HubSpot sales enablement tactics, tips, and strategies (HubHeroes, Ep. 23)

[00:00:00] Liz Murphy:

Welcome back to another episode of the Hub Heroes Podcast. As always, I am Liz Murphy, your content strategist in residence and your hub Heroes Wrangler. And I'm joined, yes, by Max and George Devon. Thank God you're back.

[00:00:14] George B. Thomas:

we're all

[00:00:15] Liz Murphy:

Oh my gosh. I don't know about you all, but I am just so ready to hear him like spit fire, but in a way that's just. Just read the phone book to me, man. Just read the phone book. I was so excited.

[00:00:28] George B. Thomas:

like if Confucius like spitfire kind of thing

[00:00:32] Liz Murphy:

No, this is like Luther Vandross spitting fire and like there's

like a nice like baseline in the background. He's like, let me break it down about

why you're doing everything wrong with your processes.

[00:00:43] George B. Thomas:

this is how you do inbound marketing.

[00:00:46] Liz Murphy:

Like at inbound, this. Throwing it out to the HubSpot gods. Can we have a room that's for Devin, but it's like lit with like crushed velvet sofas, mood lighting, maybe some like berry white in the background. He's like, let's talk about your systems.

I would go to that. Everybody

gets a smoking jacket.

[00:01:06] George B. Thomas:

I would be there.

[00:01:08] Devyn Bellamy:

that room kind of existed. It just wasn't for that purpose. There was a quiet room in, in. Where it's like

just the dark lighting and it literally, the only thing it's missing is a monologue from yours, truly. Really? But,

[00:01:22] Max Cohen:

Devin, you what you wanna know. Sometimes I listen to the calm map and to fall asleep. They have these things called train stories where they just tell you just about an experience you're having on this very exotic

[00:01:33] Liz Murphy:

Headspace does the

[00:01:35] Max Cohen:

just want you to tell me, yeah.

I want you to tell me a train story.

We can call it all aboard the inbound

[00:01:43] George B. Thomas:

my gosh.

[00:01:45] Liz Murphy:

guys, we need a Hub Heroes meditation app where we do sleep stories cuz Headspace, Headspace has the same thing and it's like you are at an antique bookshop, blah. But what if it's like, we're talking about workflows and you're just gonna click this button right here.

[00:01:59] Max Cohen:

Yeah. . Yeah. Yeah. Or it's about like riding the M B T A commuter rail, and he is like, you just picked up your French vanilla large iced from Duncan's. You sit down on the on the, the, the dry leathery, broken seats, , and a calm comes across your

[00:02:19] Liz Murphy:

And then a guy slaps the front of your Volvo. Hey, I'm walking here,

[00:02:23] George B. Thomas:

and everybody is listening to the podcast wondering what in God's name is happening right

[00:02:28] Devyn Bellamy:

Yeah.

[00:02:29] Max Cohen:

Yeah. What were

[00:02:30] Liz Murphy:

I don't know. I love, you know what? I love George's subtle like Liz. Liz, do you remember your hosting? Yes, of course. I. Because the

next sleep story we're gonna be, I know, le, I know I understand. It is a three o'clock recording on a Friday, George, but you're at a 15. Let's bring it down to like a solid eight.

[00:02:52] George B. Thomas:

All right. Eight, eight and a

half. Maybe I might be able to do nine. I'll

[00:02:55] Liz Murphy:

in fact, you know what? You know, here's what I'm gonna do. Here's what I'm gonna do. So last week, and right now I've bet my sass levels have been at a. For you guys, I'm gonna bring it down to a five

because this is the,

I know because this is the second part of a two-part conversation. We're talking about sales enablement today. If you missed the first episode last week with Max George and myself, we talked about why your sales enablement strategy is failing. All of the things that you need to think about and consider before you. Consider technology or the tools or looking at HubSpot to just please for the love of God, fix everything with sales enablement.

Make it work, please. This week, however, I'm finally gonna grant your wish. I gave you a lot of grief last week, not letting you talk about tools and technology, but that's exactly what we're talking about today. So I'm taking my SAS quotient. I am gonna let the three of you all just live in a tools and technology paradise in this conversation, and I'm just gonna be here as the journalist on behalf of the audience.

How does that sound to you guys?

[00:03:54] Devyn Bellamy:

Yeah, sure.

[00:03:55] Max Cohen:

We love you.

[00:03:56] George B. Thomas:

of me.

[00:03:57] Liz Murphy:

God, don't get so excited,

[00:03:59] George B. Thomas:

I mean, you told us to pull it back a little.

[00:04:04] Liz Murphy:

George.

I'm just, kidding. You know, I want you all to spit. Are we ready? Are we ready to do this? Are you guys excited to talk about tools and technology this

week? Yeah.

[00:04:14] Max Cohen:

Oh, my.

[00:04:15] Devyn Bellamy:

Yeah.

[00:04:16] Liz Murphy:

Ow. Okay. That's the energy I want. All right, so I think it goes without saying. That no one should ever look at a sales enablement tool or platform to actually be their strategy.

This is something you guys have talked about all the time. HubSpot is not your strategy. However, I wanna start today's conversation with this question. When a company is thinking about how and where they integrate and leverage technology into their stack, into their processes in a way that's smart for sales, enable. What are the things that they need to be thinking about? What are the questions that they should be asking themselves?

[00:04:54] Devyn Bellamy:

one of the things to taking in consideration is operations disruption, and there might be a tool that looks super fun on the outside, but the, it's gonna derail everything because it is so. different than how you could and should be operating that you can't even parallel test it. so looking at how it can integrate into your existing operations, unless you're planning a new king, your operations and you know, I'm a fan of just completely start over. But if that's not the plan, Look at how it can be an asset that aligns with your strategy and not a hurdle that needs to be overcome. But keep in mind I say this with an asterisk because that mentality is how you end up with disparate systems. But if you're not capable of doing systems integrations, if you're just trying to take one little step at a time, you know you're afraid of change. Or even worse, your head of sales is afraid of change. try. You might, you might, you might have to find that, uh, happy medium.

[00:06:03] Liz Murphy:

Or people who say they like change, like I'm totally into change, and then change happens. They're like, Ugh, why? why?

isn't this perfect already? Max, what about

you?

[00:06:12] Max Cohen:

Well wait, George, did you have something you wanted to say? Cause

[00:06:14] George B. Thomas:

Yeah. So I was just gonna say, first of all, let's just be, uh, real. Nobody likes change. and if you don't

believe me, you can go, uh, get the book, who Moved My Cheese, and it talks about the fact that humans just don't like, Change at all. so I do have some thoughts, some questions that I think people should be thinking about when they're going to try to enable sales enablement in their organization.

But I'll pause it. I just wanted to talk about like, fundamentally we don't like change and so we have to go about it a certain

way. But Max, I do want to get your thoughts.

[00:06:47] Max Cohen:

Yeah. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting that you say we don't like change. Cuz sometimes even when we want change, when that change ends up happening, we don't like going through it. Right. I wanna move to my new house. I hate the process of doing it right when it comes down to get it done. Ugh. And the same thing I think goes for when you're like, Changing certain processes, you know, be it in something like your sales process or just the way you operate or, or interact with customers, things like that.

It's, it's the same thing. So change is always gonna be tough, even though it seems like it's desired. Right. But when it comes to like, getting started with, you know, sales enablement and like choosing technology, I think like, , you gotta start with like the simple stuff first, right? And that's figure out where the fires are, Because like, you can't make a lot of these nice to have changes without first implementing the need to have changes. And like you can't build a house that's currently on

[00:07:36] Liz Murphy:

What's an example of

[00:07:38] Max Cohen:

yeah, I mean, so like if your sales reps are being forced to use certain tools that make their work more tedious, You, can't expect to deploy all these other like, nice to have things without fixing that first, right?

You can't build a house that's currently on fire. asking folks like, Hey, what is, what is getting in the way of you being able to sell right now? Not what's like the nice, like other things we can do. Right, but like what's making it difficult is like the act of, you know, finding the right prospects to be working with is the act of following up with people is the act of data entry into the crm is, is is the act of using your CRM not worth the benefit of using your CRM , right?

Like, is it just like difficult, like are you spending way more time doing administrative stuff than you are actually like having conversations? Right. So I think it first comes down to like talk to your people and saying, What's the friction that's making it more difficult for you to sell today? Right?

And hyper-focusing on solving for that stuff first before you start layering all these kind of other things on top of it, right? Because it's really hard to, you know, build a house without a solid foundation, kinda like we've said a billion other times. So, um, you know, it'd say step one, whether you're first starting out or it's a team that's already kind of been operating for a while and you haven't been thinking about sales enablement yet.

You gotta, you gotta, you gotta patch the wound first. Right. You gotta do some triage. Right. So I'd

[00:08:55] George B. Thomas:

Max is like in analogy mode. It's like houses on rocks and castles on sand, and people with bruises and all sorts of things on fire and craziness. But, here's the thing.

You did say a word a lot actually. You said a lot of words, uh, that I agree with, but you

did.

say a word that I think is a magical word that we need to pay attention to, especially in the conversation that we're having right now about when looking at technology for sales enablement. and the words that you said was, simple. And what I would say is I would, convert that to simplify. Too many people when they go to think about sales enablement and technology, they go, Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, look, uh, they can do this, and they can do that. And they can do this. Oh, and there's these three things that they can do over here.

Oh, this is so great. when the mindset should be, uh, and if we get this, they won't have to do this. They won't have to do that. They won't have to do these three things over there. Because if you truly want to enable sales, what it means is how much can we actually do for them? How much can the

software or SaaS platform do for them? Because the only way that you can get them to sell more is allow them to have more time to sell. And so if any of these tools take away from the simplification and add complexity, then you're fighting an uphill battle.

[00:10:14] Max Cohen:

Mm-hmm.

[00:10:14] Liz Murphy:

the other thing I would add to that as well, and then I promise I'm gonna go right back into my li put my little interviewer cap back on. I was recalling earlier this week through some conversations on LinkedIn when I was first trying to stand up sales enablement systems when I was working at Impact. And one of the things that we talked about last week is that often you have to do a lot of work to understand what it is that you actually need to triage, especially if you are in a marketing seat where I was having happy hours and going shopping with some of these people on the sales team. But when it came to the brass tax of what needed to happen from a sales enablement perspective, there were so many things they were not telling me about what their real opinions are or what they were actually. they didn't wanna hurt my feelings or they just didn't feel like the conversation was worth it cuz they didn't think I could actually do anything to fix it. The reason I bring that up from a technology perspective is because one of the triage things that you may need to do is right now every single sales rep on your team has a Google Doc that is their own of a random list of their directory of helpful content. You may need to move that to something that is centralized within HubSpot, but you may need to do the trust building work to even figure that. As a problem. And I think sometimes that's something we need to remember is that don't go into as assuming what we, that you know where all the fires are and you need to have

the conversations to surface them. So let's get HubSpot specific here. although George, did you have other questions that you think other people should be asking themselves at this point that are either pointing to some of the softer human things that we were talking about last? Or just about the platforms themselves. Then I really wanna start digging into hubs.

[00:11:49] George B. Thomas:

Well, I definitely think we can dig into Hub Swap, but a, again, this, I think there's mindsets that you have to have and, and I fully understand that probably a lot of who is listening right now might be the marketer or the owner of the company. There might be a few sales folks. If you're a sales uh, folk, to this.

Let us know. Like hit, hit us up on the Twitters or something, let us know, Hey, I'm in sales and I listen to your jams. When I think about this, the simplifying the complex is definitely a mindset. But the other thing that I would say is a question that you have to ask yourself is how can you rethink what you think as a marketer, as an owner? And I might, uh, a little bit later in this episode be able to have a chance to talk about something that most times is thought of a, of a marketing. Yeah. In a conversation I had earlier this week, it was positioned as a sales tool and it stopped me in my tracks and I was like, wait, what? What do you do? And, and the way that it was simplified and the way that they deliver it to their sales team, is quite absolutely magical. But the, the question you should be asking yourself is, are the things that I think truly the way that the rest of the world sees them? Or am I seeing them as a marketer? And what if I was to look at them? Like a sales rep, how would I use them? How would I want them?

and then last but not least, I, and I know marketers, I'm gonna get hate mail here, but the one thing that I would be asking myself is how much can I do for them? I, I alluded to this when we were talking about SaaS software, but if you can take more off of, a sales rep's plate than you put on, you will end up in a very good.

[00:13:25] Liz Murphy:

okay. So we're talking at a very high level here, a lot about what we need to be thinking about holistically about technology. That can include HubSpot. It can also include other things that may not specifically be HubSpot, but now Hub Heroes. Let's get

Hub HubSpot centric. What are the ways in which people should be thinking about hubs? to help them with

sales enablement. And one of the reminders I want us to put in our heads from last week when we were shilling for Big Sprocket was that this really is something that has expanded to a company-wide initiative. So I want us to think about what are the different components, what are the different hubs that come in here?

Not just the marketing and

sales pieces, which I think are sometimes the obvious ones for people, but we should spend a lot of time.

[00:14:07] Max Cohen:

Okay. So if you're, if for, for me at least, when I'm thinking about sales enablement, and like literal tools in HubSpot. I'm saying what am I doing to enable the productivity of my reps? So like what? Like what am I setting up and how am I coaching people to use the tools in a way that's going to make them like spend less time doing a lot of the bullshit administrative stuff they gotta worry about.

Right. And then the other sort of angle I'm thinking is, How am I gonna enable them from like a knowledge and information at their fingertips type, approach, So in that realm, you know, in the first realm where I'm thinking of like productivity, that's where I'm just like, all right, what's like the emails they're sending over and over again?

What are the, the things that they're constantly typing? What are the, what's the stuff they need to get access to? So you're thinking about. Templates and snippets, things like sequences, right? Like what are the common times people are like, try like following up in the same exact way, and how can we reduce, you know, the effort it takes to do that kind of stuff.

But then when I think about that second realm, like how am I enabling them with like knowledge? I'm thinking about things like playbooks, right? I'm thinking about building in things like battle cards for like competitive intel, stuff like that. but yeah, it's like those two sort of like lenses are kind of like the, the way that I would approach it and the way that you would do either of those is, is obviously gonna fluctuate, right?

But from a tool perspective, that's generally where I'm gonna start.

[00:15:31] Devyn Bellamy:

all that and then some one thing that, uh, yeah, right. One thing that. Max alluded to, that I think is really important is how do you use your technology to duplicate your top performers? one of the things

that, um, you'll see a high turnover, with sales personnels cuz a lot of them just don't know what they're doing and they're unsuccessful. And so that's when we start talking about playbooks and duplicating. winning, snippets and, winning sequences and looking at who is really doing it and what can you do to make sure that your people at the very least are, have the ability to, uh, aspire to reach those levels of success. if they have everything that they. to be as good as the best person you got. And then also, of course, how can you make the best person you got?

[00:16:27] George B. Thomas:

So it's interesting cuz as I kind of listen to us here, one, I wanna make sure we dive. Deeper into like individual tools and thoughts and ideas around snippets, around

templates. but also I want us to think about something and that is, up until this point we've been talking about what they do or don't do, what they do or don't do, what they do or don't do and, and the tools that'll enable them to do this or stop them from happening.

To do that, I think there's a big part of sales enablement that we should be paying attention to that has actually has a lot with keeping them not being lost. it's very easy for a

sales rep to get lost in the weeds. It's very easy for marketing or a company to build a process that's too robust and they get lost in what they're supposed to do.

What do you mean there's 27 required fields in that one deal stage that I have to drag and drop it. What do you mean? I'm supposed to do these five or seven things right. And so when I think about this, helping them not be lost in pairing it with the what they have to do and what we don't want them to do, I think of two things.

I think of automation that can enable the tasks that happen when they need to happen. Not before, not after, but right at the right time. Like on the marketing side of this, we talk about talking to the right person at the right time with the right. But for sales enablement, it's literally the right task for the, you know, the thing that you have to do in that moment in time. And so now all of a sudden you're just firing on all cylinders. You're not lost in the wilderness, and you're getting, you're helping them be more productive with the limited amount of time that they have in a day to accomplish the massive goals. The other thing that I think about not getting. Is if you're listening to this and you don't have goals and forecasting set up in a HubSpot so people actually know the revenue journey that they're trying to get to or go through. And trust me, the only reason I can bring this junk up is because I've been in portals and seen it, oh, well why did HubSpot put that in there? That seems like a, a kind of nice to have. No, like it's a must. To keep them on the right journey anyway, so I think of automation and I think of understanding the journey that they're supposed to go.

[00:18:28] Liz Murphy:

George something. Goals is something you talk about a lot, I'm actually gonna link in the show notes. I think thematically across the board goals in some way, shape, or form are some of the most underutilized components of every single HubSpot tool. So you wrote this great article about HubSpot workflows, and that's the thing that people do.

They open up these tools. With zero goals and my brothers and sisters in Christ, or the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Buddha, I am so curious as to how we're going to measure or manage what it is that we're doing. How can we even define whether or not we are succeeding as a family or failing as a family if we haven't even defined

what that looks like?

It's crazy.

[00:19:07] Max Cohen:

yeah,

[00:19:08] George B. Thomas:

analytics.

Just gonna throw that. Quick anyway.

[00:19:10] Max Cohen:

Yeah. That there, there's that, and then I think there's also like, Enabling people to be sort of like, Enabling them with visibility into their own performance. Right. Because there's one thing to like look at your, like DealBoard and see like, oh my God, I've got all my revenue tied up in this stage of like whatever.

Right? But like, you know, I don't see enough people building like dashboards for individual reps to just look at that's gonna tell them how they're, how well they're doing, right. Or even help them, compare them to. They're teammates if they wanna see that Right. To kind of get an idea of where they're, where they stand, or to even like, set those, those, those dashboards up in a way where if I'm a, a sales leader or a manager, I can sit down with someone, filter it by just that rep and use it as a, a coaching conversation tool.

You wanna make sure, like someone who's using it on a daily basis has a reason to go in there and it's gonna provide them some value. And sometimes that's gonna be like an easy way for them to understand how they're doing so they can kind of, you know, gauge their performance accordingly.

Yeah, I mean if we want to kind of get more like specific, like into the, into the tools a little bit, I think snippets is like a really neat one to like start with, cuz a lot of people, um, you know, kind of just think snippets is like a way to just, you know, put in like a beginning of an email or like repeatable text that you use all the time.

Um, but sometimes it can be used for something like a call note template, Everybody takes notes in different ways. Some people like do the chicken scratch thing or just like take super short form notes while other people are putting, you know, way too much detail into 'em. A really cool quick thing that you can do with cheaper versions of HubSpot is like, have a quick like snippet that makes everybody take their call notes in the same way, And one that's, you know, enabling good data to go into the system. But two, it's also like a super simple way that you can give someone a quick framework for a discussion so they. The information they need to get the questions they need to ask what information they should be, you know, jotting down, things like that.

you know, so snippets are cool for that if you're not like just, you know, using 'em to straight up communicate with someone in like a chat or an email. But I don't know if you guys have seen like other creative uses of some of the more similar tool, like simpler tools in there for like, you know, enabling

[00:21:15] George B. Thomas:

Yeah, absolutely. And Devin, I know that you have some ideas cuz you're kind of like leaning in there, but I don't want to go off of snippets too quick because, yes, you can have. Discovery snippet that gives you the seven questions you want every rep to ask. Yes, you can create a snippet

on price and cost because it's a question you get a thousand freaking times a day and you want it to be answered consistently. yes, you can have a snippet on a. Uh, the latest blog articles of X, Y, Z or the topics that you want to be known for here, there, and everywhere, and everybody knows, oh, if somebody asks about, the Roto-Rooter five 57,000, uh, here's the snippet for it, right? Like, and again,

part of this is if I don't have to think as a sales rep in the way in which you want me to position and talk about X, Y, Z thing. Then that saves me time in my day, I just go, pounds, 5,700. There it is on the page. Pound or number sign for us. Old farts. Number sign. You know what? Discovery? Boom, there it is, wherever I need it. And the fact that snippets work inside of Outlook, Gmail and your CRM like anyway.

[00:22:23] Liz Murphy:

So George, I love that you've already started digging into the tools. This is not an A yes, and but it also is a little yes. And however, there's a reason why I wanted to save the ninja tips until the very end, because one of the things I wanna make sure we do is that I think natively, we automatically look at at least people who are seasoned with HubSpot, right?

They're looking at sales and marketing hub. But I'd be so curious to hear from you about what are the tools people are not thinking about maybe in service. Things in the CMS

hub, maybe in operations, because I want us to have a whole dedicated time when we're talking about snippets, sequences, setting up those knowledge libraries.

There's a whole question dedicated just to that. But one of the things we talked about in the last episode is that this is a whole company initiative, y'all. This isn't just sales and marketing. So what are the components that people of are overlooking in HubSpot that don't immediately maybe connect the dots to sales enablement?

[00:23:14] Devyn Bellamy:

what I was thinking about, and, and people do think about it for sales enablement, um, but it's also excellent for service as well as documents. if you're accustomed to sending out PDFs or sharing a link to a pdf, and you, you know, that PDFs don't give analytics, there. once you have the document out there, then it could be viewed by one person viewed by a hundred people who knows, who knows who it's getting sent to.

That's the cool thing about, documents tool in HubSpot, is that it gives you a little bit more control and visibility on what's going on. and when you are talking about, that cookie cutter, statement that you, uh, have saved for snippets on a particular, can also drop that, uh, spec sheet or the brochure for the same thing. And, oh, man, would that come in handy for service two? And the very first line in the troubleshooting dock is, did you turn it off and on? And you know, they didn't because you can see that they didn't open the dock.

[00:24:13] Max Cohen:

Well, I think the other thing I love about documents too is like when you talk about enabling people to remove. when you have like a bunch of sales collateral that you're sending around, lot of times people are like spending time trying to find that in whatever folder they saved it in going and downloading it from the other location that was central to get the latest version, not knowing if they're sending the newest one or the older version or whatever.

Having that stuff like right in there, just like, yeah, it's convenient, but the big thing is that it's gonna shave a whole lot of wasted seconds and even minutes finding. Right. And like when you add that up over a day, you're enabling people to have less friction, you know, in their day. In terms of, Elizabeth, you were talking about like other parts of the tool service hub's a really like interesting piece too because like, you know, while you're, while people like sometimes only look at HubSpot for engaging with folks outside of your company.

like the people that work at your company are people too, and they could just as easily be contacts in your system. when we talk about, like listening to what's going on and the fires that you have to put out from an enablement perspective, you can use the surveys tool on your own folks, You can build knowledge bases that are private, that only your, your employees can. and give them, uh, you know, give, give that as a resource to them too. whether it's, you know, with enablement documentation, internal knowledge-based articles, things like that. there's a lot of ways that you can take the tools that you're using to, you know, traditionally just communicate with customers and prospects and turn them inward and use them on your own people for

[00:25:39] George B. Thomas:

Teacher, teacher, teacher call on me. Call on me. I, I understand the assignment. I understand. Assignment. Listen, here's the deal. The assignment was what other than marketing and sales hub can we be leveraging for sales enablement? By the way, before I go into my diatribe, ladies and gentlemen, I love documents. The fact that you can give visibility where there was. Darkness inside of emails and PDFs if they were downloaded or not. I am a big fan, but here's the deal. If you wanna derail sales faster than, I don't know, snot on the, I don't know where it's gonna be, but if you wanna derail sales, give them some dirty data. Right? So dirty data. So

immediately, are you using the Operations Hub Quality Command Center to make sure that the data in the system that the sales reps are trying to use to actually have those calls are the data that they need to be paying attention to? That's one operations. Data cleanliness. Second one, cms.

Are you using your products for more than just your quotes? Are you using products on the

CMS side where you can actually have updated pricing because it's looking at the products in the backend of HubSpot to pull in the pricing for your actual stuff on your website pages? Because by the way, if you didn't know. It's possible you can do that. And so making the back end of your system work with the front end of what the people actually see is a way that you can enable sales. Cuz they're not like, is that last year's pricing? No, no, no. It's just pricing is pricing. That's how you can enable sales. They're not confused.

They're not lost. They're streamlined. The other one is a service hub. Service hub man, if you're listening to this right now, and your marketing and sales teams do not have a voice of customer system in place where you can understand the latest and greatest demands, the, the, the major pain points that they're facing right now, not six months ago or six years ago, and able to have conversations, whether it be through snippets, templates, or process driven through playbooks. Or sequences, then you definitely should be using Service Hub to have a voice of customer. I'm sorry, I had to go a little bit on a little bit of there for a second.

[00:27:38] Liz Murphy:

George,

[00:27:39] Max Cohen:

what the

[00:27:40] Liz Murphy:

what the people that one of the reasons why I

was challenging all of you to like, we're about to, by the way this, we're about to get to the ninja part with sales hub and marketing hub, but one of the things I think that is so critically important that people forget is guys, there are more hubs and they exist for a reason. And that's why we have this dream team of Hub Heroes, right? Because you guys do the work, you know the tools and people don't

look at them. They

look at ops hub and service hubs. They go, how? What does that have to do with sales? We've already sold to.

[00:28:09] George B. Thomas:

Everything.

[00:28:09] Liz Murphy:

exactly, but George,

[00:28:11] Max Cohen:

We've gotta talk about, we gotta talk about

[00:28:14] Liz Murphy:

Okay. No. So actually, can I, can I set the table for you guys?

[00:28:18] Max Cohen:

please?

[00:28:18] Liz Murphy:

I just want you to talk about your favorite dreamiest parts, all the sales tools. Let's just go sales Wild. George, I want you to

start because you are off on a passionate tear. You let me bring us back on course, but now I wanna let you.

[00:28:32] George B. Thomas:

Yeah, so first of all, they kind of stole a little bit of my thunder because the un unlike. They need to be like a group of people need to just lift it up and carry it through town and let everybody know that it's a hero that most times people aren't paying attention to. And that is the documents tool. the ability to see the amount of time and the pages that somebody looked at in A P D F A PowerPoint type presentation and sales to actually get the visibility that somebody stopped on page six. Well, why is that important? Shit. Page seven is where we talk about price. They don't know anything about price.

So what does that mean? Well, when I get on the call with them, what am I gonna do? Hey, Jimmy, do you have any questions about the pricing? Well, no, not really. Jimmy, you're a liar. You did look at page seven. You don't know the pricing. Now, of course that's not what we're gonna do, but we're gonna ease into the conversation.

Well, well, it's good that you don't have any questions, but I just wanna make sure that you understand x, Y, Z, ABC 1 23, the main three things that are important about our pricing. Then you actually get into the real conversation, but you have that intelligence and understanding if they're full of crap or if they actually understand the process that you're about to talk to them about.

So that that is a major thing, but I will say, That. The other thing that I think is vitally important for people to understand about these sales tools is because, and, and again, it's, it's about the way we position things. I can tell you, I myself have said this, and if you go and watch any YouTube channel on, sequences versus workflows, people will position it.

That sequences is the like little baby brother, cousin, whatever, of workflows for sales. It's, it's sales. Automat, automat. Listen, there is some automation to it, but what sequences is if used right, it is a process machine. I need

you to connect with them on LinkedIn and a day later send this email. Two days later.

After that, I need you to do this thing, a K a A task that might be internally focused. Two days after that, you can go ahead and do this other thing, which is maybe send them a personalized video, and a day after that, another email, like the things that you can customize to be happening from the beginning to the end of a sequence is not. I wanna send an email and then two days later, another email, and then three days later, another email. And my biggest worry is what if they reply it? Stop. So no, like, no, no. Stop it.

[00:31:01] Max Cohen:

yeah. Sales people start Stop LARPing as marketers with the sequence tool, please. It is not. You the sequence tool. Let me get just, just so everyone, just to make it so clear. The Sequences tool is not an email marketing tool. Your salespeople are not email marketers. There are probably some of the worst email marketers that there could be, if you're just using sequences to monsoon people with emails, you are doing

[00:31:30] Liz Murphy:

So it's not a

battle act of.

[00:31:31] Max Cohen:

Uh,

[00:31:33] George B. Thomas:

No.

[00:31:33] Max Cohen:

not a battle. Acts of wrath. No. Um, you know, the, you gotta think about how can a sequence enable someone, Well, it can enable them by saying, Hey, whatever situation you find yourself in, whether you're reaching out for the first time or following up with someone in a certain situation, and you need to be able to automate stuff so you can save a lot of time, but still have those opportunities to make it personal.

Having different sequences for different scenarios is gonna be great for that, right? Because it's going to make sure you're spending less time, wasting time, creating the next follow up task for yourself and reminding you to do it, and maybe getting that reminder or maybe ignoring that reminder, right?

The other thing too that it's great for doing is ensuring that you're not filling. Your sales reps like task use with a billion unneeded tasks, right? Like there are so many people that like just add task effort, task effort, task tasks through workflows when if you deployed those through sequences, those tasks would only get created if they actually had to happen.

Instead of having a bunch of unused tasks. Cause at that point you're adding a bunch of friction in your tool and you're making it like a burden to have to go do a bunch of like useless clicks and actions in there, rather than something that's actually, you know, contextual. Right? Which is like a task served at the right time telling you to do the right thing.

one little click, quick, quick thing on documents too that like a lot of people like overlook is when you have documents inside a hubs, You can upload new versions, Why is that important? Because one, me as the sales rep, I don't wanna have to worry if I'm sending the most up-to-date version.

I just wanna send it from one place all the time and know it's the most up-to-date version. Someone else can make sure it's up to date, right? Because I don't wanna waste time going and finding it, and I don't wanna like be like, oh, am I sending the right version? Right? So if you have things that like, like pricing catalogs or stuff that updates frequently, you can keep updating that one document and it maintains its activity.

That way. I always know I'm sending the most UpToDate version of it. It, it's not something that has to take up brain space in your rep's head and you want to be reducing the amount of stuff that takes up, you know, mental calories in your rep's head if you're gonna be enabling them in any way, shape, or form.

So just a little detail, but it's something that a lot of people overlook.

[00:33:39] Liz Murphy:

Just a little detail, just spitting. Fire. No

[00:33:41] Max Cohen:

Just a little detail. Yeah.

[00:33:43] Liz Murphy:

what about you? I need some sweet, uh, need some sweet Devin spitting fire. I need it.

[00:33:47] Devyn Bellamy:

Sure, sure. Well, two places that are off overlook. the first one is in pipelines.

Um, that

there's, there's, there's two big issues that I have with the way I've seen people use pipelines. One, you have different verticals that have d. buying processes or different sales actions, but you're running them all on the same pipeline.

don't. That's like that. That's

1. That's, that's

[00:34:22] Liz Murphy:

Do not and stop and no.

[00:34:24] Max Cohen:

Don't

[00:34:25] Devyn Bellamy:

can have more than one pipeline for your different kinds of businesses. Like for instance, I work for a. used to work for a company that sold showers, right? I think I've talked about this before. We have, um, different pipelines for the different verticals. and we like, we have a B2C pipeline, which is significantly shorter and fewer steps. We have our university pipeline, which is a completely different process than the hospital pipeline, even though they're all ending up with the same product. The moment from when they engage to sales from the moment we take their money.

And beyond that, it's a completely different scenario. So don't try and make your single pipeline the, the, the, the, single source of truth for all of your different, possibilities. That that's the one thing. The other thing is start focusing on your conversion rates. So then you're able to calculate your weights within the pipeline and so you can get accurate deal forecasting. So I've

been in so many different sales meetings where they say we have $200,000 in the pipeline right now. We have $500,000 in the pipeline right now. But if you look at your analytics, most of those deal. Like you have a 50 50% chance of getting through the pipeline. And so like, let's say your closed one rate is 33%, and we'll, we'll say 25%.

Make the math a little easier. At that point, what that really means that no, you don't have 500,000 in the pipeline. You have closer to 300,000 in the pipe. because looking at all the money in your pipeline is a vanity metric that it doesn't actually mean what you want it to mean. If you're able to say, I know that we close 75% of the deals once they reach the stage, I know that we close 50% of the deals when we reach the stage. I know that I've sent the contract out. We have a 95% close rate. Once the contract's been. Then I know that if I have a hundred thousand dollars in the closed one or in the, uh, contract out section, I can probably guarantee that I'm gonna have 95% of that in the bank at some point. If you don't calculate your deal, uh, weights, uh, and, and you don't have your conversion metrics and you're not, not just about improv. Your conversion metrics, that's a whole separate conversation, just knowing what they are so you have an accurate idea of whether or not you're gonna be able to make paychecks this week.

[00:37:06] George B. Thomas:

Which by the way, let me just throw in here. Part of enabling sales not to get lost is making sure you're battling against being confused. They cannot get confused. I cannot tell you, Devin, I'm so glad that you brought that up. The amount of conversations that I have had people email me or they've asked me on a call of like, why don't the numbers match? Like I know that the numbers is this, but it's showing me this, and I'm like, do you understand what closed probability is? Because some marketer, when they set up your sales pipeline, thought that it was 20%. but you in your mind are like calculating 100% of that number and understanding what, like why does it only say 2000?

It should be like 5 billion. What? Like what's going on? Educate, educate, educate to the process and what these properties actually mean in the CRM that they're using and why it's gonna spit out data in a certain way and then all of a sudden they're like, oh, well yeah, that's what it's supposed to look like.

Let me move on with.

[00:38:07] Liz Murphy:

As we're heading into wrap up here, guys, there's just one question that is on my mind. Let's say someone has listened to both of these episodes.

They're excited. I know just one. I know this is impossible. This is very challenging, but let's assume somebody has listened to both of these episodes. They're dialed in, they're thinking about the right human elements, process elements. They're not just staring at sequences thinking it's the only way to enable sales, right? They are looking holistically at HubSpot as an ecosystem that can transform them into the hub hero They need to be for sales enablement, right? what is the one thing they need to do after this episode in order not to screw this?

[00:38:43] Max Cohen:

You gotta talk to people. You gotta like, like don't make your decisions in a silo. , if you're proposing a change, you need to first get buy-in, make sure people actually think it's gonna be helpful, and then you need to be prepared to bail on that idea. If it's not helpful, Right. Obviously give it some time to test out.

Right. But I think the biggest thing is like you've, you've gotta listen to how people need to be enabled, not just to like, , Implementing a bunch of these tools isn't gonna do anything if it's not actually gonna help someone. Right? And you need to know what help they actually need before you pro, like start to provide it, you know, there's a reason you don't give CPR to someone who needs the hyek maneuver, right? You gotta, you gotta figure out triage what's going on first.

[00:39:22] Devyn Bellamy:

I would say get your change management, add on. when you're talking about implementing any new system, um, or looking at it, because this is one of the things that I mentioned earlier, is that you're gonna run it into some internal. from somebody. And you might be making somebody's job harder in their mind, than it is because what they might actually be going through in their mind is that they still have to do all the convoluted silliness that they were doing before this new tool would be, implemented.

So be prepared to be the, the agent of change, uh, when it comes to training and. bringing from the old mindset to the new mindset. one of the things that, um, will really help, like Max said, is listening. Because then when you're able to bring, when, when you do bring in this new tool, you're able to speak to the new tool through the lens of experience that the people who are doing it the old way and are happy. Will understand, help them understand about this pain point that they didn't even really understand was a pain point. Cuz they're just so used to documenting everything in Excel. It's fine, it's whatever, but you can say, Hey, you remember how you used to have to do this, this, that, this and that. Well now all you have to do is this and they will be blown away 10 times.

[00:40:41] George B. Thomas:

All right, ladies and gentlemen, when you stop listening to this podcast, you're gonna go into HubSpot. If you have HubSpot. And you're gonna go, don't worry, don't tune out yet, because if you don't have HubSpot, I got something for you. You just stick with me. But if you have HubSpot, you're gonna go into your main navigation, you're gonna hit reports, you're gonna hit analytics tools, you're gonna go to sales analytics, and you're gonna click on the tab that is coaching reps and teams. Once you're at coaching reps and teams, what you're gonna do is you're gonna look at each individual human. That happens to be part of your sales team in your organization, and you're gonna have to change your mindset. Here is the hashtag one thing. Too many times when we talk about sales enablement, we talk about it like it's a company-wide strategy or tactic.

It is not. It is sales enablement is meant to be an individual human tactic or strategy. Jimmy is really disorganized. He needs tasks. Susie is not good with process. She needs playbooks. Billy really can't close the deal. He needs shared deals and joint close. Conversations, where are your people weak? Use technology to make them strong. It is not for the org, it is for the human

[00:41:55] Liz Murphy:

There we go, humans.

I know. I was waiting

[00:42:00] Max Cohen:

There it is. Give us, give it, give it to us. Give us, give us a good one. One more

time. Just gimme,

[00:42:05] Liz Murphy:

When I say who

you meant,

[00:42:07] George B. Thomas:

Oh God.

[00:42:08] Liz Murphy:

you're making this a, okay, George, you were making this so awkward. Just say your favorite word one more time. Just give it to us.

[00:42:14] Max Cohen:

give it to us. Deep and guttural.

[00:42:17] Liz Murphy:

Oh yeah.

[00:42:19] Max Cohen:

it is.

[00:42:19] Liz Murphy:

And

[00:42:20] Devyn Bellamy:

point out that Liz said humans before George did in this episode?

[00:42:23] George B. Thomas:

She did she.

[00:42:25] Max Cohen:

Is that true?

[00:42:26] Devyn Bellamy:

I was listening.

[00:42:26] Max Cohen:

Oh my god.

[00:42:28] Liz Murphy:

Thanks bud. I win. And on that note

of Liz being the best. I love you guys so much. Did you guys have fun talking about technology this week?

[00:42:35] George B. Thomas:

Yes,

[00:42:36] Devyn Bellamy:

Indeed.

[00:42:37] Liz Murphy:

Bye.

[00:42:38] Max Cohen:

We didn't even, we didn't get into, we didn't get into

[00:42:40] George B. Thomas:

we said we would too. Isn't that crazy? There needs

[00:42:42] Max Cohen:

I know. Can we, should we do a bonus segment?

[00:42:45] Liz Murphy:

Wait. Okay. Question. Next week, do we talk about playbooks?

[00:42:48] Max Cohen:

Just call it the

[00:42:49] George B. Thomas:

it a whole episode.

[00:42:50] Liz Murphy:

A whole episode on playbooks. You guys were so thrilled about. I literally, okay. I literally asked you the question. All right, let's dig into the sales tools. And nobody said playbooks. I

opened the

[00:43:01] George B. Thomas:

1. max

did and then Caveated

did.

like, let's make

sure we get back and talk about it.

[00:43:06] Max Cohen:

Yeah, I did. Well, I did, but then we ended up getting super deep on each one of 'em, which we were supposed to. Right. So I guess,

[00:43:11] Liz Murphy:

Let's do it. So whole

episode on playbooks Next.

[00:43:14] Max Cohen:

playbooks episode. Oh, that's a tough one. Can we, is there enough to Phil? I mean,

[00:43:18] George B. Thomas:

Well, here's the thing. Here's, here's the

thing.

If we're gonna do that, if we're gonna do that, no, this is still going, Noah, keep this all in because this is how the sauce is just made. This is how we, this is how we cook up good meals. If we're gonna do this, then it has to be playbooks for sales. Playbooks for service, playbooks for marketing.

How can your entire organization tips, tricks and examples? Playbooks for the entire org next week, served up for your beautiful whatever.

[00:43:51] Max Cohen:

Face

[00:43:53] Liz Murphy:

We're doing great

guys. We did

[00:43:55] Max Cohen:

hole.

[00:43:56] Liz Murphy:

We're do. So I was gonna say something

nice like, George, you're a mind reader cuz that's exactly what I was thinking of. But to everyone else who is listening, first of all, um, God speed. Uh, send us your therapy bills cuz I know this has been a chaotic, emotionally traumatic episode with lots of daddies and various other things. But I hope you at least feel enabled with sales. Change is hard. Suck it up, cupcake. You're gonna be fine. But we'll talk to y'all next week about playbooks.