Paid Assessments, Collective Knowledge, and HubSpot's Future Trajectory with Adam Sharrow

All right, welcome back to Agency Journey. This is your host, Gray MacKenzie from Zenpilot. This week I've got the pleasure of bringing on Adam Sharrow from Process Pro Consulting. Adam, welcome to the Podman.

Hey, good to see you again, man.

I feel like most of the time I've got folks on and then I meet them somewhere afterwards. This is the opposite. We got to meet in person first and then I get to be on. So this is going to be fun. Tell us a little bit about Process Pro Consulting.

Yeah. So Process Pro Consulting, we are a HubSpot diamond partner and we are HubSpot technical experts. So we focus on getting your HubSpot set up for your business. We do that through implementation, projects, optimization. You know, you're existing in HubSpot already, but no, you're not getting quite everything you want and then just ongoing support retainers. Because as we know the CRM and HubSpot itself is a product and kind of once you build it, you want more and you want more and we can get better things out of it. And so that's how we kind of help people in the ecosystem.

Yeah, you've got a great team, you've got a good name in the space, which is cool. You know, there's a lot of good HubSpot partners and then there's a lot of HubSpot partners that are, I don't know, I feel like talking to and being in that ecosystem for a long time, you kind of get a feel for who consistently maybe wins a lot of business, but everyone on the back end is like, man, I can't believe we got into their portal and like it was a, you know, it was a disaster when we took over clients from them. And that's not the case with you guys. Like the client Journey, you started to hint at it there, but it's not like, hey, this is a marketing retainer or this is, you know, whatever else. What does it look like? I'm coming to you for CRM help. What does that client journey normally look like?

Yeah, great question. So it's kind of like a doctor, right? You gotta go to the doctor, you gotta tell em your symptoms. What do you, what are you seeing? Kind of what issues are you trying to solve for? And we think of that as like an assessment or a discovery. So that's paid? Yes, that's a paid, paid upfront. And you know, whether that, whether we do the full assessment or we build that into just, you know, an hourly block of time that we're working with you, we've Got to get in, go through our checklist that we have. We'll go through all your settings, all your tools, and really look at what workflows and properties you have, you don't have, and come back with a plan to say, hey, here's the gaps and here's how we can help you. And while we're doing that, it's not just us looking at your HubSpot. We're going into a detailed process review with your team members. So we're hearing from the sales team, we're hearing from the marketing team. How are they using the system? What works, what doesn't work, what concerns them? Oh, the data over here doesn't ever seem right. I. We kind of get by with it, but it's got to be fixed. So we're really digging in and learning your business and learning kind of all of your processes while analyzing kind of where you're at with HubSpot to kind of see the opportunities that you have. So that's the, that's the first step. From there, then we can kind of come out and say, like a doctor, well, this is what we see wrong, or this is what we see, want to work on and you want to work on as well as, as we talked about through that process. And we'll lay out a project plan and we can get that done in a short amount of time or as fast or slow as you want. And so we'll phase out projects and really allow for you to see the start to finish. How do I get from point A to point B, C, D? It's hard to do everything at once. And so I feel like we do a great job of helping you lay those things out in a clear path and then follow that path so that we're not skipping around and feeling like, oh, we're in the same spot six months later.

Right. That makes sense. What? And then, so once you're done with that project, then there's like a support retainer. Is that the recurring revenue piece of this?

Yeah, exactly. So then we jump into kind of an ongoing support retainer, which is going to be a monthly set of hours that we work with you, and those consist of a weekly meeting, touchpoint, to make sure we're all up to date on status, and then working sessions where needed for the larger projects that get built out within that retainer.

If you don't mind, I'm going to ask you some very specific questions here around the client journey. Feel free to not like, if there's stuff that you're like, hey, I don't want to share this. Feel free to decline. How standardized is that assessment process? Is it like everyone pays X amount of money and it takes X amount of time or does that vary a lot based on, hey, this is a, you know, 5,000 person enterprise versus this is a 50 person startup.

Yeah, it's, it's changed over time. Right, and it changes over time because of what you're saying, like what are we looking at or what are we trying to solve for in the beginning when we're working with 20 to 30 person business? It's a very standard approach to probably what you're doing in the marketing team, what you're doing on the sales side. Teams aren't super large, which means you're going to have less complexity of routing rules and all of the different components that go into it. And so over time, as we've kind of grown up market, being a diamond partner and working with enterprises, anywhere from 200 to 5,000, that's a different project, but I think it's different. So what we'll do is we'll go in and say, okay, what are their goals? And determine what do we want to get out of the assessment? Because what they want to get out of the assessment up at an enterprise level, it's different than what an assessment needs to get out of, you know, at an, at a more small business entry level position.

I'm going to throw this one at you because I think a lot of people probably deal with this, but I would imagine there probably are some people who come to you and say like, hey, I know we're not getting as much out of HubSpot as we wanted, but I've got to believe you get a lot of people too who are like many. This one reporter, I need this, like this one thing that happened. And sometimes when you throw an assessment at people, they're like, I already know what I want. There's someone understanding, like, I know you need to validate this, but are you just digging for other problems or like maybe there's other stuff they want down the road. Do you get any pushback to that or is that not really an issue?

Yeah, yeah, we definitely do. And again, it's meeting the customer where they're at. So you know, if, if you've got the top five things that you need to get done and you're ready to go and you know there's a caveat to it, right. Like when we jump in what you're telling me without me jumping in and knowing kind of where the system's at and how the system's set up. I can go ahead and we can start working on those items. But we may find these things that have to happen and we'll go in with a mutual understanding of that because I mean I can push an assessment all day, every day, but if it's not what the customer is looking for, there's, there's value in, in getting those quick wins or helping them see and understand kind of what they're trying to solve for and what they need to do to solve for those. And that might mean more or less, but we're never trying to just make up work to make up work or come out of an assessment and be like yeah, we found all these things so now you're stuck with us. I think our mentality is the anti retainer. We're a month to month retainer that the value comes from the work that we're doing on a monthly basis and continuing to do for you. And you can change that at any time.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. How does that. So that obviously provides then some or creates some challenges on the delivery side in terms of what capacity looks like. Hey, we've got a budget for what that normally looks like is like slightly lower utilization. We'd see a different org which means a higher delivery margin would be how we try to balance that out. Totally fine. As long as the numbers all make sense. How are you doing plan. And obviously if you have super strong retention anyways, then that's not a, you know, that's not an issue that you'll see as much. But what are the like the side effects or the impacts from that model that you've had to deal with as you're building it? Obviously if you're heavily project based, like your pipeline is super important, but what are, what are the things that you guys have had to do to, to make that business model work as well as it has for you?

Yeah, I think you touched on it. I mean retention's huge and so we have a very high retention rate because we're helping kind of get those projects off people's task lists and helping them move those forward. And typically those are. If you came to me with that five list item, how long have you been looking at that for? And so if our team can go ahead and get those kind of crossed off the list and help you shine and be able to take that back to your team and show hey we're moving the dial forward that that creates retention and that, that's kind of like that ongoing thing. So with that being said, that helps a lot in terms of like the changes over months. And, you know, we're just very communicative in working on what's important for our customers. So I can go ahead and come back to you with that assessment report and start working on number 95 or exaggerate here. 95 list would be long. But I come back to you work on the wrong prioritized thing. So being flexible and working with our customers to work on their top priorities that align well to the plan because maybe once something has to happen before it's super important, but then we're all working on the. On the top things that are making a big impact, which create retention.

Yeah. Are there any projects you take on that are non HubSpot?

No. So we're only. We're only doing HubSpot. We do, you know, HubSpot to Salesforce integration do a lot of those. Very, very. We're very strong team on Salesforce. However, we're working with folks that have their Salesforce admin. That's its own beast of a system. And to try to take on both of those types of things at the same time, to me and from past business experience is like stepping out of my wheelhouse.

Yeah.

And. And I in as a buyer, I would rather work with the expert in the tools and have multiple people across those knowing that you're not like now on your third system or your fourth system or your fifth system. And I think the marketplace now demands that just as well because you don't want. You don't want somebody that's figuring it out. There's too many people out there to go through that experience.

Where does pipeline come from? The risk that people identify, anytime you're partnering up with a single platform and say, hey, we are the HubSpot technical experts is what if HubSpot the marketplace doesn't grow as quickly or shrinks or whatever the platform risks? What if this platform starts offering their own services or whatever else? And I think HubSpot, it seems to be a very strong. A very strong wave. And as someone who bought shares at the ipl, like that's. That's been great.

Congrats.

Great. Great from my perspective as well. But how do you build and develop pipeline built around HubSpot too? Is that mostly from HubSpot reps pulling you into deals or what does that look like for you all?

Yeah, it's a combination. I mean, definitely HubSpot partnership is. Is strong. And so for us, we focus on. On maintaining that and focus on the accreditations and focus on the steps that you've got to take to be presented as a top partner. But I think outside of that, you know, what we've always learned too is you got to build your own sales process and sales funnel. And so, you know, we're very key for us to be the thought leaders out there and be sharing our knowledge and really creating a pipeline through that. So it's a combination of the partnership combination through other partnerships with folks that are working with businesses in the space that need CRM support, that are huge drivers. And then it's just the HubSpot ecosystem is so big and growing so fast. Yes, it's a risk for sure, but there's also when you look back on how did the Salesforce ecosystem evolve and how many Salesforce partners are there and how many. Like it's, it's very replicative of that in the past and sure, like Salesforce partners may be trying to get into HubSpot, but you don't really see that that much. And it's like, it's a, it's a sign to me that, you know, there's long term kind of stance if you can position yourself as a strong technical partner. Yeah, there's, there's only going to be more and more and especially as HubSpot's clearly moving upstream.

Right.

Those projects get larger, more technical and that's your expertise that's needed.

Yeah, this may be less so moving upstream. But what like are there a handful of things that you see most commonly? Hey, here's the, like almost everybody has this issue or like what's the, what's on that? Like we made the bingo card of hey, these are the most popular things that people are coming to us with. What does that look like?

Yeah, I mean, I think it's just boiling it back down to the kind of the basic processes. You know, are we tracking people across life cycle stages? Are we understanding lead source and attribution? That's huge. That's probably the number one thing right now. Everybody wants to overcomplicate it and get to every minutiae of little detail and it's. Can you even see it directionally right now? Like where your sources are coming at a top 10 level, but everybody wants 125 sources and that doesn't tell you anything. And it also makes it very hard to analyze and you end up just analyzing data and saying this is wrong. That's right, this because you make your rules too complex. So that's a huge one. Kind of see where I Stand on that you can. More simplicity can help you long term point and shoot. But understand there's the need for super details and we can get into all that as well. And then just the lead management process, especially with the new lead module out, there's a lot there that to be unpacked. I think you gotta go slow in those newer situations with HubSpot. Right. So we've been doing a lot of testing of what's good use cases, how to work it, but setting up lead status, your dispositions, being able to see all those conversion points, getting that, I consider those the foundations and then standard pipeline management and renewal. Those are like probably the five things that if you don't have those set up and you're not doing something consistently well, then what's your data anyway? Because it's oh, I create a deal whenever I want versus oh, we have a set criteria and now all that data is measurable.

So yeah, that makes a lot of sense. I've seen. So the highly technical HubSpot teams always run into working on larger and larger deals. There's some kind of team training that needs to have. There's like the enablement piece that's not just the tech solution, but that's the behavioral. Like how do we address the behavioral challenges here? Or people need to understand how this works and what gets updated. Do you mostly solve for that by solving with one internal champion who's then relaying that and enforcing that across the team? Are you going in and doing trainings with them or are you leaning on, you know, other folks to, to do that, partnering with anybody? How does that get solved?

Yeah, and that, that's one, I think probably the hardest thing that all HubSpot agencies are trying to solve for because I don't know what the number is, but it's probably close to 500 product updates this year. Right. So how do you keep it all straight? How do you share that knowledge? How much knowledge do you have to know as a team to what level? Right. I mean what. One thing that I practice and preach is not everybody's going to know everything but that collectively as a team and as an agency, we've got people in certain areas that are experts in those areas that we can rely on. And then it's deploying those same motions over and over again. And so how do you do that? It's. Yes, there's kind of one point person that's helping kind of distill what are the top things. You know, we'll take those back on a weekly basis. And run through those kind of in our team meetings to build awareness. Right. It's so hard to get super granular on every little tool and every little detail. And so I don't think, I don't think anybody out there is doing that. If they are, they're trying to. But does everybody on their team have that same. Same level? It's going to be no. And so it's. Yeah, it's breaking out kind of by Hub who experts should be in r to go to the team and then just keeping everybody updated on the general movement of, of in changes and how they impact. Because if I can make our team aware of that in a, in a, in a systematic way on a weekly basis through our specific channels where we're highlighting and updating our templates, at least you know about it now so that you can dig in when necessary based on like the projects that you're working on.

That's a really good point. This is something that every team struggles with. Usually going from the first five to 10 people to hitting a team of 15, 20 plus people is.

You got.

More changes and more information happening in the company than is realistic for most people to stay up to date on. And it feels stressful and feels like, oh, we're starting to get siloed. Like, this is. This is not good. And I think HubSpot's full. You know, you look at all the product updates that you shipped our first year as a partner in 2012, that's like two weeks now of HubSpot development. And so it feels overwhelming because it's new to everybody. But communicating to the team, hey, this is normal. This is what happened. How do you think big businesses work? This is what happens is not everybody knows everything. And the important thing is you know who to go to when you need to know, you know, whatever it is and that the big stuff comes out. And that's a whole skill that I feel like I've spent a lot more time having conversations about and trying to learn and get better at for our team at Zen Pilot and also help other teams through is, hey, it feels uncomfortable if you're there super early and in the small team and now you've lived to that next layer of leadership is in place and we've got these different departments internally. That feels wrong just intuitively. And so getting over the. Regardless of how it feels, it's not going to be efficient if everyone spent, you know, 20 hours a week trying to keep up on every single thing that changed.

Yeah. And that's something that, that's something that for me, we're, we're a 13 person team now and that's a huge, you know, you go from 2 to 5, 5 to 10, 10 to 20. You guys have probably, you've done that. Those are major milestones and they're major points where those feelings and those changes and like we're in the midst of that where how do you get to 20? It's like, well, we've got to get more refined. I can't have 10 people trying to solve the same thing.

Right.

And it's like, oh, if five of us are all going back and forth about this one new feature and oh, well, this is how we could deploy it and that's how we could deploy it. It's like, that's a lot of lost time and effort and energy, which is fun and exciting and super healthy because that's what makes our team our team. Because we're inquisitive, we want to learn, we want to dig in and it's awesome. But how do you control that behavior so that it is getting streamlined?

Right.

That is kind of our, one of our main things right now that we are working on and coaching people through that as well. Right. Like you don't know everything.

Right.

But where do we go? Like as a whole, as an agency, people are working with you because of your collective knowledge and collective experience. Right. And they're counting on us to put those templates in place and kind of work through those standard processes. So nobody's figuring it out every single time. Which, which we all do. Right. But then it's also, I know if I bring this to a team of 15 people versus one freelancer or one contractor. No, no, knock on the contractor or the free. It's just they're in the same boat. They can only know so many things and it's not everything and, and, and nobody. It isn't for anybody anywhere. And so it's important to, to recognize that and, and get everybody okay with that to, to be able to learn and grow and, and you learn from experience and working with others and, and the team. That, that's why people are buying.

Right.

Kind of the time of an agency.

Yeah, 100%. What I mean, as we look forward here, we're wrapping up Q4 23 right now, you look forward and the HubSpot ecosystem appears to be strong and continuing to grow. You've got a good reputation. Like there's, there's all the things on the flywheel, to use the HubSpot language, that are going to Keep turning. What are the things you're most excited about coming up in 2024? Like what, what are you hoping to accomplish? What do you anticipate seeing?

Yeah, like from HubSpot specifically?

No, no, no. I think specific to Process Pro Control, like from an agent perspective.

Yeah. I think continued opportunity for the larger, more complex projects. I think that technical space right now is just at a tipping point where there's the key elite players in the game that are in most of those projects, you know, and that's a lot driven by the HubSpot ecosystem. But I think with the accreditations and those kind of really coming into play, I think there's an opportunity for ourselves to really get established as that technical agency. You know, we, it's interesting for us, you know, we do a lot of optimization work. Like, we have never really been one that's just like, okay, we're going to go get all new work. Right. All new work is our only focus. It's just, well, let's build a sustainable business that is helping people be really awesome at HubSpot and that's, that's what we focus on. But we're seeing now, okay, there is more opportunity in the new business. We got to get involved in that. And so for us as a business, that's a big focus. You know, getting people into HubSpot, making those conversions, things that we do now. But a lot of times we're picking up a, oh, we tried to do the, we tried to do the implementation or we, we did the implementation with this services and it's not really where we need it to be. So can you guys come in and kind of play cleanup? So that's one thing that we're excited about. We're seeing a lot of traction there. We're excited about the accreditations and the changes in the partner process just to create an up level everybody. I think that's something you alluded to in the beginning where there's 7,000 partners and they've made changes there to kind of clean up, clean out some of the smaller ones. But, but I hate that too because you know, those folks were doing good work potentially. They're just small and they weren't focused on building and building and. But that's where we're at and like, that's where we're excited to be is in this tipping point, we want to make that jump from 13 people to 25 so we can start to break down and build out our departments and get that second layer in there. And so that's kind of where we see our future going. And then that along with kind of what you said, like the knowledge management and always improving our project management.

Yeah, right, right. It's in, it's a never. I mean, it's just like anything that is the central thing that we do is deliver on work for clients. So that's always going to be a piece you work on. I ask everybody this question. What is your number one tip for agency operators? So I'm going to spring that one on you as well.

Yeah, number one tip is, you know, think like we consult. Like you can't, you can't solve everything in one fell swoop. It's a step process. And so kind of as we've grown our agency, there's metrics that, that we look at and there's metrics that we lead by. But are they the right thing to be showing to your team and pushing on at this certain point in time? Right. Like when you're at five people, sure, we're looking at margin and we're understanding margin. But when you're trying to establish a team is margin what you should be pushing on? And there's utilization. And so it's like get your metrics, get them visible. But, but recognize like when you need to be pushing on, on those triggers and knowing the impacts of pushing on those. Because if your only goal is utilization and margin, you're going to burn people out. And it's a pendulum that swings back and forth and you've got to recognize that you've got to invest some time and effort into getting people up and running and getting them so that you can have margin kind of in the future. Right. And you can focus on it at the right time at the right place. I say that with. Because that's how we consult our customers. Right. I want everything from now until I want the very end. It's like, well, if you're not doing project management whatsoever, to go from zero to hero, that's a big step for all the incremental change management pieces. So it's like you got to start somewhere. And that's a motto that we do internally. And so don't try to do it all at once and, and take those small steps and those, those iterations kind of as you're, as you're growing.

I think those, it's a recurring theme. It's like we've all. If you're an entrepreneur kind of by definition you probably have, you have ambitious goals. In a lot of cases you have over ambitious goals. And so trying to pull People along through it. Huge. I think your point, too, about knowing what to where have we tested an offer? And okay, hey, we've got an established fit here when these types of projects come in, we know, and we should be pricing these appropriately and scoping these and managing projects appropriately to be hitting this from a profitability and utilization perspective. And then, hey, we're just trying to get this service off the ground or this team off the ground. Like, the, the goal posts look a little different for that than if this is already established and now it's just about scaling something. So I think those are. Those are both really helpful pieces for folks who want to follow along. Adam, or have technical HubSpot expertise needs, whether that's clients who need a partner who. I think one of the cool things about Process Pro and what you guys are building is you're not stepping on people's toes if they're trying to do the marketing work or the website work or the, you know, whatever else there is. And so I think you're a lot less threatening as a potential agency partner to bring in than, you know, a lot of the firms that are out there. Because I love deer. You know, your CRM optimization work, that's great. Oh, by the way, do you also. Oh, you do marketing too? Like, yeah, let's. Let's get a quote for that. But. And so I, I would say that just to get the wheels turning for listeners who are, you know, they've got clients who would benefit from that, but they're hesitant to, you know, to introduce the wrong agency. I think talking to you guys in a lot of cases is the right move to make. So where should we. Should we point people to the website, LinkedIn, like, what's the best place to follow and connect with you?

Yeah, so definitely LinkedIn. I'm doing a lot of posting and kind of keep people updated on HubSpot and solutions that we're solving for. So that's just a good spot for general knowledge and continuing to understand kind of what we solve for website. If you want to get ahold of us.

Yep.

You can go out, fill out a form, you can direct Message me on LinkedIn. Responsive on all channels there. So, yeah, like you said, we like to stay in our wheelhouse, and that's super important. And I think there's a place for people and spaces that can do it all, and it has its benefits. And then maybe we evolve over time and we've gotten pulled in directions, but it's like, we're not a website agency. I'm not creating, designing, and building websites, but can we make a landing page template? Yeah, we can, but, like, that's a big difference between being a web agency. Right. And so we work with those partners and love working with folks like that to combine forces so that we can all do what we love. And I think that's the other important part.

Right. Right. That's awesome. Cool. We'll make sure we link those up in the show notes. Adam, this has been great. Thanks for coming on today, man.

Yeah, likewise. Thanks so much for having me.