Sales Data Revolution: Unlocking Revenue Intelligence | INBOUND 2025

Good morning.

Welcome to the last day of inbound. How's everybody doing?

How many is tired?

Yeah.

We really appreciate you being here this early in the morning to listen to what we have to say.

Absolutely. And if you're not awake yet, here's something to wake you up. It's this number right here, 80%. That's the number of customer intelligence that never makes its way from conversation to CRM. And Keith, I know you discovered this the hard way.

Yeah. Unfortunately, you're talking lost deals worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And honestly, they all could have been easily avoided because the data we had, it was already there. We just had no way to surface it. And I'm sure a lot of you out there are experiencing the exact same thing.

Right, so today we'll get into Keith's story here, but before we do, maybe a quick show of hands. I know it's been the talk of the entire conference, but who here knows the difference between structured and unstructured data? Quick show of hands. All right. Quite a few, but I do see some hands not up. So maybe, Keith, you can give them a quick 30 second version.

Sure. So structured data, that's the data that you already have. So think of it, just HubSpot properties, right. It's the data that's already filled in. Maybe it's deals that you already know, what stage it's living in, the amounts or even deals that's already closed. It's the data that you have on hand that's only comprises about 20%. That other 80%, that's the unstructured data. That's what everyone is saying, that's what your clients are saying. That's in the emails, in the meetings, in the calls. All of that data is right there. But it's the 80% that we just want to need for our sales teams and we just don't really have and we can't access all of the time.

Absolutely. So today we're here to hear about Keith's story and how he is unlocking that 80% for his sales team. So if you're in sales, if you're in operations, you've come to exactly the right place. I'm Jan, I flew in all the way from Belgium and I'm on the sales Hub product marketing team for HubSpot. I'm super excited to be here, but I'm even more excited to be joined on stage by one of our wonderful customers, Keith from Sendow. He's a director of CRM strategy at Sandow. But maybe, Keith, can you give Them a quick version of, like, what Sandow is and what it does.

Yeah, sure. So we're a luxury AMD media company that enhances and promotes the interior and exterior design industry. So media like print magazines, digital services, events. Think of architects, architectural designers, design firms, designers in general. Like all of these people expect white glove treatment, though.

Yeah. And I even go to say that it's not just a luxury industry that is like requiring that white glove treatment anymore. And we all know this. IT's technology and AI have raised the bar for everyone. So it's not just luxury, it's all industries. And it's not even just here in the States. It's everywhere. Buyers are showing up to your meetings much smarter. So if you're a seller and you're coming to that meeting and they're outsmarting you, why should they trust you with your business?

Yeah. So selling has fundamentally changed. I mean, and it actually has been fundamentally changing for quite some time. It can no longer be those generic interactions. So think like car salesmen or insurance salesmen. And I apologize if anybody holds that profession. This is not to be offensive, but we don't like those generic interactions anymore. It's more. Those are deal killers. We have to be strategic. From word one. And the big thing is knowing the why before we actually jump on that first conversation.

And Akith, I know the why is super important to you and to Sandow. Let's dig into that a little bit more.

Yeah. The why my boss is actually right there. Has ingrained it into my brain. So in everything that we do, we have to constantly consider the why. So whether it's operations or sales. But since we're focused on sales and think of every buyer that you've come into contact with, they all have a reason to want to change. So it could be maybe like their current solution isn't scaling. Maybe they're getting pressure from leadership to make a change. Or it could be something as simple as just wanting to hit a very specific goal. That's the why. But unfortunately, most of our conversations, they don't actually get there because we're using surface questions. We're using generic questions like what's your budget? What's your timeline? Who's a decision maker? And these are okay questions and they're necessary. We're going to need to know that information. But it's not strategic enough. So to quote Glengarry Glen Ross, coffee is for closers. And for all my dreamwork fans out there, cookies are for closers. Winners closers. They know the why. Before they ever walk into it, because they've done their homework and they know the context.

I absolutely love that. And to give everyone here a very real example of how this plays out in the real world. So I was shopping for solar panels about a year ago, and I had two very distinct sales experiences. So the first rep, after I submitted the form on their website, called me back around a week later, calls me up, ask me about my energy usage, about my roof, asks me if I can even take a picture of my roof and, like, which direction it's facing. Then when he hangs up, before he hangs up, he asks me, well, I'll probably get you a quote maybe in a week or so. The second rep calls me just hours after I submitted that form, and he goes like this. Hey, on I see from your neighborhood's energy patterns that you're probably using this amount of energy and also looking at satellite imagery. This is kind of the direction that your roof is facing. So this is what I propose for a setup. And I had a quote in my inbox before he had even hung up. Which one do you think I went with?

Yeah, I mean, I know which one I would have. And that's what we're all starting to realize, right, is it doesn't matter if it's solar or it's luxury media. It's all the same exact principle. We have to start moving from the generic conversations, that generic old way of selling, to more strategic conversations again. It's knowing the why and showing up prepared.

Exactly. So how is Sandow getting there?

Well, we're constantly a work in progress, so we haven't found the cure for sales reps yet. Right. But who remembers, meets the parents. And not to disappoint you, I'm not going to try to tell you how your sales reps can do it by milking a cat. But I want you to imagine that you are Ben Stiller and your client is Robert De Niro. And we're talking about a circle of trust. So trust is not just given. Right. Trust is earned, and it's earned through understanding. So you have to show your client that you know their why. And once you show that, you start to be invited deeper inside of their circle, and then that ultimately helps you win the deal. So in this case, there's no lie detector test needed, but strategic intelligence is absolutely necessary. So the circle of trust picture the ideal customer circle. Right? So in our circle of trust, it's not an in and out. It's not a whether you're on the outside or the Inside, but more of layers, degrees of connectedness. So what you know versus how well you know it.

Exactly. And so exactly what you're saying is that every customer here, every rep, every company is somewhere on this circle, and the further you are away, the less connected they are. And the closer they are, the better understanding they have of that customer and the better they can deliver that white glove experience.

Yeah, exactly. So as we break down these circles, I invite you to kind of figure out maybe where you set on them and to help you figure out where you maybe currently stand. So the outer circle, that's our scattered signals, and that's where most of us, or all of us actually start. That's where all of our data lives. This is the raw data. This is all the notes that we have, all the emails, all the visits, the logs, the notes. We're storing all that data, and it's all right here in this outer circle.

It's a bit like having puzzle pieces scattered around the room, scattered across the venue. It's really hard to get a full picture when there's pieces all over. Right?

Yeah. And I love your analogy about puzzle pieces, because if you think about a puzzle, every piece is essential to knowing the full P, but without being able to connect it together in the right way, you're never actually going to see it. It's not bad data. In this outer circle, the data you have isn't there. In fact, most, if not all of it is probably mission critical. But it has to have connection in order to actually start showing the value. Which brings us to the next circle. This middle circle is our connected insights. So systems connecting scattered signals together. And most, if not all of us, are probably using those right now. So these are dashboards, reports that show patterns. They start to actually help you to inform your next move.

So you're saying if you're integrating tools, if you're moving away from data silos and bringing everything into, let's say, a unified customer platform, you should be in this middle circle.

Yeah, absolutely. Because these are still incredibly value insights. So this is where you start to actually understand what happened. You actually start to be able to spot trends. You start to be able to measure and then even forecast.

But I spot one more circle, right?

There's always one more circle. And this is the most important. This is the most important. Where we're trying to get is that circle of trust. This is that strategic intelligence. This is actually helping you to move from what happened, the past tense, to what will happen. We want to start moving from seeing insights backwards to start actually being strategic with intelligence forward, we want to start being able to answer the questions before they're asked and predict the future.

Yeah, I absolutely love this kind of progression. So, essentially, if you're in this kind of outer layer, in this scattered signal circle, you have hundreds and hundreds of data points, but they're all. They're not very actionable. Like, they do tell a story, but you have to work really hard to understand it. Whereas if you're in this inner circle, you have much fewer data points, but they've been condensed and they're much more relevant, they're much more actionable. You can do something with them.

Absolutely. And that's. That's where we're hoping to get. Right. So that inner circle allows you to start providing that white love treatment that all of our clients are wanting. It's moving from the not responding to anticipating. It's actually now you're no longer that nervous boyfriend trying to impress the dad. You now have become his trusted advisor.

So let's throw it back to all of you. Where do you think your company is based on this customer circle of trust? Who here thinks they're still in the outer circle with scattered signals? Show of hands? Quite a few. All right, who here is in the connected insight circle? Who is connecting data, getting dashboard? Okay, I think I see the majority in the circle, which makes sense. Right. And who here can confidently say they are in that inner circle and they have strategic intelligence? Not a lot. All right, let's get him there. Keith. Okay.

So how do we get there? We love postmortems. If you don't know what a postmortem is, meet me after so we can chat, because we do them in our operations team, and if you're not doing them in sales, you need to start. And that's what we're working towards. So a postmortem helps you start to see what you should have seen coming. You can actually start realizing and digressing and pulling in data points from how you should have done it better. So let me give you kind of a hypothetical of maybe what you've experienced as possible. So in January, you get an email or a call from a client, and they're exploring digital, right? So they're just exploring it. Brand new customer, and think about yourself in the same position. If you're looking for something new, what are you probably doing? You're probably talking to more than one person about what you need. So you're exploring. So as the rep, you just, okay, this seems normal. And I'm Just going to file it away. I'm going to mark it down and file it away. And that goes into that outer scattered signals. And then in March, you have a quarterly check in, and there's a quick ask in there about virtual events. But again, it's not the main part of the conversation. So again, you kind of file it away and you put it back into that scattered signals. And then in April, you have a strategy meeting and they start talking about digital transformation. But it comes up as kind of a side conversation. And because you've been talking, the meetings went maybe a little longer than what it's supposed to, and there's a lot of words and conversations that's happened. It wasn't the main topic. So then you just file that away as, oh, they're thinking about it. And then again, more data goes into that outer circle. And then in May, you get this email and they say, hey, what would be my return on investment of everything that we've talked about in all these meetings we have? And now the Rev's starting to get excited. You're like, I think they're starting to get serious because now they're asking me for real numbers. And then in June, you give them a call back and they're like, hey, let's get this deal done. Let's sign this quote. And they've chosen other competitors. And you find out, because that other competitor, like Jan's example of solar panels, that other competitor was invited into the circle of trust earlier. They knew the why. And because they knew the why, they were invited to be that trusted advisor from the start. And then they lose the deal. That's the patterns we miss all the time because we are still thinking like humans. Each touch point is an innocuous by itself. And if you think about your Reps, you've got 50 accounts, you've got so much data. So it just felt routine. And so you just move on to the next one.

Yeah, you can't really expect a human to be able to connect those dots across time and space. Right. It's really hard to kind of do that.

Yeah. These signals were all there, but they were scattered. I mean, we can't actually see the full picture. But if we have strategic intelligence, if we would start using strategic intelligence, those signals that we heard that was logged in January and March, that would have maybe surfaced information that we could have used to maybe make different decisions. So that's what we're starting to realize. Right. Most of you can attest in here is data your problem probably not. Right. We have lots of data. So much data. Insights. Is insights your problem? Probably not, because we also have insights. They're there. The answers are all there. Our problem is we're not utilizing the strategic intelligence to actually pull that out. That not only affects revenue, but more importantly, it's affecting your reps confidence to see Excel better.

So Keith, what are you doing at sendout to combat that? To get there?

Yeah. So we are a constant work in progress. Right. I'm not going to stand up here and lie to you and say that we have all the answers because we are just starting this ourselves. But there are three things that I believe that are fundamental shifts that should happen, that these are absolutely necessary to start changing the narrative. One is, first we have to change scattered to connected. Every intelligent piece starts connecting automatically.

Yeah. So if you want to move from that outer circle to that inner middle circle, it's kind of a system solution. I'm guessing like you're removing data silos, you're integrating everything, you're putting it all in one place.

Yep. And then the next shift is moving reactive to predictive. So instead of being one step behind, we're constantly seeing a pattern and moving forward. So this is helping us to start spotting signals that humans would normally miss.

Yeah. And this is where AI becomes essential because like we covered, humans aren't equipped to scale, to spot, you know, data points across space and time. So you really need AI to do that because humans really can't do it very well.

Yep. Which then brings us to the final shift. So we talked originally about moving that generic, that old way of thinking. This helps us move that from that old type of selling to now more strategic. So every single time your rep can start walking in, knowing the why.

Yeah. So if you want to really deliver that white glove experience, it's all about like using those connected, the connected insights, turning them into strategic intelligence and then equipping your reps to actually use those tools and bring them, use them effectively for that white glove treatment, right?

Yeah, yeah. And all of these are necessary for success. These shifts actually will help move us closer to our customers and help us stop reacting and start anticipating. But it's really important to know too that these shifts build on one another. So you can't just jump to shift number three without actually doing one and two first.

Absolutely. So we've talked about these shifts and how you can get that strategic intelligence and get to that white glove kind of experience that treatment. But what exact capabilities have you started implementing at and send out to get your reps There.

Yeah. So one of the things that we're going to start doing is sales meetings. Right. Instead of then just having them log a normal meeting, or instead of just making sure that they have the right notes, it's starting to actually use the tools that we have with AI to start capturing, analyzing and understanding these. So instead of it just being a transcription, we're actually wanting to start actually pulling out themes, sentiments, and then also actions. Another thing is deal intent. So maybe you're not talking about a new customer. Maybe this is a customer that you're renewing or has been a longtime customer. Maybe you have two, three, four, five years worth of sales data and it's impossible to really pull out some of those key insights. With deal intel, you can actually start connecting those dots and then you can start understanding what caused that buyer to buy from you in the past, but then also maybe how to upsell them into the future. And then another one is buyer intent. So their actual engagement patterns. So who's reading the emails, who's not reading the emails, who opened it 100 times and after hours because they might be more interested than the other two. All of this is manually possible, by the way. And I'm sure if I asked you to show your hands of how many are trying to capture some of this data manually, most of you probably would say, yes, we're trying to do it manually. It is possible, but it is painful and it is incredibly inaccurate and it doesn't scale and everybody is wanting to scale. I also want to say that this is not just HubSpot specifically. This is any technology that you're trying to run your business in. If a human is trying to do this manually, it is never going to sell. And these are all strategic capabilities that every team needs.

But Keith, it's no secret that your team is on HubSpot and is currently leveraging HubSpot to get to get them there. So let's kind of break down what exact tools Keith is using. Keith and his teams are using to get there. First of all, it's meetings in a sales workspace. So he's setting up his reps to make sure that instead of hours of research, they can have all that prep ready in seconds and they can go into that meeting confident. During the meeting, all those notes are being transcribed, recorded, so that afterwards follow up is a breeze. Then there's the predictive deal score. And deal insights have AI surface what matters, risks, buyer goals, all that good stuff so that they know exactly and have an unbiased opinion of where Their deals are at then of course, as well, buyer intent signals as we covered.

Yeah, and this is actually the really sexy part, right? This is all in sales workspace. All three of these things are in one place. When I used to be in sales, I would have killed for something like this to actually be able to have all these insights in one spot. And you remember when we talked about shift number three, this is helping us move from that generic interaction to a more strategic reaction. What if by using this, a rep ends their day, goes home, and over the course of the evening, AI does its job and when they wake up the next morning, your rep can log in and they have all the insights that they need. They know who they need to call, what action steps they need to take next, and then what maybe even to discuss on that next conversation. AI has done all the heavy lifting for them. Our reps ask we need a sales assistant. And with this, we actually can without actually having to hire someone to do it. And AI is actually surfacing all that information that we need right at our fingertips. It actually empowers us to be strategic from the very first time.

Amazing. And I didn't ask you to give this sales pitch. Right?

So it doesn't make any sense to say all this. If you can't say what, what could happen with this? If we actually put all of these in place, what. What could we possibly achieve? And this is what I'm hoping we achieve. Faster time to close. Who here wants to close deals faster? Right. If you are a leader in this audience, you probably said, yes, close it yesterday. Faster time to close. Significance in deal velocity. But for me, the real win is actually getting our reps back to doing what they should be doing best, and that is selling. I do not want a team of researchers. I want a team of sellers. Again, coffee is for closers. I want to make sure that our reps are doing what they do best and this allows them to do this. It allows them to deliver that white glove service to our clients because they're walking in confident, they're walking in prepared, and they're walking in strategic. They then become that quoted advisor and they know the why.

Amazing. So these are amazing results to go after. But how quickly should folks expect to see those results once they start implementing?

Yeah. So I mean, again, still remains to be proven. And any sales leader would say 24 to 48 hours, right? That's when we want to see the change. But that's not realistic. I would say week one, start small, right? Start with, let's start with better meeting notes, trying to capture that data in a more meaningful way and gathering those insights. And then month one, see if your reps can start catching the details that they normally would have missed from those information they're getting. And then by month three, we're looking for full transformation. So 90 days. Give it 90 days. But again, the key is consistency. If you're not consistent with this, it will break. Trust me. It's happened to us more times than I want to admit. But month one is we're trying to start to build a habit. Right? You're trying to create that habit, and then by month three, you're wanting to actually adopt and be instituting a culture.

Amazing. So building a culture in 90 days. And if I have my data correct, you have a session on this, actually at 11:30 on this stage, right?

Yes.

So if you are interested, go to that session.

Thanks for the plug. So, again, we have not found the cure for reps. So I'm not saying all this to say this is the magic wand, but here's a challenge I would give you. So Monday, after Inbound is over and the Walt Disney experience of this fades, I want you to pick your biggest deal, and I want you to audit the last five touch points on that deal. Structured data, the data that you have. And then I want you to go out and I want you to find at least three data points that aren't in your CRM. That's that unstructured data. And then once you have those insights, I want you to ask yourself, if I would have had this information in the beginning, how different would this conversation have been? And then that's your 80%.

Thank you.

Thank you.