Episode Transcript
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Intro (00:01):
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloeddepartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace Lord Lack? Lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:24):
tool in your superhero toolbelt, knowledge.
Never fear, hub heroes. Getready to don your cape and mask,
move into action, and become thehub hero your organization
needs. Tune in each week to jointhe league of extraordinary
inbound heroes as we help youeducate, empower, and execute.
(00:50):
Hub Heroes, it's time to uniteand activate your powers. Before
we begin, we need to disclosethat Devin is currently employed
by HubSpot at the time of thisepisode's recording.
This podcast is in no wayaffiliated with or produced by
HubSpot, and the thoughts andopinions expressed by Devin
during the show are that of hisown and in no way represent
(01:10):
those of his employer.
Liz Moorhead (01:12):
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another great
episode of the Hub Heroespodcast. And are we all focused
and accounted for today?
George B. Thomas (01:22):
It's a full house.
Liz Moorhead (01:23):
It's a full house. We got some usual suspects here.
Obviously, George, we've gotyou. We've got myself, Liz, and
Max, but we have Chad backjoining us and his glowing
sentient printer in thebackground. I love it.
I love it.
George B. Thomas (01:36):
That printer's just gonna get up and walk away
mid waves of the podcast.
Chad Hohn (01:40):
It's just gonna pull an optimist.
George B. Thomas (01:41):
You know?
Max Cohen (01:42):
It's like
George B. Thomas (01:42):
an art It's looking like
Max Cohen (01:43):
it's looking like one of those it's like one of those
new Tesla robots. That's whatI'm saying. It's gonna
Chad Hohn (01:47):
pour me a drink, do rock, paper, scissors with me.
Liz Moorhead (01:50):
Driving printer.
Chad Hohn (01:51):
Yeah. It is. It's a self copying printer.
George B. Thomas (01:54):
If it was if it was a printer that could pour
me a drink, I would havepurchased one weeks ago.
Liz Moorhead (02:01):
It's true. But, guys, we we best behavior today,
guys. We got Hi. Got some coolpeeps in the house. Who Bastian
Paul of Hubly dot I o.
George B. Thomas (02:13):
Let's go.
Liz Moorhead (02:13):
CEO and cofounder. You're here joining us from
France where it is, what, 08:00at night there right now. Is
that correct?
Bastien Paul (02:20):
Nine nine. Nine PM. Oh, gee.
George B. Thomas (02:22):
That's good.
Bastien Paul (02:22):
That's good. I got some oysters and, white wine
just before, so I'm ready forthe podcast.
George B. Thomas (02:28):
There we go. Oysters and white wine and hub
heroes. That's what I I putthose together all the time.
Bastien Paul (02:33):
That's the best
George B. Thomas (02:34):
White wine and hub heroes.
Max Cohen (02:36):
I've already I've already censored myself once,
Liz. Just just just so you knowI'm
George B. Thomas (02:40):
being a good boy. A running count, like a
clicker?
Bastien Paul (02:43):
Yep. Like,
Max Cohen (02:44):
I'm gonna write down I'm gonna write down all the
jokes I'm gonna write down allthe jokes I would have made if
we were not behaving. Yes.
Liz Moorhead (02:51):
And then when Liz can't end the podcast again,
you're like, well, here we go.
Max Cohen (02:55):
Yeah. Just gonna unload it. Yep.
George B. Thomas (02:57):
I'll help you. I'll help you land it.
Chad Hohn (02:59):
Oh. Good.
Liz Moorhead (03:00):
Well, before we get into our conversation today
about SQLs, Bastian, I you and Ihave had a couple of
conversations leading up totoday, and I have questions
before we dig in. First of all,for our listeners at home, you
are an authority on SQLs. Iwanna have this conversation
about that with you, but tell usabout Hubly.io and where that
(03:20):
fits into this conversation.Who's it for? What problem does
it solve?
Bastien Paul (03:24):
Sure. Sure. So so before, I was working as a
growth marketer. So I don't knowif you have lots of that in US.
It's more a team where it'sbuilding companies and lists,
for the salespeople.
It's got it's not like inmarketing teams, a growth team.
It's really, like, salessupport. And, yeah, I joined the
(03:46):
company. We were, like, four,five. We raised to 100, raised,
like, 20,000,000.
And I was handling the growthteam for, building the list for
them. And I was sometimes pissedoff by sales, and salespeople
need something. Like, they needthe apps. They need to they were
constantly asking us for thingsbecause we have everything. We
(04:07):
had, like, BigQuery, enrichmentthing, everything inside of the
bots, all the tools you know,connected with your APIs that
you make, whatever you want.
But I have no, like, tool justto give them so they can just do
their work, have the power of,growth and marketing team, and
we can work on scalable things.And so, yeah, that's why we we
(04:28):
developed, have been with, twocoworkers. Yeah. That's that's
the way we we after we checked,what kind of tools existed on
the market, and we say, okay.Let's let's try to do something
better just for HubSpot, since Iwas using HubSpot for four or
five years.
So I really have appreciate thatsince that kind of CRM. And,
(04:52):
yeah, that's where that's wherewe we went.
George B. Thomas (04:55):
So there's there's two things that I love.
Technology born out of the factthat I got mad at the sales
team, and and I'm gonna buildthis, on Hub Spot because over
the four years I've been usingit, I fell in love with it. So
this is already shaping up to bean amazing story. Liz, I know
you
Liz Moorhead (05:16):
Oh, no. I love that. It's raging against the
machine, but creating ROI out of
George B. Thomas (05:20):
of it. I love that.
Bastien Paul (05:21):
Yes. Like, I mean, I don't know if you do you guys
know Gorgias? It's a company,Gorgias, help desk for
ecommerce, specialize onShopify. So it's a French
American company, and theyspecialize only on Shopify for
help desk for four, five day forfive years. Sorry.
And after, they did other CRMs.So I really liked this kind of
company, growing, like, not sofast, but, steady growth. So,
(05:46):
yeah, that's why we and you havesome company also named Deliver.
It's a ecommerce logistics, onlyplug to Shopify bought by about
2,000,000,000 from Shopify. Andthey did only Shopify.
They didn't do any other CMS,something like that. So, yeah, I
think I think, like, okay. Wecan do something for for the
same like that. And, frankly,like, I didn't know there was a
(06:07):
huge, huge ecosystem before,going down into Hublit. Oh, you
just got lucky.
George B. Thomas (06:14):
Yeah. You got lucky on
Bastien Paul (06:15):
that. I saw that. Yeah. So, like, Happily, of
course, errors, company likethat doing only for for HubSpot.
So I said, okay.
There is something there is saysomething we can do, so so let's
let's try it. And got I lovethat. I got mad from
salespeople.
George B. Thomas (06:33):
Yeah. Yeah. That's the nugget.
Liz Moorhead (06:38):
So there is one last question I have for you,
Bastia, before we start talkingabout SQLs. One of the things
that you are exceptionallypassionate about is something
that I know George is alsoexceptionally passionate about,
and it's this idea of continuouslearning or the way George talks
about it on this podcast and ofbeyond good to all this, getting
1% better every single day. AndI know for a while there, you
(06:59):
did have a goal of three booksper month. We're not here to
check you on that.
George B. Thomas (07:03):
This is not a New
Liz Moorhead (07:03):
Year's resolution check it. But I would be
curious, what is a favorite bookof yours that you've read
recently where you put it downand went, dang. That actually
that actually made a differencein my mindset.
Bastien Paul (07:15):
Sure. I don't know. George, did you check the
Stripe Press or the books fromStripe? You should
George B. Thomas (07:21):
if you
Bastien Paul (07:22):
don't, you you should. You should. That's
amazing. Inside this press, youhave a bunch of books, like,
commercialized by Stripe. And inthis one, the last one of the
latest one is Charles Almanack.
It's on Charlie's CharlesTimanger, the cofounder of, I
mean, cofounder. I don't know.But a really good serger from
(07:43):
Warren Buffett. And, like, henever wrote a book. He never
wrote something, but he justappeared on 10 different
conferences where he just showshis thing.
Just shows everything, what helearned, how he invest into
companies, how he behave, how helearned something. And, yeah,
(08:06):
this book, like, it was mindblowing. I really like it.
Liz Moorhead (08:10):
So Poor Charlie's Arbonnet. Is that it? Poor yeah.
Bastien Paul (08:14):
It's Charles Keymonger.
Liz Moorhead (08:15):
Keymonger? Yeah. Yep. I'm putting it in the chat
for everybody, and I'll makesure it's in the show now.
George B. Thomas (08:19):
I I love that you went in that direction
because and, again, I lovebooks. I love listening to
books. There there are so manythings we can learn when we do
try to educate ourselves. Yeah.And one of the ones for me,
Bastian, that was the most kindof mind blowing and, wow, did I
really take that journey was thebook Snowball, which is actually
(08:40):
the Warren Buffett story.
And and as an audiobook to
Bastien Paul (08:44):
read it. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (08:45):
It's as an audiobook, it's thirty eight
hours that I listened to thisbook, and it was phenomenal. I
loved it. I loved it.
Bastien Paul (08:57):
Yeah. I loved it. And, they have, some other book
more related to our business.High growth and good and growth
book from Elad Gill. He's a guy,who created the company.
I don't remember his name, buthe was bought by Twitter. And
after he was VP people ofTwitter, and he joined Twitter,
like, at 50 people. And, he hadTwitter to write to, like,
(09:19):
1,000, something like that. Andhe wrote, like, a huge book on,
okay, how do you structure yourboard member? How do you hire?
How do you implement visioninside your company? And this
book are free online. So you cango online, and you can read it.
You can just buy the bookbecause it's beautiful, and I
love papers. But, yeah, this onewas really mind blowing,
(09:43):
especially when I was workingbefore, in a company to to
understand, like, okay.
How do you grow as an employeeinside a company? Yeah. And,
yeah, I really liked it. Yeah. Ithink definitely, like, surplus,
every book they have, I want toread everything.
Liz Moorhead (09:59):
So, Bastian, like, once a month, I'm basically you
start having you at tell us whatto read and what tools to use.
Bastian's Corner. Still recordedlate at night. Right? That's
right.
Alright. So let's dig in becauseI I was very excited about this
topic, and I know I say this alot, but I I'm saying I'm
excited about this because itcomes from a deep reservoir pain
that I have felt at differentpoints throughout my career in
(10:22):
marketing. Let me let me paintthe scene here. Right? So
marketing and sales,theoretically on the same team.
Theoretically, all bringing inand Max, don't start.
George B. Thomas (10:35):
Can somebody tap this? I think she's
dreaming.
Liz Moorhead (10:40):
No? Theoretically.
Max Cohen (10:42):
She did say theoretically to be sure.
George B. Thomas (10:43):
Did say theoretically. That's true.
Liz Moorhead (10:45):
Alright. You know what? Let's try to come
together, guys.
George B. Thomas (10:48):
Alright. Alright. My bad.
Liz Moorhead (10:50):
I've gotten I've gotten to one sentence into the
problem, and we're alreadyacting up. Okay. So on the one
side, regardless as to whetherit's on the other side of the
continent or in the samebuilding, we have marketing.
Right? They're generating leads.
They're running campaigns.They're filling up the CRM with
potential prospects. And on theother side, we've got sales
teams, right, who are focused onclosing deals. But too often, we
(11:14):
have a situation where thesesales teams are saying those
leads are not sales qualified.In fact, 47% of b two b sales
teams say that the leads thatthey are getting that are
supposed to be sales qualifiedfrom marketing are not sales
qualified.
But marketing is sitting theregoing, well, I don't understand
why you're saying there's norevenue coming in from our
(11:35):
campaigns. We've just handedover this many qualified leads.
And we all said these were themetrics that said they were
qualified. So what's going on?So this is where we're going
into the messy middle today.
Right? We have two teams who aresaying at the beginning, we've
agreed what a qualified lead is,but somewhere in that handoff,
(11:56):
something's going wrong.Marketing is starting with the
lead saying, this is a qualifiedhuman, and sales is getting that
hue and saying, nah. Absolutelynot. So that's what we're
dealing with today.
What I like to call the salesqualified lead conundrum because
it can't use swear words in atitle.
Bastien Paul (12:11):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (12:12):
So that is the closest point to get
George B. Thomas (12:13):
to.
Max Cohen (12:14):
Theoretically. Theoretically. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (12:16):
If you're maxed You can words in any
Liz Moorhead (12:18):
shape Max.
George B. Thomas (12:19):
That you want to.
Liz Moorhead (12:20):
Get a crouton in your steering wheel. You're at a
15. So let's start thisconversation. And, actually,
George, I wanna start with youon this question. Although,
Bastian and Max and Chad, I knowyou're gonna have thoughts on
this.
But I wanna start with you,George, because you spend every
day talking with different salesand marketing teams. Right?
George B. Thomas (12:38):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (12:39):
So we have sales and marketing teams who have
these different views of whatmakes a lead sales qualified.
I'd like to know in yourexperience, what are the key
factors you seeing driving thatmisalignment between those two
teams?
George B. Thomas (12:53):
Oh, man. That's simple. Like, the amount
of times that I have to statethe obvious, I really do feel
like I was put on this planetsometimes to be captain obvious
when it comes to sales andmarketing teams because because
the biggest thing is, like,communication. Can we just sit
at a table like adults andactually, take the time? That's
(13:14):
another formula piece, right, bythe way.
Communication time andstrategize what it actually
looks like. And when I say whatit looks like, what I mean is we
are not taking the time tostrategize the data points.
Because as soon as we get itdown to data points of what
we're really gonna call an MQL,an SQL, or whatever l that you
(13:35):
wanna add to it, now we cantruly start to do some magical
things. But, again, it startswith communicate, take the time,
strategize data.
Liz Moorhead (13:45):
I wanna I wanna come back around, though,
because I asked you to tell mewhat the problem is, and you're
telling me how to solve it. Iwanna know why they're
disagreeing in the first place.
Bastien Paul (13:53):
I think I think they have two different
language. What's saying George?Like and that's something I
really understood also when Iwas in marketing and sales.
Like, marketing speaking aboutdata instead of speaking about,
like, feelings or things likethat. I don't I don't sometimes
more in marketing side.
So the beginning of the program,one of one part of the program
(14:13):
is that different languagesbetween, between two different
team. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (14:17):
I I actually totally agree with that. And
what's funny is that, and thisis not a plug. I am not
shilling, but I literally hadtoday a training for the super
admin training that we do wherewe talked about c suite in
stakeholder communication, andwe talked about the different
communication styles of, like,the HubSpot super
Bastien Paul (14:38):
admin and the actual c suite and how one is
George B. Thomas (14:39):
like a technical view and one is a
actual c suite and how one islike a technical view and one is
a business view. But one of thesections in that training, we
actually talk about whencommunicating to marketing, do
these things. When communicatingto sales, say it in these ways.
And so, Bastian, you are hittingthe nail on the head. Like, Liz,
to answer your question, they'respeaking different languages and
(15:00):
not taking the time to come tothe table to understand the
languages that they're speakingto then actually strategize
based on common language, thedata points they need to make a
platform work for the process ofthe people.
Liz Moorhead (15:17):
Chad, you and your creepy printer right now are
being so polite and quiet. Igotta know what's going on in
that head of yours. Well, I'mtotally glad that I love about
you too.
Chad Hohn (15:26):
Be good.
Liz Moorhead (15:27):
You're welcome. Oh, okay. Chad, so here's what I
need you to do. I need you toactivate the superpower I know
isn't dormant and think about itfrom that tactics perspective.
Right?
Oh, yeah. You are a master ofprocess, scalable, repeatable
process. So where do you see thetactical parts of this process
right now?
Chad Hohn (15:45):
Yeah. I mean, I it's literally kinda like Nick
mentioned in chat. Right? Nickfrom Fargo, he is saying, you
know, blank starts at thedefinition of terms literally
knowing what the definition foryour organization because it's
different in b to b, b to c.What is an MQL?
What is an SQL? And you knowwhat? What workflow or what form
is flipping this property.Right? Like, oh my goodness.
(16:09):
Like, because if you can't evenreport on the data accurately,
you're arguing over imaginaryeverything.
George B. Thomas (16:16):
Yeah. Sure.
Chad Hohn (16:17):
It doesn't even matter if you can't even flip
the property at the right time.Like, they're like, oh, we
generated this many leads. Andthen they're like, oh, well,
these aren't good leads. Andit's like, well, yeah, because
we said they're SQLs, but,actually, they're not. Like, you
know, because we didn't evenagree.
Right? That's, like, thetechnical part. You need to,
like, all just sit down andfigure out how to, like, you
(16:40):
know, I don't know, just programan AI model where you type in
what you think, you know, andthen the other side types in
what they think, and then ittranslates. Right? And then you
guys can actually understandwhat each other are talking
about.
George B. Thomas (16:54):
First of all, Max, that is your next get,
brother, where you use GPT'svoice assistant to translate
marketing speak to sales speak.Like, that would be absolutely
amazing.
Chad Hohn (17:05):
So good.
George B. Thomas (17:06):
It's it's but here's the thing. I wanna back
up before we dive back into thisconversation because, obviously,
this is a podcast for HubSpotusers, and Chad just said
something on the tip of histongue like it was, like, known
to everybody. If you're sittinghere and you're like, wait. Did
Chad just say that I canactually set an SQL based on a
form conversion? Yeah.
(17:28):
In HubSpot forms, you can dothat. And I'm not I'm not even
saying that you gotta go do theworkflow, but also did did Chad
say that we should be focusedon, like, an automated process
that actually fills the gap forwhat humans used to once have to
do in a drop down in the c yes.That's what Chad's saying. So,
like, please, by all this holy,if you're the HubSpot user that
(17:48):
hears that and don't have that,go do that. Like, that's your
action item for today.
Max Cohen (17:53):
Alright. I'll shut up.
Liz Moorhead (17:54):
Max, you are free to speak.
George B. Thomas (17:56):
Tell us what's going on in
Liz Moorhead (17:57):
the heart of hearts.
Max Cohen (18:00):
I mean Everyone hold on. My I mean, my whole take on
the MQL and SQL thing is,probably one of just frustration
because it's, you know, no oneever defines it the same way.
George B. Thomas (18:12):
Mhmm.
Max Cohen (18:12):
Right? Like, a marketing qualified lead as a
sales qualified lead mean, like,literally nothing until you get
into an organization. Like, youget them to define it. And then,
of course, you get in differentorganizations that, like, don't
even call things MQLs or SQLs orhave no a completely different
concept of what marketingqualified versus sales qualified
is. Sometimes it's likemarketing qualifies before sales
(18:32):
qualified, but sometimes thedifference between MQL and SQL
is, like, who actually generatedthe lead.
And it's really kind of at thesame sort of lateral place. And
so to me, it's like, I I I'm I'mwondering, like, how much, like,
HubSpot's life cycle stages intheir c m CRM have, like,
poisoned us all into this, like,argument around what's a MQL and
what's an SQL because, like,it's something that you saw in
(18:55):
HubSpot that had you know, onecame before the other because,
like, you gotta put it somewherein the in the drop down. Right?
And then it created this wholelike, there was, like, a lot of
content created about it. Andthen, you know, a lot of
confusion because there was noautomation that was moving these
stages between each other, andyou had to build workflows to
think about what's this versuswhat's that, and is one better
(19:15):
than the other or what, likewhich is why I'm happy that
they're, like, finally changing,like, their default life cycle
stages after all these years.
And I think they're even justcalling it, like, lead out.
Right? Like, I I don't even knowif they have MQL and SQL on
there, but I might be wrong.But, I mean, the the thing is
is, like, when it like, I thinkthere I think definitions are
needed no matter what you callit because, like, I I do
(19:38):
subscribe to the idea that,like, what we would kind of
consider a lead can have, like,a couple of different basic
things that need to happen.Right?
Like, we talk about physics alot on this show. Right? Like, I
do think marketing's job is togo find people that are a good
fit. That's one thing. Right?
And then take those people thatare a good fit or or create
(19:59):
content for those people thatare a good fit and then get them
engaged enough to the point thatthey're ready to talk to sales.
If I had to, like, boil it downto the most, like, basic basic
rudimentary, like, what's yourjob as a marketer? Right? And I
think what you kinda call thosedifferent stages is, you know
like, for me, I'm just like,dude, do whatever works for you.
(20:20):
Right?
But a lot of it comes down to,like, is there some kind of,
like, rough SLA between salesand marketing? Because that's
where the definition of thesethings get really important.
Right? Is because you wanna beable to have sales and marketing
teams work together effectively.And for teams to do that, they
have to be able to come up withagreements on what they're, you
know, promising the other sidethat they're gonna do for them,
(20:41):
right, in some way, shape, orform.
You know, and a lot of thetimes, it was just like, you
know, hey. How many MQLs are wegonna create? And as long as we
create enough things that wecall MQLs, we've done our job
marketing. Now it's, you know,sales, you know, you can't close
them. That's your fault.
Right?
Chad Hohn (20:55):
Exactly.
Max Cohen (20:56):
But it's like, look. No. You know what I mean?
Liz Moorhead (20:58):
Well, that's where we get to a root of a deeper
problem where we have two teamsthat are more interested in
covering their asses in terms ofhitting not hitting numbers and
less
Max Cohen (21:05):
than certain. We don't like that.
Liz Moorhead (21:08):
It's true. It's true. They're Yeah. We have two
teams where whether it's becausethere's animosity or we're
living in a climate wherethere's less job security,
people are more concerned aboutmaking sure, well, we covered
our end of the bargain. Wecovered our end of the deal.
George B. Thomas (21:23):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (21:23):
See? And so that's where those numbers get
George B. Thomas (21:25):
Any anytime you live there's two things I
gotta say because one's justburning a hole in my brain. But
this is what I'm gonna sayfirst. Anytime you live in a CYA
culture, you have lost sight ofthe humans and the importance of
actually working as a freakingteam. Now I have to back up for
a second because Max says wetalk about physics a lot on this
(21:49):
podcast. Hold up.
We might talk about inboundphysics, but I don't want
anybody to get confused andthink that you're gonna tune in
someday, and we're gonna talkabout Isaac Newton or James
Clerk Maxwell or AlbertEinstein. That's not the physics
that Max is talking about.
Chad Hohn (22:08):
Max and I, we got you covered.
George B. Thomas (22:10):
Anyway, just I wanna throw my
Liz Moorhead (22:13):
I wanna throw my 2¢ in here about go ahead, Max.
Max Cohen (22:16):
No. No. Give me your 2¢, and I'll tell you kinda,
like, how we've done it. Like,we've kinda switched up the way
we look at, like, leads andstuff. You you do your
Liz Moorhead (22:23):
Dude, do it. Just take it away.
George B. Thomas (22:24):
Well, I
Max Cohen (22:25):
mean, so, like, you know, we've gotten away from
sort of that linear model and,you know Mhmm. Like, our sales
and marketing teams, we're allon the same team. We're just
called the GTM team. That's it.Like, we're all going to market
together as a team, as a group.
We're gonna go to the market,and we're gonna get lots of
awesome fruits and nutrients andbring it back, and we're all
gonna thrive. Like, that's theway we look at it. Right? And
so, like, when we think aboutleads, you know, we've we've dug
(22:45):
a lot into, like, HubSpot'sprospecting tool a lot more
lately, and, like, we all startthere now. Right?
And the big thing instead of,like, thinking of, like, how
many MQLs did we create, howmany SQLs did we create, what
we're doing is we're kind ofrealizing, like, there's all
these ways we can generateleads. Right?
George B. Thomas (23:02):
I believe.
Max Cohen (23:03):
And there's different people that are responsible for
generating different parts ofthose leads. Right? So, like,
there's leads generated fromBrian and Joe just going out to
LinkedIn and prospecting and,like, doing their thing. There's
leads that clearly come in fromthe content creation that we do.
Right?
There's leads that find us onGoogle. There's leads that, you
know, HubSpotters reach out tome, and then I connect them with
(23:24):
people. And so, like, we startedthinking more about measuring
what we're calling leadtriggers. Right? And so, like,
every time we generate a leadinside of HubSpot, we have some
sort of, like, trigger whereit's like, this came from this
motion.
Right? And so, like, what we'redoing is we're carefully looking
at all these different motionsas these leads are getting
generated, and then we're kindof evaluating the success of
(23:45):
them over time. Right? Versussaying, like, oh, we gotta get
up to this stage first. And thenonce they do this, they could
move out of this stage, andwe're just looking at
everything.
It's like, what little yourpath? Like, we don't we don't do
that. It has to bethree-dimensional, four
dimensional. It has to be, like,way more than just, like, a
straight line. Right?
George B. Thomas (24:00):
Almost like physics.
Max Cohen (24:02):
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (24:03):
Bastian, it sounded like you, like, had some
thoughts on what Max was saying.
Bastien Paul (24:07):
Yeah. I think I think, like, the the the thing
of MQS was really to like, youwant to have a report, a KPI for
your marketing team. They haveto report to the manager and the
manager. Like, the CMO has toreport to the CEO. And at the
end, like, you're trying to to,like, have the best analytics in
(24:28):
the world, last attribution,whatever you want.
That's a mess. Like, and, like,I don't know, two weeks or a few
weeks ago, Adam Robinson fromAirbnb just saying, like, I
don't track. I just don't track.He has, like, one of the key
followers. Whenever he postssomething, he has YouTube
channel.
Of course, it's working. Ofcourse, it's building the brand
(24:50):
of his company, of him. Ofcourse, he's generating leads.
He's doing content for aspecific audience, and this
specific audience is is high CP.So unless he's doing content on
TikTok, for example, where thatthe his, just not does not slack
on it, I think that's okay.
So for us, for example, we weonly measure, bottom of the
(25:15):
funnel, like ads, things likethat, things you can really
measure, or, you want to do somecontents on transactional
subject keywords, but guesswhatever you want. But after at
the end, I think you shouldn'tcare. Maybe you should look at
the amount of sign up. Be sure,like, your sign up is not plenty
(25:36):
of Gmail, free mail, or to mail,whatever you are you want. But
if you if you're gathering goodgood agents on your ICP, I think
at the end, that's okay.
And I do agree with Max. Ithink, like, having every time,
like, looking at MQLs, it'sgood, but it's a mess at the
end, and you're just losingtime. You just need to do more
(25:57):
actions and building the bestreport with the the best funnel,
whatever you you want.
Liz Moorhead (26:02):
So there's one little piece that I wanna add to
this where we start getting alittle bit into the intangibles
of the relationships you havebetween marketing and sales. And
I know we use it for alignmentand, like, we're gonna have
revenue TV and we're gonna befriends. Like, no. But here's
the thing. Right?
Think about in your personallife, there's someone you don't
like. If someone you don't likesneezes really loudly, god, why
(26:23):
is that person so loud? Oh mygod. They're so disruptive.
We're trying to watch a movie.
But let's say it's your bestfriend. Here. Do you need a
tissue? God bless you. Are youokay, my sweet angel baby?
How are you? Are you okay? Ifyour marketing and salespeople
do not get along and you have anSQL problem, depending on which
side of the fence that's on, ifthey do not have built in trust,
rapport, if they don't treateach other like human beings,
(26:44):
something that is actually kindof like a level one nonemergency
is going to be treated like aseven because that team already
is predisposed or that person ispredisposed to not like them, to
not trust them. So they'relooking for evidence of them not
doing their job. Like that, I'veseen this happen.
If there is a toxicity thatexists between the teams, it is
(27:05):
going to be more challenging tosolve these issues because there
is going to be a resistance tosolving the problem and being
more interested in identifyingproblems that exist. So, like
and I see this a lot with teams,and I've been on a team where
this happened. I've talked aboutthis at a company I used to work
at where the sales and themarketing team were actually
super tight personally. We hungout. We went to bars.
(27:27):
We went to happy hours. We wenton trips. We did all this stuff.
But when we were in the office,the sales team overall had trust
issues with a lot of differentparts of the company. They often
felt like service or productchanges were happening, and they
were finding about it afterward.
They would sell a deal and thenbe told that that doesn't exist
anymore. They would be told bywell meaning they would be told
(27:49):
by well meaning marketers, wewill absolutely get you that
sales enablement piece ofcontent. But then their VP or
that c suite above them changedtheir priorities, told them that
someone would communicate thatto sales, and either they did,
and guess what? That's a brokenpromise, or they didn't, and
that's a broken promise with nocommunication. Yeah.
Yeah. So what happened so whathappens is
George B. Thomas (28:10):
that if we have this underlying toxicity,
yes, we have exactly the
Liz Moorhead (28:10):
things that we're talking about. Right? There
toxicity, yes, we have exactlythe things that we're talking
about. Right? There are thedefinitions.
There's the brass tacks of ifyou can't measure it, if you
can't document it, if you can'tdefine it, nobody's measuring
anything. We can't fix anything.If we have no agreements, what
expectations are we holdingpeople to? But if we have two
teams where there is toxicity,where they are predisposed to
(28:31):
dislike each other, the momentyou sneeze is the moment I will
make your life hell. Like, youknow what I mean?
Like, it's just
George B. Thomas (28:37):
do you know
Liz Moorhead (28:37):
what I'm saying?
George B. Thomas (28:38):
Can I shift gears for a second, though?
Sure. Yeah. Can I can I shiftgears for a second, though?
Because I don't know Iunderstand this team dynamic
that we're talking about, but Ialso wanna lean into something
that Bastian and Max both kindof said, and that was this idea
of need for action.
And and let's be honest, like,sometimes does one team lean on
another team too much when theycould actually be taking the
(29:01):
action that they should betaking anyway? And could that
action be easier? And what Imean is when I think about
sales, you know the way that Ialways make sales? I make sales
because I have conversations.And you know what's been
increasingly more difficult?
Having conversations in adigital world. And you know
where most of the conversationsactually happen? They happen on
(29:22):
LinkedIn, to be honest with you,in a digital world, like, unless
they're coming to my website.And so if I, as a sales rep,
actually wanna have moreconversations, I wanna find an
easier way to have thoseconversations, and I know the
conversations are happening onLinkedIn, then maybe I use a
tool like HubLead as a sales repto have the conversations and
take the action that I need totake so I don't have to weigh so
(29:44):
much on an actual marketing teambecause I'm out there. Guess
what?
Being a salesperson that knowshow to market myself myself and
sell myself and therefore marketand sell my products. I don't
know. Maybe that's a novel idea.Like, I live in a world where I
wish more marketers would knowhow to sell and more sales folks
would know how to market. Andboth of them could use a tool
(30:06):
like HubLead, just saying, toactually have the conversations
that matter and drive the funneland drive ROI.
That that's all I'm saying.
Liz Moorhead (30:13):
Yes. I agree with that. And, Bastian, I actually
wanna come back to you here forthis next question because we
talked a lot about why are mommyand dad egg fighting, and is it
our fault, and what's happening?Right? Like, we're having this
conversation about what's goingon here between marketing and
sales, but I wanna get out ofthe relationship.
I wanna get out
George B. Thomas (30:29):
cameras in my house. When every time she said
that, I'm like, are we beingdocumented? Who's that?
Max Cohen (30:35):
No. I have cameras in here.
George B. Thomas (30:37):
Just kidding.
Max Cohen (30:37):
Sorry. Don't tell him. I had to let her know.
George B. Thomas (30:39):
I had
Bastien Paul (30:39):
to let her know.
Liz Moorhead (30:42):
How does Mike how does Mike fashion, I wanna talk
to you about the lead handoff.Right? Because this is this is
that friction. This is this isthe point where somebody drops
the potato, and somebody picksit back up, but that drop
bruises it may have a problem.Right?
So what are the strategies orframeworks you've seen that work
best to smooth this handoffprocess out, whether that's
technology or strategy?
Bastien Paul (31:03):
Yeah. So at the beginning, like, one of like, we
were producing I I just want toto request a bit of context.
Like, we are producing a massivelist of LinkedIn, ecommerce
websites for my sales. We got,like, nine BDRs, so that's nine
SDRs in Paris, Four in Spain,and four in UK. You gave the
list.
They called. We were doing onlycall calling, and we were not we
(31:26):
were like we we wanted to to tosay, okay. Do we target
companies with 1,000,000turnover yearly on yearly basis?
Out of 100, how many did youget? And the goal was 2020%.
So you this one was a KPI forthe sales team to be sure that
the marketing, growth team isdoing their job. So we are
(31:46):
reviewing that. KPI is well low,Maybe at 15, for example, 10%.
So it was my fault. So I go backin my desk, work, work, work,
work, doing all machine learningwhat you want.
You do you want, scrapping with,scrapping with, whatever you
want to score a website, goingback to the list and giving it
(32:07):
to them. But what I really, findis, you had I had this
communication problem. I hadthis problem to do a lot of
things on my side and notshowing to the salespeople, but
I I missed something big is whatkind of KPI do I do I have to be
sure that my sales rep are doingtheir job. I don't know if you
(32:30):
guys have, but for me, I checkonline, I check on different
contents, and I found nothing.I'm just not speaking about,
like, different bunch of KPIs,but one KPI you can have.
And my idea was something like,how many the thing was maybe how
many touch points did you get onthe company? How many decision
maker did you find and did yououtreach on different channel?
(32:53):
Because every time I was sittingnext to next to SDR, looking at
the company, and I said, hey.You had only one cofounder. He
said he was not interested.
Did you get the other one? No.Maybe you should. Did you get
the head of logistics? No.
Maybe you should. But your firstcofounder told me he wasn't
interested. Yeah. But the firstone, you don't know him. You
(33:14):
don't know if he's doing thatjob, if he's handling, the part
of the process you want to solveinside the company.
You don't know how they areworking. You don't have you
don't have also the ICTinformation, like how many
orders do they ship amounts, forexample. So, yeah, I was
searching for this kind of KPIto have, like, both. One,
(33:36):
whereas the marketing team, besure that safety, are doing the
right job and the reverse thereverse sales marketing job for
marketing. I don't know if youhave any key share like that or
you had this problem before.
Liz Moorhead (33:52):
Gentlemen, normally, you are jumping right
in. Why is everybody suddenlybeing all polite now?
Chad Hohn (33:57):
It just makes my brain go in a ton of a ton of
places. Right? Is is, like,every business is so unique,
right, in a way. I mean, there'slike a lot of industries that
are a lot, you know, somewhatsimilar, but, like, sometimes
trying to find out if the salesteam is doing what you need them
for the marketing team. I mean,it really comes down to, like,
(34:20):
what are they doing and thenwhich things are yielding closed
deals.
Right? So, like, it's almostlike more of a broad analysis to
try and uncover that blue oceanof a KPI for your industry,
whatever that industry is.Right? So a lot of it is really
and reporting in general alwayscomes down to asking the right
(34:42):
question and then making sureyou're accurately collecting the
data to answer that questionreliably. Right?
And so I I guess where my braingoes is like, well, what is that
industry, and what are your repsdoing? And do those things have
any kind of real statisticalcorrelation to increased numbers
(35:04):
of closed deals or increasedrevenue? Right?
Bastien Paul (35:07):
Yeah. Like so so our NDC was so ecommerce
ecommerce logistics or sellingand logistic for ecommerce
websites. So you have plenty ofecommerce websites, but just
because like, let's say, forexample, you want to target
1,000,000, yearly yearlyturnover. Instead, you you can
check for the, number ofemployees on LinkedIn, but
(35:27):
sometimes you have, like, three,four people doing 1,000,000. And
sometimes you have, like, 20people, and they are doing five
k 500 k online, and maybe theyare doing a lot of b two b thing
like that.
So sometimes that's relevant.And sometimes for a lot of
industries, like, number ofemployees is not that relevant,
and you still need to call andto identify on the phone, okay,
(35:48):
what's your business, what areyou how many orders do you make,
turnover, and so on. And ourstrategy was less inbound. It
was more outbound. We had, likeevery BGR was doing, like, 60 to
70 calls a day.
So we had a massive, workforceto call call call call. And when
(36:08):
you do that, your your CAC iskind of high. So you want to
reduce it with a targeting list.And at the end, having new
companies, French companies, waskind of a a drug. Like, you
wanted to to have your, to haveto to to sell more, just go to
the marketing and ask for morecompanies.
(36:29):
Yeah. So I wanted to have that.And at the end, I checked with,
some guys from HubSpot, how theydo their sales, how do they,
give how many companies do youkeep a month amount, for
example, a quarter of an asset.I really like the idea of how
how do you know if a sales isgood or not? You can check, for
example, the number of dealsthey close.
(36:52):
But if for if, for example, theyclose, like, 10 deals and the
others are doing tight, But theothers are speaking with 200
companies, and the first who whoclose 10 is speaking with 1,000
companies. Is he really, betterthan the other?
George B. Thomas (37:07):
Mhmm.
Bastien Paul (37:08):
You know, when you go to a sport game, when you
look at the sports, you're happywhen you you your team is
winning. But how do you thinkhow do you decide if the team is
best, better than the other one?It's the one who won the final.
It's not the number of match youyou you won. You know?
So, at the end, what weimplemented is that, okay, you
get 200 companies for a quarter.We're gonna go to high ticket.
(37:32):
So can we be higher, but we getmore revenue? But you stick with
it. And you have to convert,like, I don't know, twenty,
twenty five.
You can decide whatever youwant. And then you decide, okay,
who which one, who's the bestsales inside? And you can keep
the best and and find out thethe the so it's good.
Max Cohen (37:52):
I think that I so we we we talked a lot about, like,
fit too. Something that I, like,I've noticed, especially, like,
with, you know, we're we're acouple few more than a few
months into, you know, reallystarting to hit a good motion
with, like, event happily andselling that. The thing that
(38:12):
I've, like, noticed is and I'mnot sure how great companies are
doing at tracking this or tryingto figure it out. It's that I
think there's, like, like, wetalk about lead scoring, right,
fit and engagement. And, like,oftentimes, when we think about
fit, we're thinking of, like,demographic or firmographic fit.
Right? Like, is this a companyin our ICP? Right? Where it's
like, okay. Right amount ofemployees, they do this, they do
(38:35):
that, da da da da da.
Like, for us, you know, doesyour company do events? You're
generally a good fit
Bastien Paul (38:41):
for us.
Max Cohen (38:42):
Right? But then what gets, like, really weird is that
events get so complex, right,that I think there's this, like,
concept of, like, problem fit.There's probably already a word
for it. I don't think I'm makingup anything new here. Right?
Chad Hohn (38:55):
Problem solution fit.
Max Cohen (38:56):
Yeah. Like like that like, that's that's the thing
that I think is is is sort of,like, the next thing we gotta
figure out how to, like, getahead of. Right? Because we
waste a lot of time on callswhen we could be getting this
information ahead of time.Right?
Because, like, you know, EventHappily, we're great for, like,
webinars, in person events,trade show lead capture. Are we
(39:18):
great for, like, a conferenceyet that needs to do booth
management and vendor managementand all this other stuff?
Chad Hohn (39:24):
Just think of trying to run-inbound on it.
Max Cohen (39:26):
Yeah. Sure. You could build it, but, like, we're gonna
be 1% of that solution. Right?So, like, we're not a great fit
for that.
But, like, you're stilltechnically our ICP because you
do events. Right? And so it'slike like, what I'm what I'm
kind of, like, trying to wrap myhead around to figure out is,
like, how can we is either,like, asking smarter questions
when people fill out a form.Right? Or thinking a little bit
(39:48):
more critical critically abouthow, like, you're dequeuing
someone in a nice good way thatmaybe leaves the door open in
the future, but kind of, like,politely lets them know your use
case isn't a good use case rightnow.
And start thinking about, like,cool. We've captured them. We
see that they're in ICP. We seethat they're highly engaged. But
before they highly engaged.
But before they get to sales, isthere something that we can do
(40:09):
to kind of figure out ifthey're, like, a good, you know,
problem fit for what we actuallydo and what our tool's really,
really good at, right, insteadof wasting a bunch of sales
calls on folks that, like,shouldn't even be wasting their
time with us. Right? Mhmm. Like,that's, I think, sort of the
next sort of level of fit that Iwanna kinda crack the code on.
Right?
Because we me and Joe, we lovetalking to folks. Right? But we
(40:31):
have a lot of calls with peoplethat it's just like, man, yeah,
we do event management, but yourflavor of event management is
really, really weird. Right?And, like, sure.
Can we can we get you about 1%of the way there? Absolutely.
But then, like, you know, I endup wasting a bunch of time
having all these esotericconversations selling HubSpot
itself and not even our app.Right? And so, like, I think,
(40:52):
like, just just the idea of,like, problem fit too is
something I wanna, like, pay alot more attention to.
But, Bastian, I think you weretalking about, like, KPIs for,
like, sales reps and stuff likethat. And, like, what are you
looking at? Are you looking atnumber of calls, number of
closed deals? I don't thinkanyone is paying attention to,
like, you know, the percentageat which customers, like, renew
or do repeat business. You knowwhat I mean?
(41:12):
Like, that's like, clawback isone thing. Right? But the but
the thing that sucks about salesreps is that, like, it's such a
job of attrition, and there's somuch high turnover that, like,
measuring something like, hey.At what rate do the customers
that you sold actually renew?Which is probably the best
indication that they were a goodfit customer, like, when you
actually brought them in, youknow, after they've had, like, a
(41:33):
year of the product or, youknow, they buy it the first time
and come back and buy it again.
Like, that's something that weshould be measuring, but it's
tough because salespeople aregenerally in and out. Right? And
not there for really, reallylong periods of time. Sure.
There are some that stick aroundin places for a while.
Right? But you tend to alreadyknow they're a good sales rep if
they've been there for more thantwo years. Right? So, you know,
(41:54):
it's just a couple randomthoughts to throw in there.
Liz Moorhead (41:57):
I love all of that. I wanna move from we're
having lots of conversationsabout the actual definition, but
often what will happen where Isee a lot of breakdown is, like,
let's say we have a situationwhere people are do where teams
are doing the work that we'retalking about right now. Right?
But that is status quo. That ispresent moment.
That is if our processes andsystems and size stay exactly
(42:19):
the same. It's when they startto scale. Maybe they maybe the
fact that everybody's gettingalong and agreeing on what the
leads are means they're growingin revenue. So their business
becomes more complex or theirteams get larger or they change
systems. And, Bastian, this iswhere I wanna come back to you.
When you think about the adviceyou want to give to companies
(42:39):
who are trying to lead scaletheir lead qualification
processes without losingconsistency, without creating
brand new spicy problems, whatare those recommendations that
you have for them? And I knowHubly might be a part of that,
but I'd love kind ofstrategically at a high level,
but also into more of thattechnology and
Bastien Paul (42:58):
technology.
Max Cohen (42:58):
Can we make merch for the show? It's just a T shirt
that literally just says brandnew spicy problems.
Liz Moorhead (43:04):
You're welcome.
Max Cohen (43:05):
Feel like that would be awesome.
George B. Thomas (43:07):
So I say that
Liz Moorhead (43:08):
pretty much in every content audit. Don't
worry. Once we uncover this,we'll have brand new spicy
problems. But that's a problemfor tomorrow, miss. Not today.
Let's
Max Cohen (43:16):
Not today.
Bastien Paul (43:17):
You're speaking, like, how do you scale a sales
team and taking, like, thekeeping the how do you Let's
evolve your SQL Yeah. Definitionright right okay.
George B. Thomas (43:30):
I think
Liz Moorhead (43:30):
And the processes that wrap
Max Cohen (43:31):
around it. Yeah.
Bastien Paul (43:32):
I think that's a good point. And I think training
as to your point, Max, with,problem problem, improvement
fit. At the beginning, forexample, at our company,
previous company, we weretargeting small business. So you
have one or two decision makerif there is only one cofounder
(43:55):
or two cofounder. And when whenwe try to go up markets, we were
like, okay.
It's working with small. Let'sgo. We got our SDRs. We got our
market. Maybe you you will havemore decision maker, but we
don't care.
Let's go for it. But after afterthat, we had, like, four or five
decision maker. We had morecomplex setting because, for
(44:16):
example, in that industry, youare on logistics. So when you're
speaking with, for example,L'Oreal, it's not the same thing
when you're speaking with asmall brand doing only, T
shirts, for example. So the SQLwill be more complex.
When you're doing only smallbusinesses for me and
straightforward, it's simple.You have more MQL coming from,
(44:40):
for example, inbound or this,this company's ICP. The the sale
the sale is calling, get gettingthe info, or it match with our,
product, our service. They aredoing, like, 1,000,000, for
example, plus small products.They are SQL.
I will book a demo for the AE,for example. But when you are
(45:00):
doing that with a big companies,it's not that simple. You may
you might need, like, two orthree, meetings. So, frankly,
for when I left the company, wedidn't find a solution. I was
into happily doing before wewent we find a solution.
After, like, two years in thecompany, I say, okay. That's
good to work in marketing team,but I want to build my company.
(45:23):
So I went overnight and overweekend working, but more in my
previous company. You know?Actually, I think your process
has to evolve, and it's what'sreally, hard is to understand
that you need to separate yourteam too.
I guess, for me, what Iunderstood, One team's doing the
(45:43):
same thing as you did before,small companies, and the other
one going to upmarket and, forgod's sake, not having one
people doing two team. Like,this is the worst thing I saw.
It never worked. It don'tdoesn't work, and it never never
will work in every condition forme. So, yeah, I think you have
(46:06):
to get two teams with twodefinition of history.
For me, what I understood, thatmight be wrong.
Liz Moorhead (46:12):
That's fantastic.
Chad Hohn (46:14):
No. That's good stuff.
Liz Moorhead (46:14):
I love that. I mean, honestly, Bastian, I'm
just I'm putting this out there,so you can't say no, and it's
reported. And Nick from Fargo inthe chat is here as a witness.
So this is you verbally agreeingto come back for a second
episode for us to talk moreabout SQLs because I I don't
know if anybody else could feelthe energy in this room, but,
like, we have baggage to unpack.Yeah.
(46:36):
We have baggage to unpack. Nickfrom Fargo was saying, I heard
nothing. Wow, dog. Way to just,like wow. That hurts.
That hurts my guy.
Bastien Paul (46:45):
If I come back, Chad, can you just send me an
Amazon with the light thing,printer, everything, like, where
how I can
Chad Hohn (46:51):
I'll send you a link to to the cabinet, to the
printer, to the lights, and thento the stream deck that I use to
control it.
Bastien Paul (46:59):
So there you go. I will put
Liz Moorhead (47:00):
a picture of that in the show notes. I just took a
screenshot. But, George, we havecovered a lot of ground today,
and I would love for you sinceyou are, thank goodness, here to
help us land the plane thistime, and it's not in my
incapable hands. Talk to usabout what you want our
listeners to remember.
George B. Thomas (47:17):
I mean, the fact that Chad, Max, and I, and
even Liz, to an extent, aresitting here somewhat
speechless. Like, that doesn'thappen very often. The the,
which means to me the weight ofthe problem is a real thing.
And, you know, so it I'm nottrying to be funny when I say
(47:42):
this, but the the takeaway thatI want the listeners to think
about is maybe it's time to getsome sales and marketing
therapy. And how do you do thatinside of your organization?
Like, how how because, like,again, I go back to and Bastian
said it. How does sales learnthe language of marketing, and
how does marketing learn thelanguage of sales, and how do we
(48:05):
come to the table together toactually understand what we call
it, what we do with it? Because,by the way, the the fact that
we're so quiet, the fact thatthis is such a big issue means
that the actual people thatmatter, the
Bastien Paul (48:25):
humans.
George B. Thomas (48:27):
There we go. Of your organization are not
getting the experience that theyneed or deserve. Okay, Hub
Heroes. We've reached the end ofanother episode. Will Lord Lack
continue to loom over thecommunity, or will we be able to
defeat him in the next episodeof the hub heroes podcast?
(48:51):
Make sure you tune in and findout in the next episode. Make
sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest
episodes and become part of theleague of heroes. FYI, if you're
part of the league of heroes,you'll get the show notes right
in your inbox, and they comewith some hidden power up
potential as well. Make sure youshare this podcast with a
(49:12):
friend. Leave a review if youlike what you're listening to,
and use the hashtag, hashtag hubeuros podcast on any of the
socials, and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next.
Until next time, when we meetand combine our forces, remember
to be a happy, helpful, humblehuman, and, of course, always be
(49:33):
looking for a way to besomeone's hero.
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloeddepartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace Lord Lack? Lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:24):
tool in your superhero toolbelt, knowledge.
Never fear, hub heroes. Getready to don your cape and mask,
move into action, and become thehub hero your organization
needs. Tune in each week to jointhe league of extraordinary
inbound heroes as we help youeducate, empower, and execute.
(00:50):
Hub Heroes, it's time to uniteand activate your powers. Before
we begin, we need to disclosethat Devin is currently employed
by HubSpot at the time of thisepisode's recording.
This podcast is in no wayaffiliated with or produced by
HubSpot, and the thoughts andopinions expressed by Devin
during the show are that of hisown and in no way represent
(01:10):
those of his employer.
Liz Moorhead (01:12):
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to another great
episode of the Hub Heroespodcast. And are we all focused
and accounted for today?
George B. Thomas (01:22):
It's a full house.
Liz Moorhead (01:23):
It's a full house. We got some usual suspects here.
Obviously, George, we've gotyou. We've got myself, Liz, and
Max, but we have Chad backjoining us and his glowing
sentient printer in thebackground. I love it.
I love it.
George B. Thomas (01:36):
That printer's just gonna get up and walk away
mid waves of the podcast.
Chad Hohn (01:40):
It's just gonna pull an optimist.
George B. Thomas (01:41):
You know?
Max Cohen (01:42):
It's like
George B. Thomas (01:42):
an art It's looking like
Max Cohen (01:43):
it's looking like one of those it's like one of those
new Tesla robots. That's whatI'm saying. It's gonna
Chad Hohn (01:47):
pour me a drink, do rock, paper, scissors with me.
Liz Moorhead (01:50):
Driving printer.
Chad Hohn (01:51):
Yeah. It is. It's a self copying printer.
George B. Thomas (01:54):
If it was if it was a printer that could pour
me a drink, I would havepurchased one weeks ago.
Liz Moorhead (02:01):
It's true. But, guys, we we best behavior today,
guys. We got Hi. Got some coolpeeps in the house. Who Bastian
Paul of Hubly dot I o.
George B. Thomas (02:13):
Let's go.
Liz Moorhead (02:13):
CEO and cofounder. You're here joining us from
France where it is, what, 08:00at night there right now. Is
that correct?
Bastien Paul (02:20):
Nine nine. Nine PM. Oh, gee.
George B. Thomas (02:22):
That's good.
Bastien Paul (02:22):
That's good. I got some oysters and, white wine
just before, so I'm ready forthe podcast.
George B. Thomas (02:28):
There we go. Oysters and white wine and hub
heroes. That's what I I putthose together all the time.
Bastien Paul (02:33):
That's the best
George B. Thomas (02:34):
White wine and hub heroes.
Max Cohen (02:36):
I've already I've already censored myself once,
Liz. Just just just so you knowI'm
George B. Thomas (02:40):
being a good boy. A running count, like a
clicker?
Bastien Paul (02:43):
Yep. Like,
Max Cohen (02:44):
I'm gonna write down I'm gonna write down all the
jokes I'm gonna write down allthe jokes I would have made if
we were not behaving. Yes.
Liz Moorhead (02:51):
And then when Liz can't end the podcast again,
you're like, well, here we go.
Max Cohen (02:55):
Yeah. Just gonna unload it. Yep.
George B. Thomas (02:57):
I'll help you. I'll help you land it.
Chad Hohn (02:59):
Oh. Good.
Liz Moorhead (03:00):
Well, before we get into our conversation today
about SQLs, Bastian, I you and Ihave had a couple of
conversations leading up totoday, and I have questions
before we dig in. First of all,for our listeners at home, you
are an authority on SQLs. Iwanna have this conversation
about that with you, but tell usabout Hubly.io and where that
(03:20):
fits into this conversation.Who's it for? What problem does
it solve?
Bastien Paul (03:24):
Sure. Sure. So so before, I was working as a
growth marketer. So I don't knowif you have lots of that in US.
It's more a team where it'sbuilding companies and lists,
for the salespeople.
It's got it's not like inmarketing teams, a growth team.
It's really, like, salessupport. And, yeah, I joined the
(03:46):
company. We were, like, four,five. We raised to 100, raised,
like, 20,000,000.
And I was handling the growthteam for, building the list for
them. And I was sometimes pissedoff by sales, and salespeople
need something. Like, they needthe apps. They need to they were
constantly asking us for thingsbecause we have everything. We
(04:07):
had, like, BigQuery, enrichmentthing, everything inside of the
bots, all the tools you know,connected with your APIs that
you make, whatever you want.
But I have no, like, tool justto give them so they can just do
their work, have the power of,growth and marketing team, and
we can work on scalable things.And so, yeah, that's why we we
(04:28):
developed, have been with, twocoworkers. Yeah. That's that's
the way we we after we checked,what kind of tools existed on
the market, and we say, okay.Let's let's try to do something
better just for HubSpot, since Iwas using HubSpot for four or
five years.
So I really have appreciate thatsince that kind of CRM. And,
(04:52):
yeah, that's where that's wherewe we went.
George B. Thomas (04:55):
So there's there's two things that I love.
Technology born out of the factthat I got mad at the sales
team, and and I'm gonna buildthis, on Hub Spot because over
the four years I've been usingit, I fell in love with it. So
this is already shaping up to bean amazing story. Liz, I know
you
Liz Moorhead (05:16):
Oh, no. I love that. It's raging against the
machine, but creating ROI out of
George B. Thomas (05:20):
of it. I love that.
Bastien Paul (05:21):
Yes. Like, I mean, I don't know if you do you guys
know Gorgias? It's a company,Gorgias, help desk for
ecommerce, specialize onShopify. So it's a French
American company, and theyspecialize only on Shopify for
help desk for four, five day forfive years. Sorry.
And after, they did other CRMs.So I really liked this kind of
company, growing, like, not sofast, but, steady growth. So,
(05:46):
yeah, that's why we and you havesome company also named Deliver.
It's a ecommerce logistics, onlyplug to Shopify bought by about
2,000,000,000 from Shopify. Andthey did only Shopify.
They didn't do any other CMS,something like that. So, yeah, I
think I think, like, okay. Wecan do something for for the
same like that. And, frankly,like, I didn't know there was a
(06:07):
huge, huge ecosystem before,going down into Hublit. Oh, you
just got lucky.
George B. Thomas (06:14):
Yeah. You got lucky on
Bastien Paul (06:15):
that. I saw that. Yeah. So, like, Happily, of
course, errors, company likethat doing only for for HubSpot.
So I said, okay.
There is something there is saysomething we can do, so so let's
let's try it. And got I lovethat. I got mad from
salespeople.
George B. Thomas (06:33):
Yeah. Yeah. That's the nugget.
Liz Moorhead (06:38):
So there is one last question I have for you,
Bastia, before we start talkingabout SQLs. One of the things
that you are exceptionallypassionate about is something
that I know George is alsoexceptionally passionate about,
and it's this idea of continuouslearning or the way George talks
about it on this podcast and ofbeyond good to all this, getting
1% better every single day. AndI know for a while there, you
(06:59):
did have a goal of three booksper month. We're not here to
check you on that.
George B. Thomas (07:03):
This is not a New
Liz Moorhead (07:03):
Year's resolution check it. But I would be
curious, what is a favorite bookof yours that you've read
recently where you put it downand went, dang. That actually
that actually made a differencein my mindset.
Bastien Paul (07:15):
Sure. I don't know. George, did you check the
Stripe Press or the books fromStripe? You should
George B. Thomas (07:21):
if you
Bastien Paul (07:22):
don't, you you should. You should. That's
amazing. Inside this press, youhave a bunch of books, like,
commercialized by Stripe. And inthis one, the last one of the
latest one is Charles Almanack.
It's on Charlie's CharlesTimanger, the cofounder of, I
mean, cofounder. I don't know.But a really good serger from
(07:43):
Warren Buffett. And, like, henever wrote a book. He never
wrote something, but he justappeared on 10 different
conferences where he just showshis thing.
Just shows everything, what helearned, how he invest into
companies, how he behave, how helearned something. And, yeah,
(08:06):
this book, like, it was mindblowing. I really like it.
Liz Moorhead (08:10):
So Poor Charlie's Arbonnet. Is that it? Poor yeah.
Bastien Paul (08:14):
It's Charles Keymonger.
Liz Moorhead (08:15):
Keymonger? Yeah. Yep. I'm putting it in the chat
for everybody, and I'll makesure it's in the show now.
George B. Thomas (08:19):
I I love that you went in that direction
because and, again, I lovebooks. I love listening to
books. There there are so manythings we can learn when we do
try to educate ourselves. Yeah.And one of the ones for me,
Bastian, that was the most kindof mind blowing and, wow, did I
really take that journey was thebook Snowball, which is actually
(08:40):
the Warren Buffett story.
And and as an audiobook to
Bastien Paul (08:44):
read it. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (08:45):
It's as an audiobook, it's thirty eight
hours that I listened to thisbook, and it was phenomenal. I
loved it. I loved it.
Bastien Paul (08:57):
Yeah. I loved it. And, they have, some other book
more related to our business.High growth and good and growth
book from Elad Gill. He's a guy,who created the company.
I don't remember his name, buthe was bought by Twitter. And
after he was VP people ofTwitter, and he joined Twitter,
like, at 50 people. And, he hadTwitter to write to, like,
(09:19):
1,000, something like that. Andhe wrote, like, a huge book on,
okay, how do you structure yourboard member? How do you hire?
How do you implement visioninside your company? And this
book are free online. So you cango online, and you can read it.
You can just buy the bookbecause it's beautiful, and I
love papers. But, yeah, this onewas really mind blowing,
(09:43):
especially when I was workingbefore, in a company to to
understand, like, okay.
How do you grow as an employeeinside a company? Yeah. And,
yeah, I really liked it. Yeah. Ithink definitely, like, surplus,
every book they have, I want toread everything.
Liz Moorhead (09:59):
So, Bastian, like, once a month, I'm basically you
start having you at tell us whatto read and what tools to use.
Bastian's Corner. Still recordedlate at night. Right? That's
right.
Alright. So let's dig in becauseI I was very excited about this
topic, and I know I say this alot, but I I'm saying I'm
excited about this because itcomes from a deep reservoir pain
that I have felt at differentpoints throughout my career in
(10:22):
marketing. Let me let me paintthe scene here. Right? So
marketing and sales,theoretically on the same team.
Theoretically, all bringing inand Max, don't start.
George B. Thomas (10:35):
Can somebody tap this? I think she's
dreaming.
Liz Moorhead (10:40):
No? Theoretically.
Max Cohen (10:42):
She did say theoretically to be sure.
George B. Thomas (10:43):
Did say theoretically. That's true.
Liz Moorhead (10:45):
Alright. You know what? Let's try to come
together, guys.
George B. Thomas (10:48):
Alright. Alright. My bad.
Liz Moorhead (10:50):
I've gotten I've gotten to one sentence into the
problem, and we're alreadyacting up. Okay. So on the one
side, regardless as to whetherit's on the other side of the
continent or in the samebuilding, we have marketing.
Right? They're generating leads.
They're running campaigns.They're filling up the CRM with
potential prospects. And on theother side, we've got sales
teams, right, who are focused onclosing deals. But too often, we
(11:14):
have a situation where thesesales teams are saying those
leads are not sales qualified.In fact, 47% of b two b sales
teams say that the leads thatthey are getting that are
supposed to be sales qualifiedfrom marketing are not sales
qualified.
But marketing is sitting theregoing, well, I don't understand
why you're saying there's norevenue coming in from our
(11:35):
campaigns. We've just handedover this many qualified leads.
And we all said these were themetrics that said they were
qualified. So what's going on?So this is where we're going
into the messy middle today.
Right? We have two teams who aresaying at the beginning, we've
agreed what a qualified lead is,but somewhere in that handoff,
(11:56):
something's going wrong.Marketing is starting with the
lead saying, this is a qualifiedhuman, and sales is getting that
hue and saying, nah. Absolutelynot. So that's what we're
dealing with today.
What I like to call the salesqualified lead conundrum because
it can't use swear words in atitle.
Bastien Paul (12:11):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (12:12):
So that is the closest point to get
George B. Thomas (12:13):
to.
Max Cohen (12:14):
Theoretically. Theoretically. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (12:16):
If you're maxed You can words in any
Liz Moorhead (12:18):
shape Max.
George B. Thomas (12:19):
That you want to.
Liz Moorhead (12:20):
Get a crouton in your steering wheel. You're at a
15. So let's start thisconversation. And, actually,
George, I wanna start with youon this question. Although,
Bastian and Max and Chad, I knowyou're gonna have thoughts on
this.
But I wanna start with you,George, because you spend every
day talking with different salesand marketing teams. Right?
George B. Thomas (12:38):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (12:39):
So we have sales and marketing teams who have
these different views of whatmakes a lead sales qualified.
I'd like to know in yourexperience, what are the key
factors you seeing driving thatmisalignment between those two
teams?
George B. Thomas (12:53):
Oh, man. That's simple. Like, the amount
of times that I have to statethe obvious, I really do feel
like I was put on this planetsometimes to be captain obvious
when it comes to sales andmarketing teams because because
the biggest thing is, like,communication. Can we just sit
at a table like adults andactually, take the time? That's
(13:14):
another formula piece, right, bythe way.
Communication time andstrategize what it actually
looks like. And when I say whatit looks like, what I mean is we
are not taking the time tostrategize the data points.
Because as soon as we get itdown to data points of what
we're really gonna call an MQL,an SQL, or whatever l that you
(13:35):
wanna add to it, now we cantruly start to do some magical
things. But, again, it startswith communicate, take the time,
strategize data.
Liz Moorhead (13:45):
I wanna I wanna come back around, though,
because I asked you to tell mewhat the problem is, and you're
telling me how to solve it. Iwanna know why they're
disagreeing in the first place.
Bastien Paul (13:53):
I think I think they have two different
language. What's saying George?Like and that's something I
really understood also when Iwas in marketing and sales.
Like, marketing speaking aboutdata instead of speaking about,
like, feelings or things likethat. I don't I don't sometimes
more in marketing side.
So the beginning of the program,one of one part of the program
(14:13):
is that different languagesbetween, between two different
team. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (14:17):
I I actually totally agree with that. And
what's funny is that, and thisis not a plug. I am not
shilling, but I literally hadtoday a training for the super
admin training that we do wherewe talked about c suite in
stakeholder communication, andwe talked about the different
communication styles of, like,the HubSpot super
Bastien Paul (14:38):
admin and the actual c suite and how one is
George B. Thomas (14:39):
like a technical view and one is a
actual c suite and how one islike a technical view and one is
a business view. But one of thesections in that training, we
actually talk about whencommunicating to marketing, do
these things. When communicatingto sales, say it in these ways.
And so, Bastian, you are hittingthe nail on the head. Like, Liz,
to answer your question, they'respeaking different languages and
(15:00):
not taking the time to come tothe table to understand the
languages that they're speakingto then actually strategize
based on common language, thedata points they need to make a
platform work for the process ofthe people.
Liz Moorhead (15:17):
Chad, you and your creepy printer right now are
being so polite and quiet. Igotta know what's going on in
that head of yours. Well, I'mtotally glad that I love about
you too.
Chad Hohn (15:26):
Be good.
Liz Moorhead (15:27):
You're welcome. Oh, okay. Chad, so here's what I
need you to do. I need you toactivate the superpower I know
isn't dormant and think about itfrom that tactics perspective.
Right?
Oh, yeah. You are a master ofprocess, scalable, repeatable
process. So where do you see thetactical parts of this process
right now?
Chad Hohn (15:45):
Yeah. I mean, I it's literally kinda like Nick
mentioned in chat. Right? Nickfrom Fargo, he is saying, you
know, blank starts at thedefinition of terms literally
knowing what the definition foryour organization because it's
different in b to b, b to c.What is an MQL?
What is an SQL? And you knowwhat? What workflow or what form
is flipping this property.Right? Like, oh my goodness.
(16:09):
Like, because if you can't evenreport on the data accurately,
you're arguing over imaginaryeverything.
George B. Thomas (16:16):
Yeah. Sure.
Chad Hohn (16:17):
It doesn't even matter if you can't even flip
the property at the right time.Like, they're like, oh, we
generated this many leads. Andthen they're like, oh, well,
these aren't good leads. Andit's like, well, yeah, because
we said they're SQLs, but,actually, they're not. Like, you
know, because we didn't evenagree.
Right? That's, like, thetechnical part. You need to,
like, all just sit down andfigure out how to, like, you
(16:40):
know, I don't know, just programan AI model where you type in
what you think, you know, andthen the other side types in
what they think, and then ittranslates. Right? And then you
guys can actually understandwhat each other are talking
about.
George B. Thomas (16:54):
First of all, Max, that is your next get,
brother, where you use GPT'svoice assistant to translate
marketing speak to sales speak.Like, that would be absolutely
amazing.
Chad Hohn (17:05):
So good.
George B. Thomas (17:06):
It's it's but here's the thing. I wanna back
up before we dive back into thisconversation because, obviously,
this is a podcast for HubSpotusers, and Chad just said
something on the tip of histongue like it was, like, known
to everybody. If you're sittinghere and you're like, wait. Did
Chad just say that I canactually set an SQL based on a
form conversion? Yeah.
(17:28):
In HubSpot forms, you can dothat. And I'm not I'm not even
saying that you gotta go do theworkflow, but also did did Chad
say that we should be focusedon, like, an automated process
that actually fills the gap forwhat humans used to once have to
do in a drop down in the c yes.That's what Chad's saying. So,
like, please, by all this holy,if you're the HubSpot user that
(17:48):
hears that and don't have that,go do that. Like, that's your
action item for today.
Max Cohen (17:53):
Alright. I'll shut up.
Liz Moorhead (17:54):
Max, you are free to speak.
George B. Thomas (17:56):
Tell us what's going on in
Liz Moorhead (17:57):
the heart of hearts.
Max Cohen (18:00):
I mean Everyone hold on. My I mean, my whole take on
the MQL and SQL thing is,probably one of just frustration
because it's, you know, no oneever defines it the same way.
George B. Thomas (18:12):
Mhmm.
Max Cohen (18:12):
Right? Like, a marketing qualified lead as a
sales qualified lead mean, like,literally nothing until you get
into an organization. Like, youget them to define it. And then,
of course, you get in differentorganizations that, like, don't
even call things MQLs or SQLs orhave no a completely different
concept of what marketingqualified versus sales qualified
is. Sometimes it's likemarketing qualifies before sales
(18:32):
qualified, but sometimes thedifference between MQL and SQL
is, like, who actually generatedthe lead.
And it's really kind of at thesame sort of lateral place. And
so to me, it's like, I I I'm I'mwondering, like, how much, like,
HubSpot's life cycle stages intheir c m CRM have, like,
poisoned us all into this, like,argument around what's a MQL and
what's an SQL because, like,it's something that you saw in
(18:55):
HubSpot that had you know, onecame before the other because,
like, you gotta put it somewherein the in the drop down. Right?
And then it created this wholelike, there was, like, a lot of
content created about it. Andthen, you know, a lot of
confusion because there was noautomation that was moving these
stages between each other, andyou had to build workflows to
think about what's this versuswhat's that, and is one better
(19:15):
than the other or what, likewhich is why I'm happy that
they're, like, finally changing,like, their default life cycle
stages after all these years.
And I think they're even justcalling it, like, lead out.
Right? Like, I I don't even knowif they have MQL and SQL on
there, but I might be wrong.But, I mean, the the thing is
is, like, when it like, I thinkthere I think definitions are
needed no matter what you callit because, like, I I do
(19:38):
subscribe to the idea that,like, what we would kind of
consider a lead can have, like,a couple of different basic
things that need to happen.Right?
Like, we talk about physics alot on this show. Right? Like, I
do think marketing's job is togo find people that are a good
fit. That's one thing. Right?
And then take those people thatare a good fit or or create
(19:59):
content for those people thatare a good fit and then get them
engaged enough to the point thatthey're ready to talk to sales.
If I had to, like, boil it downto the most, like, basic basic
rudimentary, like, what's yourjob as a marketer? Right? And I
think what you kinda call thosedifferent stages is, you know
like, for me, I'm just like,dude, do whatever works for you.
(20:20):
Right?
But a lot of it comes down to,like, is there some kind of,
like, rough SLA between salesand marketing? Because that's
where the definition of thesethings get really important.
Right? Is because you wanna beable to have sales and marketing
teams work together effectively.And for teams to do that, they
have to be able to come up withagreements on what they're, you
know, promising the other sidethat they're gonna do for them,
(20:41):
right, in some way, shape, orform.
You know, and a lot of thetimes, it was just like, you
know, hey. How many MQLs are wegonna create? And as long as we
create enough things that wecall MQLs, we've done our job
marketing. Now it's, you know,sales, you know, you can't close
them. That's your fault.
Right?
Chad Hohn (20:55):
Exactly.
Max Cohen (20:56):
But it's like, look. No. You know what I mean?
Liz Moorhead (20:58):
Well, that's where we get to a root of a deeper
problem where we have two teamsthat are more interested in
covering their asses in terms ofhitting not hitting numbers and
less
Max Cohen (21:05):
than certain. We don't like that.
Liz Moorhead (21:08):
It's true. It's true. They're Yeah. We have two
teams where whether it's becausethere's animosity or we're
living in a climate wherethere's less job security,
people are more concerned aboutmaking sure, well, we covered
our end of the bargain. Wecovered our end of the deal.
George B. Thomas (21:23):
Yeah.
Liz Moorhead (21:23):
See? And so that's where those numbers get
George B. Thomas (21:25):
Any anytime you live there's two things I
gotta say because one's justburning a hole in my brain. But
this is what I'm gonna sayfirst. Anytime you live in a CYA
culture, you have lost sight ofthe humans and the importance of
actually working as a freakingteam. Now I have to back up for
a second because Max says wetalk about physics a lot on this
(21:49):
podcast. Hold up.
We might talk about inboundphysics, but I don't want
anybody to get confused andthink that you're gonna tune in
someday, and we're gonna talkabout Isaac Newton or James
Clerk Maxwell or AlbertEinstein. That's not the physics
that Max is talking about.
Chad Hohn (22:08):
Max and I, we got you covered.
George B. Thomas (22:10):
Anyway, just I wanna throw my
Liz Moorhead (22:13):
I wanna throw my 2¢ in here about go ahead, Max.
Max Cohen (22:16):
No. No. Give me your 2¢, and I'll tell you kinda,
like, how we've done it. Like,we've kinda switched up the way
we look at, like, leads andstuff. You you do your
Liz Moorhead (22:23):
Dude, do it. Just take it away.
George B. Thomas (22:24):
Well, I
Max Cohen (22:25):
mean, so, like, you know, we've gotten away from
sort of that linear model and,you know Mhmm. Like, our sales
and marketing teams, we're allon the same team. We're just
called the GTM team. That's it.Like, we're all going to market
together as a team, as a group.
We're gonna go to the market,and we're gonna get lots of
awesome fruits and nutrients andbring it back, and we're all
gonna thrive. Like, that's theway we look at it. Right? And
so, like, when we think aboutleads, you know, we've we've dug
(22:45):
a lot into, like, HubSpot'sprospecting tool a lot more
lately, and, like, we all startthere now. Right?
And the big thing instead of,like, thinking of, like, how
many MQLs did we create, howmany SQLs did we create, what
we're doing is we're kind ofrealizing, like, there's all
these ways we can generateleads. Right?
George B. Thomas (23:02):
I believe.
Max Cohen (23:03):
And there's different people that are responsible for
generating different parts ofthose leads. Right? So, like,
there's leads generated fromBrian and Joe just going out to
LinkedIn and prospecting and,like, doing their thing. There's
leads that clearly come in fromthe content creation that we do.
Right?
There's leads that find us onGoogle. There's leads that, you
know, HubSpotters reach out tome, and then I connect them with
(23:24):
people. And so, like, we startedthinking more about measuring
what we're calling leadtriggers. Right? And so, like,
every time we generate a leadinside of HubSpot, we have some
sort of, like, trigger whereit's like, this came from this
motion.
Right? And so, like, what we'redoing is we're carefully looking
at all these different motionsas these leads are getting
generated, and then we're kindof evaluating the success of
(23:45):
them over time. Right? Versussaying, like, oh, we gotta get
up to this stage first. And thenonce they do this, they could
move out of this stage, andwe're just looking at
everything.
It's like, what little yourpath? Like, we don't we don't do
that. It has to bethree-dimensional, four
dimensional. It has to be, like,way more than just, like, a
straight line. Right?
George B. Thomas (24:00):
Almost like physics.
Max Cohen (24:02):
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (24:03):
Bastian, it sounded like you, like, had some
thoughts on what Max was saying.
Bastien Paul (24:07):
Yeah. I think I think, like, the the the thing
of MQS was really to like, youwant to have a report, a KPI for
your marketing team. They haveto report to the manager and the
manager. Like, the CMO has toreport to the CEO. And at the
end, like, you're trying to to,like, have the best analytics in
(24:28):
the world, last attribution,whatever you want.
That's a mess. Like, and, like,I don't know, two weeks or a few
weeks ago, Adam Robinson fromAirbnb just saying, like, I
don't track. I just don't track.He has, like, one of the key
followers. Whenever he postssomething, he has YouTube
channel.
Of course, it's working. Ofcourse, it's building the brand
(24:50):
of his company, of him. Ofcourse, he's generating leads.
He's doing content for aspecific audience, and this
specific audience is is high CP.So unless he's doing content on
TikTok, for example, where thatthe his, just not does not slack
on it, I think that's okay.
So for us, for example, we weonly measure, bottom of the
(25:15):
funnel, like ads, things likethat, things you can really
measure, or, you want to do somecontents on transactional
subject keywords, but guesswhatever you want. But after at
the end, I think you shouldn'tcare. Maybe you should look at
the amount of sign up. Be sure,like, your sign up is not plenty
(25:36):
of Gmail, free mail, or to mail,whatever you are you want. But
if you if you're gathering goodgood agents on your ICP, I think
at the end, that's okay.
And I do agree with Max. Ithink, like, having every time,
like, looking at MQLs, it'sgood, but it's a mess at the
end, and you're just losingtime. You just need to do more
(25:57):
actions and building the bestreport with the the best funnel,
whatever you you want.
Liz Moorhead (26:02):
So there's one little piece that I wanna add to
this where we start getting alittle bit into the intangibles
of the relationships you havebetween marketing and sales. And
I know we use it for alignmentand, like, we're gonna have
revenue TV and we're gonna befriends. Like, no. But here's
the thing. Right?
Think about in your personallife, there's someone you don't
like. If someone you don't likesneezes really loudly, god, why
(26:23):
is that person so loud? Oh mygod. They're so disruptive.
We're trying to watch a movie.
But let's say it's your bestfriend. Here. Do you need a
tissue? God bless you. Are youokay, my sweet angel baby?
How are you? Are you okay? Ifyour marketing and salespeople
do not get along and you have anSQL problem, depending on which
side of the fence that's on, ifthey do not have built in trust,
rapport, if they don't treateach other like human beings,
(26:44):
something that is actually kindof like a level one nonemergency
is going to be treated like aseven because that team already
is predisposed or that person ispredisposed to not like them, to
not trust them. So they'relooking for evidence of them not
doing their job. Like that, I'veseen this happen.
If there is a toxicity thatexists between the teams, it is
(27:05):
going to be more challenging tosolve these issues because there
is going to be a resistance tosolving the problem and being
more interested in identifyingproblems that exist. So, like
and I see this a lot with teams,and I've been on a team where
this happened. I've talked aboutthis at a company I used to work
at where the sales and themarketing team were actually
super tight personally. We hungout. We went to bars.
(27:27):
We went to happy hours. We wenton trips. We did all this stuff.
But when we were in the office,the sales team overall had trust
issues with a lot of differentparts of the company. They often
felt like service or productchanges were happening, and they
were finding about it afterward.
They would sell a deal and thenbe told that that doesn't exist
anymore. They would be told bywell meaning they would be told
(27:49):
by well meaning marketers, wewill absolutely get you that
sales enablement piece ofcontent. But then their VP or
that c suite above them changedtheir priorities, told them that
someone would communicate thatto sales, and either they did,
and guess what? That's a brokenpromise, or they didn't, and
that's a broken promise with nocommunication. Yeah.
Yeah. So what happened so whathappens is
George B. Thomas (28:10):
that if we have this underlying toxicity,
yes, we have exactly the
Liz Moorhead (28:10):
things that we're talking about. Right? There
toxicity, yes, we have exactlythe things that we're talking
about. Right? There are thedefinitions.
There's the brass tacks of ifyou can't measure it, if you
can't document it, if you can'tdefine it, nobody's measuring
anything. We can't fix anything.If we have no agreements, what
expectations are we holdingpeople to? But if we have two
teams where there is toxicity,where they are predisposed to
(28:31):
dislike each other, the momentyou sneeze is the moment I will
make your life hell. Like, youknow what I mean?
Like, it's just
George B. Thomas (28:37):
do you know
Liz Moorhead (28:37):
what I'm saying?
George B. Thomas (28:38):
Can I shift gears for a second, though?
Sure. Yeah. Can I can I shiftgears for a second, though?
Because I don't know Iunderstand this team dynamic
that we're talking about, but Ialso wanna lean into something
that Bastian and Max both kindof said, and that was this idea
of need for action.
And and let's be honest, like,sometimes does one team lean on
another team too much when theycould actually be taking the
(29:01):
action that they should betaking anyway? And could that
action be easier? And what Imean is when I think about
sales, you know the way that Ialways make sales? I make sales
because I have conversations.And you know what's been
increasingly more difficult?
Having conversations in adigital world. And you know
where most of the conversationsactually happen? They happen on
(29:22):
LinkedIn, to be honest with you,in a digital world, like, unless
they're coming to my website.And so if I, as a sales rep,
actually wanna have moreconversations, I wanna find an
easier way to have thoseconversations, and I know the
conversations are happening onLinkedIn, then maybe I use a
tool like HubLead as a sales repto have the conversations and
take the action that I need totake so I don't have to weigh so
(29:44):
much on an actual marketing teambecause I'm out there. Guess
what?
Being a salesperson that knowshow to market myself myself and
sell myself and therefore marketand sell my products. I don't
know. Maybe that's a novel idea.Like, I live in a world where I
wish more marketers would knowhow to sell and more sales folks
would know how to market. Andboth of them could use a tool
(30:06):
like HubLead, just saying, toactually have the conversations
that matter and drive the funneland drive ROI.
That that's all I'm saying.
Liz Moorhead (30:13):
Yes. I agree with that. And, Bastian, I actually
wanna come back to you here forthis next question because we
talked a lot about why are mommyand dad egg fighting, and is it
our fault, and what's happening?Right? Like, we're having this
conversation about what's goingon here between marketing and
sales, but I wanna get out ofthe relationship.
I wanna get out
George B. Thomas (30:29):
cameras in my house. When every time she said
that, I'm like, are we beingdocumented? Who's that?
Max Cohen (30:35):
No. I have cameras in here.
George B. Thomas (30:37):
Just kidding.
Max Cohen (30:37):
Sorry. Don't tell him. I had to let her know.
George B. Thomas (30:39):
I had
Bastien Paul (30:39):
to let her know.
Liz Moorhead (30:42):
How does Mike how does Mike fashion, I wanna talk
to you about the lead handoff.Right? Because this is this is
that friction. This is this isthe point where somebody drops
the potato, and somebody picksit back up, but that drop
bruises it may have a problem.Right?
So what are the strategies orframeworks you've seen that work
best to smooth this handoffprocess out, whether that's
technology or strategy?
Bastien Paul (31:03):
Yeah. So at the beginning, like, one of like, we
were producing I I just want toto request a bit of context.
Like, we are producing a massivelist of LinkedIn, ecommerce
websites for my sales. We got,like, nine BDRs, so that's nine
SDRs in Paris, Four in Spain,and four in UK. You gave the
list.
They called. We were doing onlycall calling, and we were not we
(31:26):
were like we we wanted to to tosay, okay. Do we target
companies with 1,000,000turnover yearly on yearly basis?
Out of 100, how many did youget? And the goal was 2020%.
So you this one was a KPI forthe sales team to be sure that
the marketing, growth team isdoing their job. So we are
(31:46):
reviewing that. KPI is well low,Maybe at 15, for example, 10%.
So it was my fault. So I go backin my desk, work, work, work,
work, doing all machine learningwhat you want.
You do you want, scrapping with,scrapping with, whatever you
want to score a website, goingback to the list and giving it
(32:07):
to them. But what I really, findis, you had I had this
communication problem. I hadthis problem to do a lot of
things on my side and notshowing to the salespeople, but
I I missed something big is whatkind of KPI do I do I have to be
sure that my sales rep are doingtheir job. I don't know if you
(32:30):
guys have, but for me, I checkonline, I check on different
contents, and I found nothing.I'm just not speaking about,
like, different bunch of KPIs,but one KPI you can have.
And my idea was something like,how many the thing was maybe how
many touch points did you get onthe company? How many decision
maker did you find and did yououtreach on different channel?
(32:53):
Because every time I was sittingnext to next to SDR, looking at
the company, and I said, hey.You had only one cofounder. He
said he was not interested.
Did you get the other one? No.Maybe you should. Did you get
the head of logistics? No.
Maybe you should. But your firstcofounder told me he wasn't
interested. Yeah. But the firstone, you don't know him. You
(33:14):
don't know if he's doing thatjob, if he's handling, the part
of the process you want to solveinside the company.
You don't know how they areworking. You don't have you
don't have also the ICTinformation, like how many
orders do they ship amounts, forexample. So, yeah, I was
searching for this kind of KPIto have, like, both. One,
(33:36):
whereas the marketing team, besure that safety, are doing the
right job and the reverse thereverse sales marketing job for
marketing. I don't know if youhave any key share like that or
you had this problem before.
Liz Moorhead (33:52):
Gentlemen, normally, you are jumping right
in. Why is everybody suddenlybeing all polite now?
Chad Hohn (33:57):
It just makes my brain go in a ton of a ton of
places. Right? Is is, like,every business is so unique,
right, in a way. I mean, there'slike a lot of industries that
are a lot, you know, somewhatsimilar, but, like, sometimes
trying to find out if the salesteam is doing what you need them
for the marketing team. I mean,it really comes down to, like,
(34:20):
what are they doing and thenwhich things are yielding closed
deals.
Right? So, like, it's almostlike more of a broad analysis to
try and uncover that blue oceanof a KPI for your industry,
whatever that industry is.Right? So a lot of it is really
and reporting in general alwayscomes down to asking the right
(34:42):
question and then making sureyou're accurately collecting the
data to answer that questionreliably. Right?
And so I I guess where my braingoes is like, well, what is that
industry, and what are your repsdoing? And do those things have
any kind of real statisticalcorrelation to increased numbers
(35:04):
of closed deals or increasedrevenue? Right?
Bastien Paul (35:07):
Yeah. Like so so our NDC was so ecommerce
ecommerce logistics or sellingand logistic for ecommerce
websites. So you have plenty ofecommerce websites, but just
because like, let's say, forexample, you want to target
1,000,000, yearly yearlyturnover. Instead, you you can
check for the, number ofemployees on LinkedIn, but
(35:27):
sometimes you have, like, three,four people doing 1,000,000. And
sometimes you have, like, 20people, and they are doing five
k 500 k online, and maybe theyare doing a lot of b two b thing
like that.
So sometimes that's relevant.And sometimes for a lot of
industries, like, number ofemployees is not that relevant,
and you still need to call andto identify on the phone, okay,
(35:48):
what's your business, what areyou how many orders do you make,
turnover, and so on. And ourstrategy was less inbound. It
was more outbound. We had, likeevery BGR was doing, like, 60 to
70 calls a day.
So we had a massive, workforceto call call call call. And when
(36:08):
you do that, your your CAC iskind of high. So you want to
reduce it with a targeting list.And at the end, having new
companies, French companies, waskind of a a drug. Like, you
wanted to to have your, to haveto to to sell more, just go to
the marketing and ask for morecompanies.
(36:29):
Yeah. So I wanted to have that.And at the end, I checked with,
some guys from HubSpot, how theydo their sales, how do they,
give how many companies do youkeep a month amount, for
example, a quarter of an asset.I really like the idea of how
how do you know if a sales isgood or not? You can check, for
example, the number of dealsthey close.
(36:52):
But if for if, for example, theyclose, like, 10 deals and the
others are doing tight, But theothers are speaking with 200
companies, and the first who whoclose 10 is speaking with 1,000
companies. Is he really, betterthan the other?
George B. Thomas (37:07):
Mhmm.
Bastien Paul (37:08):
You know, when you go to a sport game, when you
look at the sports, you're happywhen you you your team is
winning. But how do you thinkhow do you decide if the team is
best, better than the other one?It's the one who won the final.
It's not the number of match youyou you won. You know?
So, at the end, what weimplemented is that, okay, you
get 200 companies for a quarter.We're gonna go to high ticket.
(37:32):
So can we be higher, but we getmore revenue? But you stick with
it. And you have to convert,like, I don't know, twenty,
twenty five.
You can decide whatever youwant. And then you decide, okay,
who which one, who's the bestsales inside? And you can keep
the best and and find out thethe the so it's good.
Max Cohen (37:52):
I think that I so we we we talked a lot about, like,
fit too. Something that I, like,I've noticed, especially, like,
with, you know, we're we're acouple few more than a few
months into, you know, reallystarting to hit a good motion
with, like, event happily andselling that. The thing that
(38:12):
I've, like, noticed is and I'mnot sure how great companies are
doing at tracking this or tryingto figure it out. It's that I
think there's, like, like, wetalk about lead scoring, right,
fit and engagement. And, like,oftentimes, when we think about
fit, we're thinking of, like,demographic or firmographic fit.
Right? Like, is this a companyin our ICP? Right? Where it's
like, okay. Right amount ofemployees, they do this, they do
(38:35):
that, da da da da da.
Like, for us, you know, doesyour company do events? You're
generally a good fit
Bastien Paul (38:41):
for us.
Max Cohen (38:42):
Right? But then what gets, like, really weird is that
events get so complex, right,that I think there's this, like,
concept of, like, problem fit.There's probably already a word
for it. I don't think I'm makingup anything new here. Right?
Chad Hohn (38:55):
Problem solution fit.
Max Cohen (38:56):
Yeah. Like like that like, that's that's the thing
that I think is is is sort of,like, the next thing we gotta
figure out how to, like, getahead of. Right? Because we
waste a lot of time on callswhen we could be getting this
information ahead of time.Right?
Because, like, you know, EventHappily, we're great for, like,
webinars, in person events,trade show lead capture. Are we
(39:18):
great for, like, a conferenceyet that needs to do booth
management and vendor managementand all this other stuff?
Chad Hohn (39:24):
Just think of trying to run-inbound on it.
Max Cohen (39:26):
Yeah. Sure. You could build it, but, like, we're gonna
be 1% of that solution. Right?So, like, we're not a great fit
for that.
But, like, you're stilltechnically our ICP because you
do events. Right? And so it'slike like, what I'm what I'm
kind of, like, trying to wrap myhead around to figure out is,
like, how can we is either,like, asking smarter questions
when people fill out a form.Right? Or thinking a little bit
(39:48):
more critical critically abouthow, like, you're dequeuing
someone in a nice good way thatmaybe leaves the door open in
the future, but kind of, like,politely lets them know your use
case isn't a good use case rightnow.
And start thinking about, like,cool. We've captured them. We
see that they're in ICP. We seethat they're highly engaged. But
before they highly engaged.
But before they get to sales, isthere something that we can do
(40:09):
to kind of figure out ifthey're, like, a good, you know,
problem fit for what we actuallydo and what our tool's really,
really good at, right, insteadof wasting a bunch of sales
calls on folks that, like,shouldn't even be wasting their
time with us. Right? Mhmm. Like,that's, I think, sort of the
next sort of level of fit that Iwanna kinda crack the code on.
Right?
Because we me and Joe, we lovetalking to folks. Right? But we
(40:31):
have a lot of calls with peoplethat it's just like, man, yeah,
we do event management, but yourflavor of event management is
really, really weird. Right?And, like, sure.
Can we can we get you about 1%of the way there? Absolutely.
But then, like, you know, I endup wasting a bunch of time
having all these esotericconversations selling HubSpot
itself and not even our app.Right? And so, like, I think,
(40:52):
like, just just the idea of,like, problem fit too is
something I wanna, like, pay alot more attention to.
But, Bastian, I think you weretalking about, like, KPIs for,
like, sales reps and stuff likethat. And, like, what are you
looking at? Are you looking atnumber of calls, number of
closed deals? I don't thinkanyone is paying attention to,
like, you know, the percentageat which customers, like, renew
or do repeat business. You knowwhat I mean?
(41:12):
Like, that's like, clawback isone thing. Right? But the but
the thing that sucks about salesreps is that, like, it's such a
job of attrition, and there's somuch high turnover that, like,
measuring something like, hey.At what rate do the customers
that you sold actually renew?Which is probably the best
indication that they were a goodfit customer, like, when you
actually brought them in, youknow, after they've had, like, a
(41:33):
year of the product or, youknow, they buy it the first time
and come back and buy it again.
Like, that's something that weshould be measuring, but it's
tough because salespeople aregenerally in and out. Right? And
not there for really, reallylong periods of time. Sure.
There are some that stick aroundin places for a while.
Right? But you tend to alreadyknow they're a good sales rep if
they've been there for more thantwo years. Right? So, you know,
(41:54):
it's just a couple randomthoughts to throw in there.
Liz Moorhead (41:57):
I love all of that. I wanna move from we're
having lots of conversationsabout the actual definition, but
often what will happen where Isee a lot of breakdown is, like,
let's say we have a situationwhere people are do where teams
are doing the work that we'retalking about right now. Right?
But that is status quo. That ispresent moment.
That is if our processes andsystems and size stay exactly
(42:19):
the same. It's when they startto scale. Maybe they maybe the
fact that everybody's gettingalong and agreeing on what the
leads are means they're growingin revenue. So their business
becomes more complex or theirteams get larger or they change
systems. And, Bastian, this iswhere I wanna come back to you.
When you think about the adviceyou want to give to companies
(42:39):
who are trying to lead scaletheir lead qualification
processes without losingconsistency, without creating
brand new spicy problems, whatare those recommendations that
you have for them? And I knowHubly might be a part of that,
but I'd love kind ofstrategically at a high level,
but also into more of thattechnology and
Bastien Paul (42:58):
technology.
Max Cohen (42:58):
Can we make merch for the show? It's just a T shirt
that literally just says brandnew spicy problems.
Liz Moorhead (43:04):
You're welcome.
Max Cohen (43:05):
Feel like that would be awesome.
George B. Thomas (43:07):
So I say that
Liz Moorhead (43:08):
pretty much in every content audit. Don't
worry. Once we uncover this,we'll have brand new spicy
problems. But that's a problemfor tomorrow, miss. Not today.
Let's
Max Cohen (43:16):
Not today.
Bastien Paul (43:17):
You're speaking, like, how do you scale a sales
team and taking, like, thekeeping the how do you Let's
evolve your SQL Yeah. Definitionright right okay.
George B. Thomas (43:30):
I think
Liz Moorhead (43:30):
And the processes that wrap
Max Cohen (43:31):
around it. Yeah.
Bastien Paul (43:32):
I think that's a good point. And I think training
as to your point, Max, with,problem problem, improvement
fit. At the beginning, forexample, at our company,
previous company, we weretargeting small business. So you
have one or two decision makerif there is only one cofounder
(43:55):
or two cofounder. And when whenwe try to go up markets, we were
like, okay.
It's working with small. Let'sgo. We got our SDRs. We got our
market. Maybe you you will havemore decision maker, but we
don't care.
Let's go for it. But after afterthat, we had, like, four or five
decision maker. We had morecomplex setting because, for
(44:16):
example, in that industry, youare on logistics. So when you're
speaking with, for example,L'Oreal, it's not the same thing
when you're speaking with asmall brand doing only, T
shirts, for example. So the SQLwill be more complex.
When you're doing only smallbusinesses for me and
straightforward, it's simple.You have more MQL coming from,
(44:40):
for example, inbound or this,this company's ICP. The the sale
the sale is calling, get gettingthe info, or it match with our,
product, our service. They aredoing, like, 1,000,000, for
example, plus small products.They are SQL.
I will book a demo for the AE,for example. But when you are
(45:00):
doing that with a big companies,it's not that simple. You may
you might need, like, two orthree, meetings. So, frankly,
for when I left the company, wedidn't find a solution. I was
into happily doing before wewent we find a solution.
After, like, two years in thecompany, I say, okay. That's
good to work in marketing team,but I want to build my company.
(45:23):
So I went overnight and overweekend working, but more in my
previous company. You know?Actually, I think your process
has to evolve, and it's what'sreally, hard is to understand
that you need to separate yourteam too.
I guess, for me, what Iunderstood, One team's doing the
(45:43):
same thing as you did before,small companies, and the other
one going to upmarket and, forgod's sake, not having one
people doing two team. Like,this is the worst thing I saw.
It never worked. It don'tdoesn't work, and it never never
will work in every condition forme. So, yeah, I think you have
(46:06):
to get two teams with twodefinition of history.
For me, what I understood, thatmight be wrong.
Liz Moorhead (46:12):
That's fantastic.
Chad Hohn (46:14):
No. That's good stuff.
Liz Moorhead (46:14):
I love that. I mean, honestly, Bastian, I'm
just I'm putting this out there,so you can't say no, and it's
reported. And Nick from Fargo inthe chat is here as a witness.
So this is you verbally agreeingto come back for a second
episode for us to talk moreabout SQLs because I I don't
know if anybody else could feelthe energy in this room, but,
like, we have baggage to unpack.Yeah.
(46:36):
We have baggage to unpack. Nickfrom Fargo was saying, I heard
nothing. Wow, dog. Way to just,like wow. That hurts.
That hurts my guy.
Bastien Paul (46:45):
If I come back, Chad, can you just send me an
Amazon with the light thing,printer, everything, like, where
how I can
Chad Hohn (46:51):
I'll send you a link to to the cabinet, to the
printer, to the lights, and thento the stream deck that I use to
control it.
Bastien Paul (46:59):
So there you go. I will put
Liz Moorhead (47:00):
a picture of that in the show notes. I just took a
screenshot. But, George, we havecovered a lot of ground today,
and I would love for you sinceyou are, thank goodness, here to
help us land the plane thistime, and it's not in my
incapable hands. Talk to usabout what you want our
listeners to remember.
George B. Thomas (47:17):
I mean, the fact that Chad, Max, and I, and
even Liz, to an extent, aresitting here somewhat
speechless. Like, that doesn'thappen very often. The the,
which means to me the weight ofthe problem is a real thing.
And, you know, so it I'm nottrying to be funny when I say
(47:42):
this, but the the takeaway thatI want the listeners to think
about is maybe it's time to getsome sales and marketing
therapy. And how do you do thatinside of your organization?
Like, how how because, like,again, I go back to and Bastian
said it. How does sales learnthe language of marketing, and
how does marketing learn thelanguage of sales, and how do we
(48:05):
come to the table together toactually understand what we call
it, what we do with it? Because,by the way, the the fact that
we're so quiet, the fact thatthis is such a big issue means
that the actual people thatmatter, the
Bastien Paul (48:25):
humans.
George B. Thomas (48:27):
There we go. Of your organization are not
getting the experience that theyneed or deserve. Okay, Hub
Heroes. We've reached the end ofanother episode. Will Lord Lack
continue to loom over thecommunity, or will we be able to
defeat him in the next episodeof the hub heroes podcast?
(48:51):
Make sure you tune in and findout in the next episode. Make
sure you head over to thehubheroes.com to get the latest
episodes and become part of theleague of heroes. FYI, if you're
part of the league of heroes,you'll get the show notes right
in your inbox, and they comewith some hidden power up
potential as well. Make sure youshare this podcast with a
(49:12):
friend. Leave a review if youlike what you're listening to,
and use the hashtag, hashtag hubeuros podcast on any of the
socials, and let us know whatstrategy conversation you'd like
to listen into next.
Until next time, when we meetand combine our forces, remember
to be a happy, helpful, humblehuman, and, of course, always be
(49:33):
looking for a way to besomeone's hero.
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