The HubHeroes Podcast

[00:00:00] Liz Moorehead: No! My opinions are representative of everybody. There's no safe harbor language when it comes to my opinions.
[00:00:06] Max Cohen: you, you speak for the humans.
[00:00:10] George B. Thomas: we just, we did. We just edit it out, that's all.
[00:00:14] Liz Moorehead: Ouch!
[00:00:15] George B. Thomas: PAH! I'm sorry, it's,
[00:00:18] Liz Moorehead: gave you an AI generated poem for your birthday, and this is how you repay This is how
[00:00:22] George B. Thomas: I'm, I'm sorry, my apologies.
[00:00:25] Liz Moorehead: Yeah, okay. Well, welcome back.
[00:00:27] Max Cohen: Is it someone's
[00:00:28] Liz Moorehead: back to another episode of What?
[00:00:31] Max Cohen: someone say birthday? Oh, okay.
[00:00:33] George B. Thomas: you, you wished me happy
[00:00:34] Max Cohen: Oh, I thought Liz said it was her
[00:00:36] George B. Thomas: dude, it really was a crappy week
[00:00:38] Liz Moorehead: No, my birthday My birthday Oh my gosh, when is my birthday? Oh, this is ba Oh! When this goes out, it's this month. So, my birthday's in October.
[00:00:46] George B. Thomas: There you
[00:00:47] Max Cohen: October what?
[00:00:48] Liz Moorehead: I'm exactly one more month after Georgie.
[00:00:51] Max Cohen: Wait, October what? Eliza is
[00:00:52] Liz Moorehead: Uh huh.
[00:00:53] George B. Thomas: Oh, well, that's easy to remember then
[00:00:55] Max Cohen: the 28th.
[00:00:57] George B. Thomas: my wife is the 18th.
[00:00:58] Liz Moorehead: What is
[00:00:59] George B. Thomas: Yeah,
[00:00:59] Max Cohen: Everyone's having birthdays! Because we were all born.
[00:01:03] Liz Moorehead: love it. Max, where are you driving us today, bud?
[00:01:05] Max Cohen: I am driving us to Hot Takeville. Ready? And here's my hot take. Yep. listen.
[00:01:12] Liz Moorehead: Oh, no.
[00:01:13] Max Cohen: I'm, as someone who is uh, As someone who, um, does plenty of annoying people on LinkedIn whenever a cool feature comes out, uh, and I've been known to drop a, a screamy TikTok or two whenever I see something that really excites me.
The one thing that is like totally grinding my gears like recently is like everybody clearly using the same like chat GPT prompt to write like a new feature alert like their own new feature alert post that has way too many emojis and they all say what is it what is the value what does it do how does it work and like it's like literally everybody's doing the same exact thing like today I swear I saw this 75 different posts, just glazing this new conditional properties, uh, uh, conditional properties feature.
Right. And it's like, everybody is either using the same exact template or they're all just going on chat GPT and they're saying, write me a new LinkedIn post about this feature, right? And it's just, it's. Littering, and as someone who is a habitual litterer of LinkedIn, me, this guy, the, the AI generated posts just ain't doing it for me.
They're just so annoying.
[00:02:30] George B. Thomas: so, so max, uh, you do realize that you chose to have marketers as friends, right?
[00:02:36] Max Cohen: Yeah, he did, and
[00:02:37] Liz Moorehead: you did this to
[00:02:38] George B. Thomas: mean, you did this to
[00:02:39] Max Cohen: f ing hate it. Dude, it's
[00:02:40] George B. Thomas: you, you jacked up your LinkedIn feed when you said, hey, I'm going to be friends with marketers. well of course you didn't know A. I. was gonna come out, or Chat GPT was gonna come out, or people weren't gonna be creative when they actually could lose their humanity with A.
I. But, whoo, that was last week's episode.
[00:02:57] Liz Moorehead: You know, I was going to say, if people want to get in, get in on that train, they need to go back and listen to the Fireside Chat George and I did last week as our bonus episode in Hot Heroes. But I do want to point out something before we jump into this week's topic. Did anybody notice that when, um, Max is doing rage hot takes...
He drives us in a circle. He just is like, the LinkedIn poetry man. The AI generator. He's like, If
[00:03:21] George B. Thomas: Yeah, he, he's, he would be one hell of a NASCAR racer. Let's just throw it that way. Always turnin left.
[00:03:31] Liz Moorehead: would
[00:03:31] Max Cohen: isn't it right? No, it is left. You're right.
[00:03:33] George B. Thomas: No, it's left bro. Unless they're driving in reverse then maybe it'd be
[00:03:38] Liz Moorehead: Zoolander wouldn't be able to do that. He's not an ambi turner.
[00:03:42] Max Cohen: can I just, can I just say there is nothing. Hold on. There is
[00:03:46] Liz Moorehead: never remember Zoolander? He can't turn left.
[00:03:48] George B. Thomas: No, I
[00:03:48] Max Cohen: Zoolander. Yeah. Cause he rocks on the runway. There is nothing. There is nothing more comforting and satisfying than a protected left hand turn. You ever, you ever know like the, you ever get the anxiety pulling up into an intersection?
Hold
[00:04:04] George B. Thomas: How how is this
[00:04:05] Max Cohen: pulling up into an intersection,
[00:04:07] George B. Thomas: How is this the topic?
[00:04:09] Max Cohen: Someone, someone brought up left hand
[00:04:10] Liz Moorehead: what, Max, Max, Max, I'm so glad you brought this up. You're right, Q4 is here. And as scores of ladies just like me, Code S.
[00:04:20] Max Cohen: I was, I was, this was a roundabout way of getting to talking about today's subject, which is Liz.
[00:04:25] George B. Thomas: handoff
[00:04:27] Max Cohen: isn't Liz, but Liz is not the subject but she has the subject.
[00:04:31] Liz Moorehead: No, you so excited about today? I know I say this every time, but I am excited about today. Max, thank you so much for that seamless, flawless segue. You beautiful segue
[00:04:43] Max Cohen: Yeah? Mm.
[00:04:44] Liz Moorehead: not in any way driving into a ditch already. But yes, so, what are we talking about this week? It is Q4, guys.
It's Q4 is here. Q4 is here. Huuuh. Like, it's here. It's now. And so, in addition to people like me Coating every available surface in my home with every scented candle and, and tons of fall decor and like wings of paper dedicated to soup Recipes I will never cook because I just always go to Panera. Anyway, we need to remember that this time of year isn't just about celebrating the rapid demise of my least favorite season, summer.
It's also budget time. It is budget time at businesses. Yes. I heard that the tax man not cometh yet.
[00:05:31] George B. Thomas: Yo, if you haven't paid your taxes by now, you should probably start sweating. Just saying.
[00:05:36] Liz Moorehead: Right,
[00:05:37] George B. Thomas: taxes, that is.
[00:05:38] Liz Moorehead: I know. I'm trying to purge that memory. George, we're staying on track. It's budget
[00:05:44] George B. Thomas: Okay, it's budget time. Yeah.
[00:05:46] Liz Moorehead: for the past couple of months, for the past couple of months, business leaders, marketing leaders, sales leaders, everybody's kind of running around going, okay, so what's my budget going to look like in 24?
What's it going to look like in 24? Now we're actually here guys. That dull roar is now deafening. And look, I don't think we're all walking around with the economic anxiety that we had say during the pandemic, but like 2023 has been, it's been, it's been a challenge.
[00:06:12] Max Cohen: mid
[00:06:13] Liz Moorehead: Always walking that fine line between surviving and thriving and one of the biggest costs that businesses deal with other than salaries is technology, right?
Now George, you and I have been in the agency world. We spent a lot of time in the agency world.
[00:06:28] George B. Thomas: Yeah.
[00:06:29] Liz Moorehead: many times do you remember those random mandates that would come down of like, Everybody evaluate which tools you're using. We're slashing and burning. We're contracting. And then you'd end up with like 15 developers and designers all like, Trying to jockey on one single Adobe Creative Cloud account.
And it's just complete chaos. But one of the biggest things One of the biggest technology pieces is HubSpot, at least for the people who are listening and depending on how many hubs you're invested in It could be a pretty hefty bill. So we're talking about HubSpot renewals today Okay, because when times are tough, you can easily fall down the slippery slope of fear, right?
Whether we're talking about HubSpot or we're talking about something else It can be easy to fall into that slash and burn mentality So I thought it would be good this week for us to just take a moment Let's talk about HubSpot renewals. Let's talk about what people need to be thinking about, knowing, and avoiding before they start making any big or drastic changes to their HubSpot.
Sound good,
[00:07:30] George B. Thomas: Yeah. I can't wait to have this conversation. And I, you know, the reason we can have this conversation, conversation, conversation, woo, that was easy for me to say Liz is because, because unlike many agencies who decided to bit torrent, uh, their Adobe creative suite historically, when you could do that, uh, you can't, you can't, you can't bit torrent your, uh, HubSpot.
You can't bid toward your HubSpot, uh, SaaS platform. It's a dang gone cloud. It's not a download. What? Wait? Anyway,
[00:07:59] Max Cohen: dude I downloaded a whole bunch of extra contacts on Kazaa, my guy. Do you
[00:08:04] George B. Thomas: just, I'm just saying, I'm
[00:08:06] Liz Moorehead: I got OpsHub on Limewire, man. But it turns out it was Aerosmiths living on the edge.
[00:08:13] Devyn Bellamy: got all mine on
[00:08:13] Max Cohen: yeah,
[00:08:14] Liz Moorehead: what I
[00:08:14] George B. Thomas: Napster was the ruination. Yep. Yep. Napster was the ruination of, uh, of, uh, just. Purchases everywhere around the world. Cause it just kept getting worse, but, but I am excited to have this conversation because one, many times when you hear this conversation, uh, people default to, uh, one or two things. Oh, well make sure your contacts, uh, you know, you know, marketing contacts.
There's way more.
[00:08:39] Max Cohen: Well
[00:08:40] George B. Thomas: Way more of a conversation. I mean, don't, don't get me wrong. I'm going to mention marketing contacts before we're done, but, but it's only like a sliver sliver of what I think we're going to talk about today.
[00:08:53] Liz Moorehead: I love it. Yeah. And here's what I'm also going to put out there. So for those of you who may be reaching for your dial button because you are not the decision maker, let me just put this out there. You should still listen because if you are using HubSpot at your company, you need to understand what your business decision makers should be thinking about.
So that way if you're asked, you have actually something to say. You also have thought this through or you can proactively advocate for what it is that you think you need. You need to be an active part of this discussion. If you love HubSpot, if you love what it does for you. This is going to empower you to be the squeaky wheel and to the marketing and business leaders out there yes, we are making them squeaky wheels for you,
[00:09:34] George B. Thomas: Yeah. Cause cause here's the thing here's I agree with them listening, Liz. Because here's the thing, if you love your life, and you don't want to be a Sharpspring, or a Marketo, or a some other SaaS software not to be mentioned user, in other words, your life gets turned upside down, maybe Pardot, maybe, maybe, maybe, anyway.
Anyway, uh, like you'll want to have this information that we're going to talk about because you'll be able to arm yourself and be like, uh, like imagine getting the note, ladies and gentlemen, we've decided to maybe cut HubSpot from our budget. Uh, you'll be able to say, uh, boss, can you please listen to episode 50, I don't know, whatever, 55, 54, anyway, doesn't matter.
Uh, can you listen to this episode of this podcast before we make any rash decisions, please?
[00:10:22] Max Cohen: And if they say no, that's when you quit your
[00:10:23] Liz Moorehead: last four to the first
[00:10:25] George B. Thomas: was it, Max?
[00:10:26] Max Cohen: I said it, and if they say no, you quit your job.
[00:10:28] George B. Thomas: Wow, that got like...
[00:10:30] Max Cohen: I'm shillin I'm shillin for Big Sprocket this episode, baby.
[00:10:34] George B. Thomas: Oh, there we go.
[00:10:35] Max Cohen: The answer's always, the answer's always gonna be upgrade.
[00:10:39] George B. Thomas: Listen, listen, I have three times this year. Anyway. All right. Let's continue on the conversation.
[00:10:45] Liz Moorehead: All right, guys, so we're going to start with my favorite thing about this conversation, which is how do you think how many of our listeners right now are going like, wait, what, a renewal, playoffs, talking about playoffs, like, how many people right now do you think even have an idea of when their renewal is coming up?
[00:11:01] Max Cohen: no more than five, because there's five listening to us right now.
[00:11:06] Liz Moorehead: Join us at
[00:11:06] Max Cohen: At this very moment.
[00:11:10] George B. Thomas: At this moment in
[00:11:11] Liz Moorehead: community. loveheroes. com if you want to watch us live. Continue!
[00:11:15] George B. Thomas: I'll say is it's very few, like, I mean, listen, first of all, HubSpot's smart, right? Because they tuck that stuff like, away away. Like. It's not like renewals is not a main nav item where you just look at it on the daily or the weekly, like it's kind of stuffed away in the software and not to mention like sales is really smart because some people are monthly, some people are quarterly, some people are, you know, uh, yearly heck I've seen deals for like multiple years.
By the time you get three months into a two year deal, you're not thinking about it at all. And then all of a sudden it's like, boom, wait. My junk just auto renewed. Wait, there's auto renewal in HubSpot. Oh, I thought I would have to have a conversation for a surprise.
[00:11:59] Liz Moorehead: We all love those types of surprises.
[00:12:01] Max Cohen: Um,
[00:12:02] Liz Moorehead: do we think most folks... Max, go ahead.
[00:12:05] Max Cohen: well, no, no, what was your, I was going to ask what the, I didn't know if you'd asked the first question yet. Sorry. ADHD.
[00:12:13] George B. Thomas: Pay attention to the road, Max. Pay attention to the road.
[00:12:17] Max Cohen: What? It's just like what people are thinking. Well, okay.
[00:12:21] Liz Moorehead: already started the
[00:12:22] Max Cohen: Gotcha. No, I'm there.
[00:12:23] Liz Moorehead: We're already here, bud. You don't need to keep denying we
[00:12:25] Max Cohen: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, okay. So the big thing that I like also try to make people like aware of is that, um, your cost of HubSpot is not like just like what you're paying HubSpot for the software, right? You know, more and more, you're seeing folks have headcount whose job it is to manage HubSpot.
you know, there's this whole, uh, big thing called the app marketplace where, you know, you're starting to think of the iPhone or sorry, you're Sorry, you're starting to think of your CRM or HubSpot is more of like an iPhone, right? Where like, you down, you get it and it comes with a bunch of stuff that does some, does some things, but you can go and like buy something that makes it do something that it didn't do before or a better version of something that it already does, right?
That's an extra cost you got to think about, yeah, of course you bring that, but then there's also like, are you working with partners? Right? You know, things like that. So, you know, I think there's a. Many other kind of like factors you got to kind of put into the equation. It's not just like your bill.
There's all these other things you're kind of paying for. You should be thinking about too.
[00:13:24] Liz Moorehead: How do you think, Devin, most folks, good or bad, for better or for worse, approached their renewal time with HubSpot? Like, are there any common mistakes you see people a lot of making, either in their mindsets
[00:13:36] Devyn Bellamy: Well, um, I'd say the biggest, mistake that I've seen is people treating it like a fixed cost and not even thinking about it. oh, the renewal's up, okay, let's go. and while that's wonderful for HubSpot, um, the, the, the thing is, is that what I've seen is that people are lacking in a plan and they're just kind of throwing money at software and I think renewal time, is a great time to kind of take a step, uh, back and, and look at what you're doing versus what you want to do.
And at that point, that's how you make the decision on what you want to do with that or any tool. Like, if you have a tool for the sake of having a tool, then you're just burning money. And while, HubSpot loves, you know, making money, at the end of the day, uh, our core goal is to help people grow better.
And you're not growing better if you have this tool that has, is this powerful platform that has all these different tools within it. And you're just letting them atrophy. Or if you have capabilities within your, uh, within your dashboard that you are paying for on other services, it's like.
The thing is, is that if you aren't, if you don't have a plan associated with your tool and you don't have a strategy and like, here's what we want to do, here's what it can do for us. Here are all the different, um, aspects of our marketing strategy that HubSpot supports, uh, and how we could even possibly expand, um, what other tools there are out there available, then it's like you're just wasting money at that point.
[00:15:22] George B. Thomas: Yeah. I love that Chad in the chat pane said, since HubSpot is essentially the center of your tech stack, renewal time is a great opportunity for admins and business owners to evaluate your entire data model, dare I even say process, which we'll get to. I want to get to eventually this about not.
Immediately blaming the platform, like at some point in this episode, but what I'll say, what I've historically seen when people are talking about HubSpot renewals is, uh, they wait till the last dang minute. Um, and can I just tell you, don't wait till the last dang minute, because if you're sitting there and you're struggling with HubSpot and you're thinking of jumping ship and you have to ask yourself some honest questions, if you wait till the last dang minute.
Guess what? You're not going to get to your questions, the needed answers. And when I think about these questions that I would want people to start to ask themselves again, we're thinking, Hey, it's renewal time shoot. We really haven't seen the ROI that we want to get out of HubSpot. Like. Why, why, why is that?
What's happening? Uh, this is a perfect time to ask yourself, Well, hey, did I even, uh, set up HubSpot properly during my first 30 to 60, uh, days of using the platform? Or, or did I skip some steps and just try to create what we already had? Like Devin has said many, many times not to do. You need to start asking yourself, Am I, uh, only using HubSpot as a glorified email tool?
Or just a knowledge article, or as a human holder for my sales team, you know, one step above my historical spreadsheet or post it note that used to be on my desk, you have to, um, ask yourself, have I created parts of the platform that my team? Need to really use the tool or are they a ghost town and not set up and not like ready, meaning, you know, listen, some of you get it because you want to blog and you don't even have blog subscription type set up in your HubSpot portal after you reach out and ask us for help after a year or two years of using the system.
Like, so you've got to start thinking of those things. I, you, then you have to even ask yourself, do I have the right level of, uh, hub? Giving me the features that I actually need to get to my specific success metrics that, that we're trying to hit. And that's why I'm feeling the pain. And, and, and finally, are you looking at the value of the software only during this renewal, this last minute decision making opportunity, or do you understand?
It goes way past that. Right. And, and when I, when I say that, what I mean that it goes way past that is HubSpot works way better when you're all in. you're all in. And when I say when you're all in, what I mean is, um, are you a lone soldier out in the middle of the battlefield of business, not realizing that part of your paying for this software is the use of the HubSpot Academy is the searchability of the HubSpot knowledge basis is the community and the knowledge basis and conversations you can have in HubSpot community.
And even if I go to the next levels that we've kind of even mentioned, here's are you working with a partner? Like, do you realize that's part of what might ease your pain in those last minute decision makings around renewal if you're struggling with HubSpot? And, and by the way, dare I say, and I don't even know if we've talked about this on an episode yet, shame on us, but are, are you going to a hug?
Like, do you belong to a HubSpot user group where other like minded individuals are actually attacking conversations like we have on this podcast and many others together as a team? Or is it like, no, we spent this money and shoot. We're really not sending out any automated email. So let's cancel.
[00:19:03] Max Cohen: I think if you're like, if you're getting to the point where it's like you're, you're, you're approaching your renewal and the mindset is we need to reevaluate if this is even worth it versus, oh man, this is a, you know, our whole business runs on this thing and, and How could we live without it? Like that's a big red flag like that means something's wrong in terms of the way You're either like approaching it or setting it up or deploying it or connecting it to your other systems Like ideally you should be approaching like your renewal with like, okay, you know, obviously this thing is fundamental to the way our entire business operates and we need to look at renewal as more of like a Cost saving exercise.
Um, you know, cause we know we're going to be using HubSpot, but obviously like your goal is the customer should be. You know, pay the least amount that you can to get the most amount of software, like in all situations. but also like, I think you should be using it at like, hopefully when you're approaching it, you know, you're also using it as like a strategic way to approach any like upgrades you're thinking about, right?
Because like, of course your, your sales reps want you to renew, right? But of course they also want to sell you more product and like. Maybe you guys have been holding off for the right time to upgrade to, you know, Uh, Ops Hub, Enterprise, or, you know, any of these other things, right? Doing it at your renewal time is a great way to do it because if you're up for a renewal, You as the customer have a great deal of leverage that you can, you know, uh, exercise, right?
Um, so I would suggest that you do that with your sales rep.
[00:20:35] Liz Moorehead: You know, George, I actually want us to go ahead and talk about what you said, though, which I think is really kind of the tip of the spear of a lot of this conversation. When folks look at HubSpot like it is the problem. Talk about that.
[00:20:49] George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and before I talk about that, Chris, I agree. Hug HubSpot user group is a great acronym because it is like just getting a nice squeeze on a cool evening from a nice friend or a family member. So, so here's the thing. One of the things I've seen is immediately when. When, when, when goes awry and people aren't doing their job.
Um, all of a sudden we want to blame the platform. We want to blame the platform instantly. And honestly, to me, this is, this is a three part conversation and at least maybe four layers, maybe more. By the way, maybe more, uh, four layers that we should be paying attention to. So, so here's what I'll say. First of all, yes, there is the platform.
There is HubSpot and it's kind of things that we talked about. Are we paying attention to contacts and seats? We'll talk about that later. do we need an upgrade, a downgrade? Um, do we need to go from monthly to yearly or can we go multi yearly? But, but there's the things that are around the platform.
Then there's the thing that is around the people. Right? That you have humans in your, you have humans in your organization that are blatantly not using or passionately using, and I don't know what the percentage rates are, but do you know the percentage rates of the I'll get to the word? There's a special word that we're going to talk about when we let layers and then process.
Are, are, are you, and again in the chat pane, all on one customer platform, like, are you, do you have all the processes so that your, your team is spending more of the time doing more of the important things, saving more time in their day because the processes are in place. So like when you're thinking about renewal, it's not like, Oh, this car's a lemon.
It's like, no, and I don't know how to drive either. And why do I have four flat fricking tires? Like that's, that's where we're at with this. And so when we think about platform people in process, the layers that I start to think of is like, and I got to, I will beat this drum until the day I can't beat this drum anymore.
The amount of portals that I've gone into and the setup is crap. Like they are missing things. They're, they're not, Email sending domain domain is not set up. Uh, they have static IP addresses for their offices and it's not in there. Uh, sales teams have been using the tool and their Gmail or Outlook hasn't been hooked up for the last six months.
Like, there are so many things that set up is just bullcrap. And they're like, yeah, I don't know why we're getting the ROI out of it. Oh, because you bought a bicycle and never rode it. That's why. Oh, because you never put the chain on the frickin like gear system. That's why. And then like, here's the other piece of it is the next layer I want to talk about is buying like the lack of getting somebody to come train your people and get excited about why they should be using the platform, not because big brother has arrived, not because we actually want to do spammy crap because now we have all the lead intelligence and we can cookie the crap out of you, but because it's actually going to give you a better process, more time in your day, you're going to be able to spend Spend time with the ones you love or go golf more.
Maybe you want to do that instead, but like you're literally going to have tools, snippets, templates, documents, meetings, automation, marketing, reporting that like helps you. If you buy in, get better success as an individual and as an organization. The other piece, again, I'm gonna harp on, and we have an episode where we talked about our favorite ones of these, is like, it's not just HubSpot.
That's like saying, um, I'm just gonna go play football, I'm gonna play NFL football, and um, I just need the quarterback. Or, or I'm going to go play, you know, basketball and I just need a forward. No, you need a whole dang team. And so this idea, the lack of integrations that I see people actually applying into the system.
Right. And, and then, and then here's the last one I'm going to tell you right now. We have reached a place. Sales, marketing, service, operations, CRM, CMS. Ladies and gentlemen, your organization needs a freaking super admin. You need a HubSpot super admin. And so when I think about like all the things that you should be thinking about, instead of just going, Oh, HubSpot doesn't work. You're thinking about platform, people, process, the setup, the buy in, the integrations, and who is actually managing this ish. Why you're actually out running the business. I'll get off my soapbox now.
[00:25:11] Liz Moorehead: I didn't know how you felt about that, George.
[00:25:13] George B. Thomas: Yeah. I'm a little bit passionate about this.
[00:25:15] Max Cohen: Heh
[00:25:15] Liz Moorehead: Yeah, just constructive feedback. If you could be a little bit more direct in your
[00:25:19] George B. Thomas: I'll try next time.
[00:25:20] Liz Moorehead: be a little bit more clear on your stances.
[00:25:22] George B. Thomas: question, Liz. Next question, Liz. I got this. I got it for you.
[00:25:27] Liz Moorehead: you got it? Okay.
[00:25:28] Max Cohen: enough.
[00:25:29] George B. Thomas: I really not. I mean, I've been thinking about maybe using this thing called HubSpot for a couple of years, but I'm just on the fence about it.
[00:25:36] Liz Moorehead: And this is the one where we began, George, by saying that they should send this specific episode of Hub Heroes to the leadership in their
[00:25:43] George B. Thomas: Well, they, they can still do that, but we're not getting hired by them at this point.
[00:25:48] Max Cohen: no, no
[00:25:49] Liz Moorehead: Well, no, no. Okay. So when we think about these decision makers, talk to me about the data that they need to be collecting and looking at in their HubSpot portal before they make any decisions, before they start running around talking to people and gathering their opinions and decisions, because that is That is what these decision makers should be doing.
They should be talking to their people. But first,
[00:26:12] Max Cohen: Okay, so
[00:26:13] Liz Moorehead: data they're looking for? Max, you got this?
[00:26:15] Max Cohen: yeah, well, this is good. Let me start first. So I don't lose my ADHD isn't kicking and I lose track of the question. So in terms of the data that you should be looking at, well, not to be the, it depends guy, but yeah, I mean, it kind of depends, but I mean, that really kind of goes back to, did you have a good idea of what the jobs to be done were for HubSpot when you hired it?
Right. And, and when you bought it and were you setting up your goals or, or were you actually tracking metrics that are actually important one, right? But were you actually setting it up in a way that you could say, Hey, yeah, this was successful for the reasons that we purchased it for, right? So it kind of goes back to that.
So really go back and take a look at whatever it was that you wanted to look at it, whether it was. You know, leads you were generating or deals you were creating or like any sort of indicator of did it solve the problems that we went out and, bought it for, but then I think that's also where you start to get into like more of the expansion conversation, right?
Are there any metrics that are lacking or hurting or things that you would expect to be different, but it's because we're missing like a piece of the puzzle? Right? Um, you know, are you generating a ton of leads in the marketing hub and getting a lot of good traction on your content or people interacting with it, but like nothing's really happening with your sales team?
Well, do they not have the proper tools that they need? And you maybe need to start look at how you're utilizing sales up a little bit more, right? Look at how success in one part of the tool is either dropping off or failing as it kind of goes to the other parts of the tool that, you know, those are Elements of your strategy should be interacting with, right?
And I think there you can start to find like, Hey, if we're going to approach renewal time as more of a, you know, how do we make a tactical decision about how we invest further, right? You got to look at your data. What data? I'm not even going to try to say look at this metric and look at that metric because it's going to be different for everybody like, everyone comes into HubSpot at a different place of their business growth and everyone has their own challenges even though they're usually Inside the flavor of marketing sales and service, right?
But again, it's it's this is why you got to do such a good job at like setting Out like an understanding and defining your goals at the beginning Right, the beginning of it is always going to have a massive effect of, you know, uh, How you're evaluating HubSpot at renewal time, right? So, hate to be the it depends guy, but it does
[00:28:33] Devyn Bellamy: If I can jump in here for a second. Um,
[00:28:36] Liz Moorehead: okay.
[00:28:38] Devyn Bellamy: hopefully you have your attribution set up. Um, so you can see exactly how much, uh, your marketing efforts through HubSpot are impacting the bottom line. Um, because at the end of the day. People in c suite care about two things. Either you're building the brand or you're building the bottom line.
Uh, and you need to be able to show how you're doing both. Um, and that's not just for renewal time. That's any time. That's job security right there. Um, because instead of all of the kudos and the accolades going to the sales team for being the closers, it's still, uh, is necessary to show what it took for you guys to get there.
So, I mean, HubSpot has attribution reporting built in. If you're using your deals tools, if you're using the forms correctly, and you're not just. Constantly manually importing spreadsheets and data. Um, if, if you're using the tool correctly, you can quite easily see, okay, hubs, I'm making money using HubSpot and here's the proof.
and also, um, another metric is how, uh, integral is HubSpot into your core operations? Uh, cause one thing. That the, the people who are going through Slash and Burn may not take into consideration is that they may be cutting themselves off at the knees without even realizing it. There's this thing, well, why didn't we do this?
It's like, because we don't have HubSpot anymore. And how come this landing page looks like crap? It's like, because we're not hosting it on HubSpot anymore. So, things, uh, like that are all things that need to be taken into consideration. And also... Lastly is ease of use. you can, um, it's hard to, to, to put, you know, uh, a metric on that.
But when you're talking about what it takes to update, uh, a page in WordPress versus a page in HubSpot versus a page that's been created by a third party, isn't like react or something like that. These are all things that you need to take into consideration. Yeah, exactly.
[00:30:48] Max Cohen: The other thing I want to like throw in there while it's, it's, it's fresh in my mind, too Is that like, it's not always something you can like measure with a report and like a metric, right? A lot of the value that comes
[00:30:58] George B. Thomas: Go
[00:30:58] Max Cohen: do you mean? Oh, oh, okay. So, like, a lot of the value that comes out of HubSpot is very intangible, right?
Like, so, if you don't have, like, specific metrics that you're looking at to say, did we hit the KPIs we wanted to get when we got HubSpot, right? Go talk to people that are using it, right? Like, try to get a gauge of what it would be like if they had access to a different tool. Like, would they be able to do more?
Or, it's like, if we took HubSpot away, what kind of detrimental effect is that going to have on your work, right? Um, you know, because a lot of the times you got to... There's just some things that you can't just, you can't just replace a conversation with a human being that's actually operating inside of HubSpot and doing their day to day out of it.
And you'll probably get like a lot of really good insight too, from the boots on the ground folks using it in terms of like, are we talking about a downgrade situation? Because maybe there's a certain part of the tool that we're not using as much, or Would we be better off like reinvesting that on like an upgrade of a different hub and like maybe dropping down a tier on another one, you know Um, it's not you're not everything you can measure with a freaking report.
Sorry
[00:32:01] George B. Thomas: Yeah. Yeah. So, so I want to double down on your, it depends and not everything can be a report, but before I do that, um, I love Nick in the chat pane. I mean, I like Nick, but I love what Nick said in the chat pane that a total cost of renewal versus total cost of doing something else. The second seems like it would be a lot harder than determined.
And yes, that is a true fact. Trust me. I'm helping people literally. I said Webflow because it's, I'm literally helping a client go through a new process that HubSpot and Webflow have recently built and they didn't know what's built. And now we have to untangle Zapier from a system that was historically there anyway.
I digress. Here's the thing. Uh, my brain goes to, there are a couple absolutes that you can start to at least kind of pay attention to. For instance, um, if you are using HubSpot across your entire organization, you should be paying attention to sales, AKA deals, AKA our revenue, how much a revenue. Has we, have we been able to drive and can we measure because we have forecasting and goals and pipelines and deal stages, the next place I go, if you're using something like Salesforce, maybe for your pipeline is like, what about meetings booked?
If we, if we can get the team on HubSpot meetings, we know the meetings that were booked. We know the outcomes of the meetings. We know where we're spending too much time in meetings that aren't worth it versus meetings that are worth it. Uh, if we go a layer of that and it's just marketing, well, now we need to think about.
Forms and lead generation. How many leads did we generate? How many conversations did that actually equal? And then I'll even go to the service side of like, because we've actually used surveys, uh, the service side and surveys, like now we actually have a voice of customer system in place and what impact has the insights of being able to listen to our customer made in the last.
365 days of the year to our actual business. Okay. So there are some places where you can kind of go these highline metrics. We could pay attention to what impact they're making in our business. Some could be reports. Some might not be reports. However, two other places that I want to talk about one. And I mentioned integrations.
Go to the marketplace app in the top little browser of your HubSpot and go connected apps and just see how many connected apps you have. And then imagine the time that you will spend unraveling that versus actually just continuing to use a system that is built in a work work second place. And some people will hate me, some people will love me, but one of the things you can measure that I don't think a lot of people pay attention to being able to measure is go into your settings, gear and HubSpot, go into the security tab, hit the settings and activity tab in that security tab, and then simply click on the little link that says view account log in history and look at your employees.
And who has logged in? Who hasn't logged in? When the last time they logged in? Do I have buy in or not? It's measurable, ladies and gentlemen. You, I can tell you the three people who don't give a rats that you told them to use HubSpot because they haven't logged into your portal 200 days.
[00:35:11] Max Cohen: Yeah. mean, if you're finding people at renewal time and you're finding out that your employees haven't been using a HubSpot, oh my God,
[00:35:17] Liz Moorehead: Well, okay.
[00:35:18] Max Cohen: a whole different problem.
[00:35:19] Liz Moorehead: let's, let's, let's take a step out of the data here and let's talk about Georgia's favorite topic for a second. You want to hit us up with a hard H?
[00:35:26] George B. Thomas: Oh, man. It's time to talk about the humans.
[00:35:31] Liz Moorehead: That's right. So you were talking about here, if you don't know which of your employees are or are not using HubSpot, you've got bigger problems. Let's talk about the conversations that these decision makers and business leaders and other folks should be having with each other. So first of all, let's start.
What questions should they be asking people? Who should they be talking to? What are the conversations that you would encourage these folks to be having?
[00:35:56] George B. Thomas: Are we talking about internally or with HubSpot?
[00:35:59] Liz Moorehead: Internally.
[00:36:00] Max Cohen: yeah. I, I kind of categorize users of HubSpot, I'm forming this thought as I'm saying it. So maybe I'm going to sound stupid here, but I categorize like users of HubSpot as like boots on the ground, customer facing folks. And then more of like. The operators right so like the people pulling the string setting stuff up um, you know, uh making it work and then the people that are like Benefiting from that that are like interacting with customers, right?
I'm sure there's more sort of categories that you can put into it. But like, you know The the questions I think you ask those folks are going to be completely different to determine like if HubSpot is something that you need to kind of keep on board and if you're getting the most out of it, right? like if i'm thinking of the salesperson i'm thinking of the you know, the performers if you will the salespeople the The service people and like arguably the marketers as well, right?
Like the marketers are going in there and creating and they're getting enabled with all these tools and they're putting stuff out there. And they're, you know, they're very much performing just like a salesperson is like going in there and conversating with people and service people are solving problems and like all this stuff, right.
Versus like the ops person who's sort of. Pulling a lot of the strings and making sure everyone has what they need and setting up all these processes that the other people can use, I think the conversations that you have with those folks are very different, right? Like with those individuals, sort of like performers and operators inside of HubSpot.
It's more along the line of like making sure like, hey, do you have what you need to do your job? Is this actually making your job easier, right? What do you wish it could do? What is it not able to do for you? Things like that. Get a good I think any sort of questions there, you're trying to suss out how much it's actually enabling them to do their job better and how much net value it's actually Injecting into their day and their ability to do their job because they can do their job with different tools, right?
But like is HubSpot kind of giving them what they need that they didn't have before, right? So you're gonna ask that question differently depending on is it a salesperson a service person a marketer things like that and then
[00:38:06] George B. Thomas: it's,
[00:38:07] Max Cohen: Good.
[00:38:08] George B. Thomas: well, it's interesting, my brain, when you were talking Max, I was like, it almost feels like there's, like this is a two lane highway. And what I mean by that is there's some questions and conversations that workers should have with managers and then managers should have with the C suite. But there's a lot of questions going the other direction that I think the C suite could be having with the managers and the workers.
Like imagine just being, and by the way, not in a big group, but more of like an individual one to one. Imagine going up to the marketer and being, and saying these words. Hey, um, how much would it impact you if I took your HubSpot campaigns tool away? Or like, you went to a sales rep and you said, Hey, if all of a sudden we didn't have that sales pipeline in HubSpot, like, would that affect your day to day progress in like, being able to like, sell to our customers?
Or going to the service rep and being like, Hey, do you think if we didn't have knowledge articles, you'd probably get more calls in a day or have to send out more emails? Like, would that be a waste of time if we got rid of that? Like,
like I know I'm dumbing it down. But like, I feel like you kind of have to dumb it down.
Um, and again, one side of this is a comp
[00:39:17] Liz Moorehead: Because I see Devin, I see Devin leading along to this. Like, I don't think you're dumbing this down. I think this is a positive. This is simplifying.
[00:39:25] George B. Thomas: Oh. All right then. There we go.
[00:39:28] Max Cohen: Well, it's also, it's also, you know, having a point of conversation on, with that person on how they interact with HubSpot because it's going to be much different than other people. You know what I mean? Everyone has a different experience in an organization dealing with HubSpot because they're approaching it from different angles and you have different jobs and all that kind of stuff.
Right. But, uh, and I think this also goes why it's like this, this goes to show why it's so important. So like, you know, as someone who's a decision maker, like having a true understanding of like how your employees are actually using all these different tools you're paying for, right? Like, because if you don't have a semi nuanced understanding of that, then it's really difficult to have meaningful conversations around.
Should you keep certain technology or tools around and stuff like that. But Devin, I'm curious to hear your
[00:40:12] Devyn Bellamy: more layer that conversations like that, um, can, unlock and it's whether or not people even know what they're doing. whether or not these are the best people for the job, um, or whether or not you need some outside help and assistance. So the thing is when people think of solutions, partners, or they think of agencies, They think retainers, monthly fees, contract, all that stuff. You can get a solutions partner to come in, tell you why you suck, and then tell you how to be better. And then that would be the end of the engagement. And it can help your team get back on track. because it's very possible that people have gotten so deep in the weeds that they've completely lost the force for the trees and they forget why they're doing what they're doing in the first place, um, which is to help the company grow.
So, um, yeah, having those kinds of conversations and it can be as scary. Uh, when you lift up the rock and, and, and see just all kinds of just terrifying stuff. But at the end of the day, it, it, it may help you understand that it may not be the tool itself, but the people who are using it. And they might just need to be re energized, um, by having some outside strategists come in and set you straight.
[00:41:38] George B. Thomas: I love Devin that you mentioned this like lifting the rock and seeing what's under it and because usually if it's under a rock it's kind of something that's small. and it leads me to something that one of my buddies says that I think is, is, uh, fitting in this, uh, thing because there are a bunch of small parts to HubSpot but HubSpot in itself is really big.
My buddy likes to say how you do small things is how you do all things. And so like this is a big decision. And how you've made the little decisions along the way is probably going to determine a lot of how the conversation on this big decision is going to go. And I'd be remiss too, if I didn't hit the chat pane one more time before we start to close this bad boy out, because I love that Chris put roles, responsibilities, accountabilities, and in all caps, by the way, he felt like he had to yell at us for that last part expectations.
[00:42:27] Max Cohen: don't yell at us, dad.
[00:42:29] Liz Moorehead: something. Oh my God! So I do want to take this to the other part of the conversation as we start to wrap this up, George, because you asked a very interesting clarifying question, you know, at the start of this particular segment, I, we were, we were discussing employees. I wanted to talk about what the internal conversations they should be having, but you brought up.
So are we talking about the conversations they're having internally? Are we talking about the conversations they're having with HubSpot? So why don't we start to wrap up this conversation around that idea? So. Okay. We've talked so far about the data they should be collecting. We've talked so far about what they should be looking at internally, how they should be thinking internally, and the conversations that should be driven.
Talk to me now about once they have that data, once they have that information, what does that conversation with HubSpot
[00:43:10] George B. Thomas: Yeah. And we are making a hard left turn. Back to earlier in the episode, uh, we are making a hard left turn from like best deal mentality versus like best uses and process mindset that we've kind of been banging on for a lot of this episode. Um, but you have to start asking things like, um, Hey, Mr.
HubSpot sales guy, can I get a better discount because it's based on fiscal year or because it's the end of the quarter and you guys are trying to, oh, I don't know, hit your number? Uh, we might actually want to, uh, ask for a more significant HubSpot discount, uh, if we say these words, I'd like to buy a bundle.
Meaning I want to get two or three hubs together
[00:43:52] Max Cohen: get on that
[00:43:53] George B. Thomas: get a, wait, maybe I can get a suite, a bundle and, and have multiple products and get a discounted rate. the other thing is, can I change my billing cycle? Hey, I know that I'm bought at a HubSpot. Uh, what kind of dope price can I get if I go to a two year contract?
[00:44:10] Max Cohen: hmm.
[00:44:10] George B. Thomas: Hmm. Right. Uh, so discounts on higher contract limits. Um, also, you, an internal conversation you'd, you should have with yourself. Uh, two of them. One where in the, is the auto renewal button and turn it off.
[00:44:25] Max Cohen: Mm.
[00:44:25] George B. Thomas: I'll let that sink in
[00:44:26] Max Cohen: Nah, leave it on. Leave it on. Leave it on. Big shill. Leave it on.
[00:44:30] George B. Thomas: turn it off anyway.
[00:44:32] Max Cohen: It's easier. Just leave it on.
[00:44:34] George B. Thomas: Max gonna
[00:44:34] Max Cohen: you gotta do. Leave
[00:44:35] George B. Thomas: it on.
Just leave it on. Yeah. See, I'm just gonna play music over you. Um, but, but here's the thing. The, the second thing, hey, if you like your discount, it's okay to keep it . Like you can have that conversation of like, I see what you're trying to do here, but as one human to another, I'm probably going to have to ask that we keep it where it's at.
And many times, not always, but many times just by having that conversation. Uh, they'll go to a manager, they'll have a conversation, they'll look at the bottom line and they'll be like, yeah, that sounds good to us too. Right? So those are the things that I think internally you start to ask in conversation you start to have.
[00:45:12] Max Cohen: Yeah, do that at the end of the month, though, when it's crunch time and they're, you know, that's, that's, that's
[00:45:16] George B. Thomas: Yeah. If there's 30 days, bring it up day 27.
[00:45:20] Max Cohen: yeah, don't, don't try it on, on day one of the month, cause that, that ain't gonna go nowhere, or it's gonna go to the end of the month, and then, then you'll get there. But, Uh, I mean, the, the other thing too, right, is, uh, like think about it, when you're renewing HubSpot, you're kind of just buying it again, right, and like, maybe this is a good time to ask your CSM or, or, you know, the, the SC that's on your renewal deal if you have one or like whatever it may be, like, it might be a good time to say like, okay, like, what are we not doing with what we already have, right?
Um, and, The folks at HubSpot are really good at like looking at your portal, just because they've seen a billion and saying, Oh, you're not really using this and you have access to it. Like, you know, they want, they still want you to be happy and use what you have, right? So you keep it, um, you know, so they're really good at pointing that kind of stuff out.
Right. So it's a good time to kind of, yeah, exactly. Like they want you to, they want you to use every single square inch of that thing. Right. Um, so like, it's a good time to say like, Hey, you know, even if we're. Happy with the price. We're happy with whatever. It's just like, what are we missing? Right. What are, what are some of the things that maybe aren't so obvious.
Right. And try to squeeze more out of what you already have to. Right. Not just to like, Oh, can we lower the price? Can we do this? Can we do that? Right. but yeah, try to figure out, do more with what you got.
[00:46:35] Liz Moorehead: I love that. Okay, I want to end today's conversation with a question, and I want to start with Devin. So, this is instead of our usual one thing. HubSpot, as I alluded to at the beginning of this conversation, it's, it's only part of this conversation that a lot of people are having, like they're not looking at HubSpot in a vacuum in their budget, right?
They're looking at lots of things and depending on what their mindset is, they may be, they may be looking at this with a fear mindset. So what do you want to tell folks who may be listening right now? who are feeling a little bit more stressed. They're coming at this with a defensive posture. What are the things you want to tell that reactive person to keep in mind before they make a decision they might regret?
[00:47:21] Devyn Bellamy: The cold hard truth is that you gotta spend money to make money. And this tool's gonna help you make money. And, I mean, you can't, you can't, uh, come at it scared. Cause scared money don't make money. You need to, uh, go out and equip your team with the tools they need in order to get the job done. What it boils down to is whether or not they can get the job done, cause, cause, HubSpot's gonna do what HubSpot does, and it, it's help people grow.
But, um, yeah, Nick said it right, you don't buy HubSpot, you hire HubSpot. And it's just about whether or not you are going to, uh, give your team what they need to help you grow. But at the end of the day, if you're going to be scared, then, you know, ain't nothing I can tell you. Because what's going to happen is you're going to be answering these same questions next year, but you're going to have fewer lines to cut with the same problems.
You just, I mean, you need to get out there.
[00:48:18] Max Cohen: And I can't take full credit for the jobs to be done thing. That is a, that is a Doug David off taught me that, uh, you know, you don't buy HubSpot, you hire HubSpot, right. Jobs to be done. So big shout out to Doug. It was great seeing you in inbound. Um, in terms of like what I would say to somebody, I mean, the thing, the thing you got to remember is just like.
It's it's if you're struggling right to to see a lot of the success that you thought you were gonna see with HubSpot Packing up and heading to another tool is not gonna be what fixes it, right? It's it's gonna be you know, sitting down buckling down taking a look at you know What you could be doing what you're not doing what you are doing.
Well what you're doing bad, right? Having good conversations and honest conversations with your team And going in there and actually figuring it out, right? Because a different tool set that does the same thing but it costs less and you get sold a dream by another sales rep That doesn't fix a problem.
There's so many other reasons why you know, you didn't succeed with it, right? And if you don't fix those like, you know, you're just gonna be having Another one of these awkward renewal conversations with the next thing that you jump ship to a year from now. Right. So just remember it's, it's, it's not the, it's usually not the product.
It's, it's the process. Right. And you know, you gotta, you gotta take that into consideration.
[00:49:34] George B. Thomas: Yeah, I've actually been in many of those conversations, Max, where, uh, we would be onboarding somebody and they'd be like, Oh yeah, we were on HubSpot two years ago. And then we went to XYZ Platform, but now we're back.
[00:49:46] Max Cohen: Yeah.
[00:49:47] George B. Thomas: And it's, that's the exact decision that you're talking about that they were making. So, it's, it's funny because, like, I, I, um, Listen, I love what Devin said, scared money don't make money.
And I, I literally was when, when you started to talk about this, Liz, the major word that I heard you say was fear. And I was like, Oh man, like I could go on a whole like thing about fear.
[00:50:10] Liz Moorehead: Oh, I
[00:50:11] George B. Thomas: Yeah. And, and, um. You know, you just can't live in that world. And I know that sometimes some of the things that come out of my mouth, they're just like, yeah, that dude's living on a different planet than we are.
Um, but look, I'm a small organization. And when we started the company, we had like, Uh, starter bundle and HubSpot, uh, CMS, like we're paying maybe 400 bucks for like the tools, but as we, uh, opened the business and started to grow, we literally we've upgraded three times in the last year and a half. And I can tell you just, uh, this.
I pay way more for HubSpot than I ever thought that I would have paid for HubSpot in my lifetime. but I, I would spend more. spend more because I understand how fundamental it is to everything that we do, just from beginning to end. and I can't imagine a world where I would go and try to Frankenstein.
Uh, this somewhere else with something else. And so, you know, you have to just, and we haven't really said this yet, but the thing that I would say to people, if it's a fear based thing, uh, get out of the damn office. Go find your local park, sit down at the base of a tree with your notepad, and write all the positives on one side, all the negatives on another, sit there and sip your Starbucks or your Dunkin for a hot minute, and think about the cost of of change and the cost of moving an entire organization's cheese versus the fact that you just don't think you're getting your, you know, 25 cents.
I know it's not 25 cents out of a software that you purchased and then kind of maybe sort of. Did something with also, by the way, before we stop this, though, I've got to say two things. One, if you're getting ready to renew one, look at your marketing contacts, make sure you're doing data hygiene. Make sure you're getting rid of the contacts don't matter.
So you don't get charged for contacts that you don't need to. Your janitor doesn't need a sales or service seat. Damn it. Make sure the people who need sales or service seats have sales and service seats. Not everybody needs to have a paid seat. Okay. I'm done. Thanks. Bye.
[00:52:20] Liz Moorehead: I thought you literally were going to tell people, hey, go outside and touch grass, but you actually took it somewhere much more productive, which I appreciated. Uh, here's my little final line in the sand. Every time you decide to save a couple pennies here and there by removing an automation, you are forcing someone who costs more than that automation to do that task manually over and over and over again.
So just throwing that out there. You're saving a few pennies technically in your budget, But things will start taking longer and that is my two cents on this. Anyway, gentlemen, thank you for another chaotic episode. Max, how you doing bud? You good?
[00:52:59] Max Cohen: I'm flying.
[00:53:00] Liz Moorehead: else now? You're doing great.
Fabulous. Well, we will talk. If you'd like to leave a comment or a review or perhaps directions of where Max should drive next, don't forget to leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Otherwise gentlemen, I will talk to you next week. That's it. That's all