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- [00:00]
A
We haven't gone down a vertical path. We've gone kind of into the large customer path. Our key thing is actually multinationals. So not only large customers, customers that go across different countries.
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B
Today I have the pleasure of talking to a leader who believes that HubSpot partners need to completely reposition themselves to AI first, strategic consultants and digital transformation experts. He also happens to be the group CEO of Hubble Digital, HubSpot's global partner of the year, leading out of thousands of partners with the highest sold revenue globally, which is a pretty massive feat. When I asked him about how he led his team to the top spot in the ecosystem, he said it was a long term goal. We'll get deep into how he did it. On today's Show. I'm Sarah McDevitt and this is only the outcome. Darren Smith, congratulations again on your achievement and I couldn't think of anyone better to kick off the whole show with than you. So thanks so much for being here today.
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A
Thanks Sarah, I really appreciate it.
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B
What is Hubble's story? Tell us about you and tell us about Hubble.
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A
Yeah, starting off with me, I studied computer science. Thought I was going to be a techie. Then as the world is so unknown, I ended up getting involved in a layoff and my boss at the time made me a marketing manager because the theory was if you build websites, you're in marketing. I had no idea what I was doing, but I always had kind of this, like from that computer science kind of background, the kind of analytical side of me was always on high alert, always wanting to see kind of, well, if I spend this on marketing, is there going to be a return on investment? So after kind of 15 years or so in the corporate environment, ties don't suit me. So I stopped wearing a tie and decided to start an agency. And yeah, I was really pessimistic about marketing at that point. I'd spent millions and millions and millions and just, I was just not convinced that it worked. And I, like most people, came across a HubSpot blog that spoke about inbound marketing and I was like, wow, I can get behind this kind of inbound marketing thing. Ended up starting kind of an agency back in 2012 based in South Africa called MPLE. Back then I went from being kind of a marketing agency into actually quite a technical marketing agency because we kept on integrating different systems and so on. And then, yeah, in 2020, ended up merging with B2B Marketing Lab. They were based in London and they were really good at marketing. So I think it was like Kind of a match made in heaven kind of thing because we had the kind of technical side, they had the marketing side. And that was kind of three, four days before the big COVID lockdown. But that was the start of the Hubble brand.
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B
Can we just go back for a second? Because you know, you do have a very unique start to your journey. When you were talking about, you know, computer science and then you were kind of this reluctant participant in building a successful marketing agency, how do you think kind of your technical focused, ROI focused perspective eventually is what has shaped your competitive advantage in the HubSpot ecosystem?
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A
I see HubSpot as a bunch of pre built functionality, well tested, thoroughly tested, thoroughly scaled, thoroughly architected technology for you to build things on top of it. I don't see HubSpot as the tool and you just implement what HubSpot does out of the box and that's really shaped that kind of technical background. Where I look at HubSpot as a set of databases, a set of pre built functionality and then go right, well, what is the customer trying to achieve? Let's go back to what the actual goals are, the actual challenges are and then let's build something. Because if we use HubSpot as a foundation, we can probably cut three, four months out of a normal development timeframe. And now if you look around, I mean if you look at, there's hundreds and thousands of digital transformation companies out there and many of them will build customers things from the ground up. So as a HubSpot partner in the HubSpot ecosystem, I think we have a huge advantage.
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B
On that note, you won global partner of the year in 2024. Maybe give us like some of the kind of main points that helped you got there.
- [04:19]
A
For us there were two key things that enabled us to get to global parts of the year. The competition is strong, we've got some great competitors. I think first of all, we decided several years ago back in 2020 when we came together to form Hubble, to focus in the upmarket segment, larger customers. We cut our teeth on small businesses. Absolutely. For those first, what, eight years it was mostly working in small businesses. I love small businesses, they move fast, they're innovative and so on, but they also don't have budget. They also expect the world with very little budget. So unlike the upmarket space, the mid market, the enterprise where you're not spending the owner's money, you're spending a budget, a Capex or OPEX budget that needs to be spent in order for it to be there next year. Again, the Challenges you need to solve are so much bigger. So if I look back to kind of 2019, on average we were doing probably two marketing hub professional licenses a month, $1,600 a month. And to try and actually, you know, get into the hundreds of thousands of sold mri, which you need to get to for the like kind of global partner of the year, that's just not moving the needle. So that's one. And obviously sales is important, but the second part is retention of revenue. And going back to what I was saying earlier, you know, we don't, we don' feel that there's, there is value but not a huge amount of value in just implementing HubSpot. So what we also said at one point when we got confident enough, because that was a key thing to be brave enough to say, this is, we said no more projects, right? If you want to engage with us on a project basis, rather go find somebody else. We can't help you, we can't retain you. And as a result it will negatively affect us from a HubSpot point of view if we have customers churning and that type of thing. And that made a massive impact as well. So HubSpot's been moving up market and we, we need case studies to show hey, like HubSpot can support a sales team of a thousand sales reps or a database with millions of contacts. And so that's why we didn't, couldn't do it overnight. And it took us a long time to become brave enough to say no to projects. So you know, as you say, it took us a long time to get there. It was always a long term goal, but eventually we did get there.
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B
So you said no to projects, but what did you say yes to? I guess is the, is the. So I knew you were saying long term, but I more mean in terms of the type of customer. Like did you intentionally say this is a vertical that is more open to this model and so we're going to go down this vertical. And what was that vertical that you felt or verticals that you felt gave you that, that opportunity to expand?
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A
We haven't gone down a vertical path. We've gone kind of into the large customer path. Our key thing is actually multinationals. So not only large customers, customers that go across different countries. So after our initial merger between B2B Marketing Lab and Mpool, which gave us kind of UK and then a South African back office, we then organically opened in in the US hiring a sales salesperson. I spent a lot of time supporting the US and we also organically opened in Singapore. So that gave us kind of follow the support. And then we, we acquired a HubSpot partner in Germany and we acquired a HubSpot partner in, in Belgium to give us French capabilities. So, you know, those, those terrible stock photographs of the clocks on a wall with like Paris, Munich, London, Chicago, like Sydney, offices that have those clocks in are our ideal customer. So it's not industry, it's about where you're located. And then I suppose the one key thing that we've done, which we believe is different to many of the other HubSpot partners, is we've got one methodology, one framework. We do offer Follow The sun support 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year on an SLA. And there's a good chance that a customer opens a ticket because of something and it might be a user problem, it might be a real bug, it might just be, hey, I need to set up a new sequence, like an operational thing. But somebody that never worked on that project or that instance, say in Singapore, and this is a North American customer, may be awake and open up that ticket and need to respond. And so we thought, well, we have to have a single methodology, a single architecture belief framework, that type of thing. And so even though we've made acquisitions along the way, we've gone through the massive, massive efforts of putting everybody onto a single platform and a single methodology.
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B
Is there any failure that taught you so much that you'd fail all over again just to learn that lesson?
- [09:23]
A
Yamini actually said that I think one of the partner days strategy is what you decide not to do. And that really resonated with me because if you've been unstrategic, you can do everything, but you're actually not going to achieve everything if you keep on trying to do everything. So initially, if I take an example, we, the HubSpot App Partner Program launched and we thought, let's start developing apps, let's put apps into the marketplace. And we developed three apps. And it was right in the beginning of the app ecosystem. And it's a completely different strategy, I mean, to sell in people, hourly rates, that type of thing, to actually trying to build a SaaS product and so on. And it took us kind of almost through that, that phase of failing with our app launch to realize, hold on, we need to focus on what we are, what we do best. The way that we look at HubSpot is every time HubSpot launches a feature, we look at that feature and go, well, what are the consulting Services that are required that lead to the implementation of this feature? Because implementing the feature is easy, AI is probably going to implement the feature one day. But what are the high value things that are further up the value chain? What we learned through that experience of failing when we try to develop some apps is we need to stay true to our original strategy. We need to say no to staff. And in that particular case, now we look at the apps and we go exactly how we look at the HubSpot feature. Okay, this is amazing app, amazing. Add on into HubSpot. But what are the value add services that come before that that lead to the implementation? And that's where we focus our product development efforts.
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B
How does that translate to what we're seeing across the AI shift when it comes to the commoditization of things like technical implementations?
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A
I won't lie, AI has scared me as a services provider, but we've taken our strategy and we've gone, okay, well what leads to the implementation of an AI feature or an AI tool or an AI agent? I think it's actually quite similar to what we've been doing all along. When we do a HubSpot implementation, the first thing that we do is we re engineer their marketing processes, the sales processes and their services processes or their revenue process as a whole. And that's our real focus. And now what we then do is we look at the process and we go what native HubSpot features can enable this process, can scale this process. And then we identify which pieces of this process that we've designed need custom development, custom scripts. Like you're going back to what I said right in the beginning, like going to building things on top of HubSpot. But now with AI, we're now looking at and going, adding a third lens and going which of these processes can be done by an AI agent or which of these processes can be enhanced with AI? The key thing for us is we're still trying to deliver amazing customer experiences. That's our customer promise. We want to delight our customers. Customers and AI and HubSpot are just ways to enable us to make true on the promise we make in our customers.
- [12:46]
B
One thing that really fascinates me is a lot of partners so focused on the traditional, our billable model, right? And obviously like a lot of what you're describing there is not something you're, you're enhancing your own ability to get work done by making the AI do the magic for the customers. As it becomes harder for people to justify implementations on an hourly basis and we focus More on the outcomes for customers. How do you quantify that with the customers that you're dealing with when you're trying to move away from those more traditional revenue models?
- [13:20]
A
For a long time we've been following a value based pricing model. And the best way that I like to describe that is when you look at a task, you've got an A player who's your top consultant and you know they can do that task in an hour. And then you've got a C player which is somebody that you've bought on their graduates. You expecting them to become that top consultant in maybe several years time. But they've got lots to learn and they're going to take three hours to do that task. It's not fair to charge the client the one hour that the A person is going to do because maybe that task doesn't get assigned to that A player. And it's also not fair to charge the client the C player price because hey, you learning on the client's dime them. So we always look at what is the B player price, right? What is the fair price? And going back to kind of our values and what we believe in, that kind of transparency and being ethical and all that type of thing, we go like what is a fair price to charge for this? And yes, sometimes we're going to use AI and do things much, much faster, whether that be development, we've even been using it to develop strategy and, and do market research, that type of thing. But our pricing strategy, if I were to brand it, I'd call it like a fair price.
- [14:37]
B
A couple of weeks ago, Yamini posted on LinkedIn that we're not just in an AI shift, we're in this work shift. And she said that today we're using passive tools, soon we'll be using active tools. Today we're buying licenses for our team, soon we'll be buying outcomes for our businesses. What's your gut reaction to that?
- [14:53]
A
I absolutely agree. You know, we see HubSpot as this pre built tool with a bunch of functionality and there's a, now there's AI agents, pre built AI agents, there's ways to build more AI agents. But like it's not about just implementing the features, it's about going like, like why is this feature required? What is like if I put a customer agent on our website, like, and it can now answer our customers questions in record time with greater accuracy, is that going to delight them? I think it's absolutely, absolutely true. I think people obsess too much over kind of the Technology. And I'm like, I think I saw a post, I can't remember who posted the other day that said, like, imagine if you saw a website now and said we're a cloud based piece of software. I mean, you'll be like, who cares that you're a cloud based piece of software? That's how AI is going to become. It's going to be like, we have AI. I should hope so. So like focus on that customer challenge and focus on what you're trying to try to achieve.
- [15:57]
B
So in your opinion, because you can only offer, in your opinion, what, what advantages do you think that Hubble has already built that's going to serve you well in this work as a service environment?
- [16:09]
A
Yeah, I think it does come down to positioning. And also reflecting on a question you asked earlier and I was saying, you know, there's a bunch of HubSpot partners and we're all friends with each other and we actually all slightly, slightly different. And I think something that felt risky as well. It was almost two years ago where we changed our positioning slightly, where we said, you know, we help companies disrupt, dominate and evolve in their markets. Where we've got ahead of the curve a little bit is, is we changed our positioning. I think like everybody needs to reflect on an ongoing basis, not just like, I'm sure we'll change our positioning in a year, two, three years time, ongoing basis and going, is this still relevant for the market?
- [16:51]
B
I mean, it's the sign of a healthy company definitely to be evolving constantly. And you know, being AI ready is part of that. And you just released the AI Readiness Report. In that report you were revealing that 69% of companies are making poor decisions because of poor Data and only 55 have unified data systems. At HubSpot, we say that AI is really only as good as the data that powers it. How do you decide or how do you help your customers decide what actually is worth investing time and energy into versus kind of what's a distraction? So maybe tell me for customers first, how do you think about that?
- [17:28]
A
Customers look to us as a kind of digital transformation partner and they expect us to be innovating. They expect us to be telling them they need to deploy AI, that type of thing. But as you point out, our report shows that most of them, their database just isn't ready. And in the world of SaaS for the last 10, 15 years, there's been, or maybe even longer in desktop software as well. There was the phrase garbage in, garbage out. In the world of AI, that is that danger is magnified even more because you've got a AI agent, LLM, learning off that data and it thinks that's the truth, but it was garbage. So what we've seen is, is, is customers still have data everywhere. They might use HubSpot, they might be just using a spreadsheet, they might be using a combination. And so the first phase is to, is to unify that data. And HubSpot's an amazing platform to unify that data on with custom objects and all that type of thing. But we still need to keep them excited and motivated in terms of where you get into. So one of my favorite books of all time comes from Scott Brinker. He wrote a book called Agile Marketing and I suppose it resonates with me from my computer science background. It's like you build a backlog of all the ideas and then you prioritize them and you give them points and, and so on. Now we don't use a points based system, but we do prioritize that backlog. Every idea we have for a customer or for prospect we put into a backlog so the customer can see, hey, once I fix my data I can start using customer agent as an example. And from customer agent perspective, we need to get all that information that's maybe sitting in somebody's head or maybe on a kind of a wiki somewhere. We need to get that into knowledge base, Customer agent can learn that type of thing. But yeah, absolutely, data is the number one priority. But I do think things will start to change and what I mean by that, Let me elaborate that. Yesterday HubSpot launched in beta the MCP, which is absolutely incredible because now you can use ChatGPT or Gemini or Claude to engage with HubSpot. Thinking about that old sales rep that uses cities desk and have to fill out what was the telephone number, what was the outcome of the call and fill out all that information. Now you have call intelligence, recording the call tracked in the key things. You can just stick that into your chat window and say, right, update HubSpot with this. As we move more and more to that where it's easier and easier to record data, I think that's where we're going to stop having as many disparate databases as we have in most companies today.
- [20:20]
B
Thanks for joining us on the show, Darren. And remember, if you like what you're hearing, I'm on owning the outcome. Make sure you subscribe to new episodes that drop every week.