State of HubSpot 2024: How The Best Do It Different | Jonathan Burg Interview

Welcome to the Sidekick Strategy expert interview Inbound talks edition. Today we are thrilled to have a very special guest, Jonathan Berg, a thought leader in the HubSpot ecosystem and one of the brightest minds shaping the future of revenue strategies. Jonathan recently spoke at Inbound 2024 where he tackled the ever evolving landscape of HubSpot and how the top performers are differentiating themselves. His talk, State of HubSpot 2024, how the best do it different. Don't we always want to know the answer to that question highlighted key trends around customer centricity, CRM investment strategies and leveraging AI. Was there AI talks at Inbound? Just a few. For innovative go to market approaches. He was joined by an all star set of humans such as Sam Jacobs, Bo Brooks, Pete Caputa and Jill Rowley for years. We're excited to dive deeper into these topics and get insights into how leaders can blaze new trails and drive growth in a fast changing world. You know what, because you're wearing this shirt, I'm going to change that just a little bit. They can do meaningful growth in a fast changing world. Jonathan, welcome to the show buddy. How are you doing today?

Yeah, I'm doing great. Thanks for having me. George. Yeah, it was an intense three days. Learned a ton and like I said at the end of my presentation with that crew, I was honored to be joined by a top notch panel that dropped some serious knowledge. So thanks for, thanks for having me on this.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And as far as panels and humans, my goodness. Now I do want to start somewhere because by the way, I did a little research, I watched a little stream, it's kind of tucked away in the middle of like a bunch of other stuff. But I have to start with how your talk kind of started. Jonathan, is inbound dead?

Is inbound dead? I dropped it. I might drop that one.

Right.

The data is interesting because when we asked folks. So we surveyed 1600 marketing sales, customer success and revenue ops professionals around the globe and we did a two phase stuff. So we did a qualitative aspects where we did a whole bunch of interviews with executives across the whole ecosystem and then customers and end users. And we used that to create a survey which then we deployed out through market research, best practices. We have a partner that keeps it all really tight for us and one of the questions that we asked was what's your primary and secondary go to market Strategy? And only 10% of people selected inbound as their primary. And I was like blown away by this. I'm like, hold on a second, what is going on People like this is the HubSpot ecosystem is AI really messing things up that bad, that quickly?

Right.

But what we learned about it was then the combination of inbound with the other choices. So product led growth, account based growth, customer led growth being number two as a primary, which was super interesting and I think very indicative of the current environment. And then account based approaches as well highlighted that inbound isn't dead, it's, it's actually thriving. It's the, it's ha. The tactics and the strategies that are going to work to drive inbound methodology today is, is different.

Right, Right.

And I think that's what organizations are struggling with now. The good thing is I'm a big fan of the, the pavilion, the winning by Designs and some of the other sort of research firms out there that talk around go to market fit. I'm a big believer of that. And I think what companies are doing now is they're really trying to figure out like, great, what is our go to market fit, how do our buyers buy, how, how do people want to learn about our solutions and then how can we help them to understand that it's the best solution for us? And that's really what we found and what the panelists highlighted on that call. Now the stat that followed that, which is I think great news for everybody listening because I'm hoping that y' all are aware and investing in HubSpot solutions is that 96% of people said that HubSpot is supporting their go to market regardless of what they chose.

Right.

Whether it was whatever combination of those different go to markets. I rattled off, 96% of people said HubSpot is supporting me in that motion.

I love that like no matter what you call it, HubSpot tends to be in the foundation or the root of it. It's interesting, Jonathan, because you said a word and there's certain words that always pique my interest of like, okay, let's go down that road. You said the word change. Right. And in that inbound talk with you and the amazing humans, there was a bit of an kind of emphasis, if you will, for the need for revenue leaders or leaders to innovate or risk falling behind. So I want to ask you, because obviously innovate is change and risk is change most times. And we don't want people to fall behind. So what are the key indicators that a company is standing still on their go to market approach? And maybe since they're standing still, actually falling behind, like what are your thoughts on that?

Everybody at the company is focused that they don't have enough MQLs or, or that they have many different go to markets. I think there's an, I think another one is that there's, there's their tech stack is massive and overly integrated as well.

Right.

I think there's some trends in innovation around consolidation, being more efficient, making sure that you're aligned around the metrics that matter. We found organizations that were performing the best, right? That was the name of the talk that were performing the best, hitting their revenue targets lowest CAC. They were 100% aligned around the metrics that were that drive their business. Now that doesn't mean that there was consensus to get there.

Right.

Like they probably did the hard work to get there, but they, they ranked themselves as aligned against those metrics that matter. And the metrics that the top performing organizations really anchored on were net revenue retention and profitability complemented by new business growth. So I think those are some of the, those are some of the key areas. I think, you know, you talk to a lot of revenue leaders around challenges and in the State of HubSpot report we found that keeping up with new technology was a top challenge and then integrating AI into business process was a top challenge as well. I think organizations that are still sort of asking the question like should we leverage AI or what are we going to do or how are we going to leverage AI?

Right.

I think the question really is like what are we going to do to get ready for AI? Because we know we've got to get our data in order, we know we need to have better systems integrations and let's prepare for today.

Right?

Because this thing is happening and the impact is already taking place. So I think those are a couple of the dynamics that we're seeing in the market and that the research bubbled up as well.

Well, yeah, I love first of all that it's backed by research and I love so much of what you said and I, I started to kind of shake my head when we started to talk about AI. Not because I'm frustrated with AI. I actually love AI, but the amount of people that are doing the, you know, head in the sand scenario like it's coming, ladies and gentlemen. It, I mean it's actually, it's here, but it's. If it's not here for you, it's, it's coming for you. So it's funny because we're talking about, I will talk about it a little bit later, but I saw this kind of thread that was happening along the conversation too and I want to Dig into that because I want your thoughts on this. There were mentions of the importance of being more customer centric. The way your boy George B. Thomas likes to say it is human centric. But, but let's just stick with the word customer centric. Like how do you define Jonathan customer centricity. Especially like in 2024, heading into 2025, like how, how has it evolved in what it is now today versus maybe what it had been previously in years.

We could go a whole thread around, call it B2B B2C. It's at the end of the day humans, right? So yeah, we, that, that's a whole other conversation that we could, you could have. George, I absolutely love starts all the way at the top, down to the, down to the bottom of the funnel, right? In that, in that life cycle and creating alignment around it. So I think gone are the days because of AI and because of just savvy buyers and how we're creating customer connections. But bad are the days are just writing, quite frankly, not great content at scale so that you can rank. And you're writing for Google and you're writing for SERPs and driving people to your site, right? Like I think now is the time where you have to deeply understand your customer. You have to understand their challenges, their pains, what are, what, what kind of world are they working in in their environment and create content that's going to inspire, that's going to educate, right? And that's going to motivate people to question and change the status quo. And if organizations are really focused to like genuinely helping their community, right, genuinely helping those people to learn and grow, hopefully they choose you to partner with. But they might not. And that's okay because you help them along that journey. And you take that mentality from content production, you take that mentality from. Let's just take the SDR for example, right? I saw this graph the other day where the number of SDR emails going out like has like increased signi like it's hockey sticked in the past year and a half. So that's interesting, right? AI is a facilitated environment for that to happen. But imagine if you thought differently about how can I use AI rather than trying to drive cold outbound emails to get somebody to convert and take a meeting with me to how can I deliver and give, right? How can I give value to the person I'm reaching out to. And that is my sole job. My sole job is to help people who I have unique insights and research for that changes the whole approach, right? And now Maybe you're going to send less, but you're going to use AI to be. Have higher precision and have higher personalization and drive so much more value out of that conversation. And then I think that flows all the way through to the back end of the customer life cycle. And I'm really excited. And the. We ran this research over the course of probably like a three to five month period and we have to do it relatively early because we want to launch it at Inbound. So, you know, there's not a ton of insight into the product roadmap and it's very objective in terms of the market. But when you look at the findings around people investing in customer marketing and people really focus on net revenue retention, and then you think about the capabilities that HubSpot launched around Service Hub and then some of the AI elements that they're implementing into that part of the tool. My goodness, like, I'm super excited about that. And I think that's another area of being very customer centric is when we do have a customer, how are we going to drive more value for that customer so that they're going to stick with us and they're potentially going to expand that account. In the revenue planning session that I had at Inbound as well, I asked the question, how many people are going to be in an off site or a leadership team off site in the next two weeks? And probably like 70% of people raised their hand. And then I asked, what percentage of time do you believe you're going to spend on driving new business growth or customer retention?

Right.

And the entire, every single person said 90% new business growth, 10% customer retention. And that right. There needs to be a shift.

Right?

How can we make sure that we're focused on both sides of the spectrum and really focus on how can we deliver more value and create more value from our customer base? And I think HubSpot's delivering the data, the tools and the hubs in order to allow us to accomplish that.

You know, it's funny because we had a chance to talk in the green room before we actually hit the record button was like, man, I really like this dude. And then all of a sudden you just gave me that answer and I'm like, man, I, I think this actually especially this, by the way, I'm just gonna throw this out here. The subtle mic drop of oh, and by the way, this other Inbound talk I did.

Like, it was an intense couple of days, man.

Hey, I'm telling you, it was, man. Schedules were packed. But listen, I Think I think we're brothers from another mother because so much of what you were saying about like, maybe it's not just about more, but it's more value in a like container. And we have been so passionate about like, no, let's not use AI to just create more blog articles, but let's have AI assist us in creating better content depth wise and, and which by the way, it has actually helped with speed and depth at the same time once you get good at it. Anyway, not why we're here, by the way. My talk was the future of content and it was human powered AI assisted is the whole jizz of it. So it was like really, it was meant for this year's inbound for sure. But here, let's get back to this interview. Okay, well, I'll start, I'll stop nerding out on you as a human because I'm just super excited that we're actually in this interview together. I want to go into kind of the title, right? It was like how the best are Doing it Differently. And so Jonathan, when you think about the best companies, especially in the HubSpot ecosystem, because you know, we all love HubSpot, how are they using their CRM system differently? Like, what are some specific examples when you think of like innovative CRM strategies that you've seen or heard of in, in the ecosystem?

So I'm going to stick to the data for some of these answers. So they're actually using it like genuinely. Like we found that a lot of organizations just are not maximizing the capabilities and features of HubSpot and that was reported out through the data. And the best in class are using 10 or 10% more likely to say that they're maximizing the features of HubSpot. So that's just, that's just step one, right? Is what is our use case? Like how are we going to actually utilize our, our technology in order to make that happen? So that's, that's just, that's just like table stakes, right? Is like how can I. And one of the reasons why organizations say they're not using HubSpot to its fullest extent is skills and then knowledge and education as well.

Right.

So there's some elements that we highlighted that the best do in order to like enhance that. And I think the partner ecosystem and what the partner ecosystem has to offer really does support organizations to get the most out of it. The other is this notion of activation. So like how they're using it. So the number one way organization, the number one reason why organizations are investing in HubSpot is to manage data. Okay, it's really interesting, but the best significantly rank activating data higher than everybody else. So it's not just managing it, it's thinking through how can I activate data. All right, so another really interesting fact is from 2023 we found that organizations who are the best, right? So the way that we define the best are achieving their revenue targets, have higher growth and have lower cost of acquisition. Right there I'm missing on the exact stat. I apologize and I don't want to misquote, but they're more likely to have operations Hub in their environment as well. So I think that whole notion around managing data, creating really strong data structures aligned to your go to market and then identifying ways to activate it, with all of the breeze capabilities coming into the market and other of the app, the integrated apps having really strong AI capabilities, you need to have good data structure, right? So you need to activate it. And then how can you use HubSpot's core capabilities with Operations Hub? And we have some fantastic use cases with customers who are leveraging OpsHub to drive some really cool integration frameworks and then data flows associated with it, right? To really get the most out of the tool as well. And then the, the number one reason, the number one way organizations are driving profitable and efficient growth with HubSpot as well is through is is driving team efficiency and automation, right? So utilizing automation capabilities to help prioritize customer connections and allow organizations to focus on strategy rather than constantly doing a lot of the manual cycles. We actually found that it's a top challenge too for organizations is that they're spending too much time on admin and not enough time on strategy. So the best are really investing in productivity and automation in order to get that done.

So much good in there as well. I have been a fan, maybe, maybe a little bit fanatic around like ask great questions to get great data, manage your data, but the data needs to lead to insights because the insights need to lead to action. And so activating based on that data is so such a key point that I hope the viewers and listeners like zone into and ask themselves the question like are we? And if not, how can we do what Jonathan just said on this interview with our data inside of our organization.

George, there's another really big one on that thread though too, is that organizations who are sort of in that top category on average have two or more hubs. And I think it's really important to call out that when we look at the general sort of like marketing automation, CRM, customer success landscape. You know, I think myself, you and others, we talk to a lot of organizations that are managing a lot of integrations, right. And you know I was like rewind 15 years ago. Like I was one of those demand gen folks. Like I grew up as like a demand gen and marketing ops individual and I was like, I was all about like let me like build my tech stack and have all of my point solutions like set out.

Right.

And you know I think we're, I think we are at the time where yeah, you want to extend your core platform with capabilities that you really need.

Right.

That's why we have an app ecosystem that's so healthy and robust in the HubSpot ecosystem. But I think the thing that I'm really a impressed by and grateful for is that we have these hubs of activation and if you are integrating and consolidating as much that makes sense for your business, the more likely you are to have that clean data, the more likely that you are to create that activation and the more likely you are to drive usage of the tools. So I could also go into a whole thread about data we found around platform usage among the best, but I'll stop there. I feel like that's a really timely applicable point as companies are moving into 2025. Taking a hard look and thinking through like is my sales organization or my service team jumping into like three tools to do their job on a daily basis? Because I will guarantee you like look at their employee engagement scores compared to the that is working all within HubSpot and able to leverage automation and productivity. My, my gut tells me is you're going to have some happier employees that are utilizing a purpose built solution in one space for them.

Yes, yes. And by the way, if you're watching this and you're like employee engagement score. What? Start there, start there and then go back and watch this and implement the things. So it's funny Jonathan, you actually mentioned Breeze, so I'm going to dive into this. I want to nerd out on things that I know we both enjoy and love. AI and HubSpot and AI was a good part of the talk. Again, there was threads inside of the talk with the panel. What are the most significant ways you see AI transforming HubSpot users, sales and marketing strategies in the very, very yesterday, I mean near future.

I think being able to quickly turn really good valuable content. Probably summarizing some of your talk here, but I believe the value of good human driven storytelling and content that genuinely helps a buyer has significantly gone up.

Right.

Like, if a brand doesn't have that, they're not going to, they're not going to be able to break through and create the type of communities that we need in order to grow. But once you have that core content, how can you itemize that out and deploy it in personalized and channel appropriate ways? I'm super excited about all of the different tools that Breeze and HubSpot Content Hub has to offer in order to enable organizations to do that, I think so. In the state of HubSpot, we found that moving into 25, the way that organizations are excited about the impact of AI is data and insights. So 2023, 2023 into 24, it was all about generative AI. It was about content creation.

Right.

So having an agent and having tools to help you prioritize deals, have you ask questions of your pipeline, have you understand and be able to create insights quickly and more aligned to what's going to help you drive more customer engagement. Absolutely amazing.

Right?

So I think that's another really big area. And then I think the final area is, you know, providing, providing teams like customer success and service to get time back to deliver more to customers and being able to provide answers and insights to customers in a much more automated, seamless way that still has that human and comprehensive flair to it to really deliver the answers to the questions that customers have. So I think those are like the three big buckets. And then there's a lot of different variations and features within those.

I love that so much. And it's, it's funny, as I was listening to you, you transported my brain to a part where Dharmesh was on the stage and he actually brought up the agent AI no s on there, by the way, ladies and gentlemen, agent AI. And I was like, oh. And then he was like, and also you can have your agent connect with HubSpot. And I was like, oh, like, immediately like bells and whistles went off on my brain around this, like, analytics and data. And I was like, oh. And then he was like, and also you can have your agent connect with HubSpot. And I was like, oh, like, immediately like bells and whistles went off on my brain around this, like analytics and data and insight and reporting and like being able to have multiple agents and access to the CRM that we love. And anyway, it was just a whole thing. So that being said, I want to ask you a question that might be a little bit more specific to you and your journey with HubSpot. Like HubSpot itself is always evolving. That can be a positive. Sometimes it might be a negative. 100 updates and 34 betas in like 30 days or 60 days is kind of crazy. But anyway, we'll keep it on the good side. They're evolving, right? To better serve businesses in 2024 and 2025. Jonathan, I'm curious for you. Are there and we mentioned Breeze. If you want to go there, you can. If there's something else that's cool too. Are there any new features or trends that particularly excite you as Jonathan the human using HubSpot or helping other humans use HubSpot?

Fantastic question. One of the, actually it's the number one challenge across all teams other than customer success is keeping up with the technology landscape. So right there, like you just said it, like 200 features in like two weeks, something like that, right? Like that's it, that that's the challenge. Like people are having a hard time just keeping up with the pace. And Scott Brinker has always said it pretty well is that and the Martech report generally has researched that organizations tend to only like and use a small portion of a very large and feature rich platform. And we sort of found the same thing in the, in the research as well. So I think any organization who is in the HubSpot ecosystem, we have a blessing and we have a curse. HubSpot's constantly rolling out new features, features and capabilities. But then how are we going to keep up and apply them in the most appropriate way? So there's some elements in the report that sort of outline what the best are doing in order to overcome that. I personally right now I'm really excited about some of the deal score features that are being rolled out.

Right.

I think for any revenue leader you're constantly trying to prioritize your time.

Right.

So listen, I coach rec soccer. I give my absolute everything to my team. I'm the lead researcher for the State of HubSpot report. I'm an executive sponsor on a lot of our customer accounts.

Right.

And I work to be as engaged as I possibly can with every single person in our community and members of our team. So I need to prioritize, right. And I'm excited to explore how the deal score record and sort of how that's going to sort of continue to evolve. I'm sort of excited about potential future around customer health scores and areas there. And I also am looking at a lot of the sales productivity features in Breeze as well as around enrichment as well as allowing myself to prioritize specific outreach that me as an Executive have has to make as well. So those are some of the key sort of new capabilities and feature sets that I've got my eye on. And I'm thinking about, like, how can I personally bring those into my world and really help that drive my weekly monthly and quarterly cadence as well?

Yeah. So good. This, this entire episode has been amazing. Love, love the interview, the time. I've got one last question for you and then I'll kick this outro and we'll get back to our regularly scheduled lives. But Jonathan, you have had the opportunity to work with some of the best in the industry. One thing that I've found in life is that just model the masters, like look at what they're doing, understand what they're doing and do that and it'll get you a long way in life again. I kind of moved out of HubSpot, but we're going to move back into HubSpot for a second. Like, what characteristics or strategies do you see? Like consistently data you personally eyeballs, whatever among the top performing HubSpot users. Like, what should people be modeling or thinking about as they move forward?

Yeah.

All right.

So specific to, specific to HubSpot users.

Yep, yep.

Yeah.

All right.

Ruthless focus on data structure. So making sure that your data is really, really tight and purposeful, right. Making sure that your data is clean, making sure that you're reducing barrier of entry for companies and contacts to convert into your systems. But then also making sure that you're augmenting, enhancing and creating standardization in a way that can really drive outcomes. I think the next is like making sure that you're understanding what do your people need to do with the tool in order to accomplish their goals. So if you're, some call it jobs to be done, I like to just call it like mapping out like people's job role. And if you can do that in the context of the technology, then you can configure your HubSpot instance in a way where people can actually like click the buttons and utilize the capabilities of HubSpot to really get it done. And then that translates into training, Right. Consistent training and making sure that your teams are driving really good usage of the platform.

Right.

So it's ruthless focus on data, making sure that your process and your and your people really understand how to use it. And then training to drive the highest levels of adoption. And then I think the final piece I see the absolute best doing is calibrating this sort of like tech stack complexity versus simplicity and making sure that your tech stack is only as simple as it needs to be and only as complex as it needs to be. So you're really aligning it to those, to your go to market and how you're going to actually reach and connect with your customers. So those are the, those are some of like the key areas that I, that I really see that are foundational to getting the most out of your HubSpot instance.

So good, so good. Again, you're transporting my brain to different places. We do a training called the Super Admin Training Module 1. It's literally defining your role plus organizational value and like that's exactly what Jonathan is talking about. Like you have to map these things things out so you know the direction in which you're heading and how you're going to be able to provide the value to the humans. Jonathan, thank you so much for sharing your insights today. If people want to connect with you, where do you want to send them?

Yes, go, go to my, go to my LinkedIn. Love to, love to connect with you there. I'm, I'm consistently publishing findings here, but also like I'm following George B. I'm following a ton of other people and you know, I'm constantly trying to reshare and deliver value to the community. So LinkedIn is the best place.

Love it so much. Ladies and gentlemen, it's been a fantastic discussion. I know you're walking away with actionable takeaways to implement in your own HubSpot strategies. From embracing AI to focusing on customer centricity, human centric and innovating CRM investments, there's so much for revenue leaders to consider as they move forward in 2024. And by the way, let's just tag on 2025 because who knows when you're going to be watching this. For everyone watching or listening, whether you're just starting with HubSpot or you've been in the ecosystem for years, remember that success is about continuous innovation and staying aligned with your customers needs. As Jonathan highlighted, the best are always looking for new ways to differentiate and add value. If you want to stay ahead of the curve, take time to evaluate your current strategies and explore how you can improve, incorporate AI, optimize your CRM and put your customers at the center of your growth, or dare I say meaningful growth efforts. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Sidekick Strategies Expert Interviews Inbound Talks edition. Be sure to subscribe so you don't miss out more expert advice and remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human and do some happy hubspotting along the way.