HubSpot Updates: Quotes, Permissions, Workflow Testing

Good morning, HubSpot Nation! Welcome to Wake Up with Customer Platform, your unofficial HubSpot morning show where we help you discover the platform you already own. I'm Chris Carroll, and I'm joined by my co-hosts George B. Thomas and Madeline Donovan as we make sure you're not sleeping on HubSpot's true capabilities. If you're joining live, drop a hello in the comments and let us know what you're building in HubSpot today. Uh, happy Thursday, March 27th, folks. How are we doing today?

Doing good.

Oh no, you can't say you're doing good, it's your birthday. You gotta be doing great.

I'm just saying, I'm doing great, I'm doing great.

Yeah, I'm doing good, Chris. I'm doing good.

Good to hear. Um, well, happy birthday, Madeline, first of all. Um, and, uh, in a past world, this first one might have been a fantastic, uh, birthday present. Yes, it still might be. Uh, there's a lot of chatter about quoting in HubSpot right now and this year, so I'm very excited to see I noticed this yesterday, did not click on it. So seeing this for the first time.

Element of surprise.

Yeah, I gotta keep it organic. I'll just give you a little surprise.

It makes me happy, but we can go into it.

So number 1, create quotes from contact and company record pages. Somehow low impact.

Yeah, that's crazy.

What is it? Quotes were previously only available on deal record pages. Now you can view and create quotes directly from contact and company record pages as well. And by the way, uh, props to the Commerce Hub team. They apparently don't need betas. They just skip like right to live like every time.

Ship it!

Why does this matter, Madeline?

Well, you can now view and create quotes from contact and company record pages, making it easier and faster to view your quote data all in one place.

I love this.

Pretty self-explanatory, but like, why does it matter is like— I don't even know if I have the words. To actually explain.

I do. I have the words. The amount of time I've spent frustrated that I have to create a deal to go, especially when you're living in a world that maybe you're not ready for a deal yet, and especially in the future when there's a world where you're not measuring by the deal. Like, I just want to go to a contact, be able to create a quote, send it over to them, and if everything goes right, then guess what? I get paid. Yeah, because I'm trying to simplify a process, and, and I had to go to a contact and create a deal and then create it. Like, you know how many clicks they just saved out of our lives by just go create the quote? By the way, if you're using HubSpot Commerce, then flip that little switchy switch where they can actually just pay the quote. Imagine that, that you didn't even have to go back in and create an invoice. Less clicks. Okay, I'm, uh Man, I think it's flown over from yesterday. I'm going to calm down for a minute, drink some coffee.

Yeah.

Well, and like, that's just creating them. Editing and like viewing them is huge. Like, why should you have to go to the deal if it's associated?

Preach.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah. This is another sign that we are detaching ourselves from the world where everything has to move through a deal. Record, and I love it. Also, this solves for the, the like dissonance gap of, wait, I can do invoices and payments and all this other new stuff directly from a contact and company record, but can't do it for quotes. Now we can. So very exciting. And I'll just note Alex's comment here. We need to be able to edit quotes copy without going to the template.

Oh, don't even get me started.

Fair request. And I'll just say that just this is a small step, another sign where cash flow is coming in to help just revamp, saying it at the very least, the quoting experience inside of HubSpot. And I expect, you know, nonstop activity in this department.

If I put my HubSpot hat on for a second, I love that you use the word revamp, but I almost feel like they always reimagine, like they reimagine what's possible. And I can't wait to see what comes out around all of this stuff. Yeah.

And by the way, If you want an idea, April 8th, they are going to talk about cash flow on the admins hug. So I think that's going to be probably the sleeper most important hug, most important admin hug of the year.

Yeah, I'm writing it down right now.

Yeah, make a note.

Number 2, new app install and uninstall User permissions for admins. What is it? HubSpot admins now have more granular control over whether certain users can install and/or uninstall apps. This is possible through an update to the existing App Marketplace permission, now broken into two permission types. App Marketplace access allows portal users to install apps from the App Marketplace, including unlisted apps from third parties. Uh, or App Marketplace uninstall access allows users to uninstall apps from their HubSpot portal.

I don't know how I need your response, feel about this, but why does it matter? Until now, one generic— one, ladies and gentlemen, all of this time, one generic permission for both app install and uninstall gave admins the ability to grant or revoke access to users. Uh, HubSpot received feedback from admins requesting more granular control and differentiation between install and uninstall access in their HubSpot portals at the user level. And of course, HubSpot listened and HubSpot acted. Hmm.

So I'll, I'll say I'm happy to see this level of enablement, um, because there's a lot of cases right now where the additional permissions are, uh, you know, can go in the other direction. Um, and it's specifically this unlisted app from third parties.

Yeah.

Whereas I'd say in every other scenario, like in life, maybe not a lot of enablement suggested there, but as they've raised the bar for how to get certified and how to get onto the listed as an app on the marketplace, it can get in the way of people innovating and the need to get to the 80 installs or whatever the bar is And as you expand your team and using HubSpot, keeping that culture, again, it requires a lot of training and alignment on the team. And like, this is— I'm giving you this responsibility. It doesn't just mean go like find 10 apps to add to the portal. But that culture of, hey, if you're in the middle of your process and you see that there's a new tool or a new thing that might help you, like try it out, like explore, like see if we can make things better. Just communicate and, and, you know, support the rest of the team, think about the rest of the team as you do that. So now this even probably adds some level of visibility, you know, that we didn't have before to that kind of activity.

So I'm, I'm one for enablement. I love what you're throwing down here. I will say, however, my brain goes in a couple different directions. One, uh, you use the word responsibility. With great responsibility, or with great power comes great responsibility. Um, I, I even love what you're saying about like test and try. Super admins, be ready to have a new place that you're gonna have to audit on at least a quarterly basis. Of all the apps that potentially might be in your portal that just somebody tested and left lay around like their underwear from yesterday on the floor. Like, I'm like, I just get nervous, but I love it. Don't get me wrong, I love the enablement, I love the testing, I love the trying. There's got to be a process though. There has to be a pro— like, how do you know if Jimmy checked out that library book and if Jimmy just wants to put it back on the shelf or not. Like, there's got to be a process.

Yeah. Did you have to deal with that very much when you were an internal admin, Madeline?

Not a lot, but honestly, in listening to this, my mind goes to the uninstall part. Because if you have, if you're dealing with a lot of change management and you have a lot of team members who don't love having to connect their inbox and don't love having to go into HubSpot, like as a new, like they're still kind of like not feeling it. I can see them being like, how do I turn off notifications? They just smash their keyboard and they try to uninstall every, you know, like, kind of just like, what do I have to do to just turn this off? And then they accidentally, I don't know, turn things off for the whole portal.

This sync is not working, let's uninstall it.

Right, exactly. That seems like a good thing to be able to, uh, yeah.

And all this is an effort, like, especially when you're growing, like, things like this again are like, okay, just have super admin. Like, just go, like, here's your super admin seat, like, go do what you need to do. So we can avoid that here. But I'll also say, like, what happens when you don't allow for things like this inside of the portal? It happens outside of the portal. Like, uh, you know, back in the day where it's like, oh man, I heard about this Slack thing, let me just download it and get my internal team using it inside of this big organization, and now nobody else is using Slack, and we've got another piece of the tech stack, you know, to worry about. So, um, just because they can't do it in HubSpot doesn't mean they're prevented from doing it. Uh, so cool to see that progress. Uh, number 3, include deals in forecast. Submissions.

I'm very curious about this.

Okay, what is it? Sales reps and managers can now see which deals were included in a manual forecast submission. This visibility shows exactly which deals contributed to a forecasted number, helping teams track How forecasts evolve over time.

Okay, why does it matter? Previously, only the total forecasted amount was saved when submitting a manual forecast with no record of which deals were included. This made it difficult to review past submissions, have productive one-on-ones, and track changes in forecasted revenue. Now sales teams can have more informed coaching conversations, improve forecast accuracy, and better manage pipeline progression. Interesting. I do like— this is kind of like a check your work or, uh, show your work thing in my eyes, like to help us understand how you're getting to a certain number.

I only have one thing to say, and I'm begging anybody who is watching this now are watching this in the future, I'm not trying to hack an algorithm. I just need you to put one thing in the chat pane right now. Yes, forecasting. No, forecasting. Like, do you do it in HubSpot or not? Be honest, because the amount of humans that I've asked, like, are you doing your forecasting in HubSpot, are like deer in the headlight look. So like, I love this and I love that we're going more granular, but How do we get more people to use the thing that this is attached to? That's where my brain goes, but it—

chat paint.

Yes, forecasting. No forecasting. That's all I need you to put in the chat paint.

Great point.

Yeah. I don't know. This is like, if it's on this list and it's meeting certain deal stage requirements. Like, why is it not in the forecast?

Yeah, that's— I get— that's what confuses me too. Like, I, I like the idea of being able to tell, like having a list, but you already had a list also.

This seems like a compromise.

Here's a question.

I can just be straightforward, like, for all the people who do their forecasting outside of the system so that they can adjust in a spreadsheet before their one-on-one.

Can I get both of your opinions? In a world that we live in that is AI-assisted, is the word manual— does it become a dirty word? Like, why?

Yeah, good point.

I think it does. Number 4.

Not for the users of that update. Not for the people who like that update.

Right. But enjoy the update.

Right.

Yeah, just don't abuse it. And now it's like, okay, oh, I forgot to check that one. Yep. That $300,000 deal should have been in the forecast. Sorry, sorry, boss. Um, uh, or like, no, this— ah, like, uh, I need the forecast to be a little bit better, George.

Yeah, right.

Okay, let's add this one.

Can we add that bad boy a little bit? I don't want to get yelled at today.

Like, I'm sorry, this is from experience. Like, this, it's, and I get, okay, maybe this is how we get these sales leaders that like to do all this stuff outside of the system so they can massage as needed. But can we, I mean, can we just be better? Anyways, uh, number 4, improved workflow. Testing. What is it? Workflow testing has been improved to provide more clarity around enrollment, the path a record will take through the workflow, and how certain actions will work.

I love this. It is also the longest why does it matter I think I've ever seen so far. So just hang in there with me for a minute, but I also have a question that I want to ask. When I'm done with this. So why does it matter? Um, ladies and gentlemen, you want to feel confident and trust the workflows you build will meet your expectations. However, until now, workflow testing provided only basic information about triggers and enrollment eligibility, and the path a record would take through the workflow wasn't always clear or easy to follow. With improved testing capabilities, there's now a detailed breakdown, all bold letters by the way, outlined why— outlining why a record would or wouldn't enroll in a workflow across all types of triggers. Branches now include more clarity around which path a record will take, or specifics on we may not be able to predict for sure, along with that path visually drawn down the workflow so you can easily understand that journey. There's also a new easy way to preview marketing emails during workflow testing. Just click the button on any send email action to receive all of the emails including and included in the path being tested for a given record. Finally, it's a journey. The testing feature has an upgraded look and— oh, there's the answer to my question— upgraded look and feel to match other recently updated parts of the Workflows app. I was gonna say my HubSpot doesn't look like this. Am I the only one that is wondering what is happening there with the color scheme? But I think you might have slightly addressed that, or, or is this an accidental view into the future of something? I don't know. Anyway, the color scheme threw me off. Yeah, but I'll leave that lay right there. I love this, by the way, because if there's two places over the years, and I mean years, that people say their Achilles heel, reporting and workflows. And so when I see this update, I immediately go, oh, it's— we're simplifying the complex of being able to see that we're going to get the thing that we think we're going to see with the thing that we were nervous the entire time we were building it. Like, this, this is beautiful. HubSpot, thank you. Thank you.

Yes, and props to the team, and, and I want you to have all the permission in the world to start showing Ask Breeze as a step in any workflow screenshot, uh, that you show anywhere in, in the platform. Um, so kudos to, uh, a little bit of, um, mere exposure action happening there.

Yeah, nice.

I do have to say I'm surprised that this is the image they used or that they didn't include another image because I think we're not seeing the part that matters the most to me, unless this is already a feature. But like when you have all of those branches and HubSpot is telling you which branch they're gonna go on, I'm a very visual person. And I need to see, like, I have to imagine the path down that workflow diagram. So I feel like that's going to be the biggest thing is like, it's going to highlight the journey that they're going to go on through the diagram.

See, that would be dope if like all of a sudden it was like, so like how these are green lines, here's where my, when I hear you say that, Madeline, these are like green lines going down. Imagine you test a contact and all of a sudden like the line turns orange and you can literally visual. That would be— I don't know if that's the thing, but that would be great.

Agreed.

Yeah, some developers like, shut up, George.

Now they're gonna tell you, go, go over to the Journey, uh, the Journey. Um, number 5, edit a video thumbnail. Medium impact. How many people are editing videos?

I think I've already had this. Ooh, I feel special.

Yeah, they like to backdate stuff. It says March 17th. Pretty sure it's the first time we've seen it on the show. What is it? When creating thumbnails for your videos, you can now select a video frame and edit it directly using HubSpot's built-in image editing tools or Adobe Express.

Wait, what?

Why does it matter, Madeline?

Well, uh, thumbnails are key to grabbing attention and boosting video engagement. With this update, you can quickly create eye-catching, on-brand thumbnails directly from your video file in HubSpot. And I can, I can speak for it because I've already done this. Um, I definitely like did change thumbnail and then dragged through the video to find like a more flattering frame to use as the thumbnail, um, which is huge. But also the edit with Adobe Express, that's interesting.

So, so I, I too have like scrubbed through to pick a different frame, but, but, but I haven't added text over it. Like, if you— Chris, if you scroll up— I feel like I live under a rock sometimes, I swear to God. I don't even know. Like, if you scroll all the way up and click on that image editing tools, it takes you to a knowledge article, and if you scroll down, it literally shows like I, I, I don't think I've done this yet as far as like what I, what I think and what I—

anyway, uh, what, what is this?

Like, listen, I, I'm super interested in what they're gonna do here because here's the thing, like, if I take—

I—

so I'm gonna take my HubSpot hat off for a second. And I'm gonna put my video hat on. And one of the most important things that you can do to get engagement on the videos you're creating is have a dope frickin thumbnail because it's like the CTA of the video. It's like, oh, George has this really funky face and why is the word splash on the screen? Like, what is he talking about? And like to enable us to do something better than just scrubbing and picking a frame. but to like be able to edit and then it all in HubSpot, not need to go anywhere else. And then that'd be a dope thumbnail. Like the, the amount of like click conversions on a video. I don't even think that's even a real metric. So just that last piece, but, but, but like the amount that could be impacting watch time by this feature could be insane. Across the platform.

This can't be right. This cannot be right. November 20th, 2024.

I live under a rock. I'm like, wait, how? No, there's no— how?

Oh man. Well, we love it, obviously.

Oh yeah.

Um, thank you for that. That's medium impact for sure if you know about it, uh, which hopefully now you do.

Okay, I've, I have an ask. I have an ask. If you're the human that is in charge of the release impact, can you email me?

Yeah, I was just gonna say, how the heck is improved workflow testing low? How is that possible?

My email is george@georgebthomas.com, and I just want to know like what rubrics we're using to actually give that little tag. I'm just curious. Yeah, I don't know. I'll never know. All right, that person is like, George, shut up.

I'm glad you're not sure.

You're another human who are mad at me in HubSpot right now.

I started highlighting that like in a very sarcastic way. Yeah, because it's It never matches. And Casey asked Kyle about it, I think, on the kickoff roundtable that they were on together. And it's definitely based on user behavior in some way, which again, that's where it's like, okay, maybe there are more people doing video thumbnail activity than we think there are. But yeah, would love to understand more. Um, cause I know if I use this filter that you've just given me at the top, I personally would not trust it that like, that it would actually give me the high impact things. Um, because there's definitely some things that highly impact me, uh, and the way, you know, I help clients use HubSpot. That are often labeled as low.

Yeah, yeah, it's interesting.

Like number 6, view, edit, and delete permissions for products. What is it? Ensure better account oversight with new product library permissions enabling admins to control which users can view, edit, and delete products. This new permission system helps prevent unauthorized changes and provides greater flexibility for teams that require different access levels.

Hmm, why does it matter? By the way, my brain's breaking in a whole different direction. I'll share that in a minute. Why does it matter? This feature improves product library usability by enabling admins to set precise user permissions and decide which users and view, edit, and delete products. For somebody out there in the HubSpot ecosystem, I want you to understand the words that are coming out of my mouth. There is potentially a revenue stream that you could create. There is possibly an entire business model of just helping HubSpot users with permissions. Like, we've just today, we've added new permissions. You can now do this. You know how many people are already confused on the permissions that are in there and what they should and shouldn't allow? Like, a HubSpot permissions course is probably a thing. A HubSpot permissions and notification consultant in the future. It's probably a thing. I'll go ask my clone. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. It's probably a thing, but oh my God.

Plus one to that. I think too, like the levels of permissions, like user level versus team level. Like I still don't understand that. I remember they talked about it in the super admin bootcamp and I still don't remember because I'm still confused. I totally agree.

Yeah, layer on seat access. Oh my God, it's super fun, right? I mean, that's the challenge of creating any kind of content around it right now because it's dramatically changing, uh, by the day. Um, so, but I, I, uh, I third that, that request for somebody to create courses, or we could just do some Let's Builds and, and get after it.

There you go.

I'm getting really excited thinking about what this last one could be.

Okay. Refine which associated records get scored in scoring apps. What is it? You can now further refine which associated records will contribute to a scoring rule based on their specific properties. This is, for example, when scoring companies, only score all associated tickets that are in my support pipeline and average all the associated record scores, or only score all associated contacts that have interest equals tech and sum all the associated record scores. This seems like a big deal.

No, it's just low.

It's just—

it's a low deal.

So why should it not be low?

Is this me or is this Madeline?

I'll go because my, my brain's breaking now. Previously, I'll, I'll say what, why, what they think, and then I'll say what I think. But previously, scoring associated records meant scoring all associated records, whether relevant or not, unless you specified the association label. Now you have more control, allowing you to refine each scoring rule and ensure only the proper records impact a score. Okay, I want Chris Carroll to plug his ears right now, and I'm going to talk about MQLs. When you have a qualified lead, That's one contact. That's one contact at a company. And that contact took an action. They raised their hand. They wanna talk to sales, whatever. They're like in it. Everybody else at that company, if you are trying to keep lifecycle stages consistent across the company and the contact level, All of those other contacts, they didn't raise their hand. They might not even know about you. Like they are not on the same playing field. And I don't know, there's a lot of things you can do. You can do workflows, you, you know, you, you find ways to manage it, but setting this up like with that in mind is huge. So That's it.

With anything in mind, please think about it before you set up scores all over the place.

Yes.

But so that's key to point out because I'm— I'll say like not generally a scoring fan, but health scoring I'm becoming a super fan of because as we Because at the same time over here we're saying it's okay to have lots of companies, lots of contacts interacting with lots of other record types like deals and tech. At the end of the day, we need all the people that we're communicating with, no matter which company they're at, no matter which department of the company they're in, to be associated with the records that we're trying to communicate with them about. So at the same time, we need to allow for things like this where it's like, okay, well, we see 100 people like associated to this thing. Clearly they don't, they can't all be scored. So if we want to get serious about scoring and meaningful information throughout the portal, we need to be able to configure things like this.

So So here's, here's what I'll say. I'm actually a big fan of scoring, so it saddens my heart to hear what Chris said, is him not being a fan of lead scoring. Lead scoring, I'm, I'm, I'm— that's what I'm talking about. Because I'll just, I'll be honest with you, uh, my heart got sad when this new scoring thing came out, and then all of a sudden, like, the historical kind of scoring is going to the wayside, and like Back in the day, I used to teach this thing around lead scoring because why most people hate it is it's an arbitrary number. But I used to teach this thing called Radar Research Revenue. I swear I'm gonna resurrect this bad boy and start to teach it again, but with this, with this new scoring model. And when, when I see updates like this, I want to bring it back because it's all about the action that should be taking place based on the score that— and it's a whole like sets of emails and segmentation and like all sorts of things. I, I'm actually sitting here, not that I need another thing to do, but I'm sitting here getting excited about like this and where that could merge for like a, a version 2.0 of like really impactful lead scoring with action and understanding inside of organizations anyway. Not why I'm here.

Yeah.

So I'll just ask you to, when you get a chance, uh, take a look at the Qualification Trap episode that I did yesterday, uh, that talks about— Chris is like, I got an episode— a paradigm shift of like what happens when we focus less on scoring and more on the relationship itself. There's value in all of these things, all of these tools that HubSpot gives you access to, or else they wouldn't give you access to them. It's just the way that we've seen things like these implemented in the past in a way that's like, okay, we can have the system do the work for us. We don't need to understand, we don't need to build these muscles. Around how are these scores actually being generated and does this score mean the same thing as, like, these two people have the same number. I know inherently as a salesperson that looking at all the data in front of me, there's no way they should have the same number, yet they do, right? That's where a lot of more effort and, you know, training like, like what George described there is required to do it right. And there are people, lots of people who have done it right. Just lots more who have not. I'll say that.

So I mean, look at the release impact. There you go. That's a score.

Yep. Wow.

Exactly. What's your email, George?

No, don't email me on this one.

Uh, and that's where we're gonna wrap, uh, for today. Remember folks, you probably already own the solution you're looking for in HubSpot, and please let it be quoting and not scoring. Uh, sometimes you just need to wake up to it. Join us tomorrow morning as we continue exploring what's new in HubSpot. Drop your biggest takeaway in the comments. And let us know what capabilities you're hoping to wake up to next. Until then, I'm Chris Carroll.

I'm Madeline Donovan.

And I'm George B. Thomas.

And this has been Wake Up with Customer Platform. Now go build something amazing. Have a great day, everybody. Bye.