Agency Unfiltered

This week, we have on Dustin Brackett, CEO and Founder of Hive Strategy, and author of the brand new, just-released book “Market Like a Human”. In our conversation, Dustin explains what it means to "market like a human" and how a focus on quality over quantity can solve the problems prevalent today in marketing and sales strategies. We also talk about the crisis of disconnection and how Dustin’s methodology helps reestablish connection with your audience. He also shares how he thinks about the underlying pillars and values of this framework, like authenticity and transparency, and how they should manifest in GTM strategies. We wrap with his read on the current servicing landscape—and how other partners can leverage human-centricity to cut through the noise of a saturated market of inbound services.

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.

Jani Aaltonen, Founder of Sales Communications, hosts a rolling calendar of small group workshops that have added a ton of force to his agency’s flywheel. Jani joins us to talk about the structure of his classroom training offering, the value in trust, the impact on revenue, and how others can get started.

Adi Jagannathan, the CEO and co-founder of OpenFlow, joins the show to talk about OpenFlow's journey from being a CRM software and industry agnostic firm to deeply specializing in the cannabis and dispensary industry. Adi shares the challenges he faced while operating agnostically, the evolution of his agency’s business model, and how his category specialization (RevOps), industry specialization (cannabis), and software specialization (HubSpot) came to be. He also shares the unique opportunities that are present within the cannabis industry—especially around CRM, customer platforms, and the power of integrating dispensary point of sale data with customer data.

Lara Triozzi and Terri-Lynne Anderson, CEO and Sales Manager at Market Launcher respectively, join the show to talk about prospecting and lead generation. With both perspectives, we get to talk about both the broad evolution of B2B prospecting and the cyclical nature of how sellers must change their approach to reach prospective buyers and the tactical approaches that work best from someone on the front lines. We talk about the current state of prospecting, what businesses are looking for from sales reps and sales conversations, and what the Market Launcher team does today that can help others improve and/or accelerate their own prospecting efforts. And based on Market Launcher’s expertise in the enterprise, Lara and Terri-Lyne also discuss how these early sales conversations change as you move upmarket.

Angela Pointon, President of 11 out of 11, joins the show to talk about employee extended leave—and offers tips on how you can plan for things like parental leave without destroying your P&L or the client experience. Angela walks us through her approach staff-wise, how she manages a mix of both full-time and contract employees to maintain flexibility, and when, where, and how redundancies and coverage models are established. We also talk about how it’s handled on the client-side—how they’re made aware, how the transition is positioned, and how Angela’s team mitigates any client concerns or reservations. Lastly, apart from staffing, we hit on the other operational measures and processes she’s put into place to ensure continuous service delivery.

Carlos Corredor, CEO and cofounder of Condor Marketing and Staffing Agency who’s here to talk about how he’s grown his agency past 70+ employees primarily through a delivery team based in Latin America. We discuss the history of Condor and its growth trajectory and Carlos’s philosophy on building a LATAM-based delivery team while targeting and working with US-based clientele. We get into employment types, full time vs. contract vs. freelance, and the key benefits for tapping into this LATAM talent pool: both financial and skill-based. And for other US-based HubSpot partners looking to follow suit and grow a team outside of the US, Carlos offers his perspective on how to do it successfully—including how to anticipate the necessary changes across operations, communication, collaboration, and more.

Matt Smith, CEO and Founder of 1406 Consulting here to talk about two things: first, his entry into the HubSpot partner ecosystem via the old sales partner program—which we now know as the Provider program. We talk about 1406’s origination and beginnings, how they started as a HubSpot partner, and how its navigated the ecosystem through today. Second, we talk about tech stack and platform consulting—and how important it is to go to market with a recommended tech stack for his clients. So we talk about Matt’s approach to building that list, the qualification process he uses in determining what apps and integrations he wants to add to the list, and the relationships he makes with the app partners themselves. We also talk about how this manifests in the sales process—from discovery questions to inform his app recommendations, objection handling and navigating pushback or potential aversion to increased software costs to accelerate the sales process and close new deals.

Brian DeKoning and Duncan Craig, partners at Raka, join the show to talk about Raka Health—a new verticalized sub-brand launch geared towards healthcare and life science brands. They discuss the launch and how they made the call to formalize this specialization into its own brand. And with the launch of Raka Health, they share the changes they had to make structurally, operationally, within their processes and to their overall GTM strategy. Lastly, we dig into their expertise within healthcare to talk HIPAA compliance. Specifically with HubSpot, we talk about implementation for their healthcare clients that supports and meets their needs regarding HIPAA and privacy.

Hannah Collins Lee, co-founder and CEO of Second Mile, joins the pod to talk about one of the hottest topics in the business world: the four day work week. Hannah shares how the team ideated on, tested, and then fully implemented for Second Mile—and she walks us through what it now looks like in practice. She outlines exactly how the processes, operations, and employee expectations had to evolve to allow for this shift and how it now manifests in the team’s client engagements. Specifically with clients, she talks about the announcement out to clients, the initial receptiveness, and the increased accountability she now had to deliver results. We wrap with impact to the business—from the trickle down impact on numbers and KPIs over to the culture, work-life balance, and employee experience.

Ryan Burkett, Director of Marketing and Operations at BrandGen.io, and Galen Dow, Director of Business Development at BrandGen.io join the podcast to talk about ”ABR”, or an account-based RevOps strategy, which presents a significant revenue opportunity for solutions partners and agencies as the next evolution of account-based marketing (or ABM). Ryan and Galen start by contrasting ABM vs. ABR, including the importance of having it orchestrated within a CRM, and then they walk us through what ideal ABR strategy execution looks like with HubSpot—both with the functionality available natively and with their recommended apps and integrations plugged in. They then share how this can manifest in the sales process, including the value propositions to use, the right discovery questions to ask, the blockers you can remove, which opportunities to seek out first, and the ABM tools you should integrate in first.

Matt Bolian, CEO and cofounder of Supered, brings his unique perspective from both the solutions partner and now app partner side on why managed services, agencies, and other people-centric organizations can be difficult to scale. Matt shares why a scaling strategy is so important, how partners should be prioritizing pathways towards scaling, and what opportunities are in front of those partners who are able to leverage the right systems, teams, processes, and technologies for scale. We then hone in on the idea of “tech-enabled” partners, where technology across the app ecosystem (specifically tools like Supered) can enable and support the growth of partners by increased capacity, improved margins, and higher client adoption of the platforms they implement.

This week's guest is Tom Richard, CEO and Co-founder of Unlimited Tech Solutions. As his organization knocks on the door of becoming an Elite-tiered solutions partner, Tom shares the selling and servicing frameworks that have proven to be successful in aiding his team's growth. We start with how he frames his organization in the ecosystem (and the name Unlimited Tech Solutions provides a great hint). We talk about the win-win approach his team takes to selling—regardless of whether it's pitching net-new services, reselling software, co-selling with HubSpot, or all of the above. He goes into detail as to how he prioritizes transparency and proper expectation setting. On the servicing side, he talks about his approach to scoping integrated tech stacks and complex configurations of HubSpot, something I know is top of mind for many.  And although it can present a great revenue opportunity, we also discuss the occasional headache-inducing experience of being hired to "rewire” the work done by others in a customer's HubSpot portal.

Christopher Nault, Founder and CEO of Growth on the pod to talk about balancing small teams and sustainable growth. Chris walks us through how his team navigated the transition from traditional marketing agency to revenue generation and ops consultancy, a move that I know many partners are either thinking about or actively doing themselves, including actionable insights for others to apply to their own organizations. We then get into sales, where we learn about how Growth’s sales efforts have evolved over time and the approaches and methodologies the Growth team uses today when actively prospecting, generating and connecting with leads, and working deals through their pipeline. We wrap with his point of view on the HubSpot ecosystem, the opportunities that exist for small services providers, and how best to carve out your piece of the HubSpot pie.

Tyler Samani-Sprunk, Chief Marketing Officer at Simple Strat, joins the show and pulls the curtain back on HubSpot Hacks—the highly successful YouTube channel the Simple Strat team manages to the tune of 18,000+ subscribers and 1.2 million video views. Tyler opens up to the history of HubSpot Hacks, where and how it began, and how it operates today. We discuss those early days, how the initial pilot was structured, how they measured success, and the methods used to accelerate its growth and scale their efforts. Tyler then explains how it's been integrated into Simple Strat’s systems and other go-to-market strategies, and he walks us through how a video view on YouTube turns into a paying client of Simple Strat. He also shares the quantifiable impact Simple Strat has seen from the channel across lead generation, opportunity close rates, revenue, and more.  We wrap with Tyler’s perspective on how others can uncover and leverage growth strategies like the one Simple Strat built with HubSpot Hacks—and he shares actionable tips for building your own growth playbook—whether it's through video-based content or otherwise.

Dan Moyle, HubSpot Advisor at Impulse Creative and the instructor for HubSpot Academy’s community building bootcamp, joins the show to share his perspective on community-led growth and why it's such an important concept and strategy for solutions partners to anchor to. We dig into the specifics around building communities, around your organization and as a paid service for your client’s organizations, and Dan gets into the tactics for turning community into a powerful growth lever. We discuss what is and isn’t community, where we draw the line between content and community, and more. We also talk about ICPs and how these ideal client profiles can help manifest into a community strategy—specifically, where & how you can be a contributing member to the communities that may already exist. We wrap with a look at how communities can be built and hosted on HubSpot with tools like Impulse Creative’s Cohortium.

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.