Money Moves: How To Sell Like A Pro With Commerce Hub

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Hello everybody. Happy Friday. Happy inbound 2024. I hope you all have had as much fun as I have this week. It's so fun to see you all in person and to get to chat with you all about HubSpot, how you all are using it and what more you want from us. So thanks for being here. I hope you all have had a great Inbound so far and I am here to chat with you all today about how to sell like a pro using Commerce Hub. This has been a major initiative of HubSpot's over the past couple of years and I'm going to chat with you all about what we've been up to and how to use these tools a little bit. So to jump right in folks, let's do a little bit of a look back. Last year at Inbound we launched Commerce Hub and I will say the number one question that I got last year was Jack, these tools sound really cool. They look awesome. But I'm not based in the United States. I can't necessarily use them. When can I? I'm very happy to say that over the past year we have expanded Commerce Hub globally. You can now transact in more than 20 currencies. We've launched a lot of new features as well. Folks, I am frankly being a little bit conservative on this 20 number. We've probably launched about 30 to 40 new functionalities and I'm going to chat with you all about some of those today. So we've had a big year. I think we are just getting started as a team as well and you can expect a lot more from us over the next couple of quarters and years ahead. So folks, most importantly, what we're seeing is that those who do use Commerce Hub are really seeing value out of the platform. Users are closing 29% more deals and saving 25% more time. If that isn't adding force to your flywheel and removing friction to it, then I really don't know what is. And ultimately this is all about helping businesses grow better and we are seeing that as folks lean into these tools, that's exactly what they are doing. So folks, just a little bit about myself. My name is Jack Commersmith. I have been at HubSpot for eight years now almost. I've held roles in our marketing, sales, customer success and now product organizations. I've been on this team for three years. I joined when we had just a couple of customers. Happy to say we have a lot more now. I also do have a major travel bug. I love to travel. I am a foodie too. So folks, I do live in Boston if you all want some restaurant recommendations. I think this is a pretty awesome food city. So come chat later if you all want some recommendations. I do indeed have many of them. So folks, what we'll get into today is Commerce Hub and the deal cycle and how to think about that and how HubSpot is thinking about that. We're also going to of course chat about how Commerce Hub can help your business grow and also some of the new features and how to get started with these tools. Frankly folks, you can walk away from this session being completely set up on Commerce Hub in theory if you wanted to. It's really easy to get started. Doesn't take much time at all either. So let's start off with the sales process. This is something that I've heard a lot about this week and I bet this will resonate. I hope this will resonate with a handful of you all. The status quo for sales nowadays is folks will generally manage their deals within HubSpot. So managing that sales pipeline from that opportunity creation to closed one, this is a very important part of the customer journey. I'd argue it's one of the most important parts of the customer journey. But once you do get to that closed one stage, what we often see is that organizations will need to jump out to another tool for that contracting or for that quoting process. They then will use a different platform for their billing and actually distributing that invoice, and then another tool as well for that payment processing. And then finally that data will always move over to a given accounting platform so that you can close out your books. Those are a lot of platforms, folks. Now what this also leads to are different teams living in different silos and looking at different data as well. So what HubSpot is all about is unifying all of your data in one place. And that is what Commerce Hub is all about as well. We really do believe that those who manage their commerce within the CRM will indeed grow better. So that's everything from generating those leads, turning them into opportunities, managing that commerce process, and then of course, making your customers as happy as possible to power that flywheel. So when it comes to quoting, when it comes to billing, when it comes to payment processing, all of that is within HubSpot. The accounting is not. I never want to say never, but I don't believe HubSpot is going to be going into the back office or the accounting systems at any point in the near future. So that's an integration path, something I'll chat with you all a little bit more about later in this session. And ultimately folks, what this boils down to is managing your commerce process and your commerce data, where you manage your customers and your customer data, which is within the CRM. So as we look forward, we really do think that commerce and commerce data deserves to be within the CRM. And that is the mission that we are on on the Commerce Hub team. Ultimately, Commerce Hub is indeed that billing and that payments platform built directly within HubSpot. And our mission is to help you all streamline your opportunity to revenue process to ideally get paid faster, increase your revenue and also save some time I hope as well. So I want to give you all a brief overview of this. And folks, while we can go a lot deeper in these individual areas, getting started with Commerce Hub really does just take a couple of minutes. So you have a few options when it comes to the payment processor that will power the platform. If you're based in the United States, I recommend considering HubSpot payments. If you're outside of the United States, you can plug in your Stripe account and start using Commerce Hub again in just a couple of minutes. You'll also see that if you want to transact in multiple currencies, you can indeed do so by plugging in your Stripe account and having that power everything under the hood. From there, it's time to actually get paid. We have a number of different channels that you all can use to actually bill your customers. If you wanted to use our invoices functionality, you absolutely can this. This is a area where the team has spent a lot of time and a lot of focus over the past handful of quarters. We offer payment links as well. We see a lot of folks not just thinking about their website as a lead generation engine, but also a revenue generation engine as well. So thinking about your go to market in creative ways and maybe even opening up new revenue streams on your website. And then finally we do indeed have our quoting functionality. If you all wanted to get paid directly on those quotes and of course have those quotes signed, you can do so as well. Now where the magic really kicks in with the Commerce Hub platform though folks is how we represent the commerce data within HubSpot. And if you all have ever used HubSpot, I am very confident in saying you all will understand exactly what we're doing here the second that you view it. Because we are really just building commerce objects. That is it folks. So we have the payment object. This represents a transaction, gross amount, net amount, fees. This will also stamp with the payment processor that you're using as well. We have the subscription object. This will represent a recurring payment, start date, end date, number of expected and completed payments, things that you would expect around a given recurring payment. And then of course we have the invoice object. So this is both a payable artifact that you can create and send. It's also a CRM object as well. Now folks, when it comes to consistency and a unified view of your customer, this will help you go a very long way to be able to just see everything that you would need to see in one place. However, it's the power of HubSpot that really does make this a lot more powerful for your business. So we internally use this term, the HubSpot framework. I kind of think about it like the pipes underneath the CRM. Ultimately, if you all wanted to create some commerce workflows, you can do so in the exact same way that you would create any other workflow. So for example, maybe you want to send a given contact some emails if they submit a form. In that case you would create a contact based workflow because that's the center of gravity for the Automation set with CommerceHub. If you wanted to, for example, create a subscription based workflow to manage your renewals, it could not be easier. If you wanted to manage accounts receivable automation and simply create an invoice based workflow to notify someone internally, maybe nudge your customer. If that invoice is overdue, we could not make it easier to do so. And of course payment based workflows, maybe if a transaction fails, you want to know about it. And again folks, this will look and feel like absolutely everything else within the HubSpot platform. And the same thing goes for reporting as well. You can use the out of the box dashboards that we have, but this data will be exposed within the custom report builder again just like every other object. So when it comes to getting started, folks, if you're comfortable using really any part of the HubSpot platform, I'm extremely confident in saying the Commerce Hub learning curve will not be very steep. Also list segmentation as well. If you wanted to see a list of your active subscribers, you can simply do so by saying subscription status equals active. Another thing that is really awesome about the HubSpot platform as you adopt more of it, is this whole concept of 1:1, equaling 3. So this will power your marketing engine in a lot more of a robust way. Because you have all of your data in one place, your sales team has your insights that they need as does your customer success team? So all of this data unified in one place can really help businesses inform their next move, but also again, save some time and maybe not do those manual tasks that nobody really likes doing. I don't know about you folks, I've never met someone that likes to manually follow up on overdue invoices, let our automation handle it for you and hopefully close your computer a little bit earlier. So folks at the high level here, that's how we're thinking about building these tools. And I know I quoted some stats a little bit earlier, but I want to zoom in on a couple of case studies that we have. We have our friends over at zenpilot. They've saved a lot of money using these tools and have also saved a lot of time as well. Again, adding force to that flywheel and removing friction. It's not just our friends over at ZenPilot though, it's also the folks over at Appswithoutcode. They have consolidated their tech stack in a really big way, consolidated their data and they've also saved a lot of time on their team as well. And we're seeing this with other businesses like Nutritional Coaching Institute. They are making more money. They're also consolidating their tech stack. As I'm sure you all have heard, the Franken system of gluing a number of different tools together is something that we are trying to solve for. And what we're seeing is that as businesses do unify all of those efforts in one place, they are indeed seeing a lot of value out of these platforms. So seeing businesses like this grow better puts a huge smile on my face. I'm excited to see a lot more of them come in over time as well. So folks, one of my favorite parts about being on the HubSpot product team is that we really, really value customer feedback. It's also one of the reasons why I love Inbound so much because I can actually do my job on the day to day in person and actually chat with you all. We received a ton of feedback. I hope that you all continue to send feedback our way because we're going to continue to listen and we're going to continue to drive our roadmap based upon what the market and what you all are telling us that you want. And we've delivered a number of the top requested features over the past couple of quarters that I'm extremely excited about. And folks, I'm going to walk you all through some of these new features and a number of them are really brand new. So just a couple of months old. If you all haven't played around with them yet, I would highly recommend doing so. I'm really excited about this. I hope you all are as well. So folks, I could have had a very long slide on this one or about 15 other slides after this, but at the highest level the team has been focused on a number of different areas Accounting Integrations As I mentioned a little bit earlier, HubSpot is not an accounting platform. However, we're the first to recognize that all of your Commerce data and your Commerce motions will ultimately need to end up in that accounting platform. So we've been focusing on building out a more robust accounting integration for QuickBooks Online. More to come from the team. I'll give you all just a little bit more insight in a few minutes on that front here we have folks like Chad over there who are very much driving us forward on the accounting integration side. Chad, sorry for calling you out. We've also been on focusing on expanding and going deeper on our billing platform as well. We want to enable organizations to help to meet their buyers where they want to be met and bill the way that they want to bill. I'll go into some of those new features on that front. And folks, we're going to continue to expand that billing platform and lean in there. And then finally, I never really thought I'd say these words, but I'm really excited about taxes as well. Line item taxes. This is now fully available to absolutely everybody. We're not done on that front though. But folks, I am excited about taxes. I hope you all are too. It's a reality. It's something that we need. I'm excited you're excited. So folks, let's get into this a little bit more. I want to give you all bit more specifics. So billing improvements and subscriptions. I mentioned subscriptions are a CRM object and this is an area where we've invested a lot of time and resources. So things like subscription management. Maybe you want to upgrade or downgrade or prorate a subscription. Change the billing date as you'll see with this little gif right here as well. Folks, this is going to look a heck of a lot like an object index page. It is. It looks and feels like absolutely everything else within HubSpot. So we've been expanding that subscriptions functionality. Also Pro tip folks, subscription based workflows. Renewal management can be so much easier than it is for so many organizations. So don't overlook that as well. It will hopefully allow for you all to save a lot of time it's not just recurring payments though, that automatically charge. One thing that folks have been asking me for quite some time is Jack, I like this subscription functionality, but I want to be able to create a subscription without processing the payment first. So I want these invoices to be automatically created and automatically distributed to my customers. That is exactly what we released about one one month ago. So this is a brand new functionality, folks. You'll see it in your HubSpot account right now. So if you wanted to automatically charge, you absolutely can. If you wanted to create those invoices and distribute those automatically, you certainly can do so as well when it comes to subscription management. Of course, if you do want to upgrade or downgrade, the next invoice would reflect that. So folks, all of that still works and is consistent. People get paid in a lot of different ways though. I imagine some of you all in this room here may take a deposit. So Maybe you take 50% down before starting a project and then 25% midway through and then 25% at the very end. A year or so ago we released the ability to configure the payment schedule on a quote so that you can present that to your buyer. Now though, with milestone billing, once that first payment on the payment schedule so the deposit is paid, you'll see invoices automatically created for those subsequent milestones that you can then distribute and get paid. Now folks, again, you'll see this looks and feels like everything else within HubSpot. It is. It's a CRM object. So on that right sidebar, folks, you'll see those two invoices. And so this is a feature that a lot of folks are very excited about. If you all haven't checked it out, I'd highly recommend doing so. Taxes. I mentioned it a little bit earlier. I know that in places like the eu, the VAT is going to be on just about everything. You can now create your tax library within HubSpot and then add those to the line items on your invoices, your quotes or your payment links. Taxes in the United States are a little bit more complex. That's something that the team is thinking a lot about nowadays. But if this is something that is front of mind for you all, I can promise that it's front of mind for our team as well. So we're going to continue to invest in this area to make tax calculation extremely easy for you all. And then this is one that I'm extremely excited about as well. Folks. This was our number one feature request for the past year or Two, we delivered this just a couple of weeks ago. It is a bidirectional invoice sync. So folks, it's huge. And and so folks, while it is so simple, it is incredibly powerful. If you have open invoice 1, 2, 3 within HubSpot, open invoice 1, 2, 3 Within QuickBooks. If it's paid within HubSpot, it'll be marked as paid within QuickBooks. That is it. Now also, the beauty of this is we built our accounting integrations on top of our data sync infrastructure. It is an extremely simple way to integrate. You simply need to say, here's the mapping in HubSpot, map this over to QuickBooks and then choose the direction. It really is that simple. No code required whatsoever. And because we've built this on top of our data sync engine, we're going to be able to build more accounting integrations even faster. So I know Xero, for example, is a big player outside of the United States. That's something that the team is thinking a lot about. So stay tuned for more from us on that front. But folks, this is a big deal when it comes to empowering your front office, those folks who are engaging with your customers every day to actually send out those invoices, to actually manage that billing but still move that data into your accounting system so that your finance team has everything they need in order to close out their books. The last thing that I'm really excited about when it comes to this integration. As I mentioned earlier, I've never come across anyone that likes to follow up on overdue invoices. Well, let HubSpot do it for you. Create that invoice based workflow and let your back office team, your finance team focus on the things they'd rather focus on, not chasing down overdue invoices or going through spreadsheets. So this will also help your back office team save some time and be more efficient as well. So this is a big deal folks. I'm very excited about this and it is very easy to use. If you haven't gotten up and running, go ahead and do so now folks. That's all I have for you all from a core content perspective, but we are going to continue to lean into Commerce Hub in a big way. So folks, scan that QR code and learn more. I'd also encourage you all to try the tools out as well. We make it very easy to get started, so if you have just a couple of minutes, give it a try, run a test transaction, check out the tools now. Also, we love feedback too. So folks, if you all do have anything on your mind, if you have questions, if you're curious about our roadmap, if you think we should be focusing on something else, I'd really love to hear from you. If you all haven't already. Our demo stations right behind us are absolutely awesome. So come hang out a little bit later. We have a lot of folks from the Commerce Hub team. We'd love to show you all what we have been up to and actually show you the tools in action as well. So if you haven't gotten started, give it a try. Folks, the barrier is very, very low to get started. We make it really, really easy. So check it out if you haven't already. And again, we'd love to hear your feedback now, folks, I would also love to connect with you all on LinkedIn. We are creating product update videos left and right. I'm sure this is something that you all have heard a lot this week, but we have released hundreds of new features probably just this summer alone. We're going to continue to release a lot of new features folks, so stay tuned for more and follow me on LinkedIn if you want to learn more about it, because we're going to continue to push out those product updates there. Also, I'd love any questions that you all have. We have a couple of mics set up on either side right here and so if you all do have any questions, I'd love to hear from you.

Thank you for the presentation. I have a particular problem regarding implementation of the Commerce Hub in my ecosystem because it's outside of the usa, particularly for Croatia. Two major things that I need to see are you going to develop because the prejudice are either a Stripe account should be connected, either should be connected with QuickBooks and to HubSpot. So those two implementations are not at the moment possible inside of the Croatia. I don't know why, but probably HubSpot because you're still developing for US market. But considering Stripe, I don't know who I'm going to ask because those list of the countries which you put it in the explanation doesn't move, doesn't getting shorter. Thank you.

So I want to make sure I heard the question. So Croatia and Stripe does not operate there and so essentially like can we bring other engines into HubSpot to power commerce Hub? Was that your question?

Yes, well, I cannot. For instance Slovenia, which is next to country European Union can go without any problems.

Yeah, I can. Yep, yep, yep. So folks, ultimately the way that we think about Commerce Hub philosophically is we don't care where you are in the world or what you want to use. We want you to be able to bring that commerce process into HubSpot. And so right now, in order to actually process those payments with us, you do need to connect either HubSpot payments or Stripe. I think that's going to change long term as we continue to open up our system and invest here. But ultimately that's also one of the reasons why we're investing in billing as well, to kind of decouple that billing and that payments piece. And so more to come when it comes to opening up our system more to allow for more of that flexibility and more choice ultimately for our merchants. So stay tuned for more because we're not done yet. But right now it is just Stripe and HubSpot payments. But you can still use those billing tools. So more from us later this year, early next year, I'd say.

Hi, I'm not a user of Commerce Hub as yet, but we're very seriously considering it.

Do you mind going a little closer to the mic? Sorry.

Is this better?

Yes.

Okay. Do you have tiered based subscription as well? Like could I insert like between this to this number? This is the value I want to build. Can I automate that process or is it a very manual process as of now?

So right now when it comes to starting the subscription and actually getting that up and going, right now it is manual in that you would be creating it within our system and then actually sending out that bill. I will say though, with our payment links functionality, if you simply have a line item with a recurring payment, it will create that subscription automatically for you. And so I'd say if it is a website sale, you can still create those subscriptions. But when it comes to like the rep assisted piece, there would be that manual creation and then distribution of that.

And do you think there's a possibility if I were to update a property on the deal, like say the company's revenue tier or something, the invoice itself can adjust for their billing?

Yes, yes indeed, that's how it will work today. So you can actually convert deals or convert quotes right into invoices. Now there is an element of if you change the deal, do you always want the invoice to change? Usually not. And so there is indeed that connection. But I'd say usually once that invoice is created, that is going to be that billable moment in time that will again also move over to that accounting platform too.

Right. The update would only happen on subscription renewal and not just anytime.

Deals and subscriptions are very much connected, as are invoices and subscriptions descriptions as well.

Good to know.

Okay, thanks. Chat with us at the demo station to learn more if you want to see it in action.

Jack, how you doing? Question. I know recently you've pushed data into a readable API for the, for the work coming out. Is there anything in the roadmap for a writable API? The reason I ask, the QuickBooks integration doesn't really work for us in a B2B setup, so we want to be able to come back in and mark an invoice as paid when we see that happen in QuickBooks. Is that on the roadmap?

I had a slight sense that that question was coming. Stay tuned for more from us in the next handful of quarters. One of the power, the beauty of CRM objects folks, is they have APIs and as we continue to unify everything within HubSpot underneath the hood, you're going to see more consistency, I'd say, across the entire platform. Commerce is very much going to be riding those coattails as well. So stay tuned for more. Love to ungate you early too.

Hey, how's it going? My name is Italo. I wanted to introduce myself. I have a Revx agency called Petal and we do a ton of like custom integrations for people that are high risk or, or like out of country or whatever and they can't necessarily use Stripe or HubSpot payments.

Yep.

So we've done this six times now I think. So we eventually decided to productize and partner with a gateway and I guess kind of similar question to the first guys I know right now, I'm pretty sure right now we cannot write to the payments API. Correct. But you said you're going to be. You're thinking about opening that up next year hopefully. Correct. So right now what we're doing is we're doing it on custom objects. So for enterprise. But the hope is you better do it for pro accounts eventually on the payments tool. So that's like the big problem we run into. But he kind of touched on that. The second thing I want to bring up was metered billing. Are you guys figuring out how to do credit systems metered billing? Because that's one of the things that we want to kind of try to bring to market with our payment tool that we want to bring in a HubSpot and our market is people who don't use Stripe, don't want to use Stripe or can't get approved to Stripe or HubSpot payments because they're like we have cannabis companies for example and things like that. We also have crypto for other companies. You can't get bank approval at all. So we're trying to bring them in the HubSpot because they're already users. It's just hard for them to get their revenue data there. And so that's what we're working with. So we want to solve for metered billing. I want to hear what you guys have on that, if you thought about that yet. And then also opening up payments APIs we can sell to pro customers as well, not just enterprise.

Stay tuned for more from us in the next couple of quarters. I'd say so we have those three CRM objects. We're going to continue to open up the hood a little bit more on that front. So I think you're going to like what we have in the works. This is going to be a huge project for us as well. And again we want, we don't really care what you use. Totally recognize that there are some regulations. We just want you to manage your commerce process and your commerce data where you manage your customers, which is within the CRM. So right now we're investing in that area to open up a little bit more. And different billing use cases, I chatted about some of them today. When it comes to automatically charging recurring invoices, milestone billing, we hear about things like meter billing, usage based and things like that too. So this is very much front of mind for our teams. So stay tuned for more from us.

Yeah, awesome. Yeah, I think with the breeze that consumption is going to be a big thing. Consumption based billing. So super excited. Just want to bring it to your attention and I'll reach out to you on LinkedIn.

Yeah, let's connect.

Let's connect.

I'd love to chat. Well folks, thank you all so much for your time today. This has been absolutely awesome. Enjoy the rest of your inbound and thanks for joining the session today folks.