Agency Unfiltered: Recent Episodes
HubSpot
[NEW EPISODES EVERY WEDNESDAY] Agency Unfiltered is a weekly podcast that features interviews with agency owners around agency operations and agency growth. Nobody knows how to scale agencies better than those that are doing it, and they're happy to share an unfiltered look into what has worked—and what hasn't. Hosted by Kevin Dunn.
This week's guest is Tom Richard, CEO and Co-founder of Unlimited Tech Solutions. As his organization knocks on the door of becoming an Elite-tiered solutions partner, Tom shares the selling and servicing frameworks that have proven to be successful in aiding his team's growth. We start with how he frames his organization in the ecosystem (and the name Unlimited Tech Solutions provides a great hint). We talk about the win-win approach his team takes to selling—regardless of whether it's pitching net-new services, reselling software, co-selling with HubSpot, or all of the above. He goes into detail as to how he prioritizes transparency and proper expectation setting. On the servicing side, he talks about his approach to scoping integrated tech stacks and complex configurations of HubSpot, something I know is top of mind for many. And although it can present a great revenue opportunity, we also discuss the occasional headache-inducing experience of being hired to "rewire” the work done by others in a customer's HubSpot portal.
Christopher Nault, Founder and CEO of Growth on the pod to talk about balancing small teams and sustainable growth. Chris walks us through how his team navigated the transition from traditional marketing agency to revenue generation and ops consultancy, a move that I know many partners are either thinking about or actively doing themselves, including actionable insights for others to apply to their own organizations. We then get into sales, where we learn about how Growth’s sales efforts have evolved over time and the approaches and methodologies the Growth team uses today when actively prospecting, generating and connecting with leads, and working deals through their pipeline. We wrap with his point of view on the HubSpot ecosystem, the opportunities that exist for small services providers, and how best to carve out your piece of the HubSpot pie.
Tyler Samani-Sprunk, Chief Marketing Officer at Simple Strat, joins the show and pulls the curtain back on HubSpot Hacks—the highly successful YouTube channel the Simple Strat team manages to the tune of 18,000+ subscribers and 1.2 million video views. Tyler opens up to the history of HubSpot Hacks, where and how it began, and how it operates today. We discuss those early days, how the initial pilot was structured, how they measured success, and the methods used to accelerate its growth and scale their efforts. Tyler then explains how it's been integrated into Simple Strat’s systems and other go-to-market strategies, and he walks us through how a video view on YouTube turns into a paying client of Simple Strat. He also shares the quantifiable impact Simple Strat has seen from the channel across lead generation, opportunity close rates, revenue, and more. We wrap with Tyler’s perspective on how others can uncover and leverage growth strategies like the one Simple Strat built with HubSpot Hacks—and he shares actionable tips for building your own growth playbook—whether it's through video-based content or otherwise.
Dan Moyle, HubSpot Advisor at Impulse Creative and the instructor for HubSpot Academy’s community building bootcamp, joins the show to share his perspective on community-led growth and why it's such an important concept and strategy for solutions partners to anchor to. We dig into the specifics around building communities, around your organization and as a paid service for your client’s organizations, and Dan gets into the tactics for turning community into a powerful growth lever. We discuss what is and isn’t community, where we draw the line between content and community, and more. We also talk about ICPs and how these ideal client profiles can help manifest into a community strategy—specifically, where & how you can be a contributing member to the communities that may already exist. We wrap with a look at how communities can be built and hosted on HubSpot with tools like Impulse Creative’s Cohortium.
Gemma Price, CEO of HubGem, shares the history of HubGem and the path that led her towards specialization around the education space. We talk about the benefits of niche alignment for her team, her clients, and for the relationships she’s cultivated within HubSpot’s sales organization. Gemma also shares the risk partners face when making the decision to niche and the important considerations for after the fact—like hiring and training employees and resourcing accounts, to prospecting, sales conversations, and GTM strategies. Gemma also provides her perspective on the differences between “picking a niche” and “deep niche alignment” and what that looks like for HubGem. We wrap with Gemma's approach around HubSpot configuration for an industry that doesn’t have a traditional “sales” function you would envision adopting HubSpot—including some of the cool things she’s been able to build for her clients.
Kevin Barber, founder of Lean Labs, joins the pod to share his POV on the opportunities in front of HubSpot solutions partners with generative AI. He shares the ways in which his team has begun leveraging AI, what’s been replaced in their internal processes, and what’s been augmented and improved. We talk about the AI-prompt-powered solutions the team has both piloted and formally rolled out, like the Outline Optimizer and the Script Scrutinizer, and how Lean Labs handles the integration of these tools across their team and into their processes—from initial ideation, to test usage and prompt optimization, to ownership and involvement across the team, defining the completion criteria, and standardizing its usage and implementing it formally into their processes.
Neil Clarke, Digital Director at Quattro, joins the pod to discuss his process for building, maintaining, and prioritizing a small team—and how a lean operation has its advantages to both selling and servicing clients. Neil walks us through those advantages, value propositions, and how it manifests into Quattro’s go-to-market—including why & how it can be an attractive option for prospects comparative to larger organizations. We also talk about the intersection of team size and technical aptitude, the approach Neil's team takes for more complex engagements, and how team size isn’t indicative of a partner’s ability to effectively design and implement complex configurations of HubSpot.
Dan Tyre, a 16-year veteran of HubSpot, head of the Lion community, facilitator of Academy’s bootcamp strategy (most notably the Pipeline Generation Bootcamp), and longtime advocate, resource, and friend to many in the solutions partner community joins the pod to talk about the two things he says are the most important aspects of scaling your business as a HubSpot partner: culture and growth.For culture, he shares actionable steps and the things you can do right now to improve your ability to recruit, hire, motivate and retain the right executives, employees and partners. And for growth, Dan Tyre shares his own experiences in sales, marketing, and as an owner of a managed services provider himself—and the concrete steps partners can take themselves to sell better, scale effectively ,and address stagnant growth.
Dani Buckley, Vice President and General Manager of LeadG2, joins the show and shares with us her team’s strategies for securing sustainable growth as a services provider. Our primary discussion is around sales enablement, and while they offer sales enablement services to their clients, Dani shares what sales enablement looks like for her team, including the methodologies, resources, playbooks, processes, and technologies that have been put into place. And as a remote, distributed team, we discuss what sales enablement, team management, and sales performance management looks like for them, what works well, and what tips she has for others.
Tara Gearhart, owner of T Media Consulting, joins the show to discuss (1) established relationships with “sister agencies” and (2) the strategies that have allowed Tara, as a small business owner, to achieve sustainable growth and to carve out success as a Platinum tiered solutions partner. For partnerships, we talk about how & why she’s sought out relationships, how these help support her menu of services, protect her key areas of focus, and how these relationships appear on the client-facing side. We also talk logistics—including how these are originally scoped & made, how payments and invoicing work, and how optionality is presented to the customer. On the strategy side, we talk about building and positioning contracts for long-term engagements, the means for establishing trusted advisor relationships, and her talk track and value proposition for HubSpot in competitive sales situations with other CRMs,
Jeff Bell, President of Mindscape, joins the pod to talk about Service Hub—and how they built in a client portal through Knowledge Base and Help Desk where clients can access embedded reports unique to their business, viewing recordings of trainings and videos custom built for them, submitting tickets to their points of contact at Mindscape, and more. Jeff shares structurally how it was built, how his developers unified the UX and menu with the Mindscape website, how private content is hosted and made viewable, and how client access is provisioned through automation. After we discuss what it looks like, Jeff shares the value his team now sees by transforming the way clients engage with the team—including time savings and efficiency gains, streamlined communications with clients and between departments, and improved visibility of work in production. We wrap with how Mindscape rolled this out, how they onboarded both their teams to the new processes and how they incentivized adoption from their clients.
Christopher Barnett, Founder of WORQFLOW, joins the podcast to explore solutions-based selling as a catalyst for scaling small sales teams. He explains its intersection with RevOps and how it can give partners an edge in competitive scenarios with other CRMs. Christopher also delves into multi-Hub selling, shares how it enhances the value of HubSpot, spotlights his favorite Hub "pairings", and compares it with the common "land and expand" strategy. The episode rounds off with his approach to software demos, where they live in the selling process, how they're structured, and how he provisions hands-on access to prospects.
Bryan Byler, Director of Solutions Architecture at Mole Street, is here to talk about artificial intelligence—specifically, how partners can navigate the growing proliferation of AI-powered solutions and technologies. He outlines a number of use-cases that partners should consider incorporating into their work streams, tools that enable those use-cases, and how he keeps pace with the rapidly evolving AI landscape. We then move over to Mole Street’s performance within the HubSpot ecosystem, and after coming in 2nd for North American Partner of the Year, Bryan shares his insights on the team’s sales engine—including their digital transformation initiatives and emphasis on expanding existing client relationships. We wrap with his recommendations for how small teams can find success in HubSpot’s partner program—including the resources, approaches, and GTM strategies that can yield great results.
Nick Redding, Managing Director of Reddico, joins the show to talk about his organization’s journey to being certified as a B Corporation, or B Corp. As Nick explains, B Corps give as much consideration to their social and environmental impact as they do to their financial returns, and so he starts our conversation off with explaining what this means for Reddico, the process it takes to become eligible and then certified, and what about becoming a B Corp was attractive for his team. We also anchor his new B Corp status to the age of the connected customer, and Nick shares where and how this certification has shown up in his team’s culture, operations, and overall go-to-market strategy—including the impact on marketing, prospecting and setting meetings, and building relationships. We wrap the episode with the long-term context behind Reddico's pursuit of the B Corp certification and that’s it’s actually just the most recent milestone in a much longer series of progressive decisions Nick has made for his organization. He shares his history of challenging the status quo, the types of progressive decisions he’s made for his firm, and what is coming next.
Ben Rubin, VP of Revenue at Remotish, joins the show to share his perspective on the age of the connected customer and the resulting big bets he sees his organization making as we prepare for 2023. Ben digs into the importance of human connection, and how it manifests itself in sales calls, client engagements, and hiring pipelines—citing that even in B2B communications and interactions, it’s human-to-human. He also digs into the value of a connected platform and access to data that covers the entire customer journey. Looking ahead to 2023, Ben shares some of the adjustments Remotish is planning to make to their operating model—including the required lengths of their RevOps and WebOps service offerings and the installation of a new, role-based learning path model for team development. Remotish also has historically requested their team to complete and achieve all of the certifications offered by HubSpot Academy, but is making a change to reflect a catalog of certifications growing in size and in diversity of topic/function coverage.
Dax Miller, Head of Product for A8 Labs, joins the show to talk about app development and the opportunities in front of solutions partners. He shares his thoughts on how partners should be thinking about, and leveraging, the app ecosystem as a conduit to sell more services and improve the value they bring to their clients—including use-cases and success stories A8 Labs has seen with other partners. Dax then shares his perspective and process for public app development—and whether more solutions partners should be expanding into app development. He walks us through the lifecycle and timeline of a new product from ideation to marketplace launch, how his team validates ideas and aims to solve long-tailed needs, and where & how others can hire for, build, and grow a development team.
This week, HubSpot Academy’s own Kyle Jepson joins the show to talk about HubSpot admins. As HubSpot’s resident admin advocate, champion, Kyle shares his definition of a HubSpot admin, the responsibilities they own, and things they must know inside of HubSpot. Kyle talks through the differences between admins and solutions architects—and how he views the distinctions, contrasts, and overlaps between those two functions. And through that lens, he also shares what opportunities exist for solutions partners. Kyle then pulls the curtain back a bit on how he thinks about potentially certifying and credentialing admins. For example, on the significant spectrum that is HubSpot expertise, where does he draw that line in having the depth and breadth of knowledge that is certifiable? And how is he visualizing the two workstreams for educating admins and assessing admins? With that, Kyle shares his thoughts on the growing audience, community, and prevalence of those ready to be certifiable HubSpot admins—and where they should be looking for staying up to date with HubSpot product updates.
Natalie Furness, CEO of Rev Ops Automated, joins the show to talk about revenue operations. Our conversation though starts with data, how triaging disjointed and unactionable datasets helps solve the crisis of disconnection spoken about from INBOUND22. We also talk about tech stack audits and consolidation—how she manages that process for clients, how it differs based on customer size, maturity, and complexity, and how it represents such a large opportunity for a quick, and significant return on investment for clients. We then talk about how best to resource technical consulting, custom development work for clients, and public app development. Natalie pitches the podcast on her app idea that’s arriving soon and some recommendations on how to staff, resource, and partner with others to go to market with these services as well.
Coming to you from the partner space at INBOUND22, Karim Bouras, the founder of Nile, jumps on the show to share the big bets his team is making as we approach 2023 as a means of triaging the saturation and commoditization of inbound services. Karim highlights two major bets—first, specialization around an industry and a deep investment into the marketing strategy for this specific industry. Karim shares the channels in which he focuses his time to connect with these best-fit prospects—including his podcast, which serves doubly as a means of engagement with this audience and a way to secure time with target prospects. Second, Nile has committed to a move away from being a traditional marketing agency to offering CRM implementation and integration services. And this requires a significant investment in education—education for both his prospects to understand the value and education for his team to transition from marketers to sales consultants and technical experts of HubSpot.
Coming to you from the partner space at INBOUND22, Karim Bouras, the founder of Nile, jumps on the show to share the big bets his team is making as we approach 2023 as a means of triaging the saturation and commoditization of inbound services. Karim highlights two major bets—first, specialization around an industry and a deep investment into the marketing strategy for this specific industry. Karim shares the channels in which he focuses his time to connect with these best-fit prospects—including his podcast, which serves doubly as a means of engagement with this audience and a way to secure time with target prospects. Second, Nile has committed to a move away from being a traditional marketing agency to offering CRM implementation and integration services. And this requires a significant investment in education—education for both his prospects to understand the value and education for his team to transition from marketers to sales consultants and technical experts of HubSpot.
This episode was recorded LIVE from the Partner Hub at INBOUND22. Becky Murphy, Managing Director and co-founder of BabelQuest, joins the podcast to talk about the big bets her team is making as we approach 2023 as a means of triaging and saturation and commoditization of inbound services. Becky shares how she’s thinking about the channels and means of engagement her team is using for their next stage of growth. Specifically, she explains how formalized partnerships with complementary services providers targeting similar client profiles has been a lucrative, revenue generating channel for BabelQuest. She also talks us through her team’s technical consulting practice—including how it came to be, how the percentage split of revenue has trended over time vs. traditional inbound services, and how she prioritizes the development of technical experts and solutions architects on staff.
This episode was recorded LIVE from the Partner Hub at INBOUND22. Becky Murphy, Managing Director and co-founder of BabelQuest, joins the podcast to talk about the big bets her team is making as we approach 2023 as a means of triaging and saturation and commoditization of inbound services. Becky shares how she’s thinking about the channels and means of engagement her team is using for their next stage of growth. Specifically, she explains how formalized partnerships with complementary services providers targeting similar client profiles has been a lucrative, revenue generating channel for BabelQuest. She also talks us through her team’s technical consulting practice—including how it came to be, how the percentage split of revenue has trended over time vs. traditional inbound services, and how she prioritizes the development of technical experts and solutions architects on staff.
Today, we have on Justin Graci, Principal Marketing Manager at HubSpot. Justin is responsible for a number of enablement initiatives for our solutions partner community, and today, he previews the exclusive solutions partner experience at INBOUND. Justin starts by explaining why INBOUND is such a special and exciting event for partners specifically, walking us through opportunities available for networking, knowledge sharing, prospecting, and delighting clients. He shares how our partners can best prepare for, and maximize INBOUND—including how partners should be intentional with their plans before, during, and after the event. He wraps with a preview of the dedicated partner space at the event and the scheduled programming dedicated to partners, including the things, and people, and topics to look out for.
Today on the podcast, we have on Jens Sundell, Chief Revenue Officer at Kaksio Labs. Jens shares his team's growth story as a partner and the team's intentional decision not to get into the traditional inbound marketing retainer business. We discuss what drove that decision and how they instead found their niche in consulting for business process design. We then dig into exactly what business process design is—including what it looks like in a sales process and as a client engagement. Jens also helps differentiate consultation around process (like defining and designing business processes) vs. consultation around technology (like CRM implementation, integrations, architecture) and whether one comes before the other. We then wrap with his thoughts on the team’s approach to solutions architecture—including the process his team uses for designing data models and the important questions to ask in discovery to build the right tech stack & data flows for clients.
Today, we have on Luke Trewin, Managing Director at Modern Visual. This podcast loves a good origin story, and what’s great about Modern Visual’s beginnings, is that Luke’s very first official office job was taking on the website projects that were the catalyst for Modern Visual. And now? His team is an Elite-tiered, accredited HubSpot solutions partner. Luke walks us through when and how he decided to leave his factory job to start Modern Visual. Was it always the plan? And how did he know it was time to dip his toe into managed services. He then walks us through his process for identifying what to go to market with—were they things he was already good at? Things he was passionate about? And as Modern Visual grew, what happened when clients were looking for something outside his purview? He also shares his strategy for growing his org chart over time—and what roles, responsibilities, and candidate profiles he prioritized. Luke wraps with the value and impact he saw when working with a business coach. He shares the specifics into what he would receive coaching on, how the relationship was structured, and what that coaching relationship looks like today—spoiler alert, his longtime business coach may not be in the Modern Visual org chart.
Ingunn Bjøru, Chief Customer Experience Officer of Avidly, explains how Avidly has restructured their C-suite and has added and redesigned roles and responsibilities—including a Chief Revenue Officer, a Chief Technology Officer, and a Chief Customer Experience Officer. We learn about the teams these folks both build and manage, the focus areas and points of strategy that fall under their purview, and the impact they drive for the Avidly team, their prospects, and their customers. Ingunn and I also discuss consistency. Avidly has grown substantially through acquisitions and expansion into new regions and countries, so she shares the importance behind consistency, when differences and distinctions between teams is a actually a positive, and how they ensure consistency when it’s required knowing the global distribution of the team.
Shawn Peterson, CEO of Quantum Business Solutions, walks us through the sales machine he’s built that has led to scalable, repeatable, and predictable results for his business and his clients. On their best day, Quantum booked 20 meetings with c-suite contacts via cold outreach—with his team’s best months including over 100 meetings booked. To understand how, we start the tech stack he uses (including softwares like Kennected, ConnectAndSell, and ZoomInfo). Shawn walks us through each, including the data that pipes into HubSpot, what he’s able to automate with each data set, and how it allows him to successfully book meetings. We then move over to how this sales pipeline tech stack has manifested itself in client engagements as well—and how he pitches, prices, and replicates what works for Quantum for his clients.
Jessica Scanlon, CEO of Hot Dog Marketing, joins the podcast to share her team's journey in transitioning from standard retainers to an agile retainer strategy. As Jessica explains, by leveraging the agile methodology, the planning cycles and production sprints of her team’s retainers now allow for more flexibility, responsiveness, and better client results. We start with a breakdown of agile retainers (what they are and why they matter) and the impetus was in making this transition. We then unpack the transition period for her team, including the key elements that needed to be reimagined across project management, process development, pricing strategies, team training and more. We wrap with results: what Jessica’s client engagements look like today, the differences she feels with the new agile approach in place, and the most noticeable, tangible impact on KPIs she’s seen—like average order value, assets under management per CS rep, and more.
In today’s episode, Ranya Barakat, CEO of CRM Toolbox, joins the show to talk about the major transitions, pivots, and inflection points her team has navigated over the last few years—as CRM Toolbox, a firm offering migration, integration, and complex onboarding services, used to be IDS, a LATAM full-service agency. Ranya starts with the why: what sparked the change in name and branding, the pivot in services, and re-classification to a North American partner. We then dig into her team’s service offering—and what this pivot meant for her old services, her existing team, and her existing client base. Ranya also shares the impact on sales, including how prospecting, her channels for sourcing, and her pricing methodology have all changed. We then wrap on strategy, and what the new client experience looks like working with CRM Toolbox. Ranya shares the team’s approach about defining the problem, understanding tech stacks and data structures, designing and planning solutions, and architecting it inside of (and around) HubSpot.
Eric Baum, Founder and CEO of Bluleadz, joins the podcast to share the makeup of his team’s sales org, including the roles, responsibilities, comp plans, and performance benchmarks for his SDRs and AEs. We talk about each team's focus areas, the handoff criteria and qualification thresholds for prospects, the places in which he builds for scale, and how he thinks about the sales team’s role in fielding inbound leads vs. more outbound prospecting. We even get into the role of his customer success org—and where and how they fit into the org’s efforts in cross-selling and upselling. We wrap with a pandemic-driven experiment where Bluleadz offered sales development as a service—with a team of SDRs dedicated to offering outsourced prospecting for his clients. Eric shares the genesis of the idea and how the team came to be before digging into the logistics: how the parameters of the service were defined, how he qualified fits amongst his client base, and how Bluleadz balanced both recurring and performance-based fees for the service.
Jason Azocar, Founder and CEO of HubSearch, joins the show to share his interpretation of the HubSpot talent shortage. We look at the opportunity in front of partners through three lenses: putting your best foot forward before hiring, best practices for facilitating a candidate through the hiring process, and the importance of sustainable onboarding plans and talent retention strategies. Pre-hiring, we talk about where and how to source, the going market rates for HubSpot talent, and how to position your company as a great place to work. For the hiring process, we unpack the full candidate experience and how to balance speed vs. quality of the process. Lastly, after a hire has been made, we discuss strategies for onboarding, growing, and keeping top talent, how partners should be thinking about balance, and how to grow a People Ops function.
This week, Matt Bolian and Brendan Tolleson, cofounders of RevPartners, rejoin the show. When we last checked in with the RevPartners team, they were the fastest HubSpot solutions partner ever to reach the Diamond tier. Now, about a year later, they return to the podcast as the fastest ever to reach the Elite tier. They offer actionable insights, frameworks, and the specific steps they took to reach the Elite tier of HubSpot’s partner program in under 16 months. First, we discuss scaling operations. Do they do anything unique or against the grain operationally? How do they sell? How do they define their service offering? Second, we discuss scaling people ops. How has their org chart evolved? How did they identify the right headcount needs and priorities? And how do they recruit the right people—and keep their top talent? And third, we discuss scaling demand. Does RevPartners have a traditional sales org? And how has their approach to content creation and marketing helped spark their growth?
John Heritage, President of Evenbound, joins to highlight, and then digs deeper into, the learning and development focus of his agency's culture. We start with its origin built on both his personal and professional experiences before moving to how he positions these learning initiatives around both HubSpot, and its growing, changing, expanding platform, as well as his team’s productivity—in other words, how does his team balance KPIs like utilization rate and billable hours with dedicating time for learning and development? We then discuss how he and the team operationalize. Specifically, how he infuses competition and camaraderie, how he ensures accountability from the team, and how he thinks about prescribing certifications and education based on role or function versus creating space for folks’ personal interest. Lastly, we talk about the ROI, where he shares the tangible, noticeable results with his clients the work his team delivers.
Steve Whittington, President of Roadmap, joins the show to talk about the oftentimes unspoken aspect of systems implementation—the ripple effect and impact a new CRM can have on an organization's culture. Steve talks about how he views and defines the culture change that comes with a new CRM platform, the differences at the individual-level and company-level, and whether it's a change in mindset, behaviors, accountability, responsibility—or all of the above. He then shares how his team implements that culture change in support of a new CRM platform—and if there are any particular tools, functions, or capabilities that seem to spark a culture change more than others. We wrap with his recommendations for other partners and services providers on how to account for the culture change and how to ensure its factored in appropriately into client engagements, front-line user training, and more.
Today, we have Michelle O'Keeffe, CEO of Engaging.io, on to discuss how she and her team dispel the notion that HubSpot's CRM platform isn't customizable, extensible, or powerful enough for enterprise-level businesses. She first calls out that while that notion is swiftly waning, she still highlights the fundamental differences between platforms when comparing HubSpot to other CRM platform options in the market—and how HubSpot's single codebase and crafted platform vs. cobbled-together competitors is such a key differentiator and key value proposition. Michelle outlines the considerations and notable items that she helps surface in her sales process to help prospects level-set and accurately weigh their options when selecting the right CRM—stacking up HubSpot up against things that rhyme with Kalesforce and Kynamics.
Amber Kemmis, Chief Operating Officer at Revenue River, joins us to talk about senior leadership—specifically, why they're important and others should be thinking about and planning their own tier of senior leaders. Amber starts by sharing where senior leaders fall in her org chart and their primary roles and functions. She then shares her interpretation of the talent market and why its so hard to discover senior-level talent in 2022. We wrap with her tips, tactics, and recommendations for finding senior talent in today's talent ecosystem.
Steve Galligan and Joseph Mohay, CEO and CRO of Integrated Digital Strategies (IDS), join the show to discuss IDS's target niche—franchises. We star with IDS's history and their pursuit of franchises, and whether the business was built with this niche in mind or if it was a discovery over time. We then pivot to the engagements themselves, including what these services offerings entail, the typical buyer's journey for franchise prospects and clients, and the biggest or most unique considerations to factor in when offering services and solutions for franchises. Lastly, we wrap with how this manifests in their operations and processes. They share their approach for handling, working with, and providing value for franchisors AND each individual franchisee—and how they've structured their org chart and teams to enable engagement with these clients.
This episode, we have Doug Wendt, founder and president of Wendt Partners on the show. Doug discusses the growth and globalization of his distributed team and the methods he used for growth—including full-time employees, contractors, freelancers, and services providers. We talk about how partners should think about marketplaces for securing freelance and contract help and his thoughts and the pros + cons of staffing firms. We also discuss the advantages (and disadvantages) of professional employer organization (or PEOs) and employer of record services (or EOR).
Conrad Saam, the President and Founder of Mockingbird Marketing, joins the show to talk about his commitment to transparency and clarity on salary—specifically, what that looks like and how it's reported and communicated to employees and candidates. He digs into the history, the process, how he established baselines, and why it's been so valuable for the firm. We wrap by discussing how compensation transparency has changed over time as his team grows both in size and in depth of knowledge—and how it's changed as his org chart becomes more complex and incorporates more specialized functions.
Connor Jeffers, Founder and CEO of Aptitude 8 who joins the show to talk about solutions architecture. We start with his definition of solutions architecture and how it compares to other technical roles like systems administrators, RevOps professionals, developers, and sales engineers. We talk about solutions architect development and how to raise the bar for technical expertise and systems design—and whether these folks are primarily homegrown or sought externally. Lastly, we wrap with A8 Labs and the recent acquisition of Appchemist. Should more partners be thinking more about HubSpot's app ecosystem?
Daryn Smith, Chief Sales and Innovation Office (and co-founder) of Huble, joins the show to talk about his team's customer experience consultancy service offering. Specifically, what it entails, where and how customer journey mapping factors in, and his team's involvement with defining (and/or introducing) process on top of software implementation. We then talk about the sales conversations, unique value propositions—and how marketers offer a valuable, important perspective on CX content and touch points. We wrap with reporting and how his team measures and benchmarks success.
Romi Dexter, Director & Co-Founder of Hype & Dexter, joins the show to talk about customer service engagements with clients. Specifically, what customer service services entails and how involved her team is with defining (or introducing) process on top of software configuration. We talk sales and value propositions—and how conversations, points of contacts, and points of entry may change. We then wrap with how her team reports on success and the KPIs, the value adds, and the process improvements that ensure a positive ROI for clients.
Andrew Hong, Co-Founder of Tobe Agency, joins the show to share his team’s video podcasting strategy and service offering for clients. We discuss the role video podcasts can play in a larger pillar content strategy, where and how you can build and repurpose podcast content, some tool recommendations for production and distribution, and the unique and emerging use-cases for podcasting that he’s most excited about.
Doug Davidoff, the founder and CEO of Imagine Business Development, returns to the show to discuss how he navigates HubSpot's sales organization and builds relationships with HubSpot sales reps as a means of business development. He shares his recommendations and suggestions for others to do the same: how to build these relationships from the ground up, what folks need to set up organizationally to enable these relationships, and how partners may need to rethink their role in these types of collaborative sales opportunities.
Rikki Lear, Managing Director of Digital22, joins us to talk about the key inflection points his team navigated in their 10+ years of growth. We start with the decision of going all-in on HubSpot. How and when did he make that decision and what ripple effect did it have across his existing client base? We then discuss process and project management, automation, and other guardrails to enable faster scaling. Lastly, we talk about the recent acquisition by Avidly—specifically, how those talks began, how each side vetted the other, and what this means for Digital22 in the future.
Dave Meyer, President, and Trygve Olsen, Director of Buzz Development at BizzyWeb come on the show to talk about the discovery stage of their sales process—specifically, how they diagnose problems for prospects, how they build trust with prospects, and how they balance data and facts with the emotional, soft-skill based relationships they build.
Daniel Fonseca, founding partner of Netfluence, joins the show to talk about process consulting. We start by first defining process consulting and outlining the value it brings to clients and to his company. We then discuss if and how process consulting matches up with product implementation—does it come before, after, or simultaneously? We then wrap by diving deep into Netfluence's process for process consultancy—and the particular framework, model, or processes he follows—to help our listeners identify their own process consulting capabilities.
Nicole Pereira, CEO of Remotish, joins the show to talk about her team's emphasis on employment experience—and as she points out, employment experience is something small agencies and smaller organizations can derive the MOST value from... it’s not something necessarily reserved for large teams. We talk about the systems and processes that make it happen. Things like career crafting and role progression, entrepreneurial projects and cross-training, work-life integration and intentionally asynchronous communication—and much more.
Agency Unfiltered this week comes with a twist—as we sit down with Ekin Pehlivan, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics at California State University Channel Islands and Leslie Cortes, a student at Cal State Channel Islands. Ekin shares the history of Cal State’s student-led agency—how it started, and why. We dig into the agency's go-to-market, the types of businesses they serve, the services they offer, team structure, process development, and more.
We talk to Dave Scilabro, Chief Growth Officer at harvestROI. Dave digs deep into CRM implementation. He walks us through his team's choice to focus more on CRM implementation as a service. We talk through his team’s definition and approach to systems implementation or migrating between systems, data and its role in successful implementation, how he ensures clean data when rolling out a new system, and the role data plays in enabling departmental handoffs.
In this week’s edition of Agency Unfiltered, we talk to Lara Triozzi, CEO of MarketLauncher. We discuss her focus on prospecting and lead development efforts specifically targeting C-level executives. We talk about the approach other firms need to take for their clients when targeting the C-suite, where and how it intersects with ABM, and how to best identify when C-suite is the right point of contact you need to sell to. We then discuss FANS, or formal account, new success—and the revenue attributed to FANS may surprise you...
Brendan Tolleson and Matt Bolian, co-founders and CEO and CRO of RevPartners grew to the Diamond tier of HubSpot’s Solutions Partner Program faster than any other partner before them. We talk about what RevOps means to their team and the problems they solve by offering RevOps support.
Jonathan Franchell, CEO and Founder of Ironpaper, talks us through his team’s approach to building up their roster of senior leadership positions. He shares his process for assessing the need for various Director-level candidates, how he balances internal and external candidates, and when he knew it was time to add folks that don’t correlate to billable hours.
Brian Shilling, VP of Sales and Client Strategy at TSL Marketing, shares his team’s commitment to “renewing their vows” with HubSpot and the partner program. What does this mean for TSL and their team? How does this change the way they source and manage talent? Brian shares the approach, the early results, and his recommendations for new partners.
Heather Park, Managing Partner at Rent Bridge, joins the show to talk about the PMOS, or Property Management Operating System, the unified property management automation solution built entirely on HubSpot. Heather discusses the experiences that lead to the property management niche, the nuts and bolts of the PMOS, and the balance between templates and custom setup.
Noah Berk, Co-Founder of OBO, joins the show to talk about how his agency was able to consolidate the focus areas and services they offered their clients. Noah talks about the value in pulling back from “full-service”, how he identified what to focus on, and the implications this had on people, process, growth and the client experience.
Alex Moore and Ryan Burkett, senior partners at Stratagon, sit down to talk about people development—more specifically, people development in the newly remote-first world. They share the tools and processes they use for supporting growth, aligning collaborators, and building teams that embrace diverse communication styles and preferences.
Angela Pointon, President of 11 out of 11, comes on to talk about content marketing and how to scale it out as a service offering. We talk about onboarding subcontractors to systems, processes, and a standard of quality, how to enable a client’s thought leadership in content, and finding the right clients for a content marketing engagement.
Spencer Powell, CEO of Builder Funnel, and his team have gone all in on specialization—all the way up his agency’s name. He walks us through the decision to align so tightly to an industry, the benefits he sees across his agency’s flywheel, handling prospects with competing businesses, and the impact specialization has on team development.
Peter Lang, CEO of Uhuru Network, shares his team’s acquisition strategy. We talk about the process for sourcing potential acquisitions, indicators to look for from potential sellers, how he validates “fit”, and when he decides to walk away. And for those acquisitions that do close, we talk about team integration and the people, process, and tools that make them go as seamless as possible.
Mike Skeehan, the Managing Partner of Salted Stone, shares his experiences in evolving as a leader alongside the maturation of his agency and what it meant to grow, pivot, and reassign his responsibilities in moments of transition. We discuss important inflection points, the patterns he saw, and how he compares reactivity to proactiveness.
Jon Sasala, President of Morey Creative, shares his team’s first hand experience in developing branded podcasts. Jon discusses where and how podcasting fits into the larger marketing and sales processes, how it builds trust—and the surprising industry he likes to hire from.
Trish Lessard, CEO of Mediajunction, joins us to talk client websites and how to manage complex CMS builds, migrations, and implementations—while keeping these projects under budget, within scope, and delivered on time.
Blake Kendrick, Director of Operations for FullFunnel, talks about his team’s approach to reporting: specifically, auditing fields and schema on the backend to pull through as impactful, actionable data.
Brendon Dennewill, CEO of Denamico, has made a key distinction in their flywheel model: they put customer experience in the center. Learn how to leverage data, systems, processes, and technology to help your clients succeed with a true digital transformation of their customer experience.
Doug Davidoff, Founder and CEO of Imagine Business Development, joins us to talk about how he evolved his pricing strategy to eliminate the gap between prospect expectations and resource allocation. Learn about his three tiers of programs: services, solutions, and outcomes.
Greg Linnemanstons, President of Weidert Group, joins us to talk ESOP: and how the trust he set up for his team benefits the agency, the employees, and his clients. We discuss why he rolled out an ESOP, financials and factors to consider for your agency, and the benefits you may see.
Etienne Turner, co-CEO of digitalJ2, has created a set of scorecards and dashboards to help his team stay on target with their top KPIs across operations, marketing, sales, HR, and client performance. In this episode, we talk about how he sets the agency’s goals, where granularity fits in, and how others can set and track their targets.
Bob and Verity Dearsley, the Chief Executive and Managing Director of B2B Marketing Lab, join us to talk about scale points: the times where you must invest, revamp, or pivot to properly scale your growing agency. Learn how to focus on the customer, invest in marketing, build an HR arm, and more.
Jani Aaltonen, Founder of Sales Communications, hosts a rolling calendar of small group workshops that have added a ton of force to his agency’s flywheel. Jani joins us to talk about the structure of his classroom training offering, the value in trust, the impact on revenue, and how others can get started.
John and Lucy, Directors of ESM Inbound, have built out a unique structure to their pricing, billing, and contracts: their services are productized and available a la carte and without any retainer commitments. Learn more about their motivations, successes, and lessons learned in making the pivot to productizing their services.
Gabriel Marguglio, CEO of Nextiny Marketing, joins us to discuss how he was able to maximize the opportunity around technology consultation. Learn how to embrace software, platform capabilities and become a platform consultancy agency.
Jessica Miller, VP and Managing Director of PR20/20, comes on the show to talk about artificial intelligence: how agencies can define what it is, how to talk about it with clients, how to identify real applications of it, and how it impacts service delivery.
Tyler Pigott, Principal of Lone Fir Creative, joins us to talk about a major agency recovery he lost 50% of the agency’s revenue in a 30 day period. We talk about sticking to a sales process, consolidating tool investments, building the right team, in other lessons learned in saving the agency.
Rich Wood, Managing Director of Six and Flow, joins us to talk about a merger attempt that ended in a breakup. While never easy, Rich walks us through why they opened up a merger discussion with another agency, how the team integration went, and what ultimately led to the split.
Carter and Cameron, Partners at Creative Cave, come on the show to discuss paid ads and how they fit into their agency’s overall inbound strategy for clients. They discuss why agencies shouldn’t see paid ads and inbound as two competing channels—instead, view paid ads as a powerful channel for inbound ROI.
Alison Leishman, cofounder of Spitfire Inbound, joins the show to talk about her team’s onboarding process. She teaches us about why defining and documenting a process is so important, how she customizes onboarding tracks by role and function, and how she ties a defined onboarding process to happy clients and positive results.
John Elmer, CEO of Bayard Bradford, leads with a sales-first approach to their marketing services. John teaches us why helping clients build the system to store, manage, and close sales opportunities is so important before driving marketing leads—and how you can help improve clients’ ROI metrics with a sales-first approach.
Joining us this episode is Sheila Mitham: CEO of Inbound Fintech. Serving primarily in the B2B space, Sheila educates us on how she incorporates thought leadership into her client engagements to address customer pain-points and build valuable, credible content.
Alexandria Hart, founder of Good Joo Joo, joins us to talk scope creep: what it is, how to avoid it, how to course correct when it happens, and how to leverage it into a conversation around extending an SOW.
Travis White, Managing Director of Neighbourhood, just recently rebranded his agency. Formally known as The Raiders, Travis talks through his motivations for a rebrand, how he knew it was time, how he handled the full rebrand process, and what the next steps are for the new brand.
We make it back home to Boston, where Damien Cabral of TribalVision shares how his agency was able to improve their profitability. Specifically, how they’ve created formalized career paths to improve employee retention, how they’ve built an expansive freelancer partner network for low cost delivery, and how they introduced a lower-tiered retainer price point to help combat client churn rates.
As CEO of Campaign Creators, Bob’s story is an interesting one: in 2016, Bob had an employee embezzle three hundred thousand dollars from his agency’s payroll account. In this episode, Bob shares this story in full and how he was able to rebuild his agency by refining his services, building more structured processes, and updating the way their source and qualify candidates.
Mike and Nikole Rose of Mojo Media Labs join us to talk about open book financial management: a practice in which Mojo shares their financials with the team to have everyone think like business owners. We talk about why they incorporated this financial transparency, how it’s impacted the organization, and how interested agencies can get started themselves.
We head to Dallas, Texas where Scott Baradell of Idea Grove sits in to teach us how he successfully made the transition from traditional PR to digital marketing. He explains why he moved from PR to a full menu of digital services, how his processes and team structure changed to account for this transition, and why PR and digital marketing are a great fit for pairing together.
It’s no secret: clients have become more tech savvy and in tune with the digital landscape, which has the opportunity to add friction to your team’s ability to consult and drive strategy. Paul Brienza from Laughlin Constable explains what this growth in sophistication looks like, how he has tweaked his model to account for these advancements, and how he prioritizes continuous improvement for his team.
In this episode, Jill Wilson of Simple Machines Marketing drops by to discuss the value her agency has found in finding their niche. She explains how aligning around a niche can positively impact marketing, sales, and service. We then dig into running workshops and why “getting a look under the hood” is so valuable for her team.
Beth Carter of Clariant Creative teaches us about the importance of finding right-fit clients. She shares why it’s so important to qualify for fit, how she identifies if a potential client is a right or wrong fit, and what impact this has on the client experience. We also talk about when and how it’s appropriate to move on from bad-fit clients.
Christine Mortensen of Sprk'd jump starts our stay in Chicago by talking about how she's developed her agency’s mission. We dig into why it’s important to make an impact to society, how you can go about creating your own mission, how you get buy-in from the team, and how it impacts your go-to market.
After working with agencies across the globe to help scale, Pete Nicholls of HubDo comes in the studio to share his tips and tactics on how to navigate the most common roadblocks agencies face around marketing, sales, and client delivery.
Darren Ratcliffe helps break down growth-driven design, the data-driven re-imagining of web design. Learn how his team transitioned from traditional web design to GDD, how he updated his processes for delivery, and what GDD has achieved for his customers.
All the way from Santiago, Chile, Ranya Barakat of IDS Agency sits in to share how she’s been able to build an effective team for her agency. We talk about her candidate pipeline, her interview process, and her focus on professional development.
Jackie Hermes of Accelity Marketing teaches us the art of being “picky”, the benefits of pickiness, and the ramifications for not being picky. It can be hard to say no, agencies should be selective in the clients they bring in, in the services they offer, and in the hires they make.
Tommy Butcher of LyntonWeb joins us to talk about managing a remote workforce. He starts at the beginning with the initial decision and the benefits they’ve seen since. He then walks through how they’ve built their internal processes to set their remote team up for success.
Remington Begg of Impulse Creative joins us to talk through conversational engagement, how agencies leverage chat for themselves, and where they should get started. He then pivots to how agencies should position conversational strategy to their clients and how the service can be scaled.
Ingunn Bjøru joins us to discuss how her team approached the M&A and creation of Avidly, how she knew it was time to open the discussion, and what the transformation into Avidly meant for her leadership team, her employees, her processes, and her clients.
Daryn Smith of MPULL talks capacity management and his recommendations for monitoring, managing, and optimizing your delivery team’s capacity. We discuss the tools his team uses, the processes they have developed, and how he takes advantage of under-capacity teams.
Eric Baum teaches us about the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), what it changed operationally for Bluleadz, and how other agencies can get implement it into their firm. He then navigates the history of his org chart and what the future holds.
Romi Dexter of Hype and Dexter, and her team, were able to take their agency from concept to platinum HubSpot partner in only nine months. Romi shares her learnings along the way, the processes they prioritized and mapped out first, and how they approach client delivery.
Ryan Malone discusses SmartBug’s team structure and how his agency’s org chart has changed over time to accommodate growth. We talk about team (or “pod”) structures, career pathing, and how SmartBug split up responsibilities by role.
Gabriel Marguglio of Nextiny Marketing joins us to talk video strategy: both as a customer service tool for your agency and as a service offering for your clients. Learn how to allocate resources and develop processes to start your own scalable video strategy today.