HUBSPOT COMMERCE HUB PART II: THIS TIME IT'S PERSONAL ... AND INVOICED [HUBHEROES, EP. 61]

Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by siloed departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt knowledge. Never fear, Hub heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action and become the Hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of Extraordinary Inbound Heroes as we help you educate, empower and execute Hub heroes. It's time to unite and activate your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that Devin is.

No, he's not here. We don't have to listen to that crap.

Oh. Oh.

But we could have played it. Or should have played it because we do have Jack Cooper Smith back anyway. Liz, go ahead. Sorry, my bad.

How dare I know.

Dang God.

How dare you. I'm just kidding. Hi, I'm. I'm in a great mood today, so I may or may not be a little less prickly than usual.

Oh, nice.

We will find out.

Nice.

We will find out.

Jack, Maybe it's because you're here and your big smile. Jack Cooper Smith is back in the house from HubSpot, everybody. Can we get some applause please, George?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's hot. Yeah.

Wrong button.

Guess what? Who has two thumbs, speaks limited French and had no freaking idea how dazzling and exciting and in depth our last conversation was going to be about HubSpot's newest pub, HubSpot Commerce Hub. Was that me? It was me.

Hubs.

HubSpot Commerce Hubs.

HubSpot Commerce Hub.

I just so excited. No, we had. If. If you've been listening for any length of time. It wasn't too long ago that we had Jack on to talk about HubSpot Commerce Hub.

There we go.

That was better called pronunciation.

Yeah, that was way. Yeah.

It's Friday afternoon when we're recording this, we're getting what we're getting.

Yeah, that's true. True.

It is a special Friday afternoon, however happened. Know what happened yesterday?

What happened yesterday?

HubSpot finally followed me on TikTok. Not the. Not the random applause I wanted. There we go. It finally happened.

That's amazing.

Yeah. Yeah. It only took. It only took about solid year of just begging them on every social post they did to finally do it. And they did it. So there you go.

So you only had to leave HubSpot to get followed by HubSpot Spot, which.

Is ironic because they followed me to Tick Tock if you really think about it, because I was. I was the presence there before they ever had one. So glad they finally recognized it. Yeah.

Come on. Come on, Sprocket. Oh, my God. Hey, speaking of which, List. Let's get specific.

Good on them, though. Get on them.

Let's. Let's get specific though, because if you're listening to this and you're like, wait, Jack was on episode two.

Oh, I wanted to get into that.

Episode 56. Episode 56 is what they can go back to.

Yeah. So episode 56. We opened the door to what we thought. We knew it was going to be a detailed discussion. We knew that there were some fun nuances that we were going to be talking about, but we opened the door. We ripped open the lid on a Pandora's box of exciting questions and thoughts and ideas and all of the potential with Commerce Hub. So this is part two of that conversation. You don't have to have listened to the first part, but definitely cue it up afterward.

But.

But we've brought you back. Jack. You are back to help us get a little bit more tactical, a little bit more granular about what are some of the most exciting features and capabilities that HubSpot's Commerce Hub has to offer. So, George, Max, Jack, are you excited?

Let's do it.

Couldn't be more excited.

Rum's amazing.

Okay.

I'm so stoked.

Big question. Big, big, big. What are the mindsets organizations need to have when building a great CPQ? And for those who are not familiar with CPQ, that means configure, price and quote process within HubSpot. Let's talk mindsets, then we'll go tactics.

I like it. I like it. Good way to kick us off. Liz. And Liz, Max, George, thanks again for having me. Also, didn't realize that you all had had this many episodes already. That's awesome. Looking forward to maybe being on like 1502503.

There we go.

Welcome to episode 61.

Keep rocket and Rol.

Yeah, when HubSpot Payments starts taking bitcoin and stuff like all that. Yeah. Oh, snap.

We'll see.

Can you go ahead and send me that quote in Dogecoin, please? Yes. Easy.

I drew a picture of a stick figure. I've made it an nft. Can I pay my retainer with that?

Thank you.

Those will be the days.

Dogecoin still a thing is dogecoin.

Guys, we're already off the rails. Jack, Bubby, talk to us about mindset.

Chat mindset. Let's chat mindset. So again, great to Be back. Really appreciate you all having me. Of course, when it comes to mindset on the quote to cash or configure price quote side of things, specifically in so many of the conversations that I've had, I've spoken with, you know, founders and you know, other small businesses, medium sized businesses that think for some reason they either need to have like 15 different tools to manage this or need to have this giant, unbelievably complex thing thing to send along to their buyer in order to purchase. And so if I were to dumb it down, I would say simplify is going to be the way to go on so many fronts.

George hates that word on that.

So like in so many. So the average transaction on the quote to cash side of things right now takes about five tools. I think it really should just take one like a single quote. It doesn't need to be that complicated. So folks are doing things like creating a doc in Word and then turning it into DocuSign to then get signed and then they're going into to their accounting system and creating an invoice and then be like, wait, did we send that invoice or was the accountant on vacation that day? And then once it's actually sent, did they actually pay the invoice? You're just jumping between so many things. And while I do totally recognize that some companies need to have a pretty comprehensive process on this, let's be real. I imagine most companies are not selling to Walmart, for example, where they need to have this giant legal contract with all this back and forth. And so we can definitely get into the weeds more on this front. But I'd say it's so much more complicated than it needs to be. You can just get paid on your quote and sign that quote and then call it a day and focus your time on making your customers actually happy as opposed to jumping between all these different hoops and all these different platforms and creating this 50 page legalese document. I think it can just be a lot simpler. So simplify would be my recommendation.

God, I love this so much. Like, I mean, as organizations, it's so funny because we work so hard on the marketing, we work so hard on the sales pitch and like the strategies and all of that. And we, we work so hard in production to make the best product that we can ship them. And then we get to the point where they have to pay us and we're like, and let's add in a copious amount of buyer repellent. So you have to jog a mile, jump through three hula hoops and stand on one toe for 15 minutes to be able to pay me and ship that check through the mail. No. Come on.

We're anti fire repellent.

Oh my God.

We want to avoid Biorepellent as much.

I love that this is the most.

Important part of the process too. This is like the most important part of the customer journey. I'd argue.

Yeah, and, and that's the thing. So Liz, I know you said mindsets and by the way, biorepellent will always stick. Like I know you were the first to use it. It'll always stick. But here's if we go back to mindsets, right, it's the, the mindset about CPQ is that it's about getting paid. Wrong. Right, but wrong. It's about creating a dope experience that allows money to go from one account to the next. And like that's the thing when we think about experience, when we talk about sales and marketing and we say the word experience, what do we mean? Oh, we take time and we put together a strategy that makes sense for the person that is going through the things or coming the thing that they have to come or go through. Many times in organizations CPQ is let's just slap it on the hind end and try to just figure out what works for us.

Well, I think you bring up a really good point there because I think it's not just about the act of getting paid or a client being able to pay you think about what it I equate it to content style. And when I say content style, I'm talking about brand, voice, tone, all of the little rules that live and exist behind the scenes to make sure that the experience somebody has with your content is cohesive, that it's conveying a whole ass human personality in a way that is in line with your ethos, your values, your moral, all of those different things. It's all these little rules and things that you know, your clients and your customers and your prospects don't care about. But they'll notice if it's missing. They'll feel the symptoms of it not being there. And I think about having seamless payment processes as something very similar. If someone is having an extraordinary experience with your business through your products and services, but the moment from an administrator administrative perspective, they have to interact with your business and it hurts. It's going to convey negative things about your business whether they consciously realize it or not. You will convey, oh, they don't quite have their together. Oh, it'll convey like how organized Are they really? How detail oriented? Are they really? Max, I'd love to get your thoughts. So I know you've got something you understand.

The other thing you got to remember too is like when you're configuring not only the price, but you're also creating a quote, you got to remember, this is where you are laying down the promise and setting the expectation of the experience that that person is going to have. You are quite literally saying, you are going to give us X money and we are going to give you X experience lined out on this, you know, piece of content that's telling you what you're going to get. And I say content, but you know, whatever quote, you know, invoice, however you want to, like think about it, right? And that is you gotta remember like you're setting this story up that then all these other people behind it are going to have to follow because if you don't, that person who paid the money is going to be very angry. Really great example of this is something I'm going through right now. We hired a company to build. I won't say which company it is yet until they resolve this. We hired a company to build a 10 by 10 deck off of our pool. And we hired them in August. The salesperson said, you will have it in four weeks. You'll have it for January or for virtual.

You totally have a deck now, right?

I have a half put together death trap in my backyard. And I have had three project managers quit and nothing's happened since then. And now we are knocking on December, right? But some things that happened during that time that were totally. Because they didn't have their shit together when it came to their configuration, their pricing, or their quoting. I had experiences such as when the first project manager showed up a month late, you know, mind you, he said, hey, so there's no dumpster on this agreement. And I'm like, okay, but how the, how the was I supposed to know there needed to be a dumpster on the agreement? What are you. Why are you even saying that to me? That is not a my problem. I bought a deck, not a dumpster, right? And so we had to do this whole background. He's like, well, do you want me to get a dumpster? I'm like, I don't know. Do you guys need a dumpster? Like it was this whole ridiculous thing. And then there was a whole nother experience where they were supposed to put a gate, right? Because I have children and I don't want my children walking onto my porch and falling into the pool. And they didn't have a gate on it. And I was like, hey, guys, can we get that gate on there? They go, oh, there's no gate on the agreement. I go back and look at the agreement. I said, I see the gate on the agreement, and then I hit the guy back. He's like, you're 100% right. This is right after he told me he was going to have to charge me an extra three grand for it. Right. And still nothing has happened since then, after, like, begging them to do it. But they set this expectation. They said, this is what it's going to cost. This is what it's going to expect. And since they botched that process at the beginning and it's been a complete nightmare since then, I'm having an awful experience with them. But again, that story was laid out about what was going to happen. I was quoted. I was told, this is how much you're going to pay. And now everything's a mess because they couldn't take that, distribute it to the necessary people that needed to fulfill on that story that they lined out for me. And now we're in, you know, and here we're up creek without a power.

Here's the thing. I got to jump in here because I know we got a lot of ground we want to cover, but this is a perfect story. And, Max, I'm glad you told that, because somewhere in that organization, there's a marketer that is like, our brand is so dope, I picked just the right color. Our logo is sweet. I've been working on the website. We've created a great user experience. And meanwhile, because of CPQ and because of the process, Max is sitting here going, and that brand is absolutely trash. A dumpster fire, if you will.

Yeah.

Even though they don't have a dumpster. Anyway, Liz, let's move on.

No, absolutely. I'm feeling like between this episode and the last episode where we had everybody together, Max, you're getting a lot of therapy out. You got a lot of catharsis happening.

Yeah, yeah.

It's been loving.

It's been.

It's been a nightmare. I've had a dumpster and a porta Potty in my front yard for months, and nothing's happening.

Who doesn't want a porta Potty in.

Their stack of unused. And a pallet of unused concrete as well? So, yeah. If these people don't figure it out.

Concrete.

Okay.

At least you have a tool, though.

That's pretty sweet.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Look at the bright side. Jack says chill out.

Bring it back around, guys. Let's bring it back around. So we talked about mindsets, but now I want to get more into tactics. Tactically speaking, what does a great CPQ process look like in HubSpot for a business? And I want to quote George on this because I loved the way you summarized this for me. When I was asking what you were hoping most to get out of today's episode, you said one might think that it goes something like, product equals line item equals deal equals quote equals invoice equals getting paid. But is that the process? Most organizations starting from scratch and trying to do it in a hundred percent in HubSpot should follow. So let's get tactically into what that looks like. Jack, I'd love to hear from you on that.

Yeah. So I'd say at a high level, each business on this front definitely has very specific ideas as to how they want to operate. So when it comes to, like, what is the best practice, I'm hesitant to prescribe that too, too much just because people do have strong opinions around things. Like, my buyer really does insist that I send them an invoice. And frankly, folks, if that's what your customers want, I would encourage you all to do that because ultimately we are here to serve customers first and foremost, and so everyone has a different flavor here. Here's my take on it, though. So our products tool is fantastic and we're going to continue to make it more awesome. That being said, does everything need to be a product? I don't think so. You can create a custom line item on a quote in about, I don't know, 10 seconds, more or less, and then send it out. So to get to, like, the exact flow that I see, ultimately, if you are selling like on a quote, you're probably having a conversation with your buyer in one way or another. And if you're using HubSpot to manage this, you're probably using our deal pipeline. Create a quote right from that deal pipeline and then you can get paid on your quotes. Folks, you don't have to create a quote and then create an invoice. You can simply just throw a checkout button onto your quote and then get paid right there to reduce the back and forth. I'd also argue this is a lot easier for your buyer and will increase your conversion rates because people are having to click less. Now, one thing we are conscious of is what I just mentioned a couple seconds ago around, like, sometimes people really do just want an invoice. So let's say you don't you have a buyer that does not want to get paid on your quote? You can convert a quote into an invoice. This is a pretty new functionality that we have. And so if you wanted to just create that quote and then turn it into an invoice, it is about three clicks to do so because you just convert it and then you finalize it and then you send it. So that's really it. And so getting paid on the quote versus getting paid on the invoice, kind of up to your buyer and kind of up to your organization. But I'd say you don't need to jump through too, too, too many hoops. And also you don't need to over index on products as much as it is important. And if you really are reporting on the product level, yes, you should over index on that. But so many businesses are like I have this 10,000 product long library. I'm not sure if you really need to do that. And if you do have a product library that big, not sure that you're getting the metrics out of it that you would really want to get. So that's just my quick take on the, on the flow and the process for folks.

So there's so much that I love about that and then question that I have because I try to put my mindset in the listener or viewer. So what I love about what you said, Jack, is the fact that I can now meet the buyer where they're at. Because I've had people say, hey, I need a quote so we can get a signature on it and then you know, we'll go from there. Okay, sweet. Going to quote them and then I'm going to invoice. I've literally had people after having a sales conversation be like dope, that's what I want. Send me an invoice now in HubSpot. I can do it either way. The flexibility, like simplify is a word we used in here. Flexibility for you as the person who is selling the thing is amazing. Now here's the thing though, because when you said like products versus just a custom line item in your mind or the team's mind, is there a reason when to product and a reason when not to product? Like what, what's the mindset around that? Because again, I know you mentioned kind of reporting and stuff like that, but you know somebody could go all willy nilly and do just custom line items all day long and, and survive, get paid. But maybe you need structure like Jack. What is like dive deeper into products for us and that kind of thought.

It's a good question. And Max, as someone who has had your hands all over the tools for a long time now, be curious your take on this year as well. I guess my quick take is if your product library is approaching triple digits, and this is a little bit arbitrary, but if you have hundreds and hundreds of products in a given product library and you want to take a step back and say, what are my top selling products? And all of your top selling products are like about $50, again, kind of an arbitrary number, but like a low amount. And there are like 60 of them. Is that really like your top products? Like, is that really informing your business and like product combinations that people are most likely to buy? And so I'd say as you're thinking about your pricing and packaging, in a world where you have things like bronze, silver and gold packages, which, there's a lot to be said for that because that is nice and simple for you and for your buyers and can give you a lot of the data that you would need to get. I do recognize that some businesses have some more complexity in things. So for example, let's say you're a pro services business and you have completely different packages for just about every single buyer that you have. I probably wouldn't index as much on the product side of things. More on the payment object, more on the deal object, more on the invoice object, for example. And so I'd say it kind of depends based upon how complex your pricing and packaging is. Once you start getting to like 100 plus products though, that may be a little too complicated. Max, I'm curious your take though.

Yeah. So, George, is the question like, when should something be a product in the product library? Is that like kind of what you're distilling?

Yeah, because. Yeah, because it gets, it's confusing.

Right.

First and back. So I'll let you go. But like the first thing that we have to teach people is that product is line item. Well, that's confusing. So then if I'm gonna add a line item or several line items to a deal, do I need to just do it as a product or not a product? And when should it be a product? That's the question.

Yeah, totally. So the way I think of it is like, products are things you sell. A line item is an instance of you selling that thing and a certain quantity of it to somebody. Right. You know, so that's kind of more the. If anyone is having confusion over like, is it a product or is it a line item? Like you Know, line items are where products meet deals, right? Like that's, you know, I sold five of these products. Like, that is a line item, right. When something should be a line item, I think you got to think about what's the utility of it being in there, right? The utility of it is usually around three different things. One I can easily add to a quote, right? So if it's something that needs to show up as its own thing on a quote, it's very important that it shows up as its own thing with its own price. Then you do that, right? But, like, there are situations where it could be like, well, you know, if I'm, you know, they actually kind of did it on this quote that they gave me, right? Like, they didn't say, you're buying all of these different nuts and bolts for this gate. They called it a gate package, and it was X amount of dollars. Right. Even though there's like a bunch of things in there. Right. So I think there are plenty of situations where you say, hey, if it's something that can be bundled up with other stuff, do that as much as you can to reduce the amount of line items that you have. But if it's something that someone needs to see, how much does this one thing cost? And it's on a quote, That's a good reason to have it. The other thing, too is you got to think about reporting, right? If you care how much of something you sell and you want to report on it, you got to remember line items are objects by themselves. They're objects in a database. They're sitting in a table. You can build reports off of them, right? So, I mean, if reporting on how much of something you are selling. Selling is important to you, you might want to have it as a product that shows up as a line item on a deal, right? Yeah. And it's just on top of that, if you want to do reporting at the product level itself, right. That also might be a reason why you want to have it in there. So, you know, it really kind of depends. But if it. If you check any of those boxes, I think it makes sense to turn something into a product in your product library.

So I got to dive in here because I was looking at the chat, which I love that we have live viewers and we have this chat that we can look at that. And I love, by the way, I love Chad. Chad is always showing up in the chat pane, but he said it really ties back to your accounting platform. And here's one thing that I've noticed as I've helped clients with the CPQ journey is that many times they forget that there's an accountant and an accounting platform that they probably need to be talking to when making the decisions of how they're going to actually set that CPQ up and how they're going to integrate it with the life of that human and the life of that software. So this is a call out to everybody. If you're doing this and you haven't had or you're going to do this and you haven't scheduled a call with the accounting firm or accountant to talk through the mess of getting them to talk together with each other in a way that makes sense because that's the true end result. Then do it. And by the way, you can send Chad the check that he deserves because he brought it up in the chat.

Hashtag checks for Chad.

All right, I want to switch gears.

Well, wait, wait, Liz, I had to answer your other question. I didn't answer your other question.

You had an answer to my other question.

Oh, yeah.

Let's do it.

Yeah. Remember, I'm taking, I'm taking my ADHD medicine, so I'm actually paying attention now. It's great.

So proud of you. There's so much growth happening right here, right now.

Yeah. And what's cool is like, I totally made up this answer on the spot because I didn't get to see this dog until we started. So you had said, what is a good CPQ process look like in HubSpot for a business? So I, I, I, I'm calling this quadruple A. So it's four words that start with A, that I think make for a good CPQ process, and that is accurate, adaptable, adoptable, and automated. Where it makes sense. Right.

Everything could have been appropriate until that last one.

Everything could have what? Been a puppy?

I said everything could have been a puppy until that last one. I don't think we're going to automate a puppy.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Hopefully robot dog maybe. So accurate, Right. Obviously. How are you keeping that information up to date? Are you quoting people the correct price? Are the prices correct to begin with? You know, do the prices need to change when, you know, other, you know, other factors are being considered? Right. Like does someone get some sort of loyalty pricing, volume pricing, like, so obviously you're dealing with numbers. It has to be accurate. Right. Adaptable. There are going to be situations where you sell maybe a little bit differently than you normally do. Case in point, the other day we had a partner come to us and say, hey, could you do bundle pricing on these different apps. And while we were like, sure, we'd love to, our salesperson was like, how the, am I going to do that with the way that things are currently set up? I have no way of like doing an audible and selling, you know, in a way that's not currently set up for me to do. Right. So when you think adaptable, it's like, what are you doing in situations where when things aren't perfectly, you know, being sold the way that they're kind of always meant to and in the box that you envisioned it, how can you react to that? And is it adaptable enough to be able to do one offs here or there, like, you know, quote things a little bit differently? Adoptable? Are, are your, is your team actually going to use it? Is it easy for them to understand? Are they. Are, are the tools, like, easy to navigate? Is all the information they need to put together this proposal, this quote, this invoice, whatever you want to call it, is it at their fingertips and are they not trudging through three different tools in order to be able to do that? And then is it automated where it needs to be? Right. So for example, there's many ways you can think about automation when it comes to like, you know, quotes and invoices and things like that in HubSpot. Right. Couple of things coming to mind. Are you automatically invoicing people? Are you automating the process of even just signing a quote or, you know, paying for it? Like, how are you automating how these things are happening? Am I moving a deal to a certain stage and is it automatically sending an invoice to someone or, you know, whatever it may be, I want to shout out like another app builder on the HubSpot app marketplace that I think is super relevant to this conversation. There's a gentleman named Harry Bevins. He has a company called Weave and Blend, and he just released one of the coolest apps I've ever seen that has to do with line items. In HubSpot, it's called Line Pilot. What it allows you to do is it allows you to just change code object properties on a deal and it automatically generates all the line items for you dynamically using rules. It's one of the craziest things I've ever seen. But that actually takes that automation and adoptability thing because it makes it much easier for your sales reps to just check a couple of boxes or, you know, choose a couple options on some properties and all of a sudden all the work that you Usually do. Clicking through line items. This stuff's just automatically added in there. Right. So it's. It's a little bit easier to do. And of course, there's some things you're not automating too. Right. Like keep that in mind. Just because you can doesn't mean you always have to. But yeah, I would take that. Is it accurate? Is it adaptable, adoptable and automated where it needs to be. Take that. Adhd.

Four A's.

That's incredible. The four A's. I never. The four A's we. We needed but never knew we wanted. All right.

Yeah.

So now let's dig in.

Jack, can I add something on top of that?

Yeah, absolutely.

If it starts with a. Sure. If it doesn't start with a, just keep your mouth shut. Jack back.

Now I'm trying. Now I'm.

No, no, you're good.

I don't know if I'm accurate. I don't know.

Don't force it. You're.

I need some of that. I'll take some. Harry. Harry's awesome. I actually connected with Harry a couple of weeks ago. We blended. It's a totally legit company. And what's really cool to me is so many of our partners are starting to get into this commerce space. And like, when I started at HubSpot, and really what HubSpot was built upon was like we had all of these marketing agencies. It's been really cool to see all of our partners really transform into CRM integrators and migrations and now, like a lot of app development, especially in the commerce space. And ultimately, I think that this is. And I hope that this is a function of this commerce space kind of changing. For so long, it's just lived in the back office in the accounting system, for example. And what we're ultimately talking about it about here is like, bringing this forward into the CRM and so just like piggybacking off of that product conversation. Let's say if all of that is always just siloed in your accounting system, for example, you're not able to answer questions like, okay, what folks in this industry, what are they most likely to buy? Folks who came from this specific source of ours, what are they most likely to buy? You're able to answer a lot of more robust conversations about your business when you bring your customer and your commerce data together. So it's been cool to see the evolution of our partner network as we really do bring commerce and CRM efforts together. So thanks for giving me that time there. I'd Be remiss if I didn't mention that. But like, I think that is ultimately the floor of everything that we're chatting about and things are changing too, which is great. It's time for change, first of all.

Absolutely. There's a reason why we had you here, and it's to drop knowledge bombs like that. Now, I do want to move us forward a bit here, so I want to move away from the CPQ process holistically and now talk a bit more about some of the secrets, secret sauce, the hidden gems of features that live inside the Commerce Hub. For example, do people even realize that there's a Coupon functionality in HubSpot? So, Jack, I'd love for you to shine a spotlight on some of the pieces of the hub that folks might be missing.

Yep, always love a question like this. So just because we've been chatting cpq, I'll mention a couple of things on that front. I feel like a lot of folks are unaware of how robust our custom quote tool can be. You can really create some pretty fancy schmancy quotes on our platform, and so look at our default quotes quote templates that we provide, but you can definitely roll up your sleeve and get pretty intense on that front if you'd like. We also, of course, have a lot of integrations as well that can accomplish whatever really you would need on that front. Another thing about our quotes tool that I feel like folks are often unaware of is within our custom quote template, you can actually use personalization tokens. That's something that can make quotes personalized, obviously, but ultimately it can also save you and your team a tremendous amount of time when it comes to just typing in data. So that's one of those things that I feel like a lot of folks are unaware of and I wish more people knew about. On the quotes side of things, obviously, discount codes. Awesome. Excited for that. We're probably going to do a little bit more work on the discount code side of things next year when it comes to like limited usage or time bounds and things like that. A couple of other things for payments and meetings, you can literally, I would argue, the easiest thing that any human being can sell is their time. That is the definition of what connecting a payment link to a meetings link looks like. And I know that, like, you know, George Max, like a lot of folks who talk about HubSpot all the time, as someone who has spoken to, I don't know, 8, 9, 10,000 customers in my time here, there are so many people out there who would spend a couple hundred Bucks to just chat with you for like an hour. And so just put it out there on your website, get paid. That's something that I think a lot of folks are unaware of. That is just such low hanging fruit for any business. And then the last one that I'd call out is probably optional products. So what that looks like on a given payment link is you have essentially a given product line item and then an add button next to it. It's not a full fledged like Shopify shopping cart by any means, nor are we really trying to solve for that specific use case, full transparency, but it does get us closer to like a shopping cart and it really is like upsells to its core. So those are just a few of those features that I think are absolutely awesome. And when I talk to folks who are using Commerce Hub, they see that and they're like, oh, wish I knew about that because I could be making more money if I did.

Okay, so I got to jump in here for a second. And then, Max, it seems like you might be chomping at the bit to say something too, but Jack, because you brought up payments in meetings the other day, I was working on something and I was like, oh my God, this is a HubSpot wish list item. Oh my God, Jack is going to be on the podcast. I can talk to him about it. Dude, payments in the new CTA's tool, to be able to click a button and pop up a CTA and to be able to say, instead of just a form or a button, to be able to say, I want to drag this payment link just like a payment button into a CTA tool. Talk about a great user experience for getting paid on your website. I'm just saying it would be dope.

Can I also add payments and forms?

Oh yeah.

So you can essentially turn like a submit button into a checkout button.

Yeah.

You can also connect multiple payment links to a given form as well. So that's one of those things that like, the folks who use it, love it, but it kind of can fly under the forum's radar to a degree.

Yeah, Max, I wasn't really chomping at the bit to say anything good. It's all self serving. I was just gonna say I do have one of those paid payment links sitting right on maxjacofcoen.com if anyone wants to go check it out. If you're listening, my time is just a meeting link away.

Just a meeting link away, baby.

No, no, that's just.

That's just chilling for Max though. I Don't. I don't hate that, by the way. I don't.

I mean, well, it took us 40 minutes for anybody to shill. I think that's pretty good. Go us.

Oh, I remember I was still. I was still in SC when that. When that feature came out. And I was like. The running joke was like, all right, guys, I'm gonna start charging 50 bucks for any sales reps that want to get on my calendar. But, you know, never. That one didn't go.

You would have made a lot of money, Max. You should have done it.

I know. I mean, I should probably do it right now. Like, if any Ses, I mean, any. Any HubSpot sales reps need me to SC a deal for you, just use my link.

All right. Actually, I want to dig into a HubSpot Payments a little bit more. We've already talked about the new CTA tool. We've talked about the way you can use it in forms. But what are some of the other cool places and ways you can use HubSpot Payments?

Jack, Jack, can I ask something real quick? Did. Did E Signatures get an update recently? Because I see a big, fancy new badge next to E Signatures.

So E Signatures have gotten. Haven't gotten a giant refresh, but we've been moving down the, like, pricing and packaging of it. So, like, now, like, a lot more folks can use it with. Without the major restrictions. No major changes. Are you sure you're seeing it on the E signature part specifically?

Max, I'm looking at the quotes E signature and right next to it, it says new.

Well, so we have this new functionality around, like displaying information on the quote side of things.

Okay, Just so everybody knows. Yeah, just so everybody knows. I like pizza.

I do too. I love pizza. All right, so HubSpot payment.

Dude, Dude.

The question was, hey, Jack, what other cool places can you use? Hey, guys, what's this new tag?

Are you sure you took your medication today?

It's literally.

There is high level squirrel at like, vibes happening right now.

I'm putting. I'm literally gonna paste this into what I'm. I'm putting it in our Slack channel and you can see new next to E Signatures. Swap was curious.

Well, so we have, like, more. More like tracking around the E signature usage that. That could be what we're referring to. And just for the record, I think Chicago Pizza beats me pizza 10 out of 10 times. So if we're talking, I'm here for New Haven.

Thank you very much.

Frank Pepe. Not bad.

Oh, Frank Pepe. Dude, yes.

All right.

Else can we use payments?

Can we use totally brand new question, what are the different ways we can use HubSpot payments?

So this is this entire like burdening, like growing space in the B2B area called embedded payments. It isn't just HubSpot that uses that term. It's something that's growing pretty, pretty quickly. So meetings, forms, for sure. CTA is absolutely a very close connection there as well. And then when it comes to marketing emails, when it comes to our CMS as well, you folks will see a payment module right there on the left that you can drag and drop right on over to make, you know, getting paid on your website very, very easy. So you do not need to be able to write code by any means. You simply need to know how to drag and drop. And that's pretty much it. Also in places like the extensions that you can use, like your email extensions as well as conversations too. So like, like for example, let's say you have a support rep talking to someone and they're like, hey, I really, really want to buy more products. It's so inefficient for that support rep to then go to their back office and be like, hey folks, here's what they want. Let's go ahead and send them an invoice. And then obviously have zero visibility into that invoice instead, right where they're working right there, drop a payment link and ship it. And so we want to make folks a lot more efficient on this front. And I really, really, really would love to see a lot more businesses open up completely new revenue streams here. I don't know about you all, but like, if I have 10 bucks coming into my account that I didn't previously anticipate, great, I'll take it. And if you can just open up some new revenue by selling differently online and productize your services. One thing I always fall back on is we have like, I've seen divorce lawyers selling their services online without talking to anyone. If they give, a divorce lawyer can do it, you all can too.

Yeah, so that's quite the equivalency.

I never thought I would ever. Let's all learn from divorce lawyers. George, go ahead.

Yeah, so a couple things I want to just throw out here. The having the power to have payments inside of your Gmail or your outlook. I hope people just take time to realize how powerful that is for the conversations that you're going to have.

Have.

Now again, this might be the wish list item episode that, that I'm gonna have here because when I think about communication and I think about the fact that I can put it inside of my Gmail or my Outlook. What I wish was possible is that I could actually create a HubSpot template because I can insert a snippet, a document, a meeting link, a video. I wish that I could create a HubSpot template that I could add a payment to as well. Saving my sales rep, AKA myself, the time of actually needing to even add that because it was already in there, right? So again, I'm not poo pooing on anything. I'm saying these are all awesome places, but HubSpot, Jack, Cooper, Smith and team, please continue to find more places where we can leverage payments inside of HubSpot.

Well, Kirk, do like a payment link.

Dude, dude, don't pee on my parade. I want there to be insert and.

Under insert payment link.

Payment link.

Yeah, Max's se hat I was going.

To say just dropped the URL in George. Yeah, I think here's, here's like another, I think a bigger, bigger thing where I'm like, wow, it's cool we finally got here now, right? Like, and I kind of compare it to when Service Hub first came out out, right, where you know, HubSpot always preached attract, engage, delight, right? As like the inbound methodology. And yeah, I know for anyone, like before that it was attract, convert, close, delight. But you know, if you think about it, it was still all the same thing, right? We knew delight was so important, but we never had tools to actually help people do it. We had like, you could kind of do it with like the marketing hub a little bit. But when we had the Service Hub, you could finally truly attract, engage, delight, right? I think what's neat about quotes. Not quotes, sorry, invoices finally becoming their own object, right. Is when you think about the basic motions of payments in HubSpot, we have a way to tell you how much it's gonna cost. That's a quote. Tell you how much you owe us, which is an invoice and tell you how much you paid, which is the receipt after you get paid. So it's like those major forms of paper or what we used to represent with paper, right? Those now all have their proper digital space within HubSpot, right? And you no longer have to do this fun game of like, well, it's a quote, but it's a quote with a payment link on it. So it's kind of like quote 0.5, but it's not quite an invoice because it doesn't say invoice. Right. Which a lot of people like. Like, I'm sure, Jack, you saw plenty of people say, well, let's just do a custom quote template and call it an invoice. Right. It's like now all of those things, even if you use them in slightly different ways. Right. I think us being in the digital age now, it's more common that we see a quote with a payment link at the bottom. Whereas, like, you look back, I don't know how many years, that's not happening. Right. But, you know, now it's just. I just think it's neat that, like, we're still enabling those businesses that sell in that way where it's like, here's the quote that's just for you to look at, know how much it costs, it's making, maybe for you to sign it. And then you're, you're used to getting an invoice from us. We can still do that if that's something that you want to do. Right. We're not totally forcing you to be in this digital A, where we're telling your, your, I don't know, your, your. Your accounts receivable or payable or whoever it is. Oh, you got to sign this quote thing when you're expecting an invoice. Right. Like, it has those three major motions. Now, what, what you're going to pay, what you owe us and what you did pay. It's all there. I think that's just.

All right.

It shouldn't be hard to get paid. Like, once you've gotten to that finish line, shouldn't be hard to get paid.

That's the part of the process that shouldn't hurt. And then we talked about that at the beginning of how important it is to make sure that part of the process is seamless.

Before.

Before we say goodbye to all the daylight hours and our time together here with Jack, there is one other big topic I want to make sure that we cover today, and that's invoicing. Why should folks be invoicing through HubSpot versus other platforms? What makes it so special, so awesome, so happy in HubSpot, particularly, by the way, for those of us who use QuickBooks like that, that. Because I know a lot of folks who are still on that bandwagon.

Totally. Well, so part of your question as well is like, the undercurrent of it, I guess, is like, what is the relationship between a given invoice in HubSpot and a given invoice in an accounting system? So I recognize that I, I promise I'll tackle That I'd say at a high level, though. So Commerce up is really looking to solve for three use cases more than anything, let you all get paid faster, increase your revenue and save time. Like, every time that we release a feature, we're like, how does this help someone get paid faster, increase their revenue or save their time? I say these words all day, every day, because that's really what we're relying upon. And you all have heard me say this a couple of times throughout this conversation around, why go knock on your back office's door to say, hey, can you create an invoice and send it out? You're able to just create it within HubSpot and then distribute it in a few clicks. Now, there's also an element of a lot of the back office folks being like, oof, I don't know if I want to open this door wide to every single person in my company. Which is also understandable. But because of that, they're constantly answering the questions like, yeah, I sent it out. No, they haven't paid it yet. And so there's just a lot of inefficiencies around that as well. So a lot of this boils down to being able to get paid fast and also have the visibility that you all need. So, like, Max, I know you would always pay your invoices on time, for example, no doubt about it. But these project managers that you've been working with on your deck, let's say that, like, they sent you an invoice and you just, like, didn't pay it for whatever reason. Maybe you know, the email bounce or something like that. There are so many businesses I've spoken to that are like, you know what? I was halfway through this giant project, this giant deck that Max is building here next to his pool. Oh, I didn't realize he didn't actually pay the invoice. And now I'm having cash flow problems. I've heard that story so many times. Whereas if you're just living within HubSpot, you can see all of that information right there. So there are a lot of benefits to the visibility of everything within our system. There are also a lot of benefits to being able to just create an invoice and send it without having to rely on 15 other people within your organization. Now, I'm sure a lot of you all are hearing this and being like, okay, that's great. I need to really make sure, though, that I have all of this accurate information in my accounting system so that I can pay my taxes and close my books. And run my business. I'm happy to say that we do Indeed have a QuickBooks integration. Xero and Netsuite. It is the Commerce Hub team's number one priority over the next handful of months though, to really beef up these accounting integrations for some quick context, folks. We've had HubSpot payments for a couple of years now, but the invoice object and the invoice artifact to get paid is relatively new. So as we've really leaned into invoicing and invested in invoicing, we realized that if you're going to have invoice 1, 2, 3 within HubSpot that's open, we need to be able to sync it over to QuickBooks and have invoice 1, 2, 3 open. When it's paid within HubSpot, it needs to be paid within QuickBooks. Essentially what we really just need is the two systems to talk to each other in real time with the same invoice number. That's the direction that we're really pointed in. It's just a bi directional invoice sync. We're really prioritizing QuickBooks, Netsuite, Sage Zero. Well, I'm sure we'll get to more, but just wanted to give you all a little insight as to what my team is thinking about nowadays and how this plays into invoicing more broadly.

George and Max, what are you thinking there? I see you both, you're both like very solemnly like head nodding and processing. This is the price. You both have been this, this whole episode. What's going on over there?

Well, so I, my, my, my brain went sideways, right? Because I did do a little Snoopy Snoopy earlier in the week or maybe it was even today. It all runs together and I saw something that I don't know if I have seen it before and then, but maybe it was there, maybe it wasn't. And I was literally asking myself, should I ask Jack if it's always been there? Should I ask Jack if it's something new? Should I ask Jack when people should actually use it? Because I think it's probably a confusing part to the process. Does anybody care? I'll just get to it. Jack. In invoices, in Settings, there's add tax ID to invoices. Like I didn't even know I could add a tax id then I'm curious of when I would want or need to add a tax id. Is this a physical product because they buy it in North Carolina? Is this a service like now all a sudden I need to know the law a little bit. And I don't even know m. Jack, if you're like, you could be like, bro, consult. You're a lawyer or something. But I just saw it and I'm like, is that new?

Oh, yeah. But I asked about E signatures and get crucified.

Tax ID I was giving you.

I know.

Hey, I love the attention to detail. First of all, yes, it is a new feature. I think that this is one of those things where, in general, like, you will know if you need to have it is, I guess, kind of how I'd couch it. So did we send a giant email to every single user when we shipped this feature? I'll be honest, we didn't. But at the same time, if you're a given business and you think that you need this, you probably do throw it right on there and then you can call it a day.

Oh, it's interesting, Chad.

We have a lot to be. We have a lot more on invoicing, though. Sorry to interrupt you, George, but, like, we are still. I'll use a baseball analogy. I'm sure we're into, like, the third or fourth inning of invoices. We have a lot more to do. And ultimately it's along the lines of allowing for you all to get paid the way that you want and the way that your buyers want. So stay tuned for more on invoicing. That product has. Has some more investment coming on as well. I promise.

Take it all. I'll take it all. And it's interesting because again, I'm watching the chat pane again. It's Chad, Mike, dude, everybody, actually, Saleem, Chris, everybody's on fire in there. But Chad says if you're in Canada, every single line item needs its own tax id, which is interesting because then all of a sudden I'm like, is this part of or the heading in the direction of that? I know eventually payments is not just going to be us only. Is this like a stepping stone to actually releasing payments to the global world? Anyway, I digress. Liz, go ahead.

I have a little bit. I have a little bit I can say on that if y' all are curious.

Oh, okay, okay.

Look at Max's face. Oh, okay.

Couple more months. A couple more months. We are pretty darn close to expanding commerce hub outside of the United States. And I'll give you all just a little bit of a sneak peek on this here. This isn't as much a which country are we going to next? Instead, we're really going to be focusing on unlocking currencies and payment methods as well. Now folks, you all have heard us talk about HubSpot payments and commerce Hub. I'll just like quickly clear the air on the difference between the two. If you all do have any like questions on that, or if you're asking yourself that Commerce Hub is the broader product. HubSpot Payments is a way to power Commerce Hub. I think about it like an engine. And so there's nothing to purchase with Commerce Hub. It's not like $100 a month, for example. It's a consumption based model where you simply pay processing fees. So instead of buying Commerce Hub, you select an engine to power Commerce Hub. HubSpot Payments is one of them. Stripe Payment Processing is the other one. So you can plug in Stripe and then use Commerce Hub. Now we're going to be using that in order to expand internationally. And so give us just a couple more months, folks. It is November of 2023. Give us a couple more months and I'm sure you'll like, I hope that you'll like what we're rolling out.

That's such. You heard it here first on Hub heroes, folks, right? All right, last question. George, Max and Jack, what are your hopes and dreams for B2B E commerce capabilities? What are we hoping to see in the future?

I hope I see more people using it to power the rest of their like Flywheel. Right. This is a frustrating thing that I run into selling zebra because a lot of folks come to us because they have a hyper complicated way they want to sell and they're like, I want to be able to charge someone X.

Amount on the first day and then start a subscription and I want to.

Put it on a quote and they just, all they're caring about is like the transaction. I am having a hard time getting people to see the bigger picture of saying when you have your commerce data in HubSpot and this is irregardless if it's like a zebra or you're doing this with HubSpot payments, like let's remember you have things like, like subscriptions and records of people paying you in different ways, whether it's stripe transactions or HubSpot payments, whatever it is. That is a lot of really good data that you can power all these other parts of like the customer experience with. Right. How are you onboarding new people when they buy new things? How are you, you know, trying to win back folks that cancel stuff or are no longer customers? How are you thoughtfully segmenting your audience? Buy things that they've purchased in the past in order to create smart, thoughtful upsell and cross sell opportunities. How are you enabling your support people down the road to do refunds or be able to see how much money has someone actually spent with us? So maybe we might, you know, do some different stuff for them. Whatever it may be. Right. Like all this commerce stuff spreads across the entire customer experience.

Experience.

It's not just this like narrow sales thing. And the thing that I see that just disheartens me a lot with customers is that so many of them are just hyper focusing on the how do we just like set something up so we just get paid? Not how do we take this history and data that we have about how people are giving us money and when they're giving us money and when they stop giving us money to then inform the rest of this experience that we could be providing for the them. So not necessarily a wish for the tool, because the tool's got a lot of stuff that lets you do that already. Right. It's more so a wish for the folks that are using it, the operators and also folks like us who are encouraging those folks how they use it. Right. Is to think of different ways to like use that. That's not just how do you get paid as quickly as possible. And then it stops there.

I love that, George.

I love that.

I'll let Jack go.

You want to let Jack go?

Go cheer. So cool. I'll. I'll, I'll take that, Mike. So I guess three, three things. I'd love to see smaller tech stacks. It like there are just so many businesses that use bajillion tools to run their business. And I'd love to see a world where folks can consolidate and simplify. So I, you know, argue against that one in so many ways. I'd love to see smaller tech stacks. I'd love to see new revenue streams for businesses. So one thing that our former chief Product officer would mention is HubSpot builds software. We also build careers as well. And like what I always took that as is, we can allow for you and your company to be a champion in your company by pushing forward the modernization of your firm into the Internet. Error in Internet era. I'd love to see a world where you all are productizing your products or services and selling them online in a little bit of a different way. And folks, if you and your business, if you're the chief marketing officer, the chief Sales officer, for example, and you can open up a completely new, very efficient revenue stream, I'd love to see more and more of that happening. And I think that's the way that the world is pointing in so many ways. And then the last thing I'd really love to see is the end of this front office, back office fallacy. Like right now, there's this giant wall between the two. I'd love to see that wall come down a little bit more, have a touch, a nice integration data flow between those two systems, and really build out a little bit more of a middle office where CRM is not only the center of gravity for your customers, but for your customers and your commerce motion. So I'd love to break down that wall a little bit. Those are the three things that come to mind immediately.

I love it. I love it so much. Yeah, Liz. So it's funny because I'm going to go back to how you kind of positioned this. And by the way, there's somebody that I want to have on the podcast in the future to talk about B2B E commerce, because let's be honest, most people, you'd say that too. And they're like, isn't that one of them? Their oxymoron things? Isn't B2C E commerce? Like, what do you mean, B2B E commerce? And so when I think about this conversation, one, I want to be one of the humans that helps accelerate the. The thought of these simple words. Is it possible? Because so many people are stuck in the. Well, this is the way that we've always done it, so that's the way that we're going to continue to do it. And when you have companies that are innovating, like HubSpot and all the app ecosystem folks that even make HubSpot more powerful than HubSpot originally is, you have to ask yourself, can we work work? Can we build? Can we own a company that dives into the philosophy of is it possible? Is it possible that we get paid in an easy way? Is it possible that we provide a great user experience? Is it possible that the accountant isn't throwing the stapler at the marketer's forehead? Is it possible? And dare I say yes, yes, it is.

Well, on that note, Jack, I can't believe I'm going to say this, guys, but I think in the new year we're going to have to do a third Commerce Hub episode because we still have like 18 things on my list that I want to talk about. Like, I want to talk about reporting, I want to talk about subscriptions. Like, your girl still has questions. So, Jack, we are definitely going to be having you back on in the new year, but thank you so much once again for joining us to our listeners at home. Thank you for tuning in each and every week. Make sure to leave us a review on your preferred podcast podcast platform. And Max and George, I love you guys and we'll talk to everybody next week.

Okay Hub Heroes, we've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the Hub Heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hub heroes heroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the League of Heroes. FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend, leave a review if you like what you're listening to and use the hashtag Hub Heroes Podcast on any of the socials and let us know what strategy is conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human and of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.