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- [00:01]
Kevin Dunn
Hi folks. Welcome to agency unfiltered, the HubSpot Solutions Partner Podcast. I'm your host Kevin Dunn and Agency Unfiltered is a weekly web series and podcast that interviews the owners, founders and executives of agencies and services providers from around the world about whatever it takes to grow and scale. This week's guests are two members of the BrandGen IO leadership team, Ryan Burkett, Director of marketing and operations and Galen Dow, Director of Business development. And Ryan and Galen are here to talk about ABR or an account based revop strategy which presents a significant revenue opportunity for partners and agencies as the next evolution of account based marketing, or abm. Ryan and Galen start by contrasting ABM versus abr and then they walk us through what an ideal ABR strategy execution looks like with HubSpot, both with the functionality available natively and with their recommended apps and integrations plugged in. They then share how this can manifest in the sales process, including the value propositions to use, the right discovery questions to ask the blockers. You can remove which opportunities you should be seeking out first and the ABM tools you should integrate in for your clients. Welcome to another episode of Agency Unfiltered.
- [01:34]
Hello gentlemen. Ryan, Galen, how we doing? Happy Agency Unfiltered recording day to you both. How we doing?
- [01:41]
Ryan Burkett
Doing awesome, Kevin, thank you for asking, man.
- [01:44]
Galen Dow
Yeah, still rebounding from Inbound, you know, heads are full, the opportunities are boundless.
- [01:50]
Kevin Dunn
I would say the rebound from Inbound, I'm surprised that's not, you know, that's not somebody's newsletter yet, you know, take it all in. Yes, in the spirit. I mean obviously it's still so timely. What, what got, what, what has you thinking the most? What, what's like the biggest takeaway? Just while we're on the topic of.
- [02:06]
Galen Dow
Inbound, super quick dynamic, you know, customer records, that sort of thing, you know, the efficiencies and possibilities there. I found really interesting. Spin up a website with a couple of prompts to try that and see AI everywhere. Of course. Right. That alone is a lot to digest. That was sort of my key ones. Ryan, what were you thinking man?
- [02:27]
Ryan Burkett
Yeah, co signing, all of that. I think there's also, I walk away with a ton of thoughts around how we are planning to do differently from an agency standpoint. Like how our clients going to see our services now in an age where the platform is continuing to grow more sophisticated and, and with the introduction of AI and ML throughout the platform, like frankly it, it is doing a lot of what we would have been doing and offering five, six years ago. So now it's how do we make sure that we're, we're continuing to step up our delivery as well. So my mind went away from the platform and 100% into how do we get better as humans?
- [03:02]
Kevin Dunn
You know, you know, not on the prep sheet. So we, you couldn't have planned it any better though, as to like, all right, let's kick it off with the product enhancements that we're most excited about and then also how we plan to operationalize or like what it means process wise for us as a agency. So, yeah, you guys covered the game. That's great. And Ryan, also worth noting. Welcome back to the pod. I know we've, we've had you on previously, so.
- [03:21]
Ryan Burkett
Yeah, man, absolutely. And always enjoy it. I'm always grateful for the opportunity, so thanks.
- [03:26]
Kevin Dunn
So I want to open up with a term that it feels like you, you guys may have coined. Maybe it's elsewhere, you guys. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's really going to set the stage, I think, for what we're here to talk about over the next, you know, block of time. And it's not abm, it's not account based marketing, but an evolution towards ABR or account based rev ops as a strategy or as a framework. And so I don't know who wants to take the lead on that. But what is ABR and how do you see it as being fundamentally different from abm?
- [04:00]
Galen Dow
Yeah, I'm happy to start. So, you know, the ABM platforms that are out there, obviously brilliant people, they've developed some capacities that are incredible and useful and valuable. Right. And sort of steered us all in this flip the funnel model, you know, and that's all awesome. And they're going to continue to grow and thrive, I'm sure. One of the issues that I feel like maybe when you move the account based activities out of your CRM is sales and marketing alignment, which is crucial to everyone's success. When you move it into your CRM and orchestrate everything from within your CRM, it's much easier to get near real time sales and marketing alignment versus maybe having an ABM meeting every other Thursday where the sales rep world has been turned upside down with three phone calls and none of those accounts have any interest. What now? And two weeks later we're pivoting our marketing to sort of respond to that. So part of it is getting everyone in the same platform with the same view for the same data, activating and deactivating things that are happening to support the sales Prospecting effort and getting to sales and marketing alignment. So rev ops marketing and sales is part of it. And then I think the other part is all the way around the flywheel we talk to a lot of folks who their interest in account based activities is upsell and next sell for existing customers. Right. Is that really marketing? Because marketing sort of been sort of this funnel thing where it's you know, net new customers, net new logos. So I think it's two things all the way around the funnel and getting sales marketing alignment by getting everybody in the same platform are harmoniously working together in my view makes sense.
- [05:40]
Kevin Dunn
I think as I jotted this down, as you were saying it. But it's having the ABM work or strategies cross functionally moved into and orchestrated from the CRM versus whatever maybe that ABM point solution, whatever it is. Right. So like that that seemed to be the crux that that then unlocks a lot of the things I feel like you just outlined, you know, a more effective or efficient sales marketing alignment, et cetera, et cetera. So that that was the key piece that I took down. Hopefully that feels reflective of the importance in your mind too of the CRM.
- [06:10]
Galen Dow
There's no tool other than HubSpot in my view that you can achieve that with with all of the hubs in there and with the app marketplace surrounding you. If I think of it as like the prospecting efforts, the bullseye HubSpot's sales tools for prospecting are getting more and more powerful. Right. To be best in class. And then the next circle around the bullseye is the brand building and engagement across your social, open web, organic, paid or you know, those types of things. You have the capacity within HubSpot now to orchestrate all of that and keep the marketing directly in alignment and fluidly moving with how your sales prospecting effort.
- [06:48]
Kevin Dunn
It'S a great call.
- [06:49]
Galen Dow
I don't know another platform that can, that you can achieve that with, you know.
- [06:52]
Kevin Dunn
So my next question, there's like two parts and let me know if it makes sense to decouple and kind of attack one at a time. But you mentioned, you know, ABR as it relates to HubSpot just you know, based on the tools and the functionality natively available in the HubSpot customer platform. And then you mentioned HubSpot plus maybe some of the apps within the marketplace in the ecosystem. And I know that's, I mean upwards of there's like 1500 in there now.
- [07:16]
Ryan Burkett
Right.
- [07:17]
Kevin Dunn
So, so there's the two elements and so what does ABR look like if we start only with tools and functionality in HubSpot, what, you know, can it be done? It sounds like, yes, potentially, you know, in an effective way.
- [07:30]
Galen Dow
Yeah, absolutely. So centered within HubSpot, you can do one of the elements which is account discovery. How do we decide which accounts are the right ones? In my experience, and I've been doing this a very long time, right, There are often companies where there's always an account based conversation. There are often companies where it's like, hey, we sell to law firms and I want to go get the 200 largest law firms or architecture firms or whatever, right? And those should be our customers. So there we go. There are others where there's a very long list of potential, you know, fit companies out there. So I need an intent signal to sort of rank them. You know, where do I focus today? There are intent signals baked into HubSpot leads come in companies. Visit your website. You're running AdWords campaigns, right? So you can watch in your, what used to be the prospects tool, now the website visitor stools. You tie that with your AdWords campaigns and now you can identify companies that are searching your, for your competition, searching for you, searching for, you know, high value, high intent keywords, right? So that's sort of opportunistically watching our traffic, surfacing an intent signal within HubSpot. And then you move from there. You have the target account stool, where you load them into the target account stool and whatever tiers you sort of set up. And then there's, you know, maybe, you know, some contacts that you already have in there. So that sort of energizes your first outreach. And then you've got within HubSpot your social advertising tools. So I run my lists against Facebook and LinkedIn, right? I am, while I'm prospecting, I'm going to Sales Navigator. I'm sending connection requests, I Post out of HubSpot Social Tools to the people that are willing to connect. So right within HubSpot, you know, I can open up multiple channels with the tools that are already there using a relatively high value, low cost intent signal and get moving with apm, right?
- [09:20]
Kevin Dunn
Love that. Immensely powerful. And I can't help but think there's somebody in charge of, you know, the, the, the usage recipe of ABM inside of HubSpot in HubSpot or elsewhere. They'd be like, man, we got to. All right, I got to, I got to steal that sound bite. That was like, that's how you walk through, right?
- [09:35]
Galen Dow
Introduce us to the, to the right folks.
- [09:38]
Kevin Dunn
And we'll do we' and so, so where does the ecosystem fill the gaps? Right. So it's like what, you know, what's the point? What's your point of view? What's the perspective? What is a. What's the ABR optimized tech stack look like as you look elsewhere?
- [09:50]
Galen Dow
Yeah, contacts. I need contacts to prospect. I may want intent. So two tools that I'm liking right now are Apollo I.O. and Seamless. Right. For contact discovery, Apollo has intent wired in. I think Seamless does as well. I'd have to look. Right. So that's a no brainer. I think we all would if we've tried these different tools. Zoom info I think is the gold standard. Very high quality. You know, a lot of the contacts are accurate which is great, but the price point up here in enterprise ABM land. Right. So for us mere mortals, you know, you know Apollo and Seamless are two tools for contacts, enrichment and maybe intent if that's important. And then brand gen, super affordable bolts deeply into HubSpot. And for your open web account based advertising as well as taking the right contact lists, onboarding, advertising and ABM retargeting, we can talk about with that suite of tools you have a very comprehensive ABM capability across a pretty large number of channels.
- [10:47]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah, it's a helpful reference and you know, a great recommendation. Now also I'll put a pin in brandgen. I think there's much more to discuss on that front. Now I don't want to pull us down a rabbit hole but something that I'm always curious about, you know, as you go into these, you know, conversations with prospective clients who are considering purchasing HubSpot, is there any sound bites or approach to that conversation that yields a higher success rate or win rate when you're stacking on softwares in additional price points beyond Maybe just the HubSpot platform SKU like what's the approach, right. To close these like multi software sales calls. Does that make sense?
- [11:26]
Galen Dow
Yeah, I feel like I'm talking a lot. Happy. Happy. So I think it really. And we've got the partner showcase in June where we sort of dove into some of these things in more depth. Folks might look for that. I think really it's in the discovery call asking the account based question. Have you thought about account based activities? And you know, are there accounts that might be really valuable for you to focus intently on? Right. Which includes, you know, prospects, leads, existing customers and opening that conversation right there for partners. Having been on a lot of discovery calls and having been on partner calls, you know, introducing. You're differentiating yourself. Just asking that question across the HubSpot ecosystem. I feel like we, there's this feeling that ABM is this big expensive thing that happens. Is this in this software over there? And why would I put my customer, my relationship at risk referring something that is kind of not anything you always want to refer, you know, but nothing really in it for me. It's a big budget going over there for this thing that if it doesn't perform, I recommended, you know, so, so I feel like we're all kind of like it's over there, it's a big ticket thing and I can't really do that. And the shame of it is that when you do it well, you can do it really well. In HubSpot you can't do everything. If I'm going to do it at large scale, you need all of that functionality. That's all great. I can do it at small scale, I can do it very affordably. I can sell more value of the HubSpot. They're already buying, you know, inbound demand gen and ABM. Let's talk about it all ABR. Right. So opening up the conversation and then exploring what that might look like and for partners, you know, maybe the $15,000 ABM tool is out of budget over here, but that doesn't mean there isn't a 3, $5,000 ABM retainer. You know, with a couple of affordable tools that we can do a lot with, you know, they can produce a lot of value from what they're largely already buying. So it's the discovery call question and it's the value based presentation. That's where the heart of it and where it all begins.
- [13:34]
Ryan Burkett
Yeah, Kevin, if I could just add. I think there's also like, I think there's a, there's a great reality to a lot of what Galen has mentioned from the standpoint of strategic approach to how we're trying to execute and how we're trying to find value could be a bit intimidating, a bit overwhelming, especially to agencies that haven't begun to proof of concept this within their agency and with their clients like. But there is this reality to the fact that there are, there is definitely a way that looking at the ecosystem of, of application partners that are out there, branch and included to build a model which allows you to crawl, walk, run in towards the success that you want to see for your clients as well as within the agency. So, so I don't want anyone, especially knowing the audience of this particular session. I don't Want anyone to walk away from this session and think, my God, that's overwhelming. How in the world do I take the first step? They're absolutely. And we spent a lot of time internally talking about how do we create the fastest path of proofing and the fastest and easiest path for confirming that proof of concept within an agency partner relationship. And it's very imperative to us that we do that because we also recognize that not every agency is going to have the ability to scale into a sophisticated strategy out of the gate. Right. And so to Galen's point, the notion of abr, the notion of ABM, and frankly the notion of anything that begins to extend into revenue ops is sometimes a leap for agency partners. And what we would advocate, especially in one on one conversations, is let's figure out where you are today from a baseline standpoint and let's talk about how we create. Galen likes to call it air cover. Others may call it other types of activation. But how do we create an opportunity to use a different tactic now to support the strategies you've already built your reputation and your client trusted relationship on? And we believe you can do that with the platforms that are existing in the marketplace, including, including Branchen, when paired with a very, very capable system of record for the entire business opportunity, which is HubSpot. So that's really the way that we try to approach it, especially in our conversations with agency partners is where are you today? Where are your clients at today? What do they know about X, Y or z to include ABM, to include RevOps? And how do we begin to stairstep them into recognizing the ROI of putting the time and attention into that much more sophistication without it being overwhelming now.
- [16:01]
Kevin Dunn
Super, super helpful and you know, it's, it leads into my next question may actually like proactively answer a good portion of it. But I was going to ask, you know, from what I'm hearing right, a CRM driven ABM or ABR strategy is just immensely powerful. And the strategy outlines itself, it's right there and there's already text, you know, softwares and apps that can plug in to make it even more robust and powerful. And so what are the blockers like what's getting in the way right. Of more partners to be thinking about this and doing in it. And obviously you mentioned like hey, you know, we're, we're here to try and mitigate this feeling of overwhelmed, like overwhelming them with this or are they not aware of the resources that are available? It sounds like maybe a capacity issue to like handle the sophistication it requires. But anyways, like, what else? What other blockers do you guys get.
- [16:50]
Galen Dow
A sense of talking with partners and hubspotters, you know, customers every day. My. My impression is that the ABM tools have done a great job of branding themselves as the way to do abm. Largely expensive enterprise price points, capable tools. You know, we all have our place. But the perception, in my view, is it's expensive. This customer can't really afford it. There's a lot of risk in referring something that I have no control over. So it sort of sits over here on the side. And with HubSpot's growing capability set and these connected apps, we're trying to change that perception into something that can be sold and monetized by partners in an effective way. And I think, you know, having been a partner in different forms for a long time, the worst thing that I want is my customer to be asking me, hey, what about. I always want to be ahead of them. We should be talking about. I don't want them talking to these platforms off the side and maybe sending budget over there. Starting to think about it, because I haven't raised the conversation that this is something that's important. So to me, there's a defensive aspect. Let's bring it up and talk about it, right? And as Ryan said, you know, start small, think big, move fast, right? So, you know, start with some advertising, start with this, start with that sort of feel your way. And like in the old days of inbound, where there was sort of, you know, small, big, large packages, we're seeing partners now starting to package. You know, if you use this app and this app, these are the services we provide. And, you know, small to large, and they're, you know, you could double your agency revenue by adding this to what you're already doing. Like, there's an immense service opportunity here. And for HubSpot, you're stickier, you're that much more valuable. People are activating that many more tools. You know, we're closing more deals because, oh, there's this whole thing we can do we're not even talking about, right? So there's, in my view, we're banging on the door every day saying, please listen to us. Like, there's millions of dollars at stake here. Like, it's all going over there, and we can have it right here. Like, you know.
- [19:01]
Kevin Dunn
Well, you know, I was gonna double the revenue. I want to unpack that. Like, all right, everyone's ears just perked up. And so it's like, all Right. What's the pathway to doubling my revenue by chance by using the right technologies.
- [19:12]
Galen Dow
Right.
- [19:12]
Kevin Dunn
And executing the strategy for my customers. Like what truly is the pathway?
- [19:15]
Galen Dow
Sure. And I don't know what scale different partners. But let's say, let's say that you've got a demand gen, an inbound marketing package and it's $10,000 a month. Right. If I'm considering ABM, that's the type of budget that I'm thinking about to go move to one of these tools. So if it's in the conversation and I'm considering that as an opportunity, then there is, you know, 5, 10, $15,000, you know, of services revenue centered in HubSpot and what we do there is, you know, some attributes of this when you get into it are when you use Brandgen to run a buyer group advertising campaign, you know, 100 companies and their CFOs is a very, very small audience. So you get what's called banner blindness. You get really high engagement rate, like really high click through rates and engagement rates at first and then that tails off. Because I've seen your ads, dude. Like, you know, I'm clicked right in.
- [20:05]
Kevin Dunn
Right.
- [20:06]
Galen Dow
So refreshing creative, refreshing messages. All of these things to feed that beast are retainer based services that are baked in in order to make this an effective effort. So the budgets are out there. It's, you know, it's either being spent over here, which some of it I think we could maybe, you know, claw back, but I think more of it is underneath that budget set down here where I can do a lot of it on a smaller scale within HubSpot. There's all of that budget available that I don't see anyone really sort of meeting the need for at this point in time. And I think it's in millions. The other thing we're doing this like, right.
- [20:45]
Ryan Burkett
I think the other thing is when you start to think about it as a value, value based pricing and I don't mean to suggest that it would be a pricing mechanism other than resource time. What I'm essentially saying is that as you can continue to show greater value and continue to get closer and closer to the transaction, the opportunity continues to grow from the standpoint of just increasing pricing overall. Right. You are more, much more valuable the closer you get to the point of transaction as a service provider. And what we would advocate for, what we would suggest is that we got data that enables you to see that through some of the targeting mechanisms that we would talk about here and some of the other platforms that allow us to hyper target. Now, the dollar spend is, has a far greater ROI than some of the things that we've done historically, which just didn't have the ability to target the way the platforms enable us to target. Now I guarantee you, you do walk in the door to your customer and you say, hey, with a dollar spend, I can guarantee you we're going to now than we were two years ago with the same dollar. They're going to recognize the value in that and they're going to see the service that you're providing as being a more valuable service. So it's not just about can we rack up more services. Honestly, your service becomes that much more valuable when you can present to a client attributable data that says, hey, we're closer to the transaction and we're impacting the transaction from an attribution standpoint.
- [22:10]
Kevin Dunn
Brian, I'm glad you're, you're in my brain a little bit. I know we talked about like the point of emphasis on asking the right questions in the discussion discovery step. I was going to follow up with, well, you know, what's the value proposition that you should, you know, complete the swing on and like hammer home. But I think that you just, you more or less have just outlined it in that you're closer to the point of sale of the transaction and you're, you're enhancing, you're growing the dollar in, dollar out ratio or the roi. Like those are the, those are the sound bites, right?
- [22:36]
Ryan Burkett
Absolutely. And you know, it's, it's also somewhat future proofing as well. Kevin, like to a certain extent, when you start to think about strategies like this, it enables us to turn the corner on what may be changing from just a market dynamic standpoint. We talked earlier around ABM and AI and the HubSpot platform and how that's increasing now the capabilities of the platform without the human touch. Now we are increasingly as agencies going to have to be forced to upskill and refine our services. So continuing to do more of the same obviously isn't going to work for us. And I would debate and offer that anytime you can show a higher value return from an ROI standpoint, then that enables you to decouple from the commoditization of what the platform is pushing out totally. So I think that's, you know, everything has to be about us upskilling as humans and staying a bit ahead of the, of what AI eventually will learn. But, but what it is doing now.
- [23:37]
Kevin Dunn
Feel free to answer this question by saying it's negligible or non existent. But as I look at my existing book of business and maybe also the prospective clients or deals in my pipeline, is the ABR conversation better suited for net new business or as a expansion to or upsell on existing business? It's interesting to get your take if there is, if there's a difference.
- [24:03]
Galen Dow
I mean if it were me, I would start with upselling existing. You have those relationships, relationships, you probably have an idea of target audience and such a little bit easier to develop, you know, a strategic solution, implement something and then you know more about what it is you're selling on net new. But there's no question in at least my mind that it is a differentiator in the sales process. And I've had, you know, customers are like, nobody else talks like you. You know, that's what is that a.
- [24:32]
Kevin Dunn
Good thing or a bad thing?
- [24:33]
Galen Dow
Well, it's, you know, ask my wife what it is.
- [24:35]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah, true, right.
- [24:37]
Galen Dow
But, but the gist of it is it's, it's a sort of rough way of saying no one else is talking about this particular advantage of this software and solution set and therefore I'm more interested in working with you. And that's what every partner wants. So if you are the one raising it in the conversation and nobody else is talking like you, that's differentiation, you know, in the sales process. And, and I, and I feel like that could be part of HubSpot writ large differentiation, you know. Wait, what do you mean? Your software is really good at this thing that I thought was this thing that was over here, you know.
- [25:12]
Kevin Dunn
So I think any, anytime you're able to get into this conversation and kind of outline this strategy that isn't being echoed by every other agency or person that they may be talking to. Yeah, there's, you know, it's compelling in that way.
- [25:26]
Galen Dow
Yeah, for sure.
- [25:27]
Ryan Burkett
Yep.
- [25:28]
Kevin Dunn
No, that makes sense.
- [25:30]
Lessons learned along the way here. Maybe you guys have skinned your knees or have seen, you know, an agency trying to, you know, apply this strategy to a certain business that didn't work. Are there any flags? Industries, verticals, business types, variables? Like what, what red flags do I need to look at to know like ABR is actually not on the table for this person.
- [25:48]
Galen Dow
How many form fills will I get? Right? Because it's not about the form fill. You have the contact information and theoretically you're actively reaching out in a multi channel model and trying to engage with them. So you know, if I'm really good at inbound, I'm good at getting a form fill and it's because, you know, and if the form fills are well done, these are high value leads because there's intent behind what they were searching for. We've now moved to an interruptive HubSpot used to use that phrase when they were really all in, all in on inbound. You know, there's this other thing called interruptive. Right. Well, now we're moving into interruptive marketing.
- [26:27]
Kevin Dunn
You outbound, you know.
- [26:29]
Galen Dow
Yeah, outbound, yeah. You took them off of weather.com or the newyorktimes.com or e time, whatever it was. And they'll come over and they'll take a peek. I'm really busy. It's not the thing on my mind, but sort of on my mind when the timing's right. So we can demonstrate a lot of engagement.
- [26:43]
Kevin Dunn
You can.
- [26:43]
Galen Dow
They'll watch the video, they'll scroll up and down the page, the heat map, whatever, click through rates. All of the engagement metrics will be there for the part that we provide. Getting the form fill is devilishly difficult. And it's similar, I think with your social media advertising. So it really, the mindset needs to change from this is generating a lead that I can follow up with to I am actively reaching out to this company. I am building my brand with the people that matter so that when we have the conversation, when the decisions are being made, everybody in the room or more people in the room are like, oh yeah, I think I was on their website. Like I know them. Right. That familiarity that compresses sales cycles increases deal size. You know, that happens. So it, I would encourage everyone go engage with the big abm, you know, enterprise ABM platforms. You may have a customer that they're a great fit for and that's awesome. Right. And you should be recommending the right thing. But also understand how they talk about value. Right. And how value is positioned when you're moving to an outbound versus an inbound model. So if a customer says how many form fills? You haven't had the right conversation. If a customer understands brand, you know, like, hey, I want to be at all the trade shows because my customers are there. You know, the leads from trade shows aren't great, but you're there for brand. Right. It's that sort of thinking that needs to go in behind this. That's very different from an inbound, you know, results measurement model.
- [28:07]
Ryan Burkett
Yeah, I think if I were going to answer that question, Kevin, the other thing I'd add, and I agree with everything Galen said, I'm going to pick out two words that he used That I think are, I think agencies, individuals, clients are going to skin their knees on, which is focus on contact and difficulty focusing on company. Like when we start to think about the core of abm, like realistically, when we all started listening to the definition of abm, we're talking about company firmographics, we're no longer talking about the demographics or the specifics of an individual. And that's difficult for a lot of folks in our line of work to think about the import equal importance and impact that we can have on focusing on the company and roughly wrap role title into company because now I don't have the identifier as opposed to focusing on the cookie and the contact. And that's very, very difficult. And, and I think if people were to scrape their knees enough on the front end before they start to engage with their clients and understand and seek to understand and be able to articulate the importance of both within marketing strategy, I think it makes a big difference. But that is one where we continuously get questions because there's, it's ingrained in us after all this time. Right. That that's what we're thinking. Our ultimate value is tied to that contact level. But ultimately when we're talking about B2B, what are we trying to do? We're trying to push for decisions that are made corporately for a business. Right. A business to transact with a business. So that is one of those areas that we continue to fall and scrape our knees on how to articulate that in a way that is simplistic enough for people to be able to understand it. So I would just offer that one. It's a very, very simple one. Just continue to think about the fact that it's not just contact, it's also company. And how do we have a strategy that fulfills for both.
- [30:02]
Galen Dow
Yeah, brilliant. For sure. Ryan and pet peeve. Right. You know, we all know that the buying group makes the decision and they're getting bigger, but we score at the lead level. Right. We don't score at the account level. Right. Largely so, yeah. I mean, and that's part of the change in mindset. What's happening at the account level versus this one lead we're work. Happen to be working today. Yeah. Brilliant run.
- [30:24]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah. Great notes. Yeah. Great flags. Good call outs. You mentioned some, some technologies, maybe some app, you know, apps that, that build a really, you know, effective ABR tech stack, obviously powered by HubSpot as the CRM. What are the considerations or things that other agencies on behalf of their clients should be looking for as part of the evaluation process. And again, I think the subtext here from everything I'm talking to you guys about sounds like brand gen scores fairly high in those evaluation points. So I'd love to just get a sense. It's like what folks should be looking for, how to evaluate and obviously potentially why branch and fits the bill there?
- [31:06]
Galen Dow
Yeah, I think in part, depth of integration with HubSpot I think is critical because there's this idea of account based marketing. We're going to select our accounts and we're going to do this thing right at those accounts. Largely we might use an intent signal and sort of make it a little bit fluid. My own take on this day to day sales rep is their day changes five minutes at a time, you know what I mean? So accounts might score high over here. I'm sorry, there's no heartbeat. Like I've had five conversations and. And then a lead comes in and like, wow, there's really something here and it's not really connected over there. So where I hope to see us move is automated agility. Scott Brinker, I promise him a TM every time I use that phrase. So it's a great phrase, a good phrase, Automated agility. So in order to get true sales and marketing alignment, we need to be realistic about the day in the life of a rep and how fluid that can be when you center it into CRM with the connected tools, with deep integrations to your apps. Now we can move, you know, like two fish through the ocean together. Marketing and sales truly aligned in real time by automating agility to tie our marketing directly to what our sales is doing. And even, you know, like with brandgen, the ability for a sales rep to turn on and off campaigns, here's campaigns and here's a budget. Think of it like sales collateral. Right? Have a great conversation. Add that buyer group to the budget, you have a terrible conversation. Don't spend your budget there and take it out. So what have you done for me lately? Well, I built you campaigns for buyers group that you can activate and run your own little budget. Right. When you have that level of depth of integration with HubSpot now you can automate agility and you can build a realistic framework for getting to sales and marketing alignment by having it all housed and activated in in your CRM.
- [33:02]
Kevin Dunn
Depth of integration that yields automated agility or enhance, you know, improved automated agility. Yeah, love that. Go ahead, Ryan. I know I cut you off there.
- [33:10]
Ryan Burkett
No, that's all right. I was just going to completely co sign that I'll be honest, the feature that we built out to support sales team engagement into, in this case, the targeting of the marketing driven campaign is really, really excites me in part because we've been talking about sales and marketing alignment for so long and the question is how do we continue to upskill the tools that we're bringing to market? Not just branch in, but everyone within the ecosystem such that it can deliver on that prom. So that's one that's very, very exciting to me because I think it's, it's one that we haven't seen replicated within the ecosystem. Not just the HubSpot ecosystem, but any of the other CRM and marketing supported tools around CRM. So we're excited about that one. I think that'll be pretty quick and I'm sorry, pretty good quickly. The other things that I think you would look for when you're considering these platforms are of course, what's the, what's my barrier to entry from a cost standpoint? Like what's that going to look like? So we're trying to check that box and make sure that it is low or cost from the standpoint of how do you get to access at least the initial features associated with the platform and then beyond that, how do I have the ability to target in ways that I don't have in other platforms? So we're trying to add some additional value from some unique targeting opportunities and brand gen that you just don't see in some of the other ecosystems. So we really, really are taking the agency driven or agency Persona driven model to even the features that we're adding into the platform. And every we add something in, we're asking ourselves is this going to help an agency partner sell to his customer the strategy better? And you know, like that's a, it's a checkbox that we're checking on our internal check sheet every time we go through and we're having a features and functionality conversation around R and D. So I, I think integration is one thing again, figuring out how to check the boxes around barriers to entry around cost is another. And then ultimately if you can continue to enhance the way that we can target, then it just makes agencies not only more intelligent but more agile and more effective from the standpoint of what they can deliver for the clients.
- [35:21]
Kevin Dunn
Now to reflect back, just for my own understanding, I want to like check my own assumptions when we talk about depth of integration. Probably the volume of objects and records and data that gets synced over between the two platforms. Also probably the Speed in which that occurs obviously around your call about the barrier and the cost of entry. Sounds like the unique element here too is like the agency forward feature rollout or like the agency oriented product or feature development. And then just quickly you mentioned maybe some targeting capabilities or some features that aren't available in the other platforms. What are some of those?
- [35:57]
Ryan Burkett
Well, I'd say. Let me back up. I don't know that they aren't available. I think you wouldn't find them co located within a single platform that enables the agency to be effective. So even from just a pure targeting standpoint, most platforms aren't allowing you to do unique publication targeting and creating publication groups from a targeting standpoint in the same tool that you're also able to do roles and titles with traditional company focus or geo targeting. Like we're enabling you to be able to stack these tiles from the standpoint of how you can, how you can continue to be more refined in your target and that just produces better outcomes. Of course. So that's the intent is to try to bring more arrows into the quiver of brand gen. For us, that just makes an agency stronger. You can find it everywhere else. But if we can bring them into a one place that works synchronous in a synchronous fashion. Let me not use the crazy word in a synchronous fashion, then that's just going to make agencies that much better.
- [36:58]
Kevin Dunn
Yeah, it's not unlike the old cobbled versus crafted narrative. Right. And so you don't have to. Yep, 100 makes a ton of sense. Thanks for the point clarification. Yeah, makes sense. Guys, we're coming up on time and so I'd hate to not squeeze this last question in. We. We wrap every episode with it and maybe we can add a spin on it depending on your initial reaction. It's this. What's the strangest part of agency life?
- [37:26]
Galen Dow
Oh gosh. Well, to a certain degree what I have loved about it, which is pretty close to the question is, you know, like you're. You're talking with all of a sudden you're talking with a company and oh my gosh, that's where the wiring for the wire under my hood comes from. Like somebody had to make it right and. And then the depth of like what it takes to make that work. Well, so just the constant learning. If you love to learn new things every day, agency life can be a great place to be. I'm trying to think of what the strangest. Ryan man, what do you.
- [38:00]
Kevin Dunn
We can't discount the strange Nature of that, though, it's like, oh, okay, yeah, that's the company that creates the metal springs for my pens, you know?
- [38:07]
Galen Dow
Okay. That's where. That's where that comes from. And, oh, my gosh, who knew that there was so much to know about this little thing, right? So that can. That can be super enjoyable, for sure.
- [38:18]
Kevin Dunn
How about your take, Ryan? Oh, do we lose your audio? You're muted on my end.
- [38:26]
Galen Dow
Sorry, friend.
- [38:28]
Ryan Burkett
Sorry about that.
- [38:29]
Kevin Dunn
There it is.
- [38:29]
Ryan Burkett
Yeah.
- [38:30]
Galen Dow
Yeah.
- [38:31]
Ryan Burkett
So I don't remember how I answered the question a couple of years ago, but I guarantee you it'll be different than I've answered today. I'd say the greater environment that we're in right now makes agency, the definition of what an agency does, so incredibly different than what it was two years ago. That it is making it feel as though every. Every month, every quarter, every year, you're. You're building a new agency, you're building a new definition as to what the agency is. And more importantly, like, you're having to figure out what in the heck you provide and why you provide it and be able to articulate that in a. In a consistent, clean manner such that people buy it and support you. So I think that's the strangest thing right now, that I didn't feel that half dozen years ago. I didn't feel it two years ago. It felt like, understood what we could provide. And now it feels like with just the changing environment, everything is very different. So it's strange times more than anything, I think.
- [39:28]
Kevin Dunn
And it takes a very special, unique type of person to want to, you know, really lean into that lifestyle or like, yeah, we got to reinvent every two years if that scares you. You know, probably in the wrong line of business. But, yeah, great answer. It is. It's certainly a strange element to it, for sure. Well, guys, we're at. We're out of time, so thanks so much. I've learned a ton. I can only imagine how much the folks that have tuned in today have learned. Obviously, you know, as we think about ABM evolving to abr, right, and having it orchestrated and homed and connected to your CRM, and then obviously the tech stack and all the different solutions and strategies there within. So I appreciate the time, you guys. Thanks for coming on the show. Certainly been a pleasure of mine. So thanks so much.
- [40:11]
Galen Dow
Been a joy. Thank you so much for the time, Kevin. Really appreciate it.
- [40:14]
Ryan Burkett
Thanks, Kevin. Awesome.
- [40:15]
Kevin Dunn
All right, guys. Well, this has been another episode of Agency Unfiltered.
- [40:39]
Ryan Burkett
Sam.