Owning the Outcome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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