Owning the Outcome

Coming to you from the partner space at INBOUND22, Karim Bouras, the founder of Nile, jumps on the show to share the big bets his team is making as we approach 2023 as a means of triaging the saturation and commoditization of inbound services. Karim highlights two major bets—first, specialization around an industry and a deep investment into the marketing strategy for this specific industry. Karim shares the channels in which he focuses his time to connect with these best-fit prospects—including his podcast, which serves doubly as a means of engagement with this audience and a way to secure time with target prospects. Second, Nile has committed to a move away from being a traditional marketing agency to offering CRM implementation and integration services. And this requires a significant investment in education—education for both his prospects to understand the value and education for his team to transition from marketers to sales consultants and technical experts of HubSpot.

This episode was recorded LIVE from the Partner Hub at INBOUND22. Becky Murphy, Managing Director and co-founder of BabelQuest, joins the podcast to talk about the big bets her team is making as we approach 2023 as a means of triaging and saturation and commoditization of inbound services. Becky shares how she’s thinking about the channels and means of engagement her team is using for their next stage of growth. Specifically, she explains how formalized partnerships with complementary services providers targeting similar client profiles has been a lucrative, revenue generating channel for BabelQuest. She also talks us through her team’s technical consulting practice—including how it came to be, how the percentage split of revenue has trended over time vs. traditional inbound services, and how she prioritizes the development of technical experts and solutions architects on staff.

Today, we have on Justin Graci, Principal Marketing Manager at HubSpot. Justin is responsible for a number of enablement initiatives for our solutions partner community, and today, he previews the exclusive solutions partner experience at INBOUND. Justin starts by explaining why INBOUND is such a special and exciting event for partners specifically, walking us through opportunities available for networking, knowledge sharing, prospecting, and delighting clients. He shares how our partners can best prepare for, and maximize INBOUND—including how partners should be intentional with their plans before, during, and after the event. He wraps with a preview of the dedicated partner space at the event and the scheduled programming dedicated to partners, including the things, and people, and topics to look out for.

Today on the podcast, we have on Jens Sundell, Chief Revenue Officer at Kaksio Labs. Jens shares his team's growth story as a partner and the team's intentional decision not to get into the traditional inbound marketing retainer business. We discuss what drove that decision and how they instead found their niche in consulting for business process design. We then dig into exactly what business process design is—including what it looks like in a sales process and as a client engagement. Jens also helps differentiate consultation around process (like defining and designing business processes) vs. consultation around technology (like CRM implementation, integrations, architecture) and whether one comes before the other. We then wrap with his thoughts on the team’s approach to solutions architecture—including the process his team uses for designing data models and the important questions to ask in discovery to build the right tech stack & data flows for clients.

Today, we have on Luke Trewin, Managing Director at Modern Visual. This podcast loves a good origin story, and what’s great about Modern Visual’s beginnings, is that Luke’s very first official office job was taking on the website projects that were the catalyst for Modern Visual. And now? His team is an Elite-tiered, accredited HubSpot solutions partner. Luke walks us through when and how he decided to leave his factory job to start Modern Visual. Was it always the plan? And how did he know it was time to dip his toe into managed services. He then walks us through his process for identifying what to go to market with—were they things he was already good at? Things he was passionate about? And as Modern Visual grew, what happened when clients were looking for something outside his purview? He also shares his strategy for growing his org chart over time—and what roles, responsibilities, and candidate profiles he prioritized. Luke wraps with the value and impact he saw when working with a business coach. He shares the specifics into what he would receive coaching on, how the relationship was structured, and what that coaching relationship looks like today—spoiler alert, his longtime business coach may not be in the Modern Visual org chart.

Ingunn Bjøru, Chief Customer Experience Officer of Avidly, explains how Avidly has restructured their C-suite and has added and redesigned roles and responsibilities—including a Chief Revenue Officer, a Chief Technology Officer, and a Chief Customer Experience Officer. We learn about the teams these folks both build and manage, the focus areas and points of strategy that fall under their purview, and the impact they drive for the Avidly team, their prospects, and their customers. Ingunn and I also discuss consistency. Avidly has grown substantially through acquisitions and expansion into new regions and countries, so she shares the importance behind consistency, when differences and distinctions between teams is a actually a positive, and how they ensure consistency when it’s required knowing the global distribution of the team.

Shawn Peterson, CEO of Quantum Business Solutions, walks us through the sales machine he’s built that has led to scalable, repeatable, and predictable results for his business and his clients. On their best day, Quantum booked 20 meetings with c-suite contacts via cold outreach—with his team’s best months including over 100 meetings booked. To understand how, we start the tech stack he uses (including softwares like Kennected, ConnectAndSell, and ZoomInfo). Shawn walks us through each, including the data that pipes into HubSpot, what he’s able to automate with each data set, and how it allows him to successfully book meetings. We then move over to how this sales pipeline tech stack has manifested itself in client engagements as well—and how he pitches, prices, and replicates what works for Quantum for his clients.

Jessica Scanlon, CEO of Hot Dog Marketing, joins the podcast to share her team's journey in transitioning from standard retainers to an agile retainer strategy. As Jessica explains, by leveraging the agile methodology, the planning cycles and production sprints of her team’s retainers now allow for more flexibility, responsiveness, and better client results. We start with a breakdown of agile retainers (what they are and why they matter) and the impetus was in making this transition. We then unpack the transition period for her team, including the key elements that needed to be reimagined across project management, process development, pricing strategies, team training and more. We wrap with results: what Jessica’s client engagements look like today, the differences she feels with the new agile approach in place, and the most noticeable, tangible impact on KPIs she’s seen—like average order value, assets under management per CS rep, and more.

In today’s episode, Ranya Barakat, CEO of CRM Toolbox, joins the show to talk about the major transitions, pivots, and inflection points her team has navigated over the last few years—as CRM Toolbox, a firm offering migration, integration, and complex onboarding services, used to be IDS, a LATAM full-service agency. Ranya starts with the why: what sparked the change in name and branding, the pivot in services, and re-classification to a North American partner. We then dig into her team’s service offering—and what this pivot meant for her old services, her existing team, and her existing client base. Ranya also shares the impact on sales, including how prospecting, her channels for sourcing, and her pricing methodology have all changed. We then wrap on strategy, and what the new client experience looks like working with CRM Toolbox. Ranya shares the team’s approach about defining the problem, understanding tech stacks and data structures, designing and planning solutions, and architecting it inside of (and around) HubSpot.

Eric Baum, Founder and CEO of Bluleadz, joins the podcast to share the makeup of his team’s sales org, including the roles, responsibilities, comp plans, and performance benchmarks for his SDRs and AEs. We talk about each team's focus areas, the handoff criteria and qualification thresholds for prospects, the places in which he builds for scale, and how he thinks about the sales team’s role in fielding inbound leads vs. more outbound prospecting. We even get into the role of his customer success org—and where and how they fit into the org’s efforts in cross-selling and upselling. We wrap with a pandemic-driven experiment where Bluleadz offered sales development as a service—with a team of SDRs dedicated to offering outsourced prospecting for his clients. Eric shares the genesis of the idea and how the team came to be before digging into the logistics: how the parameters of the service were defined, how he qualified fits amongst his client base, and how Bluleadz balanced both recurring and performance-based fees for the service.