Why Retention, Renewals, and Upsells Are the Real Growth Engine for Your Business with Stuart Balcombe

Sidekick Strategies Expert Interview

• Show Transcription

  Stuart Balcombe (00:00.394)
  Yeah, it is definitely nice when you're in the tools that you know how to use.
  
  George B. Thomas (00:04.152)
  Without a doubt, without a doubt. All right, well, Hub Heroes, here we are for a sidekick strategy. I'm super excited. I hope you're excited. If you are excited and you can hear what we're saying, put in the chat pane, let's go, because it is time to go. Today we are talking about the power, of course, we want all of you Hub Heroes to have the power, power of sales, renewals, up sales, and a 360.
  
  degree view. Now, Stuart, you're going to explain more of what all of those words mean as we kind of move forward. But ladies and gentlemen, just so you know, I'm not alone. That would be boring. We have Stuart here today, who is the head of growth at Arrows, the collaborative customer onboarding tool built for HubSpot, as well as the creator of the popular. If you haven't seen it, you should steal this workflow series for the HubSpot community.
  
  on LinkedIn and he spent the past eight years helping early stage software companies grow by focusing on their customers and today he's one of the hub heroes and he's on sidekick strategies. So, Stuart, how the heck are you today?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (01:12.398)
  I am doing great, thank you so much for having me. Super excited to dive into this.
  
  George B. Thomas (01:16.716)
  Yeah, I think it'll be a ton of fun for sure. So today again, we are talking about the power of sales, renewals, up sales, and a 360 degree view. So let's get in to the good stuff. I'm gonna ask the first question, Stuart, to kind of kick us off here. And that is, I like to level set a little bit. So can you explain the importance of sales, renewals, up sales, and customer retention for businesses, particularly regarding revenue growth and long-term success? Because...
  
  I see so many folks out there that are trying to just get new people in the front door. I want to have this conversation first. So what do you have for us?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (01:54.442)
  Yeah, I mean, that's really, we see that a ton all the time too, right? Everybody's focused on new customer acquisition, everybody's focused on closing that deal, celebrating that big initial sale. And then there's this big question mark about what comes next, right? So often onboarding is an afterthought, the renewal process itself when you're coming up to that renewal date is an afterthought. And it's just sort of a, you know, winging a prayer that customers actually renew. And if you're in a recurring revenue business...
  
  you need renewals and expansion because you are probably spending a ton of money to acquire customers because the model sort of expects that they'll stick around for two, three, four, five years, right? So if you're not actually building a process, if you're not actually investing in making that customer successful, I think this is something that's really come into focus, you know, this year, maybe last year a little bit, as well as sort of the economic situation. But like you have to be focused on retention because...
  
  Customers have more options than ever. They're more conscious of their budget and where they're spending their resources than ever. And if you're not building a sort of, not only building a strategy, but building a proactive strategy that isn't just, oh, we saw you didn't renew, do you want to come back? If you're not getting ahead of that, then you're sort of already behind. And you're ultimately impacting your own growth, right? There's not only are you losing customers, you're not.
  
  you'd never have the opportunity to expand those customers either. So that's sort of the, in a nutshell, see so many companies or so many folks who aren't making it a priority focused on a new customer acquisition. And it's not just the lost revenue. It's the, you know, the opportunity cost of the customers that you lose not expanding as well.
  
  George B. Thomas (03:40.932)
  Yeah, such a good foundational piece there. And Hub Heroes, by the way, you heard it here first, a wing and a prayer is not a valid sales and marketing strategy, so you can't do that. Now, Stuart, with that being understood that we have to kind of move in this direction if we haven't thus far, what are some mindsets that marketers and businesses have when approaching renewals, up sales, and customer attention? Like...
  
  How does this mindset differ from acquiring new customers? Because it really is kind of these two different pillars or two different conversations. So talk to us about the mindset of making this shift and what you need to be thinking about.
  
  Stuart Balcombe (04:20.978)
  Yeah, for sure. One thing that we always say is that retention starts on day one. Retention doesn't start to come into play when you have that renewal date coming up in the next 30 days. Retention starts really from a customer's very first interaction with a brand. And I think that is something that is sort of not, maybe a little counterintuitive for folks who are traditionally in sales and marketing that are thinking about that initial sale first and how do we win this customer. And that sort of, the things that you do to win the customer.
  
  are really going to ultimately impact your ability to retain and expand that customer. If you're setting expectations that you're not able to meet in the first year, the first .. You're just setting yourself up for failure when it comes to retention. So I think that really everything that you're doing from a sales and marketing perspective for the initial sale needs to go through that lens of, well, if retention starts on day one, how do we make sure that we're setting ourselves up for success when we actually get to those renewal events?
  
  And one of the things that ultimately happens if you do that well is renewals just become a non-event, right? It's sort of almost harder for customers to, the customers aren't even thinking about churning, they're thinking about, well, this company is already helping our business, helping me achieve my goals, helping me get to the outcomes that, that I want to get to, how can they help me do more of that rather than, oh, this is an expense I need to cut because, you know, it's a tool that I haven't logged into in six months.
  
  George B. Thomas (05:44.604)
  I love this so much because to hear you say that, and my brain was like shouting, to make it so they almost can't renew. Like it's almost impossible in their mindset because of everything that happened from the onboarding in day one to the amount of value that you're giving. So good, so good. We're gonna talk a little bit deeper and get into some of the tactics and different things around this picture that you're painting, Stuart.
  
  As a matter of fact, let's go ahead and dig into the strategies. What are key strategies and tactics businesses can leverage to increase new renewal rates and upsells at their organizations? Like is there, Hey, here's like the secret things, the Jedi mind tricks that you might be able to do from a sales and marketing standpoint.
  
  Stuart Balcombe (06:30.398)
  Yeah, I mean, I think that the biggest thing really is thinking about, and you can sort of audit this in your own process, in your own materials, in your own sort of playbooks, but how well are we setting expectations before somebody becomes a customer about what it's actually going to be like once they become a customer, right? If everybody loves to say, oh, our tool is so easy to set up, it's so quick to get started, you'll be up and running in five minutes. If that's not the reality and it actually takes 90 days to be implemented and...
  
  seeing the impact of the tool, you're just missetting that expectation, right? So ultimately you're gonna have disappointed folks who get to day 30, what's happening here? This is not what I was expecting. So I think that's number one is being very clear and as much as possible showing what is going to happen once somebody signs on the data line, makes that payment, what is actually going to happen to get them from where they are today to the outcome that they're expecting by.
  
  by buying or purchasing from you. The next thing is taking all the things that you hear and all the things that are blockers, all the things that you have to overcome in order to get somebody from where they are to where they want to go and move them as early as possible in the journey. Move the answers to those questions as early as possible in the journey. How do you take the things that you're hearing in support, that you're hearing every customer success conversation includes this thing? How do you take that and not only move it in early...
  
  earlier in the journey so you don't have to answer it later. But how do you use that? It's sort of a double whammy, that just becomes marketing content, right? It's no longer, oh, we have marketing over here and then we have support and successful customers over here. It's all one sort of thing. And that's certainly the way that we approach things at Arrows is really our job is, and I'm in a growth role, really my role is how do I best educate prospects?
  
  and customers, right? But how do I best educate them about solving, about how to solve the problems that they want to solve that are impactful for their business? Some of those will be solved directly with the iOS products. Some of them will be solved through content. But how do you do that as early as possible so that people already, you've already built that trust. You already have that sort of framework around, here are the things we're going to help you with. And so there's no sort of surprises later on when folks actually become customers.
  
  George B. Thomas (08:51.184)
  Those are some good tidbits and I love the fact that you dived into blockers and getting those earlier, getting them addressed as soon as possible. But I think there's a little tidbit tip in there that maybe flew past folks and you said, I'm in a growth role and you followed that with how do I educate? Listen, if you're watching this, listening to this and you're thinking, how can we grow? Am I in a growth?
  
  you know, position and am I educating? If like none of those equal yes in a matrix together, then that is someplace that you might wanna start and then re-watch or re-listen to this and take notes once you're in that mindset. But also, shame on me because Stuart, for the beginning part of this, I mentioned marketing and sales. Heck, you even referenced, you know, marketing content based on some of the stuff that we're getting back through those blockers and tips that you gave.
  
  But I have to ask what role does customer experience play in driving these renewals up sales and customer retention? Like you talked about starts at day one, but what about day 90 or day one 80 or day 360? Like how does customer experience play a role here?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (10:06.09)
  Yeah, I mean, I really think that it's everything. It's hard to like the customer only sees the entire experience, right? Like they don't care that they're currently talking to marketing or they're currently on the phone with sales or they're now emailing with a support rep. Like it's just the experience with your company, with your brand. Right. So I think that the more you can, and this is why, you know, growth ultimately is sort of a full team activity. Like even if you have somebody who's responsible for it.
  
  ultimately it's going to touch every part of the business. And that's because the customer is going to touch every part of the business. Right. So I think that building that experience that is really customer first, and this goes not just for your product experience, you know, it's all great to have a, if you have a software product and you have UX that is helpful to customers and intuitive and all that's like that sort of table stakes, right. But what is the rest of the experience? How do you make sure, like little things, like, uh, when, if you're trying to educate a customer.
  
  and you're giving them a piece of content, when you send it to them or when they see it, does it feel like marketing to them? Do they have to go put in an email address? Do they have to click, like go find the specific thing that they're looking for in this sort of ocean of other stuff? How do you make it as easy as possible for the person you're trying to help? And just sort of using a broad term there, like we are trying to help people here. Ultimately, we hope that some of that is through the product that they're paying for, but...
  
  How do you make it as easy as possible for them to get what they're looking for and go back, go on with the rest of the day? And I think that this is one of those things that when it comes to customer experience that is easy to forget, and we're all guilty of it, I'm sure, but the customer really doesn't care very much about your company. They really don't care very much about your product, right? They care about themselves and getting what they're trying to do done. So how do you help them do that as fast as possible and then get out of the way?
  
  George B. Thomas (11:58.404)
  Yeah, what's in it for me? Let's be honest, that's pretty much how we all roll as humans. And I love that you addressed in there, they don't know that you're sales, they don't know that you're marketing, they don't know that you're customer experience, and they shouldn't know. And this idea of just making it simple, making it the easiest way for them to interact, such good words.
  
  Now, here's the thing, Stuart, we all know that, you know, we could help people and all of us might want to help people for free, but there's going to be somebody in the room that wants to drive revenue. They want to measure success. They want to make sure that it just makes sense. And you can use the pun there if you want or the actual word I use. It's totally up to you, Hub Heroes. But we have to ask the questions, Stuart. Are there any specific metrics or indicators that businesses should track to measure the success?
  
  of the renewal and upsell efforts because I think that's half the battle when it comes to reporting is you just don't know what you don't know and if you can learn that then you can implement it in a report or a dashboard and actually be able to measure that success. So where does your brain go with that?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (13:06.954)
  Yeah, there's a couple of things. The very first one, and I think the thing that is actually pretty easy to measure, is how quickly after you have, and this is similar to the retention stats on day one, we're gonna talk a lot about renewals and expansions and not really talk about the renewal moment or the expansion moment. Everything is earlier in the journey. So the first thing to look at is how quickly after somebody says, I wanna become a customer, or I've become a customer, like you've signed the agreement, you've paid, whatever, how quickly...
  
  do you get them to that next thing? How quickly can they engage, can they start making progress towards that goal? For some folks that's going to be, you know, scheduling a kickoff call. For some folks it's going to be, if you're a self-serve software partner, it might be like, in your project management tool, let's say like creating your first project in the tool. Like how quickly after they say, yes, I'm gonna become a customer, do they do that first thing? And that's sort of the leading indicator if you're looking for, you know, anything to look at.
  
  There's some great data from ChenRx on the impact of speed to engagement post-sale and retention. And they've looked at, they have hundreds of thousands of companies in their data set, and the graph is staggering. It's, you know, customers that, to paraphrase, customers that engage in the first 10 days versus don't are 70% more likely to be around at year four than those who...
  
  don't engage early. So that's the sort of the first thing to look at is how quickly after you close a deal, are people engaging with the next thing they need to go do. And then after that, when it comes to measuring, that's sort of on the, I guess, onboarding sort of activation side. But when it comes to the marketing side, I think this is always a question that you get, right? It's like, well, if we're not doing direct response, how do we know it's working? How do we know that we're having the impact that we want to have? And I think...
  
  Ultimately, the closer you can tie marketing to revenue, how do you tie the work that you're doing to the big outcome that you want? How do you get it as close to revenue as possible? And maybe that isn't actually dollars, because there's some steps in between, but how much qualified pipeline are you generating, for example, from marketing efforts versus, like, we're just generating email addresses that...
  
  Stuart Balcombe (15:32.278)
  we don't actually know where they go, right? Like are you generating qualified pipeline? And then importantly, and sort of, but separate is making sure that you're keeping track of the alignment between who you're closing on day one and who renews, right? The easiest way to have a really hard time in retention is to close deals all over the map and actually not have that many deals that are a great fit for your product, right?
  
  And it's a trap, especially working with early stage startups, they see all the time is, early on you want customers, so you sort of say yes to everybody, and you end up building more bloated product, you have less control or less clarity on which problems you should be solving, how you should be speaking to those customers. So keeping track of what are the customers you're closing on day one trying to do, and of that group.
  
  like are there patterns in who is renewing versus who isn't? Like not all, one thing that I will say is that not all churn is bad. You should probably be churning some customers and that's totally okay, right? As long as you know, those are customers who just weren't a great fit. We weren't able to help them in the way that we would have wanted to. And instead we're gonna focus on the ones that are really a great fit. So it was a little rambly, but those are sort of the three things that I would focus on. One.
  
  I guess to put them in order. One, measure marketing by something that is as close to revenue as possible. Make sure that you're not just doing things in silos. Two, track sort of time from close to first engagement. And then three, make sure that you're sort of mapping the deals you're closing on day one. And who are the deals that or who are the customers that are that is continuing to renew and expand versus those that aren't. And this will build that feedback loop.
  
  George B. Thomas (17:21.784)
  Very good and hub heroes, I need you to get your pen, your paper, whatever you use to take notes. I feel like that needs to be a moment where you write something down as all churn is not bad. Knowing who you're a good fit for, who you're not a good fit for and using that data, understanding those patterns, cause Stuart you mentioned that word too in that segment is patterns. And then being able to make smart decisions based off of seeing those patterns and having that knowledge.
  
  is super key as you move forward. So Stuart, here's the thing, people are watching or listening to this episode. By the way, if you're listening to it, it's because you're listening to it on your favorite podcast app. If you're watching it, it's because you've headed over to community.hubheroes.com and you've actually created an account and you're watching it along with all the other interviews that we've done on the Sidekick Strategies. But here's the thing, Stuart, they're gonna be watching this, they're gonna be, yes, we need to plug in
  
  everything that Stewart's talking about. We need to focus on renewals. We need to focus on upsells. We need to focus on the beginning customer, you know, onboarding and journey and the measuring. But unfortunately, Stewart, there's going to be challenges and roadblocks that are going to come up along the way. So let's address some of those. What are some of the common challenges or roadblocks businesses may face regarding building a renewal, upsell and customer retention process? And
  
  And can these challenges be overcome? Like, are there a way that today we can give them some words that are like, and if you know this, you can do this and miss that big bump in the road.
  
  Stuart Balcombe (19:02.722)
  For sure, and this is why I think it's great that we're talking to the HubHeroes community, the folks who are familiar with HubSpot, using HubSpot all the time, because HubSpot is a great place to be doing this, in his way. The number one thing that will kill retention, that will hurt your ability to help customers post-sale, is siloing teams. Teams not talking to each other. There's always gonna be handoffs that have to happen, right? Marketing to sales, sales to onboarding, onboarding to success, whatever it is.
  
  there are always going to be handoffs. If those teams are not talking, the customer is going to feel it. And every time the customer feels, maybe they just feel it as like, oh, hmm, that was a little weird. Like there wasn't, I had to wait a little bit to get the next thing that I need to go do. Or maybe they had to repeat themselves, after they'd already told somebody their challenges, what they're trying to do, and then they have to go repeat it. Or maybe it was something more catastrophic than that. And...
  
  They were told by one team something that just isn't possible when they talk to another team, right? So that's really the first thing is you have to have inter-department, even if you, you know, small company, even if you don't have big formal departments, like everybody involved in the customer journey has to talk and has to build a feedback loop across those handoffs. And this is what HubSpot is so great, right? Is unlike a lot of other tools. And HubSpot, you know, to a certain extent has focused in...
  
  a very specific area, starting as a marketing and sales tool for sure. But we know that HubSpot's narrative to be the connected platform. We know that having everything in one place, having your data connected, having all your teams connected across the customer journey is a really great way to start breaking down some of those silos, start to introduce more collaboration between teams. So tactically...
  
  That's going to be the biggest bottleneck is teams not talking, not building feedback loops between them. So tactically, how can you bring more of your process, more of the life cycle into HubSpot so that you are actually able to track and report, give everybody context on what's happening? And the most sort of obvious way or the sort of clearest way that we think about doing that is building separate pipelines and HubSpot are a great place to go build a process and define.
  
  Stuart Balcombe (21:23.838)
  what needs to happen to find a journey. So having discrete pipelines for each stage in the customer journey. So you probably already have one for sales. If you have a hands-on onboarding or implementation pipeline, whether it's in deals or tickets, but having pipelines for each stage so that you can take a record from one place with all the data, you can require the data that is needed for that next step in the journey and validate that it's actually there, right? And if it's not, if something happens,
  
  you have everything in one place. You can have it, having data makes it much easier to start a conversation, right? Rather than it being like, well, sales did this and this customer churned and onboarding success is mad and they're mad at sales, right? Like that's not very helpful. But if you were able to say, these are the specific reasons, this is what we knew, this is what was said in sales and this is what happened, that becomes a much easier conversation to have. And ultimately it's sort of not about trying to point fingers and.
  
  assign blame to teams, but how do you come together and solve for the customer? Because ultimately that's the thing that's going to have the long-term impact on retention.
  
  George B. Thomas (22:35.012)
  this so much. First of all, we're kind of bouncing into like this rev ops mindset of like across the board with HubSpot. But also to hear you say data helps you start a conversation. I might even add in there an educated and productive conversation as you were kind of eluding there and data is so key. It's so important. And many times we look at it from an external perspective of what can we gather.
  
  Stuart Balcombe (22:52.627)
  For sure.
  
  George B. Thomas (23:01.924)
  versus like what can we gleam as an internal team. So one of the things we talked about kind of the potholes, the hurdles, the challenges that get in the way. And so let's shine a light on what success looks like. So Stuart, can you share any success stories or examples of businesses implementing effective strategies for renewals, up sales, and customer retention that you've seen or worked with?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (23:04.898)
  Mm-hmm.
  
  Stuart Balcombe (23:26.526)
  Yeah, for sure. I'm going to sort of the biggest one because it's usually the biggest friction point and the one that Arrows as a product has the sort of biggest direct impact on really is that time from sales handoff or sales close to sort of engagement and customer progress during, during onboarding. And we've really seen some, we have some case studies on the, on the Arrows website about companies that have, by defining that process more in that data and HubSpot by sort of
  
  just building a defined process and sort of being prescriptive, but being prescriptive about this is how these teams are going to work together. This is going to be the experience for the customer and then using, you know, arrows to sort of enable the customer. Um, we've seen teams cut, you know, onboarding times from sort of 30 to 45 days to three days. Like there are some, the bar for improving onboarding is frankly not very high. Um, usually the
  
  reasons why you're onboarding an implementation, which ultimately is a great indicator of what your attention and an expansion is going to look like. The reason that those times that engagement is so low is because you're getting in the way of customers, because you don't have a defined process, because you don't have the data flowing in the way that you need it for everybody to know what's next, to know what to go do. So we've certainly seen some pretty wild
  
  improvements. I think that's probably the best, or the best documented example is actually another HubSpot partner, RBP, Roof and Business Partners. Went from a pretty manual process that was really difficult to scale, was really overwhelming and sort of burning out the team, to something that better defined uses the data, enabling customers with errors, and sort of cut it from
  
  35 to 45 days to two to three in some cases. So it's pretty amazing what you can do. And ultimately, like I say, it doesn't usually mean ripping it up and starting over. It usually just means being more intentional, better defining what you're trying to do and keeping everything organized in HubSpot and arrows if you want to enable the customer as well.
  
  George B. Thomas (25:43.748)
  Love it. RBP, Adam, and team, we see you. Love hearing your name on the show for sure. So Stuart, if you're in the marketing circles, I mean, you can only stand there for all of about 35 seconds and somebody's gonna spit out the word personalization or somebody's gonna say something about target marketing. I mean, it just happens.
  
  So I'm curious with what we're talking about now, today's subject, what role does personalization and maybe even target marketing play in driving more renewals, up sales, and customer retention, if any?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (26:19.702)
  I mean, I think it's huge, but I just think it's different than the way that most people look at it. And what I mean by that is ultimately customers are coming to you to achieve an outcome, right? And every customer's, the outcome that they want to get to is gonna be rooted in their own context and their own business and their own goals. So making sure that your customers are actually achieving that outcome is critical. That has to happen to drive.
  
  retention and expansion. I think the thing that often gets missed is that it can be a lot of the discussion around personalization and it's hard to have the discussion around personalization without somebody bringing up personas and how you're building customer segments. I think the most common thing that I see that I would push back on is that often those are built around
  
  demographic information, like size of company or role even, or where is this company located, like number of employees, that kind of stuff. And the thing that misses is that has zero connection to outcome, right? It might have some correlation to the outcomes of those customers want to achieve. Like maybe you can look at patterns and say, well, typically companies of this size are trying to do this, but it might...
  
  it also might not. So I think that a better way to think about personalization is using jobs to be done and really try to understand what is the thing that this company or this customer is trying to achieve. And I think the thing that is so easy to miss and does require some thought, it certainly requires some resource to do well, is not everybody at the same company, the same account
  
  is going to have the same job to be done. As an example of this is, ours is a good example of this actually, we sort of talked to three different, I can't believe I'm gonna do this, but I'm gonna use personas. We still speak to three different personas who have very different jobs. We talked to onboarding reps and CSMs who are working directly with the customers who are, they are responsible for getting that customer to success for onboarding them.
  
  Stuart Balcombe (28:39.646)
  And they care a lot about what is my daily workflow? How efficient am I at getting my job done? How can I not be burnt out trying to serve the number of customers that I'm expected to serve? We speak to rev ops and ops folks who are, you know, don't, I mean, not to be a derogatory, they don't really care about the day-to-day. They know that they want the day-to-day to be better for their CSMs, but they really care about the data and the system and the ability to automate and remove.
  
  work and make sure they have data that is up to date and accurate in HubSpot. Right. And then finally we have the leader who is, doesn't care so much about either of those things, but once reporting wants to know that the thing they're spending money on is doing what they expect it to do. So I think hopefully the examples are helpful to sort of frame. Yes, you're going to, to a certain extent have to define, you know, the demographic sort of characteristics, but ultimately the thing to create content around the thing to.
  
  make sure that you're enabling in onboarding that you're first off understanding as you're talking to customers is, what is the job that they are hiring my product to go do?
  
  George B. Thomas (29:49.932)
  Yeah, and if you're watching or listening to this and you haven't researched the jobs to be done methodology, there's books I'll put out there now. But there's an original resource that you can look up and find. We'll try to have that in the actual show notes for this episode as well. So Stuart, let's kind of turn the ship for a second because we as humans, we even talked earlier, what's in it for me?
  
  And we're super all about most of the times like, and how do I make it happen right now? Well, sometimes some of this stuff isn't right now stuff. So when we sit back and we put the different cap on, what are the long-term benefits of focusing on renewals, up sales and customer retention for businesses? Like how does it impact their overall growth and profitability, not in an instant, but over time?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (30:42.194)
  Yeah, for sure. And I think this is really the best way to look at, you know, retention and renewals is what is the long-term impact. And to give, I guess, to give the sort of first thing that folks are maybe already measuring is you're going to better offset your cost of acquisition, right? If you are spending X dollars to acquire a new customer today and they churn before they renew, you're only offsetting the amount you spent with their first year spend. If they say around the year two, you...
  
  offsetting it with year two as well. So that's ultimately, especially when it comes to profitability, is how effectively are you offsetting the cost of acquiring a customer by having them renew and continue to spend money. Secondly, if customers aren't renewing, they're, and certainly if they're, you know, probably more likely to be doing this if they're expanding, but they're also not referring you, which is the cheap, by far the cheapest way to acquire new customers, right?
  
  You didn't do anything to get this new customer. You made somebody who was an existing customer happy, successful, they got to that great outcome and brought you a new customer. You're instantly winning in that scenario, right? So I think that those are sort of the two obvious ones. You're not offsetting CAC if you're not retaining expanding customers and you're missing out on that sort of easy win growth engine of referrals.
  
  when you are, because it's sort of this implicit connection in there that if you are renewing and expanding customers, they are being successful more likely to refer than somebody who isn't. And I think that that's certainly something that at Arrows we look at a lot is sort of our, I'm sure we can link to the resource in the show notes, but the burn multiple, like how efficient are we being with our sort of...
  
  burn against what we're generating from that burn. It's all very well to spend a ton of money upfront or grow quickly, but if you're not growing efficiently, you're ultimately not gonna be sustainable for the longterm, right? And you can't go and invest in the things that you need to invest in later if you are cash strapped because you are spending it all on acquisition. So I think that's really the big thing is like, how do you...
  
  Stuart Balcombe (33:03.67)
  And why I love that you frame this question this way is that, you know, retention and expansion really is sort of taking that long term approach. Maybe it does, it might even mean we're closing less customers or we're trying to close less customers today because we're saying no to the ones who aren't a great fit, right? Or we're not doing things that might have short term impact but are, you know, less, a little more questionable when it comes to will those customers stick around. But in the long term.
  
  The biggest lever that you have, especially in a recurring revenue business, is expansion and referral, because it's much, much cheaper than new customer acquisition.
  
  George B. Thomas (33:43.172)
  Yeah, there's a pro tip right there. It's much, much cheaper. Notice there was two muches. The other thing that I'll throw in here that I love about this is you mentioned referrals and Hub Heroes, trust me, as soon as I heard that, I'm like, we need an episode on referrals and like how to manage a process around referrals and does that equal HubSpot? Is there other tools? We'll talk about that in the future because today we're talking about...
  
  all sorts of fun stuff as renewals and upsells and retention. And so Stuart, earlier you mentioned HubSpot. It might be that you dive deeper into HubSpot and actually how
  
  We might be able to build some type of system or there might be other tools. I'm just gonna ask the question people, are there any specific tools or technologies that can aid businesses, the hub heroes that are watching this or listening to it in managing their renewals, up sales and customer attention efforts?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (34:42.402)
  I mean, there certainly are, there's plenty out there on, that if you're looking for, there's plenty of customer success platforms, there's plenty of tools out there. We, I mean, and I think HubSpot obviously likes this. I think that the more you can keep things in one place, the more that you can build the system in the place your teams are already using, the more effectively you'll get, as we mentioned earlier, that you're, the more effective, or the easier time you're gonna have of,
  
  ensuring that sort of cross-team collaboration. So certainly when it comes to managing renewals, and if you go and check out arrows.to slash vault, we have, and I'm sure we can provide the direct link as well, we have sort of a system for building renewals and an expansion process in HubSpot. My view is keep everything together as much as possible, because the thing that
  
  as soon as you introduce other tools, and you likely are going to want to use some other tools in here and push data into HubSpot, I'm gonna call out Zebra from Happily here. Like if you were using Stripe for billing, it's a great way to get your recurring revenue data from Stripe into HubSpot. But the more you can consolidate things in one place, the easier time you're gonna have.
  
  And as the call out service hub, I would say you're probably going to want to use sales hub for renewals and expansion because you're going to have revenue associated with those, with those deals, but certainly post sale, you know, whether it's onboarding implementation, ongoing success, certainly service hub in pipelines can support that pretty well. But yeah, keeping everything together in one place just gonna get so much easier because I think the thing that folks miss when it comes to, you know,
  
  the cost or the trade-offs when it comes to integrations is it's not just about the data that's flowing. And obviously having it in one place means the data is flowing. But you really lose the team visibility into what's happening, into the context of the rest of the customer journey as soon as you split those things out. Let's say that you're implementing a customer success platform. Sure, maybe you're integrating that data back to HubSpot. But are you integrating every conversation? Can a sales rep just go look at what's...
  
  Stuart Balcombe (37:09.27)
  happened with a customer in previous conversations, because they're almost certainly not getting seats in a CS platform. So yeah, I would certainly look at the more you can do in HubSpot from a sort of process perspective and then pull in any data for billing and payments using tools like Sabres is great as well.
  
  George B. Thomas (37:30.948)
  Yeah, such a good piece, they're keeping it all together. And by the way, if you're listening to this on the podcast feed, I wanna reference what just happened because you as a listener need to know. We had a comment in the chat pane because yes, we're doing these episodes live, which gives people the ability to make statements or ask questions. And so when Stuart referenced the service hub and when you would use that versus the sales hub,
  
  It was directly to a real human being that was interacting with the show. And yes, that could be you. Again, if you head over to community.hubheroes.com, you can sign up and you can actually watch these episodes live and ask your own questions as well. Now, I'm going to end Stuart this way as we kind of land the plane. If there was one thing that the viewers or listeners take away from today's session.
  
  What is that hashtag one thing that you hope they take away?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (38:30.794)
  Ooh, that is a... It's tough to get it to one thing. I really think that I would come back to retention starts on day one. I think that is the sort of the drum beat of everything that you need to do to be proactive about retention, right? Retention is not just a customer success and sort of churn avoidance problem. Retention is a sales problem when it comes to setting correct expectations.
  
  aligning on what is actually going to, what A, what the product can actually do, but what is that experience going to be like after the sale? It's a marketing problem when it comes to being clear in marketing about how things work, how easy is it to get set up, handling objections that are going to come up later, helping to identify and attract folks who are actually going to be a good fit for the product or service, right? And I think retention starts on day one is sort of a nice way to sort of encapsulate all of that.
  
  and help make it clear that retention is a full team, but full journey activity.
  
  George B. Thomas (39:33.5)
  Full team and full journey, which by the way means you might have some additional questions. Stuart, if people have questions on renewals, up sales, retention, where do you want to send them so they can start a conversation with you?
  
  Stuart Balcombe (39:47.138)
  Yeah, for sure. LinkedIn is probably the best place to come find me. I post to tonne.linkedin, but feel free to DM me. Connecting DM is always appreciated. Happy to answer any questions there. And I called it out, I'm sure we'll put it in the show notes, but arrows.to if you're looking for a sort of onboarding and activation tool built for HubSpot. And then we have the Vault as well, which has 50 plus at this point, templates, resources, including a big walkthrough of setting up a system for renewals and...
  
  expansion in HubSpot as well.
  
  George B. Thomas (40:20.032)
  And Hub Heroes, don't you worry, any links that Stewart shares will make sure they're in the show notes so that you have valuable resources and we can help you live a better life pertaining to renewals and up sales. Remember, if you're listening to this, hey, well, we'll see you when we release the next episode. But if you want to dive deeper in between now and the next episode, make sure you head over to the community, sign up for your account. We're here creating all sorts of content for you as a HubSpot user.
  
  Stuart, thank you for the time that you spent with us, the value that you added. And again, Hub Heroes, make sure you reach out and give Stuart some big applause, thumbs up on LinkedIn. Until next time, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and we'll see you in the next episode of the Hub Heroes Sidekick Strategy Show.
  
  Stuart Balcombe (41:09.098)
  Thanks for having me.
  
  George B. Thomas (41:10.137)
  You bet.