The Pre-Sales Process: HubSpot’s New Prospecting + Leads Tools for Sales

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 currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode Recording. This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin during the show are that of his own and in no way represent those of his employer.

Yes, but at least he has an employer. Not everybody on the planet can say that right now. Environment. You know, here's the thing. I have to come out the gate and be like, two weeks without Liz. I don't like it, gentlemen. I don't like it. I like when I sucks. I want to go home, man. I just. I like when I can kind of sit in the pocket and be part of the conversation and just, you know, and plus, she brings a little. She. She brings a little spice, a little, you know, cat hurting to. To the episode. So I'll be glad she's. She's moving. So next week she should be back, which will be good, and we'll get back to our regularly scheduled shenanigans. But I am also think.

I want to say. Hold on. I just want to say, you know, her not being here makes me kind of afraid that we might fly off the rails a little bit and potentially get ourselves canceled. But then I remember there have been plenty of times that she has almost gotten us canceled off. Some crazy shit. She said, so. We miss you.

We miss you both. Both could be true. Because I remember something about a restaurant and things that we had to, like, maybe edit. I don't know, like, yeah, so we're good. We're going to try to make this through and not get canceled. But I am also kind of excited today because I feel like. I feel like, Max, you and I might get in a fight. We might get in an argument for this conversation. Just maybe, maybe. And here's the thing today, listeners, viewers, what we're talking about is. We're talking about bot. We're talking about the prospects, the leads tool. We're Talking about where HubSpot was historically strong in the sales process and we're going to talk about terminology that I used to in a Slack channel and I kid you not, I think Max Cohen lost his frickin mind for a second. But we'll, we'll get there, we'll get there. So let's set the stage. Like been in HubSpot for years and years and years have talked to people about sales ever since it went from marketing to marketing and sales. And historically HubSpot has been great at pipelines, deal stages and being able to kind of customize a process around allowing teams to do that. Been great at giving you the records and the objects and the properties and custom properties to do that and report on what I have historically always called the sales process. Now in my personal opinion, where it was a little bit lacking is I felt, I always felt like we were hacking a piece of the system. Meaning I would talk about lead status with teams and I would say, well that could be your first call, second call, first touch, you know, whatever you want to do as far as what the, what the process is before you actually get to this, hey, we're going to talk about money, dollar signs, let's create a deal, get it in the pipeline and to have a sales process. I always called that the pre sales and I'm glad you threw your hat on. I always called that the pre sales process because it's, it's the prospecting process. And so when, when I said hey, I want to talk about the prospecting tool in HubSpot, I want to talk about the leads object in the leads dashboard. I said, you know, I want to let people know that now you can do the whole sales process, the pre sales process and the sales process. And then Max came through Slack, ripped my face off and started giving me this diatribe about you're stupid, that's not a pre sales. So. So Max, I want to just start opening it up. I want to start by opening up and being like can you please vent and air out this frustration to me saying that now you can, you don't have to hack with lead status, the pre sales process, but you now have prospecting and the leads dashboard to do it.

I mean my Devin, don't look at me like, listen, I spent the last two years of my life at HubSpot in pre sales. I was a pre sales solutions engineer. There are pre sales, you know, the sales engineers they call them, there's pre sales solutions architects Pre sales is like a def. For me, the way that I know the word right is it's a definition or a category of, you know, people who support account executives and the people actually doing the selling.

Right.

So like, you know, a solutions engineer doesn't run an entire sales process, but they're there to, like, support and enable the sales reps and be the person who actually knows what the product actually does.

Right.

In those conversations. Right. You know, so when I say pre sales, you know, pre sales to me has this very specific connotation. Now I'll have you look at my hat which says pre sales.

I'm looking.

And I am also going to acknowledge the fact that you put a dash between pre and sales, which I can, I can, I can. I can jive with.

Right.

You know, because you're. You're saying. You're saying before the sales process is what you're trying to say. Whereas, like, pre sales solutions engineers. There are post sales solutions engineers too, as well. At HubSpot, we have both.

Right.

Or they call them solutions architects.

Yeah.

Right.

But, you know, that typically means, like, you're the more technical resource working with folks as they go through that sales process before they buy, but then after, you're generally not working with them.

Right.

That's usually what you see with like, pre sales roles. But I understand what you mean by the pre sales process. I would normally call that like, prospecting, business development.

Right.

Cause oftentimes we think about people in these roles as SDRs, BDRs.

Right.

And I think the beautiful thing about this is it's not just HubSpot getting a lead object like Salesforce.

Right.

That's not what this is.

Right.

What's happening is they're finally fixing that awkward space before the sales process. What comes before what comes before process?

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Oh, my God. You proved my point.

I get it. I understand. Listen, you know what we're doing, we're just playing with words. We used to do a podcast with someone who got really angry when we played with words. I remember that guy.

Yeah, yeah.

Love that guy. Yeah, me too. Anyway, so I'm just channeling a little bit of inner Doug here, right? And saying words have meaning, but. Yeah, anyway, but here's the thing. It's really. I was a huge fan of the lead object because of the way they deployed this.

Right.

They finally solved that weird problem of, like, me as, like, the meeting booker or the first person that has a call with someone to qualify them. I'm not the actual, you know, Closing quota carrying, closing sales rep, Right? Where the hell is my space to work inside a HubSpot, Right? Am I really living inside a contact Properties of, like, leads to that shit was always so goofy to me, right? And then you saw people doing this, like, atrocious stuff where it's like, oh, well, we have, like, a separate deal that, like, leads to, like, a different deal, but then it disappears out of that pipeline when we move it into the sales pipeline. Or we just create two separate deals and then they're not, like, associated to each other, so we can't tell what. What led to what led to what.

Right, yeah.

And then there was also that awkward thing where it's like, well, are your deals, like. Are you just opening up deals for, like, any odd, you know, person who, like, raises their hands and wants to talk to sales? That's weird, right? Because then your reporting's all crazy because you're close losing 99% of everything because deals are getting opened up when they shouldn't have. Yeah.

Right.

So I think the. The lead object filled this gap that was really missing. And I like the way they deployed it where it's just a baby deal.

Right?

It evolves into a deal when you close it and qualify at the end. The idea is that it creates a deal because you qualified that lead to actually become a real deal versus opening up a bunch of deals that never should have been deals in the first place. Right. There's way more we can talk about the prospecting tool. But I was a big.

Yeah, so, okay, so, Devin, you've. You've sat there, you've heard me rant, you've heard Max rant. Are we both crazy? Are we both saying the same thing? Are we, like, what are your thoughts on just the idea? And by the way, Max, I want to dive back in after we hear from Devin because I have some questions for you around. What you said, Devin, where's your brain at right now, brother?

To be completely forthright, one, I was very amused by the back and forth, but I think the hyphen solves it. The hyphen makes it two completely different notions. So. Yeah, but I love the idea, like you said, Max, where you have the space for, you know, the BDR team and all those guys, as opposed to, you know, mocking something together based on, you know, your limitations. I really like the idea. Or just how you were just going down the pipe, because as you were talking about it, I'm thinking it's like, well, would this solution work? And then you say that solution and it's like, yeah, separate pipeline now all your numbers are screwed.

You suck.

Yeah.

None of these.

I bet you're having flashbacks to plenty of portals you've been in. Yeah.

But, yeah, no, it's the. It's. I actually had a conversation about prospecting with a friend of mine I went to high school with. Seth. Seth. I'm making sure you hear this episode because one of the things he was talking about was because he comes over from Salesforce and it's adopting his sales process to work with HubSpot the way he wants it to. And the prospecting tools now that are out, it's. There's a bit of a disconnect, and so hopefully there'll be some insight after this.

Yeah, the other thing, too, that I think is, like, really important, like, whenever we think about what needs to be its own object in HubSpot, right? Like, for me, and I was. I was going. I think me and. I think me and. Me and Doug son Drew were actually going back and forth about this on a LinkedIn post about, like, my logic around, like, when something should be an object is when there's many instances of it and there's describing characteristics of each one of those instances, right? When you think of, like, the reason I think the lead object in its form is good. Like, in Salesforce, a lead represents a person. Person, and then it, like, turns into a contact, and then that lead, like, converts, and it kind of, like, goes in, and then it's a. It's a person, right? Whereas, like, HubSpot, a contact is a contact account. It's always just a contact. But me as a person with my relationship to, like, a company, I can. Me, max the contact. I can become a lead multiple times, right? I can show up and go, oh, I'm kind of interested in your product. I want to learn more. And maybe I'm not a good fit, but that is, like, a point in time where I became elite. And there's information about that. What was I interested in? How did I, like, you know, get in touch with the sales team? Why wasn't I a good fit at that time? Because I might come back a year later, and all of a sudden I'm a good fit, right? And that's another instance of me becoming a lead again, right? And so to me, instances of these things happening are much better represented in objects than they are properties. Think about it. Even activities are objects, right? Because you can have multiple phone calls, multiple meetings. Those different phone calls can have different durations and different notes and different. You Know call dispositions.

Right.

The act of me becoming a lead and doing a hand raise, that can happen multiple times.

Right.

And.

And that is impossible to represent in a fricking dropdown that gives me five options called lead stats.

Yes. Right.

I don't know when I did it. When, like, what happened? When I. Why wasn't I a good fit that I.

Right.

So, like, for me, the lead object makes so much sense because each one of those times that I became a lead, I could have became a deal if I was qualified.

Right.

But now it's great because when I'm. Now that I'm the bdr, you know, talking to this person after, like, the third time that they came back and now that they're actually, like, a good fit, I can look back at those old lead objects and be like, oh, why did you get disqualified the first time? What changed? And that's like, really great context for me to have a conversation with this person about, why is it going to be different now?

Yeah.

Right.

And I think there's so many people that are missing that point because they're just going, oh, it's a Salesforce lead object. It's like, no, it's not.

Not even close.

It's an instance of something happening.

Yeah.

Right.

So.

And this is why I wanted to have this conversation. And again, I still want to flip back to, like, questions that I have for you, because I don't feel like it has to be my way, but I feel like there has to be a way. And I really want us to help define that here in a hot minute, since we have multiple brains on this podcast, but in. In episode after episode, you've heard every one of us at some point in time say, quit trying to make HubSpot your historical system. What I'm saying today, when this happened and they created the prospecting dashboard and the leads object. I don't know how long you've been using HubSpot, but if you haven't gone to reporting and data management and data model in your portal lately and seen that historically how we talked about HubSpot, you would say, yeah, companies is an object, contacts is an object, deal's an object, tickets is an object. And inside those objects, you can have properties. Ladies and gentlemen, now, when you look at the data model, CRM objects is companies, contacts, and tickets. And then the conversation moves to sales objects and sale. This was never a divider before. And sales objects is deals, leads, line items, and quotes. And Max, you even said, hey, activities is an object.

Yeah.

That's why now, in the data model, there's literally a freaking. The thing that says activities. And it's got calls, emails, LinkedIn messages, meetings, notes, postal mail, SMS, task, WhatsApp messages. Like, these activities are starting to be treated in the data model different than they were. And so here's what I'm going to say on this episode. Quit using HubSpot like you used to use HubSpot, because HubSpot is not historical HubSpot. HubSpot is a new HubSpot. There's new tools that mean we can have a new process that can be fleshed out. And there's still a bunch of organizations, I dare I say thousands of organizations that are going to listen to this. Well, I hope thousands of them listen to this. They might not even listen to this, but they're still using lead status, or worst case, they're doing something like I saw historically, where it was actually a ticket pipeline that led into a deal pipeline. And I about lost my mind. I'm like, oh, my God, what universe have I entered? So you have to stop. And I would, if I could get in front of Everybody that's using HubSpot, or if I could suggest that HubSpot would get in front of everybody that's using HubSpot, they would make the statement, Quit using HubSpot like it's HubSpot. Start using HubSpot like it's HubSpot. And I know that might be confusing, but you have to draw a line and understand that the, the tool in itself has fundamentally changed the, the foundational backbone of how it's thinking about itself and how it's built. So with that rant, holy crap. Max, I want to circle back around and Devin, I want to circle back around and I want to talk about, like, when we think of general organizations, and I know this is going to be hard because there's, there's maybe HubSpot is like a general organization. Max, you were talking about pre sales, right? It's a set of people that actually are technically advanced that can help the sales folks have conversations that they might not be able to have or think about it in ways that they might have historically not thought about it. Then what I have been calling pre sales prospecting, because it literally is prospecting. And then we've got the, like, deal process. Like, so. So it's almost like if you start to think about how people got confused about buyer's journey and customer journey and everybody wants to segment it away and. And you're like, oh, now I'm really confused. Like, I want to, I want to flesh out. And you even mentioned post like solutions architects, right? Like how should companies when we think about this new object structure when we think about these new tools, you know, what's, what's the somewhat sort of decent roadmap of like there's this and then there's this and there's this and there's this. And as an organization, you should be thinking of these four boxes that would consist of your entire sales process. Where does your brain go?

I mean, for me, like, it really, it really kind of like depends. I mean, does every. And I'm going to preface this by saying the one thing I learned about being in pre sales at HubSpot is that the role of like a solutions engineer in general is like completely different. In every single company you go to. There's like not a lot of consistency, right? At HubSpot it was very tightly defined. You work with customers in the, in pre sales like before they buy, right? Like you're working with them in your sales process. You don't support them after. There's plenty of sales engineers or solutions engineers, like the name is, you know, whatever, right, that end up doing, you know, help during the sales process, that run demos that end up like being support for customers that like build stuff out for customers after like they buy. So there is like not a lot of consistency in the pre sales world, right? But you know, if you're asking like when would you need like, you know, someone in a pre sales role? Well, I mean, you got to kind of balance that with like how complex is your tool to sell? Like if you need to be able to just have your account executives like focus on the sales process and driving that whole process and being good at selling and you know, it's really hard to get them also to be like experts in the product, right. Which a lot of sales organizations do like, you know, suffer from, right. There can be people who just come in and have those more difficult conversations like about the product, right? And again, there's some places where the sale, the sales engineers, they're the ones that run the entire demos, right? At HubSpot, I didn't run any demos, right. I was bored. Just like enabling sales reps, it's different everywhere. So like the only thing that I can kind of pull down from that, I don't want to say that I have like any sort of ultimate advice on like how to structure like a pre sales Org or anything like that like at a, at a company, but it really kind of depends on like, like look at your business, look at the way you sell, and like, realistically deploy what you need. I don't think there's a one size fits all for everything because, you know, pre salespeople are expensive. That's an expensive resource to have, like someone who's just like a product expert.

Right.

Which is why you see them deployed in so many different ways depending on it. Because not every company's like HubSpot that can afford to have pre sales solutions engineers, pre sales solutions architects, and post sales solutions engineers and architects and be able to like, delineate it that much because they have more. Have enough resources to do that.

Right.

So, you know, I think it's. It's. It's hard to say, but. Yeah, I don't know. I think I'm going off on like a weird tangent around, like, building pre sales. Org, so I'm gonna shut up.

But I like the tangent. That's literally where I was trying to get you to go, so. Because I don't know if most organizations, A, think about this, B, need to think about it, but if we have the conversation, it'll spur in their mind. Shoot. Am I actually missing a piece? We'll get back to the tool in a minute. Devin, where's your brain at right now?

So I was just thinking about Brian Garvey's podcast. Good morning. He's going to be relaunching his Good morning ecosystem. But in the Good morning pipelines, I was listening to the recap and it was talking about how the all these different elite partners had developed their sales teams and there was three stories and all three stories were completely different.

Yeah.

And like one they started out with in mind. Documentation. Start out and we'll go. And then the other ones kind of fell into it. And the first ones had something didn't work or pivoted. And so it was like listening to how all of these orgs develop. The one thing that was consistent is that they're constantly evolving. Well, I know we're going to be getting to the tool in a minute, but the thing is that with HubSpot for. For those who haven't been using it as long as we have, we've seen the evolution firsthand and have had the opportunity to grow with it and grow operations with it with whoever we're working with. But the thing is, is that if you're starting now, you're still going to have to maintain that mindset in order to keep up in the future. Whatever process that you have now, whatever process you're developing now, Might be great now, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's viable or scalable.

Yeah.

And it's. You gotta be able to like adapt like the way sales teams work too because, you know, it's with, with the changing crazy landscapes, the economy and everything and you know, being able to deal with buyers that have different levels of education and then your product changes.

Right.

There's so many different things that can just screw up the way that you sell. You have to be able to like adapt your team to it. I guess so, you know, build it in a way that it can adjust.

Right.

Versus just thinking everything's going to be going right all the time.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Again, I'm not super skilled at like building sales team, so I'm to be careful how much like advice I actually give.

But I, but I feel myself as a content creator. I now I'm like, oh, and maybe this isn't as a content creator. Maybe this is just being a curious dude that realizes the end of me being curious. Something. Yeah, that's my spirit animal, bro. Curious George is my spirit animal. Like, I, I feel like I want to map out something around this conversation of like when organizations need to think two levels before and two levels after and what the actual center journey of a modern CRM using human. Oh, oh, oh. Human focused company is actually thinking about. But, but let's dive into the tool because somebody might be watching this. They might have stumbled in and been like. So like the prospecting tool and what we're talking about is literally in the sales navigation as it sits right now where it'll be in the future. Maybe it might change. It's at the top of your screen. It might be on the left of your screen in the future. I don't know. HubSpot just be doing whatever HubSpot want to be doing. But there's a prospecting tool that now. Yeah. That they have summary, which is the kind of the main prospecting page you get to when you get there. And this is things like tasks, sequences, your schedule, your feed. But it's all a snapshot of like suggested activities you should do potential leads that you have in your pipeline. And I'll just. Well, it's not even. It's. But it's your leads pipeline. It's not your deals pipeline. So I got to be careful there. But it has a leads tab. It has a schedule, it has a feedback. I'll ask what you guys love and hate about this here in a minute. But just in general, like if you're looking for those sales insights, you got your feed. If you're looking for a snapshot of how busy your day is or who is or week who is, who is in your calendar, like yeah, there's just, it's, it's so.

And what you'll notice is that they're putting this if you see the new nav, right? They're putting this under this like workspaces thing, right? And like I think this is going to be a big theme when you see HubSpot release like a lot more of these like workspaces, like there's a reason it's like the top of the new nav, right is it's clear that they're trying to make a lot more of these like home based places to work for, like role specific job, like you know, for specific roles, right? Because you know, think about it like if you're a BDR or like an sdr, right, and you have your leads like automatically being given to you, right? Where else do you really need to go? Think about it like your tasks are getting assigned to you automatically. You've got your Google Calendar or whatever hooked up to it. You know, you've got your to do list, you've got like the leads getting routed to you, things like that. Like all this stuff is in one space and you don't have to fumble around to all these different spots inside of HubSpot, right? So I mean I think I like to see HubSpot do this. You're seeing them do it with Help Desk, right? Help Desk is now turning into. The workspaces are like the prospecting tool for support or you know, service reps, right? It's all right there. Everything you need. You've got all your incoming channels, you've got ways to like go and address those tickets. You don't have to be fumbling around to 12 different places inside of HubSpot.

To do that, right?

So I really, really enjoy it. You know, I think it's just, it's, it's, it's, it's going to be really good. I think for like role specific adoption stuff where it's like, listen, you get in front of this thing, here's your screen with everything that you need.

Go right?

And spend less time fumbling around and it'll make it, you know, HubSpot's easy to adopt because like the interface is great and everything and like there's a lot of good training around it and all this stuff. But man, if you just make it so like I don't Got to navigate anywhere to really get my job done. And not saying prospecting is all the way there yet.

Right.

But it's a really good step in that direction.

Here's the thing. By the two things. And then, Devin, I'm coming to you, brother. Two things. One, this is the worst it will ever be. And it's freaking awesome.

Right?

Like, you gotta think about that. Like. And I've. I've heard people. By the way, I. I didn't make that up. I've heard a bunch of people talking about AI tools, and one of the things that I hear a lot of them saying is this is the worst it'll ever be because it gets better from here. Listen, the prospecting's tool. This is the worst it'll ever be. Because the only thing that HubSpot will do is continue to make it better. Now. Now, here's the other thing. If you heard Max say workspaces, listen, there's a navigational beta that you can be part of. Make sure you've headed over to the right hand side. Or it might be at the top of your. It might be at the top of your screen and you've ignored it and it says, try the beta nav. Click that or go over to the sidebar and go to product updates and search for the nav beta. Because it is a. It is a different experience. And there is this thing called workspaces. Not to get confusing, but just know that that's there. Max, give me. Yeah, okay. Yes.

I just. Because I just found. I literally didn't even notice this because I was just like perusing the prospecting tab. One of the things that I hate more than anything in HubSpot, are we gonna get canceled? Oh, okay. Is going and finding meetings and calls that I did and changing the outcome from scheduled to whatever it ended up being. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, like, because think about it. There's like a lot of reporting that we do. There's a lot of reporting that I do for my own metrics, right? That, like, keep track of, like, how many. How many partner calls am I doing? How many. How many calls with HubSpotters am I doing? Am I. Or are we getting? Or, like, are we actually having them? Are they showing up or they do whatever. And we're building reports, all this stuff. And I. There's so many times that I end up going to those reports being like, oh, my God, all this stuff is still scheduled, or like, I didn't complete it, so it's not showing up in my activity or whatever. And so I'm like, oh, I got to go find the record. I got to go scroll through the timeline. I got to go click whatever the meeting was. I've got to then hit outcome, select the outcome. And then I got to hit. And it's like, wait, I had eight calls today. I have to go do that eight. And it's a nightmare. I was literally just on the prospecting page. On the prospecting page, there's a tab that I could literally drag all the way up to the top of the screen that says suggested activities. And you want to know what I just found when I un. Collapse this little sucker right here? A little tab that says meetings need outcomes. And when I clicked it, it showed me all the meetings that I've had that I didn't select an outcome for. All the meetings that were scheduled that I needed to go and hit completed for it to properly track in my reporting for my own metrics, I was literally able to just select it, hit it, select it, hit it, and it automatically completed it for everything. And I literally have been begging for this in my brain silently, but not knowing how to say it. And the fact that I just found this on the prospecting page, I am losing my mind because I am never, ever, ever going to have to go dig through a mother contact record stupid activity feed to find a meeting, to click two more buttons, to then click completed. And like that. This little stuff alone, knowing that I can do this right from here.

So. So there's a couple things. One, Devon, I swear I am coming over to you and Max, you're in trouble. Sorry, I told you we're gonna fight.

You're in trouble.

Because the next question was gonna be like, what do you love about the tool? We figured out what you love about the tool. You might have more, but we've got to unpack a couple of things. By the way, that's what happens when you get together to do a Hub Heroes podcast. You find new ish in HubSpot. And then you're like, and this is what people should be thinking about. But, Max, you said something that I don't think most people picked up on, because, by the way, I didn't freaking pick up on it. You said dragged and dropped it to the top of the screen. And I was like, wait, when did that become available? That I could actually put the thing where I want it on the prospecting tool. And so when you hover over to little. Little grid of dots shows up, and you can collapse or expand and you can drag it to where you want it to be. So that's super dope. Okay, Devin, give us your thoughts. I want. I want us to start to move into. What do you love about the idea of this prospecting tool? The summary, the leads, the schedule, the feed. Like, let's start brain dumping on that.

The biggest thing that I love about it is the fact that it exists, for one. The fact that BDRs can spend more time building relationships than having to dig through the CRM and dealing with this stuff. Max, you look like you're in wonder and awe over there. Like you're just looking.

Yeah, it's. It's just. I mean, it's just it. I haven't been in it in a while and like, the more I kind of click through it, the more stuff that I like, find that it's just like, damn, I wish it there is. Anyway, I don't want to interrupt you, Devin. No worries.

But yeah, that and I think the feed idea is pretty dope. I'm curious as to see what that's going to be like, but the fact that your entire day is on a dashboard is sick.

Yeah, like there's a proper calendar in there now. You know what I mean? And there's really. It's funny. So I saw like a very early build of this, like a while ago when I was still at HubSpot and they were showing this like calendar thing here and it was like back when it was like just figma and they would like, you know, we're. We're mocking it all up and it wasn't like actually like in yet, but something that he said they wanted to do that the PM's no longer there anymore. I still talk to him every once in a while. Something I know that they wanted to do is like now that like they have access to the calendar and like we're doing a lot of stuff with AI now, right? Like being able to like give like smart suggestions of like what to do with your time.

Right.

Or to like, you know, what to do when it sees certain things on your calendar. Like so for example, they have a really cool opportunity here to think. Like to say, like, hey, we can tell there's like call after call after call after call. Maybe if you see a string of calls, suggest a break, like a little block. Be like, click here to put a block on your calendar or something like that. I think there's probably some really, really neat stuff that they could do with all the things that they're doing like around AI, like on this too as well. But like, the other thing, too, that I'm noticing is, like, I can literally go and, like, click any of these things on the calendar, and I can either launch the meeting right from there, or if I haven't updated the fricking completion or the. The. What I was just saying before the outcome, it literally, like, shows the calendar events differently. And I can do it, like, right from there, too, as well. So it's just. Yeah, it's really neat.

All right, Devin, Devin, let's. Let's dive back in here a little bit. Well, actually, hang. Hang on.

I have marketing questions for Devin because marketers actually need to start thinking about this too, right? Because you're no longer in a situation where you're just creating contacts for someone to work. Like, you need to start thinking about how, like, your marketing or the. The. Sorry, like, what sort of, like, conversions people can take or what sort of things could happen that actually warrant creating lead objects for salespeople.

Right?

Because think about it, what were we doing in the past? We were marking freaking contacts as, like, MQL or SQL or something like that based on, like, a form they filled out.

Right?

But now you're in a world where it's like, ooh, like, are we. We need to have a conversation of, does a deal get created because of the nature of what this person's converting on? Or does a lead object get created and go to someone else first for, like, a little bit of, like, qualification? Because you can create these lead objects in workflows, I'm pretty sure, unless I'm crazy, I think you have, like, settings that you turn on where it, like, says, if the lifecycle stage hits something, create, like, a lead or something like that. I'll look into it while you guys kind of talk about marketing.

And.

Well, so, Devin, I'll let you go first, Max. You don't need to look into anything. I'm already on the page with the settings to talk about it. But, Devin, I. I do want to know your marketing brain and the fact that this is a. I'm saying, think of HubSpot in a different way, and there's this new tool. Where does your brain go pertaining to this? From the marketing side? Less sales side.

From the marketing side. The very first thing I noticed when I was poking around the tool was the automation for the handoff. I love the idea of speeding up, smoothing out the. The marketing sales handoff and using lead objects to do that and then having predefined criteria that automates that process so you don't have to have A person be a bottleneck or just have some convoluted workflow that's constantly processing things that. That's the first place that my head goes as a marketer. And then also of course HubSpot being the dope thing that it is, is that it makes being able to track that customer journey in one system even easier.

Yeah, I want to push this marketing thing a little bit more because I think there's also a. And George, let me know if you agree. I think there's also like a little bit of a. Do we maybe start to look at reporting a little bit differently?

Right.

Because I think before when we think about MQLs, we're thinking of how many unique people am I sending to you? Which is very different than how many times have we gotten someone to do the hand raise and that may include a couple of the same people.

Right?

Like depending on how you're looking at leads, considering like I could become a lead multiple times.

Right.

And then it's like for a while the, the big reason why, you know, people loved like the salesforce integration for instance is because it brought in your opportunity records as deal records. And then all of a sudden marketers could see, hey, my leads are turning into deals and, and there's money and I can do attribution based on that.

Right.

But like are we in a world now inside a HubSpot where marketers are going to start actually looking at lead objects at all in terms of like a metric?

Right?

Like, you know what I mean? Because we talk about marketing qualified leads. Well now you can make a lead object. Does that change your, your, your. The way you're thinking about reporting it?

All right.

And I think a lot of that comes down to like what does a lead actually mean to you, the organization and how are you using that object?

Right?

But it's interesting because ah, now you kind of have this new, this new in between object to kind of about. It's not just contacts with certain statuses and deals.

Right.

There's like another thing that you're creating, right? So it's like do we get measured on how many of those deals or leads actually get qualified and we're not even looking at the deal object or what?

Right.

So yeah, it's interesting.

Hey, hey baby, hold my jacket. Why, why I go out and do this for a second. Like, like listen. Sure. Could we do what HubSpot is saying and go to the settings tool and say create a lead based on the life cycle stage of sales qualified lead and realize at that point Then the contact owner has been sales, you know, and now it's moving into the sales process. Yes, we could do that. But could we imagine this as being the beginning of a world where we actually start to align marketing and sales? Is this actually the tool that starts to bridge the gap? Meaning could this be. Because by the way, I have helped organizations max, where they have A leads and B leads. And that gets fun. And where are you supposed to fricking store that? Guess what? In a dumb HubSpot property historically is how they were doing it. But could you actually have a system where marketing is actually the contact owner up until a certain point? And therefore could you go into the lead stages tab of this tool and actually customize where you wanted the in progress stages to be for your system that were specifically based on marketing? And could then you have a workflow that when it got to a sales qualified lead, what it did is actually change the contact owner so that now it's just goes into the sales reps prospecting dashboard instead of the marketing prospecting dashboard. Because now marketing and sales are both doing, doing prospecting. They're both revenue generators. There's a new game in town. Like I said, don't use HubSpot like it's HubSpot. Use HubSpot like it's HubSpot. Rethink and customize what the frick you need to do based on what your team needs. Man, I'm losing my brain. And listen, this is why I wanted to do this episode because this was such a gigantic change to HubSpot and nobody's freaking talking about it, nobody's thinking about it in the way of how it could just revolutionize the way marketing and sales is working together or even sales is doing their entire process. I don't even know where to go from here. Somebody pick up.

Yeah, well, I mean, I. So you know, Devin, you're a marketer by trade, right? Yeah, like so what? I mean I'm sure you, you've done the whole, you know, marketing qualified leads is a, you know, is a, a metric that you're living and dying by at some point in your, in your, in your, in your. You know, I know things have probably changed now, right? We're, there's, we're not doing as much like putting shit behind landing pages and passing it off to sales when someone gets an ebook and like all that kind of stuff, right? But like knowing there's this in between object or like knowing how people, how marketing teams I guess have like, you know, you know, done their Metrics, I guess, is like the easiest way to say this. Broad question I'm asking, does this make you think a little bit differently about how you'd see people doing it there? I mean, I don't know. I was never a marketer. Marketer.

Right.

So like it's hard for me to have like a super intelligent conversation around like how marketing teams are actually like, you know, performance based or whatever. Like what? Like how those teams set up their metrics, I guess.

Sure.

Yeah. At the end of the day, the average marketing team is about vanity metrics. Hopefully less than average.

Yeah, like, like, but you're past that vanity shit, man. Like you like you know what's actually important to you, right? Like, do you think this is like helpful, like stuff to look at? Like, are we going to start seeing marketers be like, how many objects have we created? Or is it like not really gonna be something you think affects them too much in terms of their metrics?

It depends on who's running the show. If it's important to the person at, then it'll be important to the people who are in it. But like me personally, I would adjust my conversion rate so I'm looking at any leads that I touch. Hopefully this new development will change how people do their reporting in marketing. Because for us, we live and die by attribution. If they ask us how has your contribution to this organization raised the bottom line? Then you have to be able to say something.

Yeah, yeah.

And at least maybe now maybe have a. Since you have this new object to add to reporting, somehow you can get a little bit more granular around. Like here's like, you know, deals that have come from us. Yes. Here's also leads or the at bats that we're creating for those SDRs, BDRs or whatever.

Right.

And like you have that. It's almost as if like, you know, for, for a lot of times with like the sales folks, it's like we're doing stuff to be able to generate deals that you can work.

Right?

But now it's like marketers have a thing that they can generate for the BDRs and it's not just a, you know, a shitty contact property or like a deal that shouldn't be a deal yet or something like that.

Right.

Like they have that product they can deliver right. To those folks earlier in the sales cycle.

So in a minute I'm going to ask a question so we can close this.

But, but wait, it's word.

It's four, bro. Like, so here, here's the deal. We're gonna close this in a second. But I. I have to say, I've been. You guys have been talking, and I've been standing here for the last four minutes and, like, 46 seconds with my mouth open, like, my jaw dropped. And, dude, if you go to schedule and you look at the left hand sidebar, it tells you. And this is. This wasn't excited me. Yes, great. It tells me who I'm gonna meet with that day, and it gives me the ability to go into their contact record with ease, and it gives me the ability to copy their email address if I need to go paste it somewhere else. But I had never noticed the fact that there was a Playbooks dropdown under the human that I'm actually going to meet with, Meaning I go to my schedule, I see that I'm going to meet with Max, and I can pick what Playbook I need to run on the meeting that I'm actually going to be talking to Max on.

Like, wait, can you share your screen? Yeah, so if I don't see it on my. But I might not have any Playbooks.

If you're listening to this and you're like, wait, What? Go to community.hubheroes.com I haven't said that for a lot of episodes. We put the video versions in here. But I am going to share my screen because, Max, what I'm saying is right here, if I'm having a meeting with Max Cohen or Mark Killens or Devin Bellamy, I can literally open up Playbooks Dropdown and run a Playbook with that human because I have a meeting with them on that day.

Yo, what the.

I'm like, holy crap. Talk about giving them the tools that they need to do the thing that they're going to do when they're actually going to do it if this schedule becomes the place that they live and die by. Meaning we. We've preached this for years. Hey, get everything in HubSpot. Get everything in HubSpot that you can. Now, my calendar. There's no need for me to go over to my Google Calendar. There's no need for me to go to my Outlook calendar, because I can literally see everything that's supposed to happen from a meetings and task perspective in HubSpot on my schedule page. And run fricking Playbooks too.

That's crazy. I wonder, does it, like, is it, like, it's suggesting Playbooks too? Which is the wild thing. Like, I wonder if there's any. Like, I wonder if they're going to build in any logic into Playbooks that let you kind of say, like, oh, you know, depending on the call or the meeting type or something, like it pops a certain playbook. Because imagine that, right? Where it's just like, you've got booker.

Let's. That's going to be our closing question. That's going to be our closing question.

Yeah.

What do we hope? What do we pray? If we had a magic wand, what would we want to see happen with this tool pertaining to sales or marketing or whatever direction you want to take it?

I, I, if we're talking about the prospecting, like workspace, because I could go on and on about the lead object and what it's missing and all that crap, but I would say it would have to have been what I was saying earlier where it's like, use some AI on that calendar, right? Like deploy some AI to help your, your, your sales reps not burn themselves out, right? Like, hey, maybe put a call block here. Hey, take some time to take some, like to make sure your notes are updated. Hey, maybe call this person that you haven't called in a long time, right? Or hey, here's a good suggested time for like, you know, follow up emails that you're sending, right? You've got these follow up email tasks. Yo, throw that on an empty spot in my calendar. Link me to those follow up email tasks so I can go bang them out, right? That would be pretty, that would be pretty cool. Like, you talk about a cool way to use AI in HubSpot. This is like a really, I think, great opportunity to do that.

Devin, what are your thoughts?

That one kind of blew me away because I was thinking about AI and integrating it more, but I would have stopped there because I didn't have any specific use cases. And then Max comes out and then just like brain drops on all of us. So.

Well, to be fair, that's what they showed me a while ago and that's what I wanted to be in it. And now I just want it to be real because this thing is actually here and that's missing. Sorry, I just, I'm going. Shut up.

All right, so I'll, I'll jump in here. I have a, I have a wimpy one and then I have a based off of what we've talked about one and then we'll close this bad boy out. My wimpy one is if I go to the summary dashboard, I wish I could adjust the width of my left column and my right column to where I wanted it to be because I'd love to see that schedule and feed just a little bit bigger maybe than it is right now to really get access to it. That's. That's a wimpy one, by the way. What I'm talking about is with HubSpot dashboards, you can literally move stuff around and resize it how you want. I just like a little bit of resizing. Now. If I go into the leads object and I piggyback off the conversation of prospecting, doesn't it just isn't for sales. But prospecting is literally for marketing and sales marketing is the one generating the leads. This is the one place in HubSpot that you have objects or an object and you don't have views yet. Imagine if you had a marketing view. Imagine if you had a sales view. Imagine if you could start to segment these views in different ways that marketing and sales wanted to for the leads object depended upon how they were going to work with them. So in the future, I'd love to see views inside of the leads object. All right, I don't know, you guys. Here's what I'll say to the people to close this out. Are you using the prospecting tool? Are you using the leads object? Has your mind been blown today with this episode? If so, let us know. If not, let us so. Also, if there's a topic that you want us to cover, we're all ears because it's all about creating great content for your growth. Ladies and gentlemen, adios. Have a great day.

Tell them to bring out the whole ocean.

Boil it. 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 thehubheroes.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 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.