October 27, 2025 • 50 mins
Text us your thoughts on the episode or the show!
In this episode of OpsCast, hosted by Michael Hartmann and powered by MarketingOps.com, we are joined by Danielle Urban, Co-founder and CEO of Cartographer Consulting. Danielle brings a blend of demand generation, operations, and HubSpot expertise, helping early-stage startups and scaling teams build smarter, more sustainable marketing systems.
The conversation focuses on Martech maturity, how to know when you have outgrown your current setup, what signals indicate it is time to evolve, and how to align platforms and processes as your team grows. Danielle shares lessons from her experience guiding teams through HubSpot optimization, stack consolidation, and key maturity milestones to avoid growth slowdowns.
In this episode, you will learn:
- How to define Martech maturity and identify growth triggers
- Common pitfalls when teams outgrow their systems
- How to align HubSpot and processes with business evolution
- When to DIY and when to bring in outside expertise
- The growing role of AI in shaping marketing operations
This episode is perfect for marketing operations professionals, HubSpot users, and growth teams looking to scale efficiently without skipping important maturity steps.
Episode Brought to You By MO Pros
The #1 Community for Marketing Operations Professionals
Ops Cast is brought to you in partnership with Emmie Co, an incredible group of consultants leading the top brands in all things Marketing Operations. Check the mount at Emmieco.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Michael Hartmann (00:25):
Hello everyone, welcome to another
episode of OpsCast, brought toyou by MarketingOps.com and
powered by all the mud pros outthere.
Today, I'm excited to be joinedby Danielle Urban, co-founder
and CEO of CartographerConsulting.
Danielle brings a unique mix ofdemand gen, operations, and
platform expertise, especiallyin the world of HubSpot.
She's helped early stagestartups and scaling companies
(00:46):
figure out not just how to useHubSpot, but when and how to
level up.
We are going to be talkingabout RTech maturity, how to
recognize when you're you'veoutgrown your setup and what
signals to look for before yourstack starts slowing you down.
So whether you're a team of twoor scaling fast, Daniel has
been there and can help youavoid the pitfalls of skipping
key maturity milestones.
(01:06):
Danielle, welcome to the show.
Danielle Urban (01:08):
Thanks.
Thank you so much for havingme.
Michael Hartmann (01:11):
You know, I thought I was going to trip over
the name of Cartographer, butuh there's a nail that there's
there's a one of the my favoritebooks that I ever read is it's
called um, I think it's calledThe Map That Changed the World.
So, you know, obviouslycartography is a part of that
somewhere.
I I would like encourage you togo check it out.
It's a pretty fascinating storyabout one of these people who
(01:34):
did some work, wasn'tappreciated at the time, died a
pauper, you know, and in majordebt, and then now is looked on
as someone anyway, had to dowith how we um the value.
I forg I forget the person'sname, but anyway, good good
work.
So, all right, well, um enoughof that.
(01:54):
So you um yeah, when we talkedbefore, you you said you know
you've worked with teams atdifferent stages of growth,
which is great because I thinkthere's a lot of people who
listen who maybe are probablygonna be going through
transitions.
When you think of maturity,especially around Martech, like
how do you define that?
Like, what's your approach tothat?
Danielle Urban (02:15):
Yeah, I I've seen multiple inflection points.
And it's funny because oursales conversations, we always
try to say, like, what bringsyou here?
Like, how can we help youtoday?
Um, and you get a huge range ofanswers.
But even when I was backin-house, I started my career in
Demand Gen um million years agoat a very, it was like a
medium-sized company that gotacquired by a very, very large
(02:37):
company.
Um, and so it was reallyinteresting to see the
juxtaposition between like oursmall nimble team that was
supporting a 200-person companyinside of like a 300,000-person
company and the differences inhow we talk to our colleagues.
And so very early in my career,I got exposed to like both
extremes.
Um, and then I went evenfurther down the extreme on the
(02:59):
smaller side where I worked in ahandful of startups as their
like first marketing hire.
And so I was really setting upsystems.
And so, with that backgroundknowledge, now coming into the
consulting world over the pastfour or five years, um, I feel
like we've seen, we've seen itall, truly.
Um, and a lot of times thereare these sort of trigger points
(03:19):
where either they're expandingtheir team or they have some new
initiative that they need tomeasure, that's sort of that
inflection point of like, weactually can't measure any of
this.
We don't know how.
Um, or it's a new leader thatsteps into play, or they they
are putting a renewed or newfocus on, say, customer success,
and they need, you know,systems to support that
function.
So there are a lot of differentthings that will pull you in at
(03:42):
different times.
Um, and it can be as small aslike, we made our first
marketing hire.
Now we need to give them toolsto do their job, or it could be
like we're building out anentirely new branch of our
business, uh, or we're you know,beefing up our marketing team.
So usually there's someindication of growth or major
change that will start thatconversation.
(04:03):
Uh, but there sometimes it'sjust like we need to fix this,
it's so bad.
Michael Hartmann (04:08):
Yeah.
Danielle Urban (04:09):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (04:10):
I mean, it seems like the the driver for
the Martech maturity is reallylike almost like a business
maturity is the leadingindicator.
Danielle Urban (04:19):
Yeah, I'd say so, definitely.
Because the the people who willsee the need are the people who
have a goal to accomplish.
And so if you are adding newgoals and new people are
assigned to those goals, thenyou need systems to support
that.
And that system can be like apeople-driven process.
You know, when you hire a newsalesperson, all of a sudden now
(04:41):
you need to train them.
Well, what are you eventraining them on?
Uh, so there's that processpiece of it.
And then there's the system oflike, okay, you're training them
to follow the methodology.
Well, where are you trackingthat?
Where are they understandingtheir success?
How are you understanding theirsuccess?
And that's where the Martechpiece comes into it.
And it's it's funny we'retalking about sales and
marketing technology, but in theHubSpot world, it's all one and
(05:04):
the same these days.
Right.
So there are so many differentfunctions that come into play
when you can put it all underone roof in HubSpot.
Michael Hartmann (05:11):
Yeah, I think I think it's interesting that
you've had that exposure to likereally, really large
organizations down to earlystage, startup, whatever, small
organizations.
And you talked about how likethe lay the way that you talk to
each other is different.
And there's there's adifference in like there's a
difference in language.
There's also what I've seen isI think if there's an
expectation, if you're growing,right, you add a person, right?
(05:33):
There's um a straight line ofincreased output, right?
But it's not that becausethere's I don't there's probably
somebody studied this, but Isuspect that like there's a
there's a point at which likeadding another person does you
don't get another you know X oneX of whatever uh uh the average
(05:54):
is across the team, right?
Right becomes lower because ofa number of things.
Part of it usually there'sspecialization, right?
You've got enhanced you got itnow.
You put in more process, right?
And I think there's there's arisk there too of um expecting
more out of that one additional,you know, that marginal
addition of the headcount towhat you can produce to and then
(06:17):
you add in the languagedifferences, like it's just like
that is a whole nother piece ofit.
Danielle Urban (06:23):
Yeah.
Well, if you think about it,there's sort of the small
company that, you know, I like Isaid, I was a first marketing
hire at a handful of startups.
Usually they've got asalesperson, maybe a sales
leader and one person under themin place.
And so because I'm the firstone in who cares about
marketing, the sales team hasprobably just gotten by on
(06:44):
spreadsheets.
Maybe they've chosen theirfavorite cheap, free trial tool
to keep track of everything.
But then I'm like, well, now myjob is to help you guys.
I was usually in demandgenerals because that's what
they hire marketing for at anearly stage.
So I'm like, if I have to dowork to feed you leads and to
(07:05):
create all of this buzz, how amI going to track what I'm doing
and how it impacts what you'redoing?
And so I implemented HubSpotmore than once when I was
in-house because we just neededsome level of tracking things.
And I think if their sales teamwere to grow bigger before that
point, they would have alreadybeen on a system to know that
(07:25):
like if you've got more than twopeople, if you can sit down
over coffee or talk to eachother in the hallway to get your
work done, when you add onemore person, that's too much
coordination.
So if you reach more than twopeople on your team, you have to
build processes.
And so if I had stepped into ateam where there's already more
than three salespeople or threeor more, then there probably
(07:48):
would have been a completelydifferent approach for me to
take in trying to bolt on towhat they're already using so
that we can all work cohesively.
And that's only at the smallscale.
When you talk about addingpeople at a larger scale, adding
one more salesperson to apredefined role is not going to
break anything because you'vealready gotten to that level of
specialization and the sort ofrole function inside of the
(08:08):
systems that you already have.
Michael Hartmann (08:10):
Yeah.
So, I mean, we're normally umsort of tool agnostic, but you
basically you with yourexpertise with HubSpot, um,
something that was interestingto me because I'm less familiar
with HubSpot is that you saidthat the subscription tiers in
HubSpot kind of loosely map tomaturity levels that you think
of.
Walk us through what you meanby like what the tiers are, what
(08:33):
those maturity levels are, andand maybe what is unlocked as
you move forward in thosematurity levels.
Danielle Urban (08:39):
Yeah, it's funny because since we last spoke,
they've even changed it.
They used to be pretty lockedin, but at inbound, they
announced their new smart CRM uhpricing model.
Um, and so it I'm not gonna gotoo deep into what it used to be
because there's a lot of whatit used to be.
But today you can buy a smartCRM seat.
Seat-based pricing is stillrelatively new in the HubSpot
(09:01):
world, but they announcedseat-based pricing.
And it used to be that you buya core seat, which is like your
super admin seat, and then youhave specialized seats for
sales, marketing, et cetera.
We still have that, um, whichis great.
And then we've layered in thisnew smart CRM pricing model
where you as one person can sortof push yourself through the
(09:23):
subscription tiers.
They have their starter level,which is pretty locked down.
It's really just basicinformation keeping.
It lets you into even on thefree version, there's not much
functionality you get over thefree version and the starter
version.
Um, but free and starter, it'sjust like information keeping.
You're tracking your emails,you see what happens where, you
can keep track of people, you'vegot basic deal function.
Michael Hartmann (09:45):
Um like a spreadsheet with connections and
some app on top of it.
Danielle Urban (09:50):
Yeah, exactly.
I think most people will movefrom a spreadsheet to HubSpot
because it tracks your emailsautomatically to the contact
record.
So that is the thing that youwant when you decide to go sign
up for HubSpot on a randomTuesday.
Um, but then you get into thepro level tiers, which unlocks
some automation.
So when you need more things tohappen in a consistent way,
(10:12):
then you feel yourself pushinginto that pro level tier.
Um, and the smart CRM seats letyou, you as an admin or you as
one person potentially who'sbuilding your one person company
or a small company, can moveyourself into that seat without
having to get into thespecialized functions of
marketing sales, customerservice, data, engineering, any
(10:33):
of that.
Um, whereas it used to be youhad to choose one of those to
sort of unlock thatfunctionality.
So I'm very excited about thatbecause me, as one person, can
do a lot if I'm able to pushinto some of those higher level
features.
But as soon as you move intoone of those specialized tiers
or specialized hubs, as HubSpotcalls them, with marketing sales
(10:54):
or customer success, thenyou're sort of locked into that.
You follow that path now orfollow multiple paths at once.
Um, and so generally speaking,the HubSpot tiers are starter
pro and enterprise with free asa kind of an option.
Um, and pro is where you firstunlock that uh automation piece
of it.
Um, you can customize some ofyour views, you get a little bit
(11:16):
more flexibility in reporting.
And then when you get into theenterprise level, you're able to
capture data at such a granularlevel.
Um, the big, big feature for mein that level is uh custom
events tracking.
So you can indicate if there'sa change on a record, you're
capturing that as its own thing.
If somebody clicks a button ona certain page, you can capture
that in its own record.
(11:37):
And so you're able to track ata level of granularity that no
one in a startup is really goingto care about.
And if they do, they probablyhave a specialized tool like
their product team who's lookingat product interactions.
You're not building that intoyour marketing yet.
And so, or definitely not yoursales.
So if you are reaching thatlevel at a business, then
generally your bigger businesswith more specialized people who
(12:00):
want more specific information.
And so that's roughly how itall sort of maps out.
Michael Hartmann (12:04):
Yeah.
It's interesting because Iheard about that in my first
reaction is if I was responsiblefor this, I would be really
worried about people coming tome like, we want this random
activity to be tracked withoutreally thinking about like how
would it, like, how would itactually inform what we do.
Danielle Urban (12:26):
Yeah.
And in the reason, my pocketMopsapalooza.
Is that it?
Talking about enterprise reportor executive reporting and how
you get to a report that'sactually useful and not just
because somebody asked you.
Michael Hartmann (12:40):
Yeah, I just like my this is kind of goes
back to my early years when Ifirst moved into the kind of a
marketing domain and I worked indatabase marketing.
And you know, there's all theseproviders that could you could
get, and they're still outthere, probably more of them now
where you could get additionaldata.
In our case, it was consumeroriented, right?
Like get at the zip code level,right, information about
(13:00):
whatever income levels, youknow, preferences that are
typical, yada yada yada, right?
You can imagine all those kindsof things.
And if I ever put that in frontof our marketers and said,
here's you know, here's a basketof you know a hundred potential
fields that we could get,right?
What do you want?
Invariably the answer would belike, well, we might use any of
(13:21):
them, so let's get them all,right?
Danielle Urban (13:23):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (13:24):
So and like, but the reality is there's
probably 10 or fewer that arethe realistic ones you would
use.
And I think like that's thelike with what you just
described, if like that's wheremy head went was like, how do we
keep that from going out ofcontrol in terms of all the
things we could track versuswhat we would actually use?
Danielle Urban (13:41):
Yeah, definitely.
And I mean that you're at thatpoint where if you have that
functionality and you're willingto pay for that level of
service from HubSpot, you'redoing it for a reason.
There's something you want totrack.
And it's okay.
Yeah.
It's okay if that evolves andchanges over time.
If you're measuring a singlecampaign and you want to know
how many people click that redbutton during Black Friday, you
(14:04):
don't care that much comeJanuary.
You might want to compare yearover year, but once you've
captured that data, it's okay tojust sort of move on and let it
evolve.
I think you have like 150tracked events.
So there's a lot of things toplay with.
And like at the end of the day,if you're capturing extra
information, like fine.
You're already paying for thefeature, whatever.
Michael Hartmann (14:22):
Yeah.
I mean, my point is like have aplan for like actually using
the stuff if you're gonna do it.
And if in and it's okay if youthink you will and you end up
not, and then you can double it,right?
But don't just keep it becauseyou made that decision a year
ago.
So, okay, so let's know, like,this now to me gets into a
(14:44):
little bit of like how how wouldI, maybe as a as a team of one
or uh a leader, right?
How would I know what are thesignals that I should be looking
for that we should be thinkingabout, you know, moving whether
it's the next tier or someonebased on what I if I understand
right now with the new model,right?
(15:04):
A particular user's tier towithin HubSpot, right?
How do you think about that?
Like what what are the you've Ithink you've hit it at a couple
of things, but what are some ofthe changes or signals that
would indicate, hey, it's timeto be thinking about us moving
maturity, moving our users todifferent levels and so forth.
Danielle Urban (15:24):
Yeah.
Well, why don't I outline whatI've got for the sort of rough
maturity model that's still awork in progress, but so far, I
think it's tracking.
Um, the first stage is reallyjust like a speed to function.
You're a small scrappy team,everybody is using tools that
they need to get their job donethat day.
There's not a whole lot ofthought about how it comes
(15:45):
together as a functioningplatform, a complete ecosystem.
We're not really connectingthings together that much.
Maybe one or two things aresharing data, but it's really
just like, how do I, as amarketer, as a salesperson, get
through today?
Yeah.
And maybe next week.
And maybe we get to somenumbers for the board, but
that's really not coming to mindon a day-to-day.
Michael Hartmann (16:07):
And maybe this is something I want to be
repeatable, but like that's notprobably not thinking.
Danielle Urban (16:13):
Uh, would not from what I've seen.
But in that case, there's solittle focus on scalability, and
you end up, it's very easy tochange platforms, which is great
to maintain flexibility, butthat consistency and tracking
and data capturing over timemakes it very difficult for your
team to share information.
So if you're one salespersonworking out of a spreadsheet,
sure, you can share your GoogleSheet and then it's up to date.
(16:36):
But if it's not in a formatthat's accessible to other
people, or if someone needs totransform that data to get a
different kind of number, itkind of starts to fall apart
really quickly.
Michael Hartmann (16:44):
Yeah.
Danielle Urban (16:45):
Um, and so then you find that you need more
specificity and you need alittle bit more maturity.
Yeah.
Um, and you need to create thoserepeatable systems.
And I think that usually comes.
This is what I want to test abit in more conversation is
like, I think that comes whenpeople want more analysis out of
their data.
So, like you're tracking it,you're reacting to it, you're
(17:07):
doing things on the day-to-day.
But when you're like, well, howdid that work?
Or how do I do more of that?
What is the pattern here?
That is, I think, when you hitstep two in this maturity model.
And that's where you start toneed those repeatable systems.
And maybe it's when your teamgrows past two.
Um, and you just need to getthat data model to be meaningful
(17:29):
because your business needs totrack deals consistently.
They need to track, you know,lead um, lead creation
consistently and those sourcesthat they come in from.
Uh, and you need to turn aroundand report that to a board and
say, this is how we're growingour business because leads are
coming in from these sources,we're following up in this way,
and here you go.
Michael Hartmann (17:47):
You want you to be able to translate.
I mean, the word that comes tomind that I talk about when you
get into that is discipline,right?
You need to discipline the waythat you're executing.
And I I use that likespecifically instead of process,
because I think like it'sreally like we are gonna be
because you like you said, youadd this one other person.
If you're doing this sort offree-for-all uh model, right,
(18:10):
each if you now get two peopledoing things differently,
they're calling things that arethe same, different words,
right?
Yeah, very quickly reporting isgonna be a challenge, um, let
alone like knowing like what'sworking across the two different
people.
Exactly.
Like consistency and disciplineis what you need there.
Okay.
Danielle Urban (18:28):
Absolutely.
And I think there's still atthat stage, because it's still
small, it's still prettyflexible, you're moving between
systems.
If you do a system migrationthree times in the space of a
year, you get to that sort oftribal knowledge where it's
like, we just use this one.
Like, don't worry about thoseother confusing things that have
created some debt for us.
Like, just use that one anddon't worry about the rest.
(18:50):
And so there's still sort ofthat that people piece of it
that hasn't been codified intothe platforms that you're using.
Um, but you're you're aiming atthat consistency and you're
aiming at that disciplinebecause you recognize the need.
So maybe you've got some tools,maybe you're starting to build
that out and recognize the need,but you're still kind of
sitting in this place where likeeveryone's just trying to get
(19:10):
their job done and also getnumbers to the board once a
quarter.
Um, and so then I think you canmove into the next stage when
you need to share thatinformation more broadly.
So maybe it's more teams, maybeit's that the board is putting
more of a microscope on youbecause you're getting to a
point where your revenue is highenough, the investment is high
(19:31):
enough that that needs to bereal.
And they everyone needs thevalidity in the reporting that
you're putting out to know thatit's real.
And so that's where you want tobe able to look back over time.
You want to do predictive uhmodeling, you want to do
forecasting.
So all of that is the nextstage three, maturity level, um,
(19:53):
where you just need to get moregranular, more specific, more
disciplined.
That data dictionary needs tobe super duper clear and
everyone needs to be bought inon it.
And I think that is kind of thepoint where you need to put
someone in the function ofowning the platform and
processes.
Michael Hartmann (20:10):
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, it sounds likeit's almost like a switch, maybe
not like a switch from we'rejust looking backwards in
performance and now we'relooking at that and trying to
inform what we expect the futureto look like.
Danielle Urban (20:21):
Right.
Exactly.
We want to be able to tell acomplete story of a single
person, but also find thosepatterns where, like, if this
happened in the past, then itbut it happened this way on the
next few steps.
So if we do the same thing ordo something very similar to
follow that path, we think thisnext thing is going to happen.
But my notes here say the skillset is likely not on your team
(20:43):
to be able to hit that.
So you're still, even thoughyou're getting to that point
where you can capture the dataand maybe you've got someone
sort of owning the capture ofthat data, but do you get into
like statistical modeling?
You probably don't have a dataengineering team.
And how much money is that?
Michael Hartmann (20:58):
What are the biggest gaps in skills across
our team?
Absolutely.
Um definitely.
Danielle Urban (21:03):
And then I think the the stage four and final
stage I have noted is like thatdeep analytical need where you
do get that data engineer onboard and you're finally big
enough that you can justifyhaving like an analytic center
of excellence or a platformownership that's more than one
person, and really make surethat the data is flowing between
your systems, that it'saccurate, that it's measured,
(21:25):
that there's you know, buy andan understanding on what what
the numbers are telling you.
Um and you're not sort ofcobbling it together and saying,
just use that one property thatwe made up three years ago.
Michael Hartmann (21:36):
Well, yeah, this field is labeled this one
thing in our CRM, we actuallyuse it a different way.
So do like this is what youyeah.
Um that's interesting.
Yeah, the thing about the onenuance I think I would add to
that last stage, and I don'tknow if that was actually the
last stage, but the last one wejust talked about, yeah, is um
when you get to that dataengineering aid, right?
(21:56):
What I've found is reallydifficult is finding someone who
understands data statisticalanalysis in the general sense,
but also in the domain of salesand marketing, because it's got
its own set of uh likechallenges, I think is the best
way to put it, right?
It's just it's messy data, it'snot like finance data, right?
All that kind of stuff.
Um curious, so I mean, I I'mtracking all these different
(22:20):
stages.
I think there were four total.
Yeah.
Um the uh the thing I'm like itcame to me in mind to me is
like um is it ideal that likeyou would see organizations
going kind of step by stepthrough those?
Or does it make sense to skipthem?
If so, when like what or likewhat are the it feels like it
(22:43):
feels like it could be skippedin some cases, and maybe there's
like a major capital infusionor merger, right, that would be
a driver for that.
But like outside of that, likeit feels like there might be
some risk in sort of jumpingsteps.
Danielle Urban (22:57):
Yeah, I I think you would find yourself like
over-engineered if you skip someof these steps.
And I've seen that be the case.
You know, you outsourcesomething and they you get sort
of a a copy paste process intoyour systems, and then there's
no adoption because it justwasn't built for a way that
serves your business.
And that's that's what we asconsultants are always trying to
(23:18):
do.
We we want to talk about how dowe build the best system for
you right now.
There's a lot of patternmatching that I can do, there's
a lot of commonality betweendifferent types of clients.
But at the end of the day, theway that your teams are
structured, the way that yourteams like to work, what else is
in your tech stack is verycustom.
Um, and so I I've only seen oneclient really need to skip a
(23:40):
stage.
And it was exactly what youwere talking about.
Like they just they have theproduct market fit at exactly
the right time.
The industry was justabsolutely blowing up.
They couldn't even keep up withthemselves.
They couldn't hire fast enough.
They had a massive capitalinfusion, and they went from
like step one to step four.
Like they really jumped the gunin a matter of a couple months.
(24:01):
And but that is so, so unusual.
I really think that it comesinto play.
And maybe you could break itout into the different teams
that are doing that.
But I think this this functionsmostly at the business level.
Um, because even if you hadlike the maturity of a customer
success team, it's gonna sort offollow these same steps, but
it's only gonna follow thosesteps because of the needs of
(24:21):
the business.
Um, so yeah, I think it'spretty rare that you would jump
around.
Michael Hartmann (24:25):
Yeah.
I I love you use the termpattern matching, which I love.
Like I feel like I see I it's Ialways sort of have this really
like visceral reaction whenpeople are like, I'm you know,
there's this best practice, andit feels like that doesn't
really like uh and I think whatthey be people mean is kind of
what you're talking about,right?
Pattern matching, like applyingthe lessons I've learned to
(24:48):
your specific situation,environment, maturity, whatever,
and trying to match that.
And that's like that makes away more sense to me than just
throwing, hey, I've got a cookiecutter solution, I'm gonna drop
it in, right?
And I see Yeah.
Danielle Urban (25:03):
I I had to laugh once when I lost a deal because
they wanted quick bestpractices, and I was like, Yeah,
but for what?
And they were like, we justwant best practices.
I was like, I'm not it then.
Sorry.
Michael Hartmann (25:14):
Yeah, that's probably probably good to avoid
that client, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Because they think there's theythink there's an easy button to
to this stuff.
And yeah, okay.
I'm gonna I could go off on atangent that I don't want to
stack.
So okay, so we've so we've Ithink we addressed maybe one
common thing that could be arisk or a pitfall.
(25:35):
Um are there other kinds ofthings that could be pitfalls as
teams are going through thislike maturation process, um,
kind of trying to keep up withtheir growth or whatever that um
we didn't already touch on?
Danielle Urban (25:49):
Um, I think maybe if the teams are, I just
sort of said like if you hirecustomer success and they're
sort of following their own pathuh through those maturity
stages, it really should be at abusiness level because if you
have, say, sales and marketing,which is such a classic example,
but if you have sales andmarketing who are moving through
this differently, then yourwhole business is going to fall
(26:10):
apart.
So I think the sort of platformconsiderations and how you
bring people into processes andplatforms needs to be done very
carefully and sort of theassessment of platforms.
Um, someone needs to own it,whether it's their full-time job
because you're at you're atsort of a stage three or stage
four where there's enough need,or it's someone who's
(26:31):
recognizing the need enough togo looking for a solution, they
need to sort of step back andmove themselves from step one of
very reactive day-to-day intostep two, where it's like we are
evaluating this for a long-termimplementation.
We don't want this for sixmonths, we want this for three
years, depending on how fastthey're growing.
But still, you don't, you don'twant a sales leader going off
(26:53):
and be like, well, I bought thisCRM because I like how it works
or it's my favorite.
And marketing is like, but wealready had a CRM that's hooked
up to all of our marketingactivities.
Like, then you're just indifferent places.
And so I think keeping thatfocus at sort of the top-level
leadership executive level needsto be really important.
You need to get everyone onboard.
Michael Hartmann (27:14):
Yeah.
So have you, um, do you haveany examples of where you've
helped clients or where when youwere on site or in embedded
with teams, right?
Where you had some, you know,did some changes, maybe because
I think what you're alluding tois sometimes you need to make
smaller changes, right?
And they can have that sizeimpact, which I'm a big fan of.
(27:35):
It's like yes, looking sharethere.
Danielle Urban (27:38):
Yeah, I one of my favorite recent stories was
uh a small company.
They're a pretty small startup.
Um, they've been around for awhile, so they've they've sort
of grown and shrunk and changedcourse a little bit.
Uh, but they had been onHubSpot, not under my expertise,
um, not under my guidance.
And they they then sort ofshifted focus, shifted their
(28:00):
sales team a bit, ripped it outand went to Monday.com and then
decided they hired like threenew salespeople, came back to me
and said, we think we want tobe back on HubSpot because our
salespeople are comfortable withHubSpot.
And I was like, okay, here wego.
So we got into it.
And um the data model they hadcreated for themselves in their
Monday.com CRM was a trainwreck.
(28:23):
Like they didn't, there was noconsistency to how data was
captured.
Like there was a company objectand then there was company name
typed in.
And there was also like a notesfield where sometimes company
names were typed in and it justwas all over the place.
And so our team sort of takedeep breaths right now.
Like I exactly stressing meout.
And you're like, but our teampainstakingly pulled all of that
(28:46):
apart.
Thankfully, it wasn't a hugeamount of data because they had
they'd been through a lot ofchange.
But they um we pulled thatapart.
We got it into HubSpotproperly.
One of my favorite things to dowith HubSpot uh clients is to
sit down and show them the viewof the data model that you get
inside of HubSpot.
It's sort of this little thingthat's tucked away, but it's
really powerful for helpingpeople understand what the
different objects are and howthey relate to each other
(29:08):
because it lays them out inboxes, then you hover over a box
and it draws lines to the otherthings that they're related to.
It's a really great view forgetting people to understand
this is how it all connectstogether.
Um, so I love that.
We did that.
Michael Hartmann (29:20):
We did not easier to consume than like if
you're not familiar with lookingat massive data models, right?
Danielle Urban (29:27):
Yeah.
When you start talking aboutobjects, uh the salesperson
who's not familiar withadministering a CRM is gonna be
like, I don't care.
Like they are so gone from thatmeeting.
And so we went through andonboarded them very meticulously
and set them up with a system.
But the my favorite part ofthat project was that their CEO
wanted visibility into leads ina very specific way.
And he was like, I can't getthat with HubSpot.
(29:49):
That's why we got rid of itlast time.
I was like, that's such a lie.
Like, we can always get youthere.
And so we sat down and had likea 45-minute working session and
created CEO's homepage as adashboard in HubSpot.
I walked him through how to setthat as his homepage and
HubSpot.
So when he logs into HubSpot,that is exactly what pops up in
front of him.
(30:09):
It's the fields he wants to seelisted in the way he wants to
see them, relevant to how thesales team is working that day.
And they're thrilled andthey're actually using the
platform properly, finally.
Michael Hartmann (30:21):
Yeah, it's so funny how these.
Misperceptions or or not evenmisperceptions, but perceptions
can taint someone's view.
And sometimes it's like alittle investment in like going,
actually, no, this is like thisis totally possible.
Sometimes it's not, right?
Sometimes what they want isthat possible.
But like at least you can showwhat is possible, and I think
(30:42):
that's that's huge.
So you see you you hinted at acouple of things.
(31:46):
So I know like I like I said,I'm not familiar with HubSpot.
What I do know is it's like asyou already kind of hit it, like
they're like, I feel likethere's an announcement of some
sort of change every week or twofrom them.
Yeah.
Right.
So they're evolving a lot.
What what are what are some ofthe what are some of the other
underused features that youthink more teams should be
taking advantage of?
Danielle Urban (32:09):
Um there's so much.
And it's the features that aregetting released are getting
more and more specific, I think.
Uh, so it's a little bit harderto keep track of.
But I think some of my favoritethings to sort of really reduce
complexity in accounts, um,people may not realize they're
there, like calculatedproperties.
Uh, you can write a calculationinto a property so that you
(32:30):
don't have to do thatcalculation in a report, in a
workflow that adds it togetherand creates a new property.
Like you can just do that andyou can add days.
There's some funkiness to it.
Like you need to remember tochange your time windows to epic
time.
But like once you figure outwhat that is, you can eliminate
workflows.
Like you can eliminate all ofthese processes that are
(32:52):
happening and have built out,have been built out to automate
things for you just because yourewrote it as an equation.
Um, and in a similar vein, thesync properties that came out
are very, very cool when you'restamping data between objects.
Um, we try not to.
In most cases, you don't needto because you can
cross-reference objects in a lotof the different features in
HubSpot, but there are caseswhere you can't or you need to
(33:14):
be able to see it in a specificway.
And so these sync propertiesare like a mirroring of data
from the other object, which issuper, super helpful.
Again, can cut down on a lot ofthe workflows that people have
to stamp numbers across.
Um, and uh in the same vein,stamping data across the custom
events are so desperatelyunderused.
There's been a huge amount ofchange in those.
(33:35):
Shout out to uh Maggie Philbinover the last year.
She's a product manager, she'swonderful, uh, very accessible,
clearly.
Uh, but there's been so muchchange just over the last year
in what you can capture, how youcan capture it.
Um, and people just don't thinkabout it for the use cases
they're trying to solve becausethey don't know that it's
matured to that point or thatthese new features are
(33:56):
available, that you can track itin that way.
Um, so I think there's a lot ofopportunity in those that
people just aren't aware of.
Michael Hartmann (34:03):
Yeah, that sounds that sounds good.
So another thing, like use whatwe talked before, you use a
term that I hadn't heard beforeabout doing reverse demos as a
way of diagnosing things.
So explain what that is and whyyou think it's so effective and
helpful.
Danielle Urban (34:23):
Yeah, I think I co-opted the term from a sales
method, but it's my own now.
Go for it.
Yeah, we we really like to dothat as part of our discovery.
So we'll schedule an hour-longcall with the person who has to
use the tools that we'redeveloping for.
So if it's a sales process thatwe're working on, then we want
(34:44):
to talk to like the lowest levelsalesperson who is picking up
those leads every day andlogging in to make calls because
I want to see how they work.
I want to see what buttons theypress, I want to see what
they're looking at, I want tosee what they're updating, what
other platforms they'reaccessing.
You might find out thatsomebody has their own
spreadsheet that they'remaintaining and copying data
from HubSpot into thatspreadsheet.
(35:05):
You might realize that peopleare filling in data in three
different places that they don'tneed to, but they think they do
because no one told themotherwise.
And it's so incredibly telling.
It's mind-blowing.
Michael Hartmann (35:17):
Yeah, hardest.
So I've done that kind of thingbefore too.
And I think the hardest part isnot saying something while
they're going through it.
Oh my gosh.
Not correct it, correct.
Yeah, not yeah.
Um, it's and it's funny thatyou talked about like the side
spreadsheet.
So I did a a project at acompany years ago uh that was uh
intended to try to enable thesupport team to scale without
(35:43):
adding headcount, right, tomatch the growth of the company,
which it typically had aparallel growth pattern.
And so the like short shortversion is like we've we found a
methodology and there was somepushback about it, but what we
found in doing investigation isbecause it was kind of a
knowledge-based solution um onsteroids, but like we found out
like pretty much all the all thesport teams had their own
(36:06):
version of a knowledge base.
It was usually like a Worddocument on their computer that
nobody else could see, right?
Control F.
Right, yeah, and so they hadalready kind of made that
solution themselves, but it'slike that in like going and
sitting with somebody and seeinghow they actually do the work,
yeah, is uh can be mind-blowingbecause if you're going like
(36:29):
like I've I've I tell this topeople all the time is like if
you don't know what you're ifyou're asking as a marketing
team, why can't thosesalespeople just update their
CRM with opportunity status orconvert a lead or whatever,
right?
Go watch what it takes to doit.
Right.
Because you might be shocked atwhat a pain in the ass it is to
(36:53):
do it.
Yeah.
Um and then you can go, like Ithink it will give you a very
different perspective about howto do it.
Like, and it's not that youdon't want that, and it's
probably not that they don'twant to do that for you.
But their goals and objectivesand what drives them is not
that.
Danielle Urban (37:09):
Right.
Well, and we'll have peoplecome to us.
I'm working on a project rightnow.
They they signed on for areally small, like three-week
project to just get some reportsstood up, basically.
They wanted a little bit ofautomation, a little bit of
visibility.
And I was like, all right,cool, we'll we'll start there.
We will start there.
And even in that conversation,I was like, put me on with one
(37:31):
of your salespeople.
And I we've gone back and fortha bit because they were like,
well, you can talk to the salesmanager.
I'm like, I don't really carewhat the sales manager has to
say.
I want to see who's clickingthe buttons and how, because I
need to build what the salesmanager wants them to do into
what they're already comfortablewith.
Like, we all benefit if I canbuild a system that gets done
(37:51):
what the sales manager wantsdone, but it is in such a way
that it's so accessible andstraightforward to the low-level
brand new salesperson that justcame in because they are being
basically guided through thatprocess.
Like, yeah, sales manager, youneed to tell me what the process
should be.
We'll get there.
But I want to see what theperson is actually doing every
(38:12):
single day because I'm settingup these automations to say,
hey, there's a new lead assignedto you.
Are they checking their emails?
Are they seeing it in HubSpot?
How do they get into that?
What are the views that they'reaccessing?
How do I make sure that theyknow it's there and they should
follow up?
Um, and this your sales managercan't tell me that.
Michael Hartmann (38:29):
Yeah.
Well, we set up notificationsfor when a new lead goes and
they should be checking theiremail.
And they go, like, I get somany email notifications, I
ignore it, right?
Danielle Urban (38:37):
Yeah.
Your inbox starts filteringthem out because you never open
them.
Right.
Like, you just don't know.
Michael Hartmann (38:42):
That is like that by itself, that tip of
getting that insight into likethe boots on the ground and what
they go through on a day-to-daybasis, is such a great piece of
advice.
Like that, like I tell peopleregularly, like, go hang out
with these people, these otherorganizations, it will benefit
you.
(39:02):
And they'd loved for you toknow.
It like this is exactly why,right?
Danielle Urban (39:08):
Yes.
I had a client where we had onerepresentative of their team do
the screen share, but theybrought the whole team with
them.
That was really interestingtoo, because it's one person
saying, This is how me, as arepresentative of our team, is
doing this process.
Some people were like, Oh, Ididn't know you did that.
Or like, yeah, I didn't know wewere supposed to do that.
I didn't even know that I coulddo that, right?
(39:28):
Yep.
Or like, oh, I didn't know youcould filter it like that.
I didn't know that button wasthere that made my life easier.
And so you get that informationsharing, even just among your
team, to look at the samescreen.
And it's so, as a consultant,I'm like, great, there's project
number three, four, five.
Like, I'm seeing so much thatcan be impacted, you know,
depending on the scope of whatwe're working on to begin with.
But it could be as simple aslike creating a new card view in
(39:52):
their center column so thatthey can just click and start
typing into the things thatthey're supposed to be filling
in.
That takes me five minutes, butI wouldn't know that that's
helpful without seeing the exactbuttons and things you're
hunting for in other platformsthat you're accessing directly
on your screen every day.
Michael Hartmann (40:07):
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that.
Yeah, like we could almost likethis.
Maybe we need to like cut outjust this part and just share
that to the world.
Danielle Urban (40:16):
Consulting advice piece of this podcast.
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (40:19):
Well, I mean, but it's like it's if people
aren't thinking about that,which I suspect a lot of people
aren't, um especially when theyare looking across at other
teams and um like it's likeputting yourself in those other
people's shoes, right?
Call it whatever you want tocall it, is is a valuable
(40:40):
exercise to go through, right?
And it feels like it's maybe awaste of time, maybe you feel
like you know already, yeah, butyou don't.
Danielle Urban (40:50):
It's that like go slow to go fast.
Michael Hartmann (40:52):
Yeah.
Danielle Urban (40:53):
Thinking.
Like if you slow down andunderstand how people work, you
make their work more efficient,you make everybody's data better
because the data capture iseasier.
Like it just pays off tenfold.
Michael Hartmann (41:04):
Yeah.
What is it?
Like slow is smooth, smooth isfast.
Is that the I don't know ifI've heard that one.
I think they're anyway, it wassome variation of one of those,
right?
Okay, so so we talked a lotabout like different things like
stages and when to recognizeit, some like great tips like we
talked about.
Yeah, but let's say thatsomeone in our audience is
(41:24):
listening, they're a team ofone, maybe a team of two, um,
and they're buried.
How how would you advise themto think about like when do you
need to like look at hiringsomebody versus bringing in
maybe outside help like yourteam?
Um and and going through thatthought process.
Danielle Urban (41:48):
Yeah, I think it it differs for a lot of
different use cases.
I think in the the smallerteams, I've had a lot of
conversations with freelancersconsultants who are like, hey, I
just got onto HubSpot, I'mpaying for the basic version.
What should I be doing?
And I the first thing I do, I'malways open to like a one-hour
call.
Like, yeah, let's get you setup.
Let's be friends, let's hangout.
Well, you're never generousenough.
(42:09):
Yeah, it's more of a networkingcall, but like, how do I help
you?
Um, and so in thatconversation, I had one last
week, uh, I was like, share yourscreen and tell me what you're
working on.
And the very first thing I didwas show them the data model and
HubSpot.
I'm like, you have all of thesedifferent things that connect
to each other.
She was like, I didn't know Ihad companies.
I saw that they were there.
I didn't know what they were.
I didn't know how they connectto anything else.
(42:30):
And so once we got thatbaseline, she understood all of
the things that she could do,even at the starter level.
And so we walked through someof her views.
I introduced her to some newfeatures.
We sort of got some thingsdialed in, made sure that she
had all of her um like inboxtracking set up properly, her
calendar and got that connected.
So there was a lot that wecould do in that hour just to be
like, all right, you are set upas much as you can.
(42:53):
Because on the starter version,there's not a whole lot of
things you can customize.
You're just sort of gettinginto it to use the core
features.
Um, but I think when you get tothat maturity level where
you're working across teams,that's where you might want to
talk to a consultant or aplatform expert, even if it's
just like an advisory call onetime, like talking to someone to
(43:13):
figure out how these teams needto work together.
They each have their own goalsand focuses that they need to
like dive into and own and theoutcomes they need to own.
But someone needs to tie ittogether.
And hopefully you have leadersthat can do that and are talking
to each other and working veryclosely.
But when you get multipleteams, uh, those leaders are
(43:34):
focused on guiding their team.
And then there's no one toreally own that in between and
own the process of how dataflows through the rest of the
company.
So you might have someone likeme come in and say, like, all
right, let's figure out whatsales needs, let's figure out
what marketing needs, let'sfigure out how we need to track
the data through for theexecutive team, for the product
team.
How can we bring productactivity into HubSpot to better
(43:56):
inform your sales and marketingteams?
Like, that's where we can startto pull all these pieces across
the organization.
Um, and so I think you kind ofhave to get to that point where
you've got one or two levels ofmanagement, maybe even three
levels, if you've got sort ofthe executive team, a VP level,
and then you know, a marketingmanager type person.
Um, that's when you needsomeone to step in and own the
(44:18):
processes and the platforms thatconnect it all together.
Michael Hartmann (44:21):
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, I know how I've thoughtabout it.
Like usually for me, I like usea spreadsheet.
Like, here's all the thingsthat our team or I mean or my
team needs to accomplish.
And then who's got theresponsibility of it um sort of
a matrix of the people quicklyidentifies where the gaps are or
where there's points offailure, right?
(44:43):
Right.
Right, there's no redundancy.
Um, and then I can sort ofprioritize.
I I hadn't thought of tying inthe connection with like I guess
because it's sort of implied inmy own brain, right?
There's just connection toother teams, and how do you
build those relationships?
Um, so that's good.
Um why don't we do this?
Like I we're uh we could go onfor a while here, I think, but
(45:05):
we need to probably wrap up.
Danielle Urban (45:06):
Seven minutes left.
Michael Hartmann (45:07):
Yes.
Um okay, so like it like itfeels like this is an obligatory
question these days.
Like, like what's what do yousee as the impact of AI um in
kind of marketing teams,marketing ops teams, RevOps
teams?
Um and I know there's a lot ofstuff going on within the
Hubsbot ecosystem around it too.
Danielle Urban (45:29):
Yeah, such a token question.
There's there's so manydifferent ways that you can
apply it though, because me asan admin and the things that I'm
doing to assess sort of as anoutside perspective, I'm using
AI in a bunch of different waysevery day.
I one of my favorite toolsthese days is Fathom Note Taker.
(45:49):
Um, and the reason I love it isbecause you can add your
recordings to folders and thenhave a chat conversation with
the entire folder.
So if you're trying to do thesereverse demos that you're
recording and you're puttingthem all in the same folder,
then you can go back and say,like, okay, the sales team, it's
so good.
The sales team said they'refilling out this property
(46:10):
because they think marketingneeds it.
Well, did marketing say theyneeded it?
Where when the video was salestalking about that, and then did
marketing talk about this?
And then you just like threeseconds later have an answer.
Like, it's so powerful becauseI don't have to sit there and
take notes and go back through.
And that's driven by AI on topof the transcripts.
One of my friends yesterdayintroduced me to a new concept
(46:33):
that I feel like is a completeunlock for me, where I have
very, very basic codingknowledge.
Like I can do some JavaScriptmagic inside of AppScript, but
I'm not a coder.
I went to business school, Istudied marketing.
Like, don't trust me with apps.
Um, but I know how powerful itis, and I have built out
solutions on uh JavaScript thatcan accomplish things I can't do
inside of HubSpot.
(46:54):
Um, or if I need reporting in aspecific format, we can build
JavaScript that like pulls itevery week and sticks it into a
spreadsheet.
Um, but one of my friendsshowed me a trick where he
pulled the JSON for I was tryingto audit a whole bunch of
workflows and figure out whichones were relevant to the
project I was working on andmight impact the work that I'm
(47:15):
doing.
And so he pulled out the JSONof all of those workflows, fed
it into an AI project, and thenjust asked, like, is how does
this work?
Which ones are the ones thatmatter?
And I was like, I never thoughtto do that.
I was trying to use like theChat GPT connector or the cloud
connector into HubSpot.
(47:35):
It didn't have visibility intothat object.
I was trying to use HubSpotBreeze, which I have a lot of
not very positive feelingsabout.
Um, and so I was like, thatlike pull data out and put it
here and then ask questions,like broke my brain.
I'm so excited for the thingsthat I can do with that.
Um, and I just using my verybasic JavaScripting knowledge
(47:57):
that is very much supported byAI these days, to get the data
that I want to ask questions ofand then put it into an AI
project where I'm just accessingit in that chat.
Like that's huge.
There's so much that I can doto shortcut my day in getting
the answers I need and liketaking inventory, like my
(48:19):
efficiency is off the chartsnow, if I can do that.
So I think that's my favoriteuse case that came up yesterday.
Michael Hartmann (48:26):
Well, the so the the one I'll just add,
somebody I saw somebody postingabout notebook LM.
Have you used that?
Danielle Urban (48:31):
I haven't yet, but we've talked about using
that as a handoff for ourclients.
Michael Hartmann (48:35):
So I am I'm playing around with it now where
I've been very like feeding intranscripts from from
conversations.
And I I have I'm in the carregularly listening to podcasts
anyway, and it generates thisaudio sort of summary that's
like feels like a podcast.
And I'm I did one, I'm like,ooh, this is kind of interesting
to see that perspective.
Um, so I'm kind of curious tosee if that will work,
(48:57):
especially for like the kinds ofthings you're talking about
with those reverse demos.
Yeah.
Anyway, um, I love hearingthese new stories about how to
use these tools because it'sreally, really fun.
Danielle, so much fun.
Enjoyed it.
Um, if if I'm sure we could goon for hours, actually.
But uh, if folks want tocontinue this process or want to
connect with you or understandwhat you're doing or what's
(49:19):
going on with cartographer,what's the best way for them to
do that?
Danielle Urban (49:22):
Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn.
I'm pretty active there.
Um, you can reach us atcartographerconsulting.com.
Um, I'm Danielle atcartographerconsulting.com if
you want to email me.
Um and then I'm in like amillion Slack groups, obviously,
including the marketing opsone.
Michael Hartmann (49:36):
There you go.
And you say you're speaking atMassapalooza 25?
Danielle Urban (49:40):
I am.
I'm speaking with a good friendof mine, Brian D'Andrea, on
executive reporting and how todo that in HubSpot.
It's called peeling the HubSpotReporting Onion.
Michael Hartmann (49:49):
Nice.
All right.
Well, hopefully I don't I'm notsure if this will get out
before then, but I think it willbe close.
It'll be very close.
So anyway, well, hopefullythat'll drive will traffic to
yours.
So thank you again, Danielle.
Thanks to our our our audiencefor continuing to support us.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
you can always reach out toNaomi, Mike, or me.
(50:09):
Till next time.
Bye everyone.
Bye.
Hello everyone, welcome to another
episode of OpsCast, brought toyou by MarketingOps.com and
powered by all the mud pros outthere.
Today, I'm excited to be joinedby Danielle Urban, co-founder
and CEO of CartographerConsulting.
Danielle brings a unique mix ofdemand gen, operations, and
platform expertise, especiallyin the world of HubSpot.
She's helped early stagestartups and scaling companies
(00:46):
figure out not just how to useHubSpot, but when and how to
level up.
We are going to be talkingabout RTech maturity, how to
recognize when you're you'veoutgrown your setup and what
signals to look for before yourstack starts slowing you down.
So whether you're a team of twoor scaling fast, Daniel has
been there and can help youavoid the pitfalls of skipping
key maturity milestones.
(01:06):
Danielle, welcome to the show.
Danielle Urban (01:08):
Thanks.
Thank you so much for havingme.
Michael Hartmann (01:11):
You know, I thought I was going to trip over
the name of Cartographer, butuh there's a nail that there's
there's a one of the my favoritebooks that I ever read is it's
called um, I think it's calledThe Map That Changed the World.
So, you know, obviouslycartography is a part of that
somewhere.
I I would like encourage you togo check it out.
It's a pretty fascinating storyabout one of these people who
(01:34):
did some work, wasn'tappreciated at the time, died a
pauper, you know, and in majordebt, and then now is looked on
as someone anyway, had to dowith how we um the value.
I forg I forget the person'sname, but anyway, good good
work.
So, all right, well, um enoughof that.
(01:54):
So you um yeah, when we talkedbefore, you you said you know
you've worked with teams atdifferent stages of growth,
which is great because I thinkthere's a lot of people who
listen who maybe are probablygonna be going through
transitions.
When you think of maturity,especially around Martech, like
how do you define that?
Like, what's your approach tothat?
Danielle Urban (02:15):
Yeah, I I've seen multiple inflection points.
And it's funny because oursales conversations, we always
try to say, like, what bringsyou here?
Like, how can we help youtoday?
Um, and you get a huge range ofanswers.
But even when I was backin-house, I started my career in
Demand Gen um million years agoat a very, it was like a
medium-sized company that gotacquired by a very, very large
(02:37):
company.
Um, and so it was reallyinteresting to see the
juxtaposition between like oursmall nimble team that was
supporting a 200-person companyinside of like a 300,000-person
company and the differences inhow we talk to our colleagues.
And so very early in my career,I got exposed to like both
extremes.
Um, and then I went evenfurther down the extreme on the
(02:59):
smaller side where I worked in ahandful of startups as their
like first marketing hire.
And so I was really setting upsystems.
And so, with that backgroundknowledge, now coming into the
consulting world over the pastfour or five years, um, I feel
like we've seen, we've seen itall, truly.
Um, and a lot of times thereare these sort of trigger points
(03:19):
where either they're expandingtheir team or they have some new
initiative that they need tomeasure, that's sort of that
inflection point of like, weactually can't measure any of
this.
We don't know how.
Um, or it's a new leader thatsteps into play, or they they
are putting a renewed or newfocus on, say, customer success,
and they need, you know,systems to support that
function.
So there are a lot of differentthings that will pull you in at
(03:42):
different times.
Um, and it can be as small aslike, we made our first
marketing hire.
Now we need to give them toolsto do their job, or it could be
like we're building out anentirely new branch of our
business, uh, or we're you know,beefing up our marketing team.
So usually there's someindication of growth or major
change that will start thatconversation.
(04:03):
Uh, but there sometimes it'sjust like we need to fix this,
it's so bad.
Michael Hartmann (04:08):
Yeah.
Danielle Urban (04:09):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (04:10):
I mean, it seems like the the driver for
the Martech maturity is reallylike almost like a business
maturity is the leadingindicator.
Danielle Urban (04:19):
Yeah, I'd say so, definitely.
Because the the people who willsee the need are the people who
have a goal to accomplish.
And so if you are adding newgoals and new people are
assigned to those goals, thenyou need systems to support
that.
And that system can be like apeople-driven process.
You know, when you hire a newsalesperson, all of a sudden now
(04:41):
you need to train them.
Well, what are you eventraining them on?
Uh, so there's that processpiece of it.
And then there's the system oflike, okay, you're training them
to follow the methodology.
Well, where are you trackingthat?
Where are they understandingtheir success?
How are you understanding theirsuccess?
And that's where the Martechpiece comes into it.
And it's it's funny we'retalking about sales and
marketing technology, but in theHubSpot world, it's all one and
(05:04):
the same these days.
Right.
So there are so many differentfunctions that come into play
when you can put it all underone roof in HubSpot.
Michael Hartmann (05:11):
Yeah, I think I think it's interesting that
you've had that exposure to likereally, really large
organizations down to earlystage, startup, whatever, small
organizations.
And you talked about how likethe lay the way that you talk to
each other is different.
And there's there's adifference in like there's a
difference in language.
There's also what I've seen isI think if there's an
expectation, if you're growing,right, you add a person, right?
(05:33):
There's um a straight line ofincreased output, right?
But it's not that becausethere's I don't there's probably
somebody studied this, but Isuspect that like there's a
there's a point at which likeadding another person does you
don't get another you know X oneX of whatever uh uh the average
(05:54):
is across the team, right?
Right becomes lower because ofa number of things.
Part of it usually there'sspecialization, right?
You've got enhanced you got itnow.
You put in more process, right?
And I think there's there's arisk there too of um expecting
more out of that one additional,you know, that marginal
addition of the headcount towhat you can produce to and then
(06:17):
you add in the languagedifferences, like it's just like
that is a whole nother piece ofit.
Danielle Urban (06:23):
Yeah.
Well, if you think about it,there's sort of the small
company that, you know, I like Isaid, I was a first marketing
hire at a handful of startups.
Usually they've got asalesperson, maybe a sales
leader and one person under themin place.
And so because I'm the firstone in who cares about
marketing, the sales team hasprobably just gotten by on
(06:44):
spreadsheets.
Maybe they've chosen theirfavorite cheap, free trial tool
to keep track of everything.
But then I'm like, well, now myjob is to help you guys.
I was usually in demandgenerals because that's what
they hire marketing for at anearly stage.
So I'm like, if I have to dowork to feed you leads and to
(07:05):
create all of this buzz, how amI going to track what I'm doing
and how it impacts what you'redoing?
And so I implemented HubSpotmore than once when I was
in-house because we just neededsome level of tracking things.
And I think if their sales teamwere to grow bigger before that
point, they would have alreadybeen on a system to know that
(07:25):
like if you've got more than twopeople, if you can sit down
over coffee or talk to eachother in the hallway to get your
work done, when you add onemore person, that's too much
coordination.
So if you reach more than twopeople on your team, you have to
build processes.
And so if I had stepped into ateam where there's already more
than three salespeople or threeor more, then there probably
(07:48):
would have been a completelydifferent approach for me to
take in trying to bolt on towhat they're already using so
that we can all work cohesively.
And that's only at the smallscale.
When you talk about addingpeople at a larger scale, adding
one more salesperson to apredefined role is not going to
break anything because you'vealready gotten to that level of
specialization and the sort ofrole function inside of the
(08:08):
systems that you already have.
Michael Hartmann (08:10):
Yeah.
So, I mean, we're normally umsort of tool agnostic, but you
basically you with yourexpertise with HubSpot, um,
something that was interestingto me because I'm less familiar
with HubSpot is that you saidthat the subscription tiers in
HubSpot kind of loosely map tomaturity levels that you think
of.
Walk us through what you meanby like what the tiers are, what
(08:33):
those maturity levels are, andand maybe what is unlocked as
you move forward in thosematurity levels.
Danielle Urban (08:39):
Yeah, it's funny because since we last spoke,
they've even changed it.
They used to be pretty lockedin, but at inbound, they
announced their new smart CRM uhpricing model.
Um, and so it I'm not gonna gotoo deep into what it used to be
because there's a lot of whatit used to be.
But today you can buy a smartCRM seat.
Seat-based pricing is stillrelatively new in the HubSpot
(09:01):
world, but they announcedseat-based pricing.
And it used to be that you buya core seat, which is like your
super admin seat, and then youhave specialized seats for
sales, marketing, et cetera.
We still have that, um, whichis great.
And then we've layered in thisnew smart CRM pricing model
where you as one person can sortof push yourself through the
(09:23):
subscription tiers.
They have their starter level,which is pretty locked down.
It's really just basicinformation keeping.
It lets you into even on thefree version, there's not much
functionality you get over thefree version and the starter
version.
Um, but free and starter, it'sjust like information keeping.
You're tracking your emails,you see what happens where, you
can keep track of people, you'vegot basic deal function.
Michael Hartmann (09:45):
Um like a spreadsheet with connections and
some app on top of it.
Danielle Urban (09:50):
Yeah, exactly.
I think most people will movefrom a spreadsheet to HubSpot
because it tracks your emailsautomatically to the contact
record.
So that is the thing that youwant when you decide to go sign
up for HubSpot on a randomTuesday.
Um, but then you get into thepro level tiers, which unlocks
some automation.
So when you need more things tohappen in a consistent way,
(10:12):
then you feel yourself pushinginto that pro level tier.
Um, and the smart CRM seats letyou, you as an admin or you as
one person potentially who'sbuilding your one person company
or a small company, can moveyourself into that seat without
having to get into thespecialized functions of
marketing sales, customerservice, data, engineering, any
(10:33):
of that.
Um, whereas it used to be youhad to choose one of those to
sort of unlock thatfunctionality.
So I'm very excited about thatbecause me, as one person, can
do a lot if I'm able to pushinto some of those higher level
features.
But as soon as you move intoone of those specialized tiers
or specialized hubs, as HubSpotcalls them, with marketing sales
(10:54):
or customer success, thenyou're sort of locked into that.
You follow that path now orfollow multiple paths at once.
Um, and so generally speaking,the HubSpot tiers are starter
pro and enterprise with free asa kind of an option.
Um, and pro is where you firstunlock that uh automation piece
of it.
Um, you can customize some ofyour views, you get a little bit
(11:16):
more flexibility in reporting.
And then when you get into theenterprise level, you're able to
capture data at such a granularlevel.
Um, the big, big feature for mein that level is uh custom
events tracking.
So you can indicate if there'sa change on a record, you're
capturing that as its own thing.
If somebody clicks a button ona certain page, you can capture
that in its own record.
(11:37):
And so you're able to track ata level of granularity that no
one in a startup is really goingto care about.
And if they do, they probablyhave a specialized tool like
their product team who's lookingat product interactions.
You're not building that intoyour marketing yet.
And so, or definitely not yoursales.
So if you are reaching thatlevel at a business, then
generally your bigger businesswith more specialized people who
(12:00):
want more specific information.
And so that's roughly how itall sort of maps out.
Michael Hartmann (12:04):
Yeah.
It's interesting because Iheard about that in my first
reaction is if I was responsiblefor this, I would be really
worried about people coming tome like, we want this random
activity to be tracked withoutreally thinking about like how
would it, like, how would itactually inform what we do.
Danielle Urban (12:26):
Yeah.
And in the reason, my pocketMopsapalooza.
Is that it?
Talking about enterprise reportor executive reporting and how
you get to a report that'sactually useful and not just
because somebody asked you.
Michael Hartmann (12:40):
Yeah, I just like my this is kind of goes
back to my early years when Ifirst moved into the kind of a
marketing domain and I worked indatabase marketing.
And you know, there's all theseproviders that could you could
get, and they're still outthere, probably more of them now
where you could get additionaldata.
In our case, it was consumeroriented, right?
Like get at the zip code level,right, information about
(13:00):
whatever income levels, youknow, preferences that are
typical, yada yada yada, right?
You can imagine all those kindsof things.
And if I ever put that in frontof our marketers and said,
here's you know, here's a basketof you know a hundred potential
fields that we could get,right?
What do you want?
Invariably the answer would belike, well, we might use any of
(13:21):
them, so let's get them all,right?
Danielle Urban (13:23):
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (13:24):
So and like, but the reality is there's
probably 10 or fewer that arethe realistic ones you would
use.
And I think like that's thelike with what you just
described, if like that's wheremy head went was like, how do we
keep that from going out ofcontrol in terms of all the
things we could track versuswhat we would actually use?
Danielle Urban (13:41):
Yeah, definitely.
And I mean that you're at thatpoint where if you have that
functionality and you're willingto pay for that level of
service from HubSpot, you'redoing it for a reason.
There's something you want totrack.
And it's okay.
Yeah.
It's okay if that evolves andchanges over time.
If you're measuring a singlecampaign and you want to know
how many people click that redbutton during Black Friday, you
(14:04):
don't care that much comeJanuary.
You might want to compare yearover year, but once you've
captured that data, it's okay tojust sort of move on and let it
evolve.
I think you have like 150tracked events.
So there's a lot of things toplay with.
And like at the end of the day,if you're capturing extra
information, like fine.
You're already paying for thefeature, whatever.
Michael Hartmann (14:22):
Yeah.
I mean, my point is like have aplan for like actually using
the stuff if you're gonna do it.
And if in and it's okay if youthink you will and you end up
not, and then you can double it,right?
But don't just keep it becauseyou made that decision a year
ago.
So, okay, so let's know, like,this now to me gets into a
(14:44):
little bit of like how how wouldI, maybe as a as a team of one
or uh a leader, right?
How would I know what are thesignals that I should be looking
for that we should be thinkingabout, you know, moving whether
it's the next tier or someonebased on what I if I understand
right now with the new model,right?
(15:04):
A particular user's tier towithin HubSpot, right?
How do you think about that?
Like what what are the you've Ithink you've hit it at a couple
of things, but what are some ofthe changes or signals that
would indicate, hey, it's timeto be thinking about us moving
maturity, moving our users todifferent levels and so forth.
Danielle Urban (15:24):
Yeah.
Well, why don't I outline whatI've got for the sort of rough
maturity model that's still awork in progress, but so far, I
think it's tracking.
Um, the first stage is reallyjust like a speed to function.
You're a small scrappy team,everybody is using tools that
they need to get their job donethat day.
There's not a whole lot ofthought about how it comes
(15:45):
together as a functioningplatform, a complete ecosystem.
We're not really connectingthings together that much.
Maybe one or two things aresharing data, but it's really
just like, how do I, as amarketer, as a salesperson, get
through today?
Yeah.
And maybe next week.
And maybe we get to somenumbers for the board, but
that's really not coming to mindon a day-to-day.
Michael Hartmann (16:07):
And maybe this is something I want to be
repeatable, but like that's notprobably not thinking.
Danielle Urban (16:13):
Uh, would not from what I've seen.
But in that case, there's solittle focus on scalability, and
you end up, it's very easy tochange platforms, which is great
to maintain flexibility, butthat consistency and tracking
and data capturing over timemakes it very difficult for your
team to share information.
So if you're one salespersonworking out of a spreadsheet,
sure, you can share your GoogleSheet and then it's up to date.
(16:36):
But if it's not in a formatthat's accessible to other
people, or if someone needs totransform that data to get a
different kind of number, itkind of starts to fall apart
really quickly.
Michael Hartmann (16:44):
Yeah.
Danielle Urban (16:45):
Um, and so then you find that you need more
specificity and you need alittle bit more maturity.
Yeah.
Um, and you need to create thoserepeatable systems.
And I think that usually comes.
This is what I want to test abit in more conversation is
like, I think that comes whenpeople want more analysis out of
their data.
So, like you're tracking it,you're reacting to it, you're
(17:07):
doing things on the day-to-day.
But when you're like, well, howdid that work?
Or how do I do more of that?
What is the pattern here?
That is, I think, when you hitstep two in this maturity model.
And that's where you start toneed those repeatable systems.
And maybe it's when your teamgrows past two.
Um, and you just need to getthat data model to be meaningful
(17:29):
because your business needs totrack deals consistently.
They need to track, you know,lead um, lead creation
consistently and those sourcesthat they come in from.
Uh, and you need to turn aroundand report that to a board and
say, this is how we're growingour business because leads are
coming in from these sources,we're following up in this way,
and here you go.
Michael Hartmann (17:47):
You want you to be able to translate.
I mean, the word that comes tomind that I talk about when you
get into that is discipline,right?
You need to discipline the waythat you're executing.
And I I use that likespecifically instead of process,
because I think like it'sreally like we are gonna be
because you like you said, youadd this one other person.
If you're doing this sort offree-for-all uh model, right,
(18:10):
each if you now get two peopledoing things differently,
they're calling things that arethe same, different words,
right?
Yeah, very quickly reporting isgonna be a challenge, um, let
alone like knowing like what'sworking across the two different
people.
Exactly.
Like consistency and disciplineis what you need there.
Okay.
Danielle Urban (18:28):
Absolutely.
And I think there's still atthat stage, because it's still
small, it's still prettyflexible, you're moving between
systems.
If you do a system migrationthree times in the space of a
year, you get to that sort oftribal knowledge where it's
like, we just use this one.
Like, don't worry about thoseother confusing things that have
created some debt for us.
Like, just use that one anddon't worry about the rest.
(18:50):
And so there's still sort ofthat that people piece of it
that hasn't been codified intothe platforms that you're using.
Um, but you're you're aiming atthat consistency and you're
aiming at that disciplinebecause you recognize the need.
So maybe you've got some tools,maybe you're starting to build
that out and recognize the need,but you're still kind of
sitting in this place where likeeveryone's just trying to get
(19:10):
their job done and also getnumbers to the board once a
quarter.
Um, and so then I think you canmove into the next stage when
you need to share thatinformation more broadly.
So maybe it's more teams, maybeit's that the board is putting
more of a microscope on youbecause you're getting to a
point where your revenue is highenough, the investment is high
(19:31):
enough that that needs to bereal.
And they everyone needs thevalidity in the reporting that
you're putting out to know thatit's real.
And so that's where you want tobe able to look back over time.
You want to do predictive uhmodeling, you want to do
forecasting.
So all of that is the nextstage three, maturity level, um,
(19:53):
where you just need to get moregranular, more specific, more
disciplined.
That data dictionary needs tobe super duper clear and
everyone needs to be bought inon it.
And I think that is kind of thepoint where you need to put
someone in the function ofowning the platform and
processes.
Michael Hartmann (20:10):
Yeah.
I mean, yeah, it sounds likeit's almost like a switch, maybe
not like a switch from we'rejust looking backwards in
performance and now we'relooking at that and trying to
inform what we expect the futureto look like.
Danielle Urban (20:21):
Right.
Exactly.
We want to be able to tell acomplete story of a single
person, but also find thosepatterns where, like, if this
happened in the past, then itbut it happened this way on the
next few steps.
So if we do the same thing ordo something very similar to
follow that path, we think thisnext thing is going to happen.
But my notes here say the skillset is likely not on your team
(20:43):
to be able to hit that.
So you're still, even thoughyou're getting to that point
where you can capture the dataand maybe you've got someone
sort of owning the capture ofthat data, but do you get into
like statistical modeling?
You probably don't have a dataengineering team.
And how much money is that?
Michael Hartmann (20:58):
What are the biggest gaps in skills across
our team?
Absolutely.
Um definitely.
Danielle Urban (21:03):
And then I think the the stage four and final
stage I have noted is like thatdeep analytical need where you
do get that data engineer onboard and you're finally big
enough that you can justifyhaving like an analytic center
of excellence or a platformownership that's more than one
person, and really make surethat the data is flowing between
your systems, that it'saccurate, that it's measured,
(21:25):
that there's you know, buy andan understanding on what what
the numbers are telling you.
Um and you're not sort ofcobbling it together and saying,
just use that one property thatwe made up three years ago.
Michael Hartmann (21:36):
Well, yeah, this field is labeled this one
thing in our CRM, we actuallyuse it a different way.
So do like this is what youyeah.
Um that's interesting.
Yeah, the thing about the onenuance I think I would add to
that last stage, and I don'tknow if that was actually the
last stage, but the last one wejust talked about, yeah, is um
when you get to that dataengineering aid, right?
(21:56):
What I've found is reallydifficult is finding someone who
understands data statisticalanalysis in the general sense,
but also in the domain of salesand marketing, because it's got
its own set of uh likechallenges, I think is the best
way to put it, right?
It's just it's messy data, it'snot like finance data, right?
All that kind of stuff.
Um curious, so I mean, I I'mtracking all these different
(22:20):
stages.
I think there were four total.
Yeah.
Um the uh the thing I'm like itcame to me in mind to me is
like um is it ideal that likeyou would see organizations
going kind of step by stepthrough those?
Or does it make sense to skipthem?
If so, when like what or likewhat are the it feels like it
(22:43):
feels like it could be skippedin some cases, and maybe there's
like a major capital infusionor merger, right, that would be
a driver for that.
But like outside of that, likeit feels like there might be
some risk in sort of jumpingsteps.
Danielle Urban (22:57):
Yeah, I I think you would find yourself like
over-engineered if you skip someof these steps.
And I've seen that be the case.
You know, you outsourcesomething and they you get sort
of a a copy paste process intoyour systems, and then there's
no adoption because it justwasn't built for a way that
serves your business.
And that's that's what we asconsultants are always trying to
(23:18):
do.
We we want to talk about how dowe build the best system for
you right now.
There's a lot of patternmatching that I can do, there's
a lot of commonality betweendifferent types of clients.
But at the end of the day, theway that your teams are
structured, the way that yourteams like to work, what else is
in your tech stack is verycustom.
Um, and so I I've only seen oneclient really need to skip a
(23:40):
stage.
And it was exactly what youwere talking about.
Like they just they have theproduct market fit at exactly
the right time.
The industry was justabsolutely blowing up.
They couldn't even keep up withthemselves.
They couldn't hire fast enough.
They had a massive capitalinfusion, and they went from
like step one to step four.
Like they really jumped the gunin a matter of a couple months.
(24:01):
And but that is so, so unusual.
I really think that it comesinto play.
And maybe you could break itout into the different teams
that are doing that.
But I think this this functionsmostly at the business level.
Um, because even if you hadlike the maturity of a customer
success team, it's gonna sort offollow these same steps, but
it's only gonna follow thosesteps because of the needs of
(24:21):
the business.
Um, so yeah, I think it'spretty rare that you would jump
around.
Michael Hartmann (24:25):
Yeah.
I I love you use the termpattern matching, which I love.
Like I feel like I see I it's Ialways sort of have this really
like visceral reaction whenpeople are like, I'm you know,
there's this best practice, andit feels like that doesn't
really like uh and I think whatthey be people mean is kind of
what you're talking about,right?
Pattern matching, like applyingthe lessons I've learned to
(24:48):
your specific situation,environment, maturity, whatever,
and trying to match that.
And that's like that makes away more sense to me than just
throwing, hey, I've got a cookiecutter solution, I'm gonna drop
it in, right?
And I see Yeah.
Danielle Urban (25:03):
I I had to laugh once when I lost a deal because
they wanted quick bestpractices, and I was like, Yeah,
but for what?
And they were like, we justwant best practices.
I was like, I'm not it then.
Sorry.
Michael Hartmann (25:14):
Yeah, that's probably probably good to avoid
that client, right?
Yeah, yeah.
Because they think there's theythink there's an easy button to
to this stuff.
And yeah, okay.
I'm gonna I could go off on atangent that I don't want to
stack.
So okay, so we've so we've Ithink we addressed maybe one
common thing that could be arisk or a pitfall.
(25:35):
Um are there other kinds ofthings that could be pitfalls as
teams are going through thislike maturation process, um,
kind of trying to keep up withtheir growth or whatever that um
we didn't already touch on?
Danielle Urban (25:49):
Um, I think maybe if the teams are, I just
sort of said like if you hirecustomer success and they're
sort of following their own pathuh through those maturity
stages, it really should be at abusiness level because if you
have, say, sales and marketing,which is such a classic example,
but if you have sales andmarketing who are moving through
this differently, then yourwhole business is going to fall
(26:10):
apart.
So I think the sort of platformconsiderations and how you
bring people into processes andplatforms needs to be done very
carefully and sort of theassessment of platforms.
Um, someone needs to own it,whether it's their full-time job
because you're at you're atsort of a stage three or stage
four where there's enough need,or it's someone who's
(26:31):
recognizing the need enough togo looking for a solution, they
need to sort of step back andmove themselves from step one of
very reactive day-to-day intostep two, where it's like we are
evaluating this for a long-termimplementation.
We don't want this for sixmonths, we want this for three
years, depending on how fastthey're growing.
But still, you don't, you don'twant a sales leader going off
(26:53):
and be like, well, I bought thisCRM because I like how it works
or it's my favorite.
And marketing is like, but wealready had a CRM that's hooked
up to all of our marketingactivities.
Like, then you're just indifferent places.
And so I think keeping thatfocus at sort of the top-level
leadership executive level needsto be really important.
You need to get everyone onboard.
Michael Hartmann (27:14):
Yeah.
So have you, um, do you haveany examples of where you've
helped clients or where when youwere on site or in embedded
with teams, right?
Where you had some, you know,did some changes, maybe because
I think what you're alluding tois sometimes you need to make
smaller changes, right?
And they can have that sizeimpact, which I'm a big fan of.
(27:35):
It's like yes, looking sharethere.
Danielle Urban (27:38):
Yeah, I one of my favorite recent stories was
uh a small company.
They're a pretty small startup.
Um, they've been around for awhile, so they've they've sort
of grown and shrunk and changedcourse a little bit.
Uh, but they had been onHubSpot, not under my expertise,
um, not under my guidance.
And they they then sort ofshifted focus, shifted their
(28:00):
sales team a bit, ripped it outand went to Monday.com and then
decided they hired like threenew salespeople, came back to me
and said, we think we want tobe back on HubSpot because our
salespeople are comfortable withHubSpot.
And I was like, okay, here wego.
So we got into it.
And um the data model they hadcreated for themselves in their
Monday.com CRM was a trainwreck.
(28:23):
Like they didn't, there was noconsistency to how data was
captured.
Like there was a company objectand then there was company name
typed in.
And there was also like a notesfield where sometimes company
names were typed in and it justwas all over the place.
And so our team sort of takedeep breaths right now.
Like I exactly stressing meout.
And you're like, but our teampainstakingly pulled all of that
(28:46):
apart.
Thankfully, it wasn't a hugeamount of data because they had
they'd been through a lot ofchange.
But they um we pulled thatapart.
We got it into HubSpotproperly.
One of my favorite things to dowith HubSpot uh clients is to
sit down and show them the viewof the data model that you get
inside of HubSpot.
It's sort of this little thingthat's tucked away, but it's
really powerful for helpingpeople understand what the
different objects are and howthey relate to each other
(29:08):
because it lays them out inboxes, then you hover over a box
and it draws lines to the otherthings that they're related to.
It's a really great view forgetting people to understand
this is how it all connectstogether.
Um, so I love that.
We did that.
Michael Hartmann (29:20):
We did not easier to consume than like if
you're not familiar with lookingat massive data models, right?
Danielle Urban (29:27):
Yeah.
When you start talking aboutobjects, uh the salesperson
who's not familiar withadministering a CRM is gonna be
like, I don't care.
Like they are so gone from thatmeeting.
And so we went through andonboarded them very meticulously
and set them up with a system.
But the my favorite part ofthat project was that their CEO
wanted visibility into leads ina very specific way.
And he was like, I can't getthat with HubSpot.
(29:49):
That's why we got rid of itlast time.
I was like, that's such a lie.
Like, we can always get youthere.
And so we sat down and had likea 45-minute working session and
created CEO's homepage as adashboard in HubSpot.
I walked him through how to setthat as his homepage and
HubSpot.
So when he logs into HubSpot,that is exactly what pops up in
front of him.
(30:09):
It's the fields he wants to seelisted in the way he wants to
see them, relevant to how thesales team is working that day.
And they're thrilled andthey're actually using the
platform properly, finally.
Michael Hartmann (30:21):
Yeah, it's so funny how these.
Misperceptions or or not evenmisperceptions, but perceptions
can taint someone's view.
And sometimes it's like alittle investment in like going,
actually, no, this is like thisis totally possible.
Sometimes it's not, right?
Sometimes what they want isthat possible.
But like at least you can showwhat is possible, and I think
(30:42):
that's that's huge.
So you see you you hinted at acouple of things.
(31:46):
So I know like I like I said,I'm not familiar with HubSpot.
What I do know is it's like asyou already kind of hit it, like
they're like, I feel likethere's an announcement of some
sort of change every week or twofrom them.
Yeah.
Right.
So they're evolving a lot.
What what are what are some ofthe what are some of the other
underused features that youthink more teams should be
taking advantage of?
Danielle Urban (32:09):
Um there's so much.
And it's the features that aregetting released are getting
more and more specific, I think.
Uh, so it's a little bit harderto keep track of.
But I think some of my favoritethings to sort of really reduce
complexity in accounts, um,people may not realize they're
there, like calculatedproperties.
Uh, you can write a calculationinto a property so that you
(32:30):
don't have to do thatcalculation in a report, in a
workflow that adds it togetherand creates a new property.
Like you can just do that andyou can add days.
There's some funkiness to it.
Like you need to remember tochange your time windows to epic
time.
But like once you figure outwhat that is, you can eliminate
workflows.
Like you can eliminate all ofthese processes that are
(32:52):
happening and have built out,have been built out to automate
things for you just because yourewrote it as an equation.
Um, and in a similar vein, thesync properties that came out
are very, very cool when you'restamping data between objects.
Um, we try not to.
In most cases, you don't needto because you can
cross-reference objects in a lotof the different features in
HubSpot, but there are caseswhere you can't or you need to
(33:14):
be able to see it in a specificway.
And so these sync propertiesare like a mirroring of data
from the other object, which issuper, super helpful.
Again, can cut down on a lot ofthe workflows that people have
to stamp numbers across.
Um, and uh in the same vein,stamping data across the custom
events are so desperatelyunderused.
There's been a huge amount ofchange in those.
(33:35):
Shout out to uh Maggie Philbinover the last year.
She's a product manager, she'swonderful, uh, very accessible,
clearly.
Uh, but there's been so muchchange just over the last year
in what you can capture, how youcan capture it.
Um, and people just don't thinkabout it for the use cases
they're trying to solve becausethey don't know that it's
matured to that point or thatthese new features are
(33:56):
available, that you can track itin that way.
Um, so I think there's a lot ofopportunity in those that
people just aren't aware of.
Michael Hartmann (34:03):
Yeah, that sounds that sounds good.
So another thing, like use whatwe talked before, you use a
term that I hadn't heard beforeabout doing reverse demos as a
way of diagnosing things.
So explain what that is and whyyou think it's so effective and
helpful.
Danielle Urban (34:23):
Yeah, I think I co-opted the term from a sales
method, but it's my own now.
Go for it.
Yeah, we we really like to dothat as part of our discovery.
So we'll schedule an hour-longcall with the person who has to
use the tools that we'redeveloping for.
So if it's a sales process thatwe're working on, then we want
(34:44):
to talk to like the lowest levelsalesperson who is picking up
those leads every day andlogging in to make calls because
I want to see how they work.
I want to see what buttons theypress, I want to see what
they're looking at, I want tosee what they're updating, what
other platforms they'reaccessing.
You might find out thatsomebody has their own
spreadsheet that they'remaintaining and copying data
from HubSpot into thatspreadsheet.
(35:05):
You might realize that peopleare filling in data in three
different places that they don'tneed to, but they think they do
because no one told themotherwise.
And it's so incredibly telling.
It's mind-blowing.
Michael Hartmann (35:17):
Yeah, hardest.
So I've done that kind of thingbefore too.
And I think the hardest part isnot saying something while
they're going through it.
Oh my gosh.
Not correct it, correct.
Yeah, not yeah.
Um, it's and it's funny thatyou talked about like the side
spreadsheet.
So I did a a project at acompany years ago uh that was uh
intended to try to enable thesupport team to scale without
(35:43):
adding headcount, right, tomatch the growth of the company,
which it typically had aparallel growth pattern.
And so the like short shortversion is like we've we found a
methodology and there was somepushback about it, but what we
found in doing investigation isbecause it was kind of a
knowledge-based solution um onsteroids, but like we found out
like pretty much all the all thesport teams had their own
(36:06):
version of a knowledge base.
It was usually like a Worddocument on their computer that
nobody else could see, right?
Control F.
Right, yeah, and so they hadalready kind of made that
solution themselves, but it'slike that in like going and
sitting with somebody and seeinghow they actually do the work,
yeah, is uh can be mind-blowingbecause if you're going like
(36:29):
like I've I've I tell this topeople all the time is like if
you don't know what you're ifyou're asking as a marketing
team, why can't thosesalespeople just update their
CRM with opportunity status orconvert a lead or whatever,
right?
Go watch what it takes to doit.
Right.
Because you might be shocked atwhat a pain in the ass it is to
(36:53):
do it.
Yeah.
Um and then you can go, like Ithink it will give you a very
different perspective about howto do it.
Like, and it's not that youdon't want that, and it's
probably not that they don'twant to do that for you.
But their goals and objectivesand what drives them is not
that.
Danielle Urban (37:09):
Right.
Well, and we'll have peoplecome to us.
I'm working on a project rightnow.
They they signed on for areally small, like three-week
project to just get some reportsstood up, basically.
They wanted a little bit ofautomation, a little bit of
visibility.
And I was like, all right,cool, we'll we'll start there.
We will start there.
And even in that conversation,I was like, put me on with one
(37:31):
of your salespeople.
And I we've gone back and fortha bit because they were like,
well, you can talk to the salesmanager.
I'm like, I don't really carewhat the sales manager has to
say.
I want to see who's clickingthe buttons and how, because I
need to build what the salesmanager wants them to do into
what they're already comfortablewith.
Like, we all benefit if I canbuild a system that gets done
(37:51):
what the sales manager wantsdone, but it is in such a way
that it's so accessible andstraightforward to the low-level
brand new salesperson that justcame in because they are being
basically guided through thatprocess.
Like, yeah, sales manager, youneed to tell me what the process
should be.
We'll get there.
But I want to see what theperson is actually doing every
(38:12):
single day because I'm settingup these automations to say,
hey, there's a new lead assignedto you.
Are they checking their emails?
Are they seeing it in HubSpot?
How do they get into that?
What are the views that they'reaccessing?
How do I make sure that theyknow it's there and they should
follow up?
Um, and this your sales managercan't tell me that.
Michael Hartmann (38:29):
Yeah.
Well, we set up notificationsfor when a new lead goes and
they should be checking theiremail.
And they go, like, I get somany email notifications, I
ignore it, right?
Danielle Urban (38:37):
Yeah.
Your inbox starts filteringthem out because you never open
them.
Right.
Like, you just don't know.
Michael Hartmann (38:42):
That is like that by itself, that tip of
getting that insight into likethe boots on the ground and what
they go through on a day-to-daybasis, is such a great piece of
advice.
Like that, like I tell peopleregularly, like, go hang out
with these people, these otherorganizations, it will benefit
you.
(39:02):
And they'd loved for you toknow.
It like this is exactly why,right?
Danielle Urban (39:08):
Yes.
I had a client where we had onerepresentative of their team do
the screen share, but theybrought the whole team with
them.
That was really interestingtoo, because it's one person
saying, This is how me, as arepresentative of our team, is
doing this process.
Some people were like, Oh, Ididn't know you did that.
Or like, yeah, I didn't know wewere supposed to do that.
I didn't even know that I coulddo that, right?
(39:28):
Yep.
Or like, oh, I didn't know youcould filter it like that.
I didn't know that button wasthere that made my life easier.
And so you get that informationsharing, even just among your
team, to look at the samescreen.
And it's so, as a consultant,I'm like, great, there's project
number three, four, five.
Like, I'm seeing so much thatcan be impacted, you know,
depending on the scope of whatwe're working on to begin with.
But it could be as simple aslike creating a new card view in
(39:52):
their center column so thatthey can just click and start
typing into the things thatthey're supposed to be filling
in.
That takes me five minutes, butI wouldn't know that that's
helpful without seeing the exactbuttons and things you're
hunting for in other platformsthat you're accessing directly
on your screen every day.
Michael Hartmann (40:07):
Yeah.
Yeah, I love that.
Yeah, like we could almost likethis.
Maybe we need to like cut outjust this part and just share
that to the world.
Danielle Urban (40:16):
Consulting advice piece of this podcast.
Yeah.
Michael Hartmann (40:19):
Well, I mean, but it's like it's if people
aren't thinking about that,which I suspect a lot of people
aren't, um especially when theyare looking across at other
teams and um like it's likeputting yourself in those other
people's shoes, right?
Call it whatever you want tocall it, is is a valuable
(40:40):
exercise to go through, right?
And it feels like it's maybe awaste of time, maybe you feel
like you know already, yeah, butyou don't.
Danielle Urban (40:50):
It's that like go slow to go fast.
Michael Hartmann (40:52):
Yeah.
Danielle Urban (40:53):
Thinking.
Like if you slow down andunderstand how people work, you
make their work more efficient,you make everybody's data better
because the data capture iseasier.
Like it just pays off tenfold.
Michael Hartmann (41:04):
Yeah.
What is it?
Like slow is smooth, smooth isfast.
Is that the I don't know ifI've heard that one.
I think they're anyway, it wassome variation of one of those,
right?
Okay, so so we talked a lotabout like different things like
stages and when to recognizeit, some like great tips like we
talked about.
Yeah, but let's say thatsomeone in our audience is
(41:24):
listening, they're a team ofone, maybe a team of two, um,
and they're buried.
How how would you advise themto think about like when do you
need to like look at hiringsomebody versus bringing in
maybe outside help like yourteam?
Um and and going through thatthought process.
Danielle Urban (41:48):
Yeah, I think it it differs for a lot of
different use cases.
I think in the the smallerteams, I've had a lot of
conversations with freelancersconsultants who are like, hey, I
just got onto HubSpot, I'mpaying for the basic version.
What should I be doing?
And I the first thing I do, I'malways open to like a one-hour
call.
Like, yeah, let's get you setup.
Let's be friends, let's hangout.
Well, you're never generousenough.
(42:09):
Yeah, it's more of a networkingcall, but like, how do I help
you?
Um, and so in thatconversation, I had one last
week, uh, I was like, share yourscreen and tell me what you're
working on.
And the very first thing I didwas show them the data model and
HubSpot.
I'm like, you have all of thesedifferent things that connect
to each other.
She was like, I didn't know Ihad companies.
I saw that they were there.
I didn't know what they were.
I didn't know how they connectto anything else.
(42:30):
And so once we got thatbaseline, she understood all of
the things that she could do,even at the starter level.
And so we walked through someof her views.
I introduced her to some newfeatures.
We sort of got some thingsdialed in, made sure that she
had all of her um like inboxtracking set up properly, her
calendar and got that connected.
So there was a lot that wecould do in that hour just to be
like, all right, you are set upas much as you can.
(42:53):
Because on the starter version,there's not a whole lot of
things you can customize.
You're just sort of gettinginto it to use the core
features.
Um, but I think when you get tothat maturity level where
you're working across teams,that's where you might want to
talk to a consultant or aplatform expert, even if it's
just like an advisory call onetime, like talking to someone to
(43:13):
figure out how these teams needto work together.
They each have their own goalsand focuses that they need to
like dive into and own and theoutcomes they need to own.
But someone needs to tie ittogether.
And hopefully you have leadersthat can do that and are talking
to each other and working veryclosely.
But when you get multipleteams, uh, those leaders are
(43:34):
focused on guiding their team.
And then there's no one toreally own that in between and
own the process of how dataflows through the rest of the
company.
So you might have someone likeme come in and say, like, all
right, let's figure out whatsales needs, let's figure out
what marketing needs, let'sfigure out how we need to track
the data through for theexecutive team, for the product
team.
How can we bring productactivity into HubSpot to better
(43:56):
inform your sales and marketingteams?
Like, that's where we can startto pull all these pieces across
the organization.
Um, and so I think you kind ofhave to get to that point where
you've got one or two levels ofmanagement, maybe even three
levels, if you've got sort ofthe executive team, a VP level,
and then you know, a marketingmanager type person.
Um, that's when you needsomeone to step in and own the
(44:18):
processes and the platforms thatconnect it all together.
Michael Hartmann (44:21):
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, I know how I've thoughtabout it.
Like usually for me, I like usea spreadsheet.
Like, here's all the thingsthat our team or I mean or my
team needs to accomplish.
And then who's got theresponsibility of it um sort of
a matrix of the people quicklyidentifies where the gaps are or
where there's points offailure, right?
(44:43):
Right.
Right, there's no redundancy.
Um, and then I can sort ofprioritize.
I I hadn't thought of tying inthe connection with like I guess
because it's sort of implied inmy own brain, right?
There's just connection toother teams, and how do you
build those relationships?
Um, so that's good.
Um why don't we do this?
Like I we're uh we could go onfor a while here, I think, but
(45:05):
we need to probably wrap up.
Danielle Urban (45:06):
Seven minutes left.
Michael Hartmann (45:07):
Yes.
Um okay, so like it like itfeels like this is an obligatory
question these days.
Like, like what's what do yousee as the impact of AI um in
kind of marketing teams,marketing ops teams, RevOps
teams?
Um and I know there's a lot ofstuff going on within the
Hubsbot ecosystem around it too.
Danielle Urban (45:29):
Yeah, such a token question.
There's there's so manydifferent ways that you can
apply it though, because me asan admin and the things that I'm
doing to assess sort of as anoutside perspective, I'm using
AI in a bunch of different waysevery day.
I one of my favorite toolsthese days is Fathom Note Taker.
(45:49):
Um, and the reason I love it isbecause you can add your
recordings to folders and thenhave a chat conversation with
the entire folder.
So if you're trying to do thesereverse demos that you're
recording and you're puttingthem all in the same folder,
then you can go back and say,like, okay, the sales team, it's
so good.
The sales team said they'refilling out this property
(46:10):
because they think marketingneeds it.
Well, did marketing say theyneeded it?
Where when the video was salestalking about that, and then did
marketing talk about this?
And then you just like threeseconds later have an answer.
Like, it's so powerful becauseI don't have to sit there and
take notes and go back through.
And that's driven by AI on topof the transcripts.
One of my friends yesterdayintroduced me to a new concept
(46:33):
that I feel like is a completeunlock for me, where I have
very, very basic codingknowledge.
Like I can do some JavaScriptmagic inside of AppScript, but
I'm not a coder.
I went to business school, Istudied marketing.
Like, don't trust me with apps.
Um, but I know how powerful itis, and I have built out
solutions on uh JavaScript thatcan accomplish things I can't do
inside of HubSpot.
(46:54):
Um, or if I need reporting in aspecific format, we can build
JavaScript that like pulls itevery week and sticks it into a
spreadsheet.
Um, but one of my friendsshowed me a trick where he
pulled the JSON for I was tryingto audit a whole bunch of
workflows and figure out whichones were relevant to the
project I was working on andmight impact the work that I'm
(47:15):
doing.
And so he pulled out the JSONof all of those workflows, fed
it into an AI project, and thenjust asked, like, is how does
this work?
Which ones are the ones thatmatter?
And I was like, I never thoughtto do that.
I was trying to use like theChat GPT connector or the cloud
connector into HubSpot.
(47:35):
It didn't have visibility intothat object.
I was trying to use HubSpotBreeze, which I have a lot of
not very positive feelingsabout.
Um, and so I was like, thatlike pull data out and put it
here and then ask questions,like broke my brain.
I'm so excited for the thingsthat I can do with that.
Um, and I just using my verybasic JavaScripting knowledge
(47:57):
that is very much supported byAI these days, to get the data
that I want to ask questions ofand then put it into an AI
project where I'm just accessingit in that chat.
Like that's huge.
There's so much that I can doto shortcut my day in getting
the answers I need and liketaking inventory, like my
(48:19):
efficiency is off the chartsnow, if I can do that.
So I think that's my favoriteuse case that came up yesterday.
Michael Hartmann (48:26):
Well, the so the the one I'll just add,
somebody I saw somebody postingabout notebook LM.
Have you used that?
Danielle Urban (48:31):
I haven't yet, but we've talked about using
that as a handoff for ourclients.
Michael Hartmann (48:35):
So I am I'm playing around with it now where
I've been very like feeding intranscripts from from
conversations.
And I I have I'm in the carregularly listening to podcasts
anyway, and it generates thisaudio sort of summary that's
like feels like a podcast.
And I'm I did one, I'm like,ooh, this is kind of interesting
to see that perspective.
Um, so I'm kind of curious tosee if that will work,
(48:57):
especially for like the kinds ofthings you're talking about
with those reverse demos.
Yeah.
Anyway, um, I love hearingthese new stories about how to
use these tools because it'sreally, really fun.
Danielle, so much fun.
Enjoyed it.
Um, if if I'm sure we could goon for hours, actually.
But uh, if folks want tocontinue this process or want to
connect with you or understandwhat you're doing or what's
(49:19):
going on with cartographer,what's the best way for them to
do that?
Danielle Urban (49:22):
Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn.
I'm pretty active there.
Um, you can reach us atcartographerconsulting.com.
Um, I'm Danielle atcartographerconsulting.com if
you want to email me.
Um and then I'm in like amillion Slack groups, obviously,
including the marketing opsone.
Michael Hartmann (49:36):
There you go.
And you say you're speaking atMassapalooza 25?
Danielle Urban (49:40):
I am.
I'm speaking with a good friendof mine, Brian D'Andrea, on
executive reporting and how todo that in HubSpot.
It's called peeling the HubSpotReporting Onion.
Michael Hartmann (49:49):
Nice.
All right.
Well, hopefully I don't I'm notsure if this will get out
before then, but I think it willbe close.
It'll be very close.
So anyway, well, hopefullythat'll drive will traffic to
yours.
So thank you again, Danielle.
Thanks to our our our audiencefor continuing to support us.
If you have ideas for topics orguests or want to be a guest,
you can always reach out toNaomi, Mike, or me.
(50:09):
Till next time.
Bye everyone.
Bye.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Are You A Charlotte?
In 1997, actress Kristin Davis’ life was forever changed when she took on the role of Charlotte York in Sex and the City. As we watched Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte navigate relationships in NYC, the show helped push once unacceptable conversation topics out of the shadows and altered the narrative around women and sex. We all saw ourselves in them as they searched for fulfillment in life, sex and friendships. Now, Kristin Davis wants to connect with you, the fans, and share untold stories and all the behind the scenes. Together, with Kristin and special guests, what will begin with Sex and the City will evolve into talks about themes that are still so relevant today. "Are you a Charlotte?" is much more than just rewatching this beloved show, it brings the past and the present together as we talk with heart, humor and of course some optimism.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.