing wrong things to your your database, you know, on your HubSpot.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Bastien Paul:I think One
Chad Hohn:of the things I yeah. Yeah.
Bastien Paul:For sure. One of
Chad Hohn:the things I've I've seen, HubSpot integrators do, and this is just like a software says, hey. We wanna have a HubSpot integration. So then they get their developer to build a HubSpot integration, but they don't use HubSpot. I think those integrations often are they just integrate with an object and put some data on there or something, but they're not as useful, if that makes sense. Like, the integration doesn't help you work out of HubSpot.
Chad Hohn:It helps them get their data to your HubSpot, if that makes sense. Like, a lot of those turn those systems want you to use their user interface, whatever it is, right, rather than allowing you to deal with inside of your HubSpot. Like and one of the things that that we added to our integration for our CPQ software, it's like a roofing specific one because I work with roofing business partner. It's called SumoQuote. And, you know, at first, we built our app so that it would, like, drop a link to the SumoQuote project, and then you open it, and it you open it in a new tab, and you work on the quote.
Chad Hohn:But now we've added, obviously, the iframe card. So you can just click the button. It opens up. And inside of HubSpot, yes, you're manipulating their user interface in their software, but you don't have to leave the tab you're on. And it pulls up the project that you're already in, right, for the the linking to the deal.
Chad Hohn:Right? And I think that's something that a lot of, integrators, you know, they're almost not even wanting to do. They're not wanting to allow you to just stay in HubSpot and never leave. And I think that's been one of my one of the most difficult things for choosing integrations is finding ones where their people are are HubSpot first, if that makes sense. Right?
Bastien Paul:I mean, I can't agree more because that's what we do. Yeah. I do agree with you. When you when you're looking at some like, if I'm trying to not be biased, Right. If you're looking to to people, companies doing differentiation, Of course, if you do, like at the end, if you do four, five integration with your app, normally, at the end, you will have kind of power to low or something like that where most of your customers are coming from one kind of CRM or CMS, for example.
Bastien Paul:And then everything you're shipping is for them. So the other one, they won't they won't get the same features that the other one is is getting. So you cannot go deep dive. You cannot go really deep inside different CRM because, one, you have to understand what the CRM about, how they are structured, the API, what kind of new things they are implementing, how people are working with that CRM, as you said. And, of course, like, having, like, still a no HubSpot for five years now, it's easier for me and, for my when I speak with my cofounders to say, like, hey, guys.
Bastien Paul:Like, customer are doing like that and like that because this is impossible inside HubSpot. Mhmm.
Chad Hohn:And I
Bastien Paul:know because I already experienced it. So, when I speak to customer, sometimes I am I'm like like, okay. Give show me your dashboard, and I just, like, consulting them on their HubSpot, how they they use it Yeah. Beyond beyond HubSpot. But at the end, it's it's it help you really, like, as a founder to better understand what your customer are experiencing and to provide this kind of thing you you said, like CRM card, iframe, and so on.
Bastien Paul:And you have more of the spirit of, not developing things inside inside your app, but more inside HubSpot. Yeah. So, yeah, I do agree. And and one of, one of the main thing I need to work on for for our customer, kind of on customer care point of view is, okay. Now we we update some properties.
Bastien Paul:Mhmm. You know how to do some reports, but what can I do more? You can create task. You can create list. You can create workflows.
Bastien Paul:You can create branch of things. You know? And then, like, for example, you have the new sequence, as I said before, personalized and so on. But this one, you, me, as Bastian, I know, but most of our customers, they they don't know. So I need to craft some content to them, to explain to them what they can do and so on.
Bastien Paul:And it brings, like, a level of opportunities really, really huge, so you can bring a lot of value to your customers. So, yeah, I do agree with you. It's still the customer is still the in the beginning of that. We are we're seeing more and more companies only HubSpot focus. Mhmm.
Bastien Paul:But I guess, like, there will there would be a more and more and more, and, it will be way better for HubSpot users because, you know, we have a dedicated team doing more things with HubSpot, and then they can be more useful for everyone.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. I mean, if it's called HubSpot, it should be the hub where you work out of. Right? The central point of where all your data goes, or at least it should be aware of your data. And I think that, you know, when we come back to source of truth.
Chad Hohn:Right? My thought is if it's not coming from HubSpot, HubSpot should at least be aware of wherever it's stored in real time. Right? And, like, for example, I'm never gonna do my accounting in HubSpot. Yeah.
Chad Hohn:But if I need to attribute expense data back to my sales or something like that, I should be able to see that expense data related to my sales, right, for example. But that's not the source of truth is in that case, QuickBooks, right, or whatever my accounting platform is. But I at least need to bring that data back in real time from an integration that's that's good. So it's a window into the actual thing, right, for example.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Completely. Like, I did that for for Stripe, for example, for every Mhmm. Not not MRR, but really, like, the amount we invoiced and we really had inside the bank for every deals. So whenever you are speaking with a client, you you you know, for example, is it is it MR.
Bastien Paul:So you're you're saying, like, okay. This is a good, huge account or not. But you know also the amount you bid the the guy. So let's say, for example, the MR is $60 per month, for example. Mhmm.
Bastien Paul:But you you see, like, I don't know, 1,000 bid, you know that, okay. It's a smart customer, but it's 1,000. So I need to be maybe more careful or something like that. So you you you change your mindset, you know, and for your sales, that's why it's easier it's better because they can see, like, hey. This deal I closed, like, six months ago.
Bastien Paul:It it brought, like, I don't know, 6,000 to the company. So they are proud. They are happy about their work. You know? So, yeah, I do agree with you.
Bastien Paul:Like, even even if it's not used inside the workflow or something like that, having everything inside HubSpot to better know your business, it's very good, for your daily operation, for sales team, marketing team, whatever you
Chad Hohn:Yeah. For sure. Well, I have one more question. But before that, just a little birdie told me, from the Commerce Hub team that payments may be getting custom properties at some point. I don't know exactly when.
Chad Hohn:Oh. But how cool would that be inside of HubSpot? Because, I mean, I've had to have a custom object to represent payments in the accounting software because I can't do anything through the payments in in HubSpot. And I'm pretty sure there's a beta out where you can edit invoices via API now. So you still have to opt in to beta, but, like, being able to manipulate HubSpot invoices, that's pretty slick.
Chad Hohn:And you can put custom properties on the invoices and everything and all that, you know, too. But, just, you know, so that you're aware if you hadn't seen those come out. That's and then there's some stuff on the horizon there that might be particularly useful for some of those use cases.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. Especially for salespeople, when you have custom invoice and so on, it can be really, really interesting.
Chad Hohn:Yep. It can. But, anyway, I guess, you know, coming back to the sales topic. Right? So I everything's kinda related to sales at the end of the day, isn't it?
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Right? You could go in so many directions from sales just because, like, everything ultimately comes comes back to you know, it starts with sales or something touches sales in some capacity. But, anyway, for, like, people who are sales leaders in HubSpot, who feel like they're not getting everything out of their tech stack, what would be the best place to start in your opinion to turn that around? So like, hey, I feel like I have all this stuff or I feel like I'm not leveraging everything in this platform that I pay all this money for, especially smaller teams really feel the burden of that expense a lot more than bigger teams, you know, just because of the size of organization.
Chad Hohn:Where's a good place to start to really start turning that ship around and feel like you're getting value out of your HubSpot?
Bastien Paul:The best thing when when when you're in this situation, normally, you it's been, like, maybe three, four months. You tried different tools, tried tried different processes. You might created some properties and so on. So I think at the end, what you need to do is just to get a blank paper or whiteboard, whatever you want to know.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. And
Bastien Paul:just try to okay. What is the process in a simple way? And, if you cannot explain it in a simple way, then you didn't understand, then you need to rework and you need to erase everything and restart. Because the goal here is not to fix the thing. The goal here is to remove what doesn't work and to remove things you tried because maybe three months ago, your understanding was like that, and now you tried and now you'd know that your understanding changed.
Bastien Paul:And so you have to get the forklift or didn't work ever. Right? Yeah. It didn't work and brought something else, something. So Mhmm.
Bastien Paul:This is something I I do like. It's a second order thinking. It's when you're bringing something a solution because of a problem, then you're bringing more problems, and then you're bringing more solution. So instead of going at the end and trying to fix the solutions, fix the new problems you have, Just get back to the real problem you had in the beginning. And maybe that at that time, when you implemented solution, you didn't really get the problem.
Bastien Paul:That's okay because Yeah. That's experience. That's how you know
Chad Hohn:more more more information now. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. And so Yeah.
Chad Hohn:You understand more.
Bastien Paul:Yeah. So to get back to the root of, to the roots of the problem, you have for me to to to, to restart, with nothing. So go for a white paper and just write down, like, okay. What are the sales journey? What are my sales are doing and so on?
Bastien Paul:And try to find things they are doing, in duplicates or, things they are doing, but they are not, useful anymore or something they are not doing and you can maybe replace, not use it again. You know? Yeah. So that's that will be the first thing. I I I won't have any blank white paper where I note all my tools and trying to articulate it.
Bastien Paul:No. No. I I will just go back to the to the process, what people are doing, what my salespeople are doing, maybe asking them, you know, and trying to have something really simple. And then you will find out, okay. This one is not useful.
Bastien Paul:This one, we need to fix. We can check another tool and and, and so on and so on. You know? But yeah.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. That's great.
Bastien Paul:Easier to, to add things that remove things. And,
Chad Hohn:Yeah. Well, it is. I mean and that's, I think, one of the difficulties that people get into is they just keep adding on top of layers and layers like you're saying rather than, you know, I mean, I guess in engineering, the best part sometimes is no part because if you don't have a part, it won't break. Right? And so, like, when you're architecting a solution for your sales, you wanna have as few moving pieces as possible.
Chad Hohn:Like, you should almost be taking away so much stuff that you have to add stuff back. Right?
Bastien Paul:Yeah. And, one advice, of course, is to read the the book, high output management, from the span of in, Intel, I guess, if I remember. Yes. Okay. Well, incredible.
Bastien Paul:Like, he explained how, projection factory works with, explaining, how you do your breakfast for, for a restaurant doing breakfast. And when you have this level of simplicity when you're speaking, like, when you're explaining, that's at that point, you really understand. So every time I'm rethinking about my process of sales automation and so on, and I think truly inside me is that I'm not sure I really understood. I'm like, okay. You need to re you need to rework.
Bastien Paul:You need to go back blank white paper and try to understand what's not clear in your mind because if it's not clear, it won't be clear anywhere.
Chad Hohn:Yeah. No. That's perfect. Well, Bastian, I, I wish I didn't have another meeting coming up because I really, really enjoyed our conversation today. And, you know, I'm sorry you were stuck with just me, but, hey, I'm I'm really grateful for it.
Chad Hohn:I really, truly enjoyed, you know, getting into all these little nuggets of information from you. And thanks so much. And and we'll definitely have to have you back another time. I think, going to, you know, back to sales church, if you will. Right?
Chad Hohn:Is where
Bastien Paul:we are.
Chad Hohn:And and, that's always just such a good time because it touches every part of the business. So thank you so much for your expertise, and thanks for being on.
Bastien Paul:Thanks, Chad, for having me. It was great even if you're aware, Arlene, but, we had a so so deep subject, discussion together. So great. Great. And, yeah.
Bastien Paul:Sure. Next time, I'll be there. Yep. Cool.
Chad Hohn:Thanks so much. We'll see you.
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