HubSpot sales enablement tactics, tips, and strategies

Welcome back to the second part of our two-part sales enablement series on the HubHeroes podcast! 

• In last week's episode, we rolled up our sleeves and had a challenging (but powerful) discussion as we unpacked why most sales enablement strategies fail ... even with the best of intentions.
• This week, we're switching gears to talk about implementation; specifically, how you leverage HubSpot to execute and implement your sales enablement strategy.

We intentionally split up these topics because, much like you can't look to HubSpot Marketing Hub isn't your inbound marketing strategy — it's the platform by which you execute a strategy you develop — you also can't look at the Big Orange Sprocket as a replacement for doing the work to create your sales enablement strategy:

• It can't address any trust issues that exist between your sales and marketing teams.
• It can't tell you what sales enablement content you actually need. 
• It can't architect what your sales enablement content library should look like. 
• It can't tell you exactly what playbooks you need to create within the tool or how to use sequences.

However, once you have that baller sales enablement strategy baked out and ready to rock, the sky is the freakin' limit when it comes to leveraging HubSpot to make sales enablement a reality. Because if you think only HubSpot Sales Hub has you covered when it comes to serving up the sales enablement goods, hoo boy! You have so much to learn, my friends.

And that's exactly what this episode about. 

If you're a HubSpot user — or you're thinking about how HubSpot can help you with sales enablement — this is the episode for you. 

Here's what we cover in this episode ...

• At a high level, what do companies need to be thinking about when they're evaluating how to leverage technology solutions (like HubSpot) for sales enablement?
• What are the ways in which companies can use HubSpot for their sales enablement means that go beyond what some might consider to be the "obvious" tools in the HubSpot Marketing Hub and Sales Hub?
• Why are documents one of the most powerful ways to maximize your sales enablement potential with HubSpot?
• What are the top sales enablement tools that you should be looking at in the HubSpot Sales and Marketing Hubs?
• What are the most common mistakes folks make when implementing a sales enablement strategy with HubSpot?

... and much more! 

YOUR ONE THING FROM THIS EPISODE

It doesn't matter if you're entirely new to the HubSpot ecosystem or if you've been using it for years. If sales enablement is a pain point or a focus area for your business, I guarantee you're barely scratching the surface of what the Big Sprocket can do for you. Of course, like we talked about extensively last week, HubSpot is not a replacement for your sales enablement strategy. But with the right one in place, you have countless tools and tactics at your fingertips within HubSpot to make it happen.

RESOURCES FOR THIS EPISODE

• Why your sales enablement strategy is failing (HubHeroes podcast)
• Why go HubSpot Sales Hub? (HubHeroes podcast)
• How to measure content marketing ROI the right way (HubHeroes podcast)
• What is customer delight, and who is responsible? (HubHeroes podcast)
• What is HubSpot (really)? The definition most get wrong

SHOW TRANSCRIPT

Intro: Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are you plagued by silo departments? Are your lackluster growth strategies demolishing your chances for success? Are you held captive by the evil menace, Lord Lack? Lack of time, lack of strategy, and lack of the most important and powerful tool in your superhero tool belt, knowledge.

Never fear hub heroes. Get ready to don your cape and mask, move into action, and become the hub hero your organization needs. Tune in each week to join the league of extraordinary inbound heroes as we help you educate, empower, and execute. Hub heroes, it's time to unite and activate your your powers. Before we begin, we need to disclose that both Devin and Max are currently employed by HubSpot at the time of this episode's recording.

This podcast is in no way affiliated with or produced by HubSpot, and the thoughts and opinions expressed by Devin and Max during the show are that of their own and in no way represent those of their employer.

Liz Moorehead: Welcome back to another episode of the Hub Heroes podcast. As always, I am Liz Murphy, your content strategist in residence and your Hub Heroes wrangler. And I'm joined, yes, by Max and George. Devin, thank god you're back.

George B. Thomas: Oh, we're all here.

Liz Moorehead: Oh my gosh. I don't know about you all, but I am just so ready to hear him, like, spit fire. But in a way that's just like, just read the phone book

Liz Moorehead: to me, man. Just read the phone book.

Liz Moorehead: I'm so excited. It's like

George B. Thomas: if it's like if Confucius, like, spit fire kinda thing happened.

Liz Moorehead: No. This is like Luther Vandross spitting fire. And, like, there's, like, a nice, like, baseline in the background. He's like, let me break it down about why you're doing everything wrong with your processes.

George B. Thomas: Ladies and gentlemen, this is how you do inbound marketing.

Liz Moorehead: Like, at inbound this year, throwing it out to the Hub spot gods, can we have a room that's for Devon, but it's like lit with like crushed velvet sofas, mood lighting, maybe some like Barry White in the background.

Liz Moorehead: He's like, let's talk about your systems.

Liz Moorehead: I would go to that. Everybody gets a smoking jacket.

George B. Thomas: I would be there.

Devyn Bellamy: That room kind of existed. It just wasn't for that purpose. There's a quiet room in inbound where it's, like, just the dark lighting. And it literally, the only thing it's missing is a monologue from yours truly, really. But

Liz Moorehead: Devin, you what you wanna know, sometimes I listen to the Calm app and to fall asleep, they have these things called train stories where they just tell you just about an experience you're having on this very exotic train.

Liz Moorehead: PetSpace does the same thing. I just

Liz Moorehead: want you to tell me Oh, that sounds magical. You to tell me a train story. Oh my god. We can call it all aboard the inbound

Liz Moorehead: train. Oh

George B. Thomas: my god.

Liz Moorehead: Hey. Here we go.

Liz Moorehead: Guys, we need a Hub Heroes meditation app where we do sleep stories because headspace Headspace has the same thing. It's like, you're at an antique bookshop. Blah.

Liz Moorehead: But what if it's like, we're talking about workflows,

Liz Moorehead: and you're just gonna click this button right here.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or it's about, like, riding the MBTA commuter rail.

And he's he's like, you just picked up your French vanilla large ice from Dunkets. I love Dunkets. You sit down on the on the the the dry leathery broken seats, and the column comes across your Volvo.

Liz Moorehead: And then a guy slaps the front of your Volvo. Hey. I'm walking here.

George B. Thomas: See, there we go. Is listening to the podcast wondering what in God's name is happening right now.

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. Yeah. What were

Liz Moorehead: I don't know. I love you know what I love? George is subtle, like, Liz. Liz, do you remember your hosting? Yes.

Of course, I do. Because the next week, do I ever gonna be I know we I I understand it is a 3 o'clock recording on a Friday, George, but you're at a 15. Let's bring it down to, like, a solid 8.

George B. Thomas: Alright. 8:8 and a half week.

Liz Moorehead: I'm already able to do it.

George B. Thomas: I'll do it.

Liz Moorehead: In fact, you know what? You know, here's what I'm gonna do. Here's what I'm gonna do. So last week and right now, I've bet my SaaS levels have been in a 15. For you guys, I'm gonna bring it down to a 5.

Liz Moorehead: Oh, wow.

Liz Moorehead: Because this is the I know. Because this is the second part of a 2 part conversation. We're talking about sales enablement today. If you missed the first episode last week with Max, George, and myself, we talked about why your sales enablement strategy is failing. All of the things that you need to think about and consider before you even consider technology or the tools or looking at HubSpot to just please, for the love of God, fix everything with sales enablement.

Make it work, please. This week, however, I'm finally gonna grant your wish. I gave you a lot of grief last week not letting you talk about tools and technology, but that's exactly what we're talking about today. So I'm taking my sass quotient back. I'm gonna let the 3 of you all just live in a tools and technology paradise in this conversation.

And I'm just gonna be here as the journalist on behalf of the audience. How does that sound to you guys? Yeah. Sure.

George B. Thomas: Sounds like a plan to me.

Liz Moorehead: God. Don't get so excited.

George B. Thomas: I mean, you told us to pull it back a little.

Liz Moorehead: George. Hey.

Liz Moorehead: We're I'm just kidding. You know I want you on a spitfire. Are we ready? Are we ready to do this? Are you guys excited to talk about tools and technology?

Liz Moorehead: Let's rock. Yeah? Oh my god. It's Yay. Okay.

The clock's about to rock.

Liz Moorehead: That's the energy I want. Alright. So I think it goes without saying that no one should ever look at a sales enablement tool or a platform to actually be their strategy. This is something you guys have talked about all the time. HubSpot is not your strategy.

However, I wanna start today's conversation with this question. When a company is thinking about how and where they integrate and leverage technology into their stack, into their processes in a way that's smart for sales enablement. What are the things that they need to be thinking about? What are the questions that they should be asking themselves?

Devyn Bellamy: One of the things to take in consideration is operations disruption, and there might be a tool that looks super fun on the outside, but the it's gonna derail test it. So looking at how it can integrate into your existing operations, unless you're planning on nuking your operations, and you know I'm a fan of just completely start over. But if that's not the plan, look at how it can be an asset that aligns with your strategy and not a hurdle that needs to be overcome. But keep in mind, I say this with an asterisk, because that mentality is how you end up with disparate systems. But if you're not capable of doing systems integration, if you're just trying to take one little step at a time, you know, you're afraid of change, or even worse, your head of sales is afraid of change, then try you might you might you might have to find that, happy medium.

Liz Moorehead: Or people who say they like change, like, I'm totally into change, why? Why isn't this perfect already? Max, what about you? George, you were

Liz Moorehead: jumping in. Wanted to say because you

George B. Thomas: Yeah. So I was just gonna say, first of all, let's just be, real. Nobody likes change. And if you don't believe me, you can go, get the book who moved my cheese, and it talks about the fact that humans just don't like change at all. So I do have some thoughts, some questions that I think people should be thinking about when they're going to try to enable sales enablement in their organization.

But I'll pause it. I just wanted to talk about, like, fundamentally, we don't like change, and so we have to go about it a certain way. But, Max, I do wanna get your thoughts.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's interesting that you say we don't like change because sometimes even when we want change, when that change ends up happening, we don't like going through it. Right? I wanna move to my new house.

I hate the process of doing it. Right? When it comes down to get it done, ugh. And the same thing I think goes for when you're like changing certain processes, you know, be it in something your sales process or just the way you operate or you're not with customers, things like that. It's it's the same thing.

So change is always gonna be tough even though it seems like it's desired. Right? But when it comes to, like, getting started with, you know, sales enablement and, like, choosing technology, I think, like, you gotta start with, like, the simple stuff first. Right? And that's figure out where the fires are.

Because, like, you can't make a lot of these nice to have changes without first implementing the need to have changes. And, like, you can't build a house that's currently on fire.

Liz Moorehead: What's an example

George B. Thomas: of a fire?

Liz Moorehead: So yeah. I mean so, like, if your sales reps are being forced to use certain tools that make their work more tedious, you you can't expect to deploy all these other, like, nice to have things without fixing that first. Right? You can't build a house that's currently on fire. Asking folks like, hey.

What is what is getting in the way of you being able to sell right now? Not what's like the nice, like, other things we can do. Right? But, like, what's making it difficult is, like, the act of, you know, finding the right prospects to be working with. Is the act of following up with people?

Is the act of data entry into the CRM? Is is is the act of using your CRM not worth the benefit of using your CRM? Right? Like, is it just, like, difficult? Like, are you spending way more time doing administrative stuff than you are actually, like, having conversations?

Right? So I think it first comes down to, like, talk to your people and saying, hey, what's the friction that's making it more difficult for you to sell today? Right? And hyper focusing on solving for that stuff first before you start layering all these kinda other things on top of it. Right?

Because it's really hard to, you know, build a house without a solid foundation, kinda like we said a 1,000,000,000 other times. So, you know, I'd say step 1 whether you're first starting out or it's a team that's already kinda been operating for a while and you haven't been thinking about sales enablement yet, you gotta you gotta you gotta patch the wound first. Right? You gotta do some triage. Right?

So let's say

George B. Thomas: Max is like in analogy mode. It's like houses on rocks and castles on sand and people with bruises and all sorts of things on fire and craziness. But here's the thing. You did say a word. A lot actually, you said a lot of words, that I agree with.

But you did say a word that I think is a magical word that we need to pay attention to, especially in the conversation that we're having right now about when looking at technology for sales enablement. And the words that you said was simple. And what I would say is I would convert that to simplify. Too many people, when they go to think about sales enablement and technology, they go, oh, oh, oh, oh, look. They can do this, and they can do that, and they can do this.

Oh, and there's these three things that they can do over here. Oh, this is so great. When the mindset should be, and if we get this, they won't have to do this. They won't have to do that. They won't have to do these three things over there.

Because if you truly wanna enable sales, what it means is how much can we actually do for them? How much can the software or SaaS platform do for them? Because the only way that you can get them to sell more is allow them to have more time to sell. And so if any of these tools take away from the simplification and add complexity, then you're fighting an uphill battle.

Liz Moorehead: I would say the other thing I would add to that as well, and then I promise I'm gonna go right back into my lip, put my little interviewer cap back on. I was recalling earlier this week through some conversations on LinkedIn when I was first trying to stand up sales enablement systems when I was working at Impact. And one of the things that we talked about last week is that often you have to do a lot of work to of with some of these people on the sales team. But when it came to the brass tacks of what needed to happen from a sales enablement perspective, there were so many things they were not telling me about what their real opinions are or what they were actually doing because they didn't wanna hurt my feelings or they just didn't feel like the conversation was worth it because they didn't think I could actually do anything to fix it. The reason I bring that up from a technology perspective is because one of the triage things that you may need to do is right now every single sales rep on your team has a Google Doc that is their own of a random list of their directory of helpful content.

You may need to move that to something that is centralized within HubSpot, but you may need to do the trust building work to even figure that out as a problem. And I think sometimes that's something we need to remember is that don't go into assuming what you would that you know where all the fires are, and you need to have the conversations to surface them. So let's get HubSpot specific here. Although George, did you have other questions that you think other people should be asking themselves at this point that are either point to some of the softer human things that we were talking about last week or just about the platforms themselves? Then I really wanna start digging into HubSpot.

George B. Thomas: Well, I definitely think we can dig into HubSpot, but, again, this I think there's mindsets that you have to have, and and I fully understand that probably a lot of who is listening right now might be the marketer or the owner of the company. There might be a few sales folks. If you're a sales, folk listening to this, let us know. Like, hit us up on the Twitters or something. Let us know.

Hey. I'm in sales, and I listen to your jams. When I think about this, the simplifying the complex is definitely a mindset. But the other thing that I would say, a question that you have to ask yourself is how can you rethink what you think as a marketer, as an owner? And I might, a little bit later in this episode, be able to have a chance to talk about something and it stopped me in my tracks.

And I was like, wait. What? What do you do? And and the way that it was simplified and the way that they deliver it to their sales team is quite absolutely magical. But the the question you should be asking yourself is, are the things that I think truly the way that the rest of the world sees them, or am I seeing them as a marketer?

And what if I was to look at them like a sales rep? How would I use them? How would I want them? And then last but not least, I and I know marketers, I'm gonna get hate mail here, but the one thing that I would be asking myself is how much can I do for them? I alluded to this when we were talking about SaaS software.

But if you can take more off of a sales rep's plate than you put on, you will end up in a very good place.

Liz Moorehead: Okay. So we're talking at a very high level here a lot about what we need to be thinking about holistically about technology. That can include HubSpot. It can also include other things that may not specifically be HubSpot. But now, Hub Heroes.

Let's get Hub Cool. HubSpot centric. What are the ways in which people should be thinking about HubSpot to help them with sales enablement? And one of the reminders I want us to put in our heads from from last week when we were shilling for big sprocket was that this really is something that has expanded to a company wide initiative. So I want us to think about what are the different components?

What are the different hubs that come in here? Not just the marketing and sales pieces, which I think are sometimes the obvious ones for people. But we should spend a lot of time there.

Liz Moorehead: Okay. So if you're if for for me at least, when I'm thinking about sales enablement and, like, literal tools in HubSpot, I'm saying, what am I doing to enable the productivity of my reps? So, like, what, like, what am I setting up and how am I coaching people to use the tools in a way that's going to make them, like, spend less time doing a lot of the bullshit administrative stuff they gotta worry about. Right? And then the other sort of angle I'm thinking is, like, how am I gonna enable them from, like, a knowledge and information at their fingertips type approach?

So in that realm, you know, in the first realm where I'm thinking of, like, productivity, that's where I'm just like, alright, what's, like, the emails they're sending over and over again? What are the the things that they're constantly typing? What are the what's the stuff they need to get access to? So you're thinking about, like, templates and snippets, things like sequences. Right?

Like, what are the common times people are, like, try like, following up in the same exact way, and how can we reduce, you know, the effort it takes to do that kind of stuff? But then when I think about that second realm, like, how am I enabling them with, like, knowledge? I'm thinking about things like playbooks. Right? I'm thinking about building in things like battle cards for, like, competitive intel, stuff like that.

But, yeah, it's like those 2 sort of, like, lenses are kind of like the the way that I would approach it. And the way that you would do either of those is is obviously gonna fluctuate. Right? But from a tool perspective, that's generally where I'm gonna start.

Devyn Bellamy: All that and then some. One thing I'm

Liz Moorehead: back in shift.

Devyn Bellamy: That, yeah. Right. One thing that Max alluded to that I think is really important is how do you use your technology to duplicate your top performers. One of the things that, you'll see a high turnover with sales personnels because a lot of them just don't know what they're doing and they're unsuccessful. And so that's when we start talking about playbooks and duplicating winning snippets and winning sequences and looking at who is really doing it and what can you do to make sure that your people, at the very least, are have the ability to, aspire to reach those levels of success.

If they have everything that they need to be as good as the best person you got. And then also, of course, how can you make the best person you got better?

George B. Thomas: So it's interesting because as I kind of listen to us here, one, I wanna make sure we dive deeper into, like, individual tools and thoughts and ideas around snippets, around templates. But, also, I want us to think about something, and that is up until this point, we've been talking about what they do or don't do, what they do or don't do, what they do or don't do, and and the tools that'll enable them to do this or stop them from happening to do that. I think there's a big part of sales enablement that we should be paying attention to that actually has a lot with keeping them not being lost. It's very easy for a sales rep to get lost in the weeds. It's very easy for marketing or a company to build a process that's too robust, and they get lost in what they're supposed to do.

What do you mean there's 27 required fields in that one deal stage that I have to drag and drop it? What do you mean I'm supposed to do these 5 or 7 things? Right? And so when I think about this helping them not be lost in pairing it with the what they have to do and what we don't want them to do, I think of of 2 things. I think of automation that can enable the tasks that happen when they need to happen, not before, not after, but right at the right time.

Like, on the marketing side of this, we talk about talking to the right person at the right time with the right thing. But for sales enablement, it's literally the right task for the, you know, the thing that you have to do in that moment in time. And so now all of a sudden, you're just firing on all cylinders. You're not lost in the wilderness, and you're get you're helping them be more productive with the limited amount of time that they have in a day to accomplish the massive goals. The other thing that I think about not getting lost is if you're listening to this and you don't have goals and forecasting set up in HubSpot so people actually know the revenue journey that they're trying to get to or go through.

And trust me, the only reason I can bring this junk up is because I've been in portals and seen it. Oh, well, why did HubSpot put that in there? That seems like to keep them on the right journey. Anyway, so I think of automation, and I think of understanding the journey that they're supposed to go on.

Liz Moorehead: George, something goals is something you talk about a lot, and I'm actually gonna link in the show notes. I think thematically across the board, goals in some way, shape, or form are some of the most underutilized components of every single HubSpot tool. So you wrote this great article about HubSpot workflows, and that's the thing that people do. They open up these tools with 0 goals. And my brothers and sisters in Christ or the flying spaghetti monster or Buddha, I am so curious as to how we're going to measure or manage what it is that we're doing.

How can we even define whether or not we are succeeding as a family or failing as a family if we haven't even defined what that looks like. It's crazy.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Sales content analytics. Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: You're just gonna

George B. Thomas: throw that out there real quick. Anyway

Liz Moorehead: Yeah. That there were there is that. And then I think there's also, like, enabling people to be sort of, like, enabling them with visibility into their own performance. Right? Because there's one thing to, like, look at your, like, deal board and see, like, oh my god.

I've got all my revenue tied up in this stage or, like, whatever. Right? But, like, you know, I don't see enough people building, like, dashboards for individual reps to just look at that's gonna tell them how they're how well they're doing. Right? Or even help them compare them to their their teammates if they wanna see that.

Right? To kinda get an idea of where there's where they stand. Or to even, like, set those those those dashboards sure, like, someone who's using it on a daily basis has a reason to go in there and it's gonna provide them some value. And sometimes that's gonna be, like, an easy way for them to understand how they're doing so they can kind of, you know, gauge their performance accordingly. But, yeah, I mean, if we wanna kinda get more, like, specific, like, into the into the tools a little, but I think snippets is, like, a really neat one to, like, start with.

Because a lot of people, you know, kinda just think snippets is, like, a way to just, you know, put in, like, a beginning of an email or, like, repeatable text that you use all the time. But sometimes it could be used for something like a call note template. Everybody takes notes in different ways. Some people, like, do the chicken scratch thing or just, like, take super short form notes while other people are putting, you know, way too much detail into them. A really cool, quick thing that you can do with cheaper versions of HubSpot is, like, have a quick, like, snippet that makes everybody take their call notes in the same way.

And 1, that's, you know, enabling good data to go into the system. But 2, it's also, like, a super simple way that you can give someone a quick framework for a discussion so they know the information they need to get, the questions they need to ask, what information they should be, you know, jotting down, things like that. You know? So snippets are cool for that if you're not, like, just, you know, using them to straight up communicate with someone in, like, a chat or an email. But I don't know if you guys have seen, like, other creative uses of some of the more similar to like, simpler tools in there or, like, you know, enable them to

George B. Thomas: Yeah. Absolutely. And, Devin, I know that you have some ideas because you're kinda, like, leaning in there. But I don't wanna go off of snippets too quick because, yes, you can have a discovery snippet that gives you the 7 questions you want every rep to ask. Yes.

You can create a snippet on price and cost because it's a question you get a 1,000 freaking times a day, and you want it to be answered consistently. Yes. You can have a snippet on, the latest blog articles of x y z or the topics that you wanna be known for here, there, and everywhere. And everybody knows, oh, if somebody asks about the Roto Rooter 557,000, here's the snippet for it. Right?

Like and, again, part of this is if I don't have to think as a sales rep in the way in which you want me to position and talk about x y z thing, then that saves me time in my day. I just go pounds 57100. There it is on the page. Pound or number sign for us old farts. Number sign.

You know what? Discovery. Boom. There it is wherever I need it. And the fact that snippets work inside of Outlook, Gmail, and your CRM, like, anyway

Liz Moorehead: So, George, I love that you've already started digging into the tools. This is not an a yes and, but it also is a little yes and. However, there's a reason why I want to save the ninja tips until the very end because one of the things I wanna make sure we do is that I think, natively, we automatically look at at least people who are seasoned with HubSpot. Right? They're looking at Sales and Marketing Hub, but I'd be so curious to hear from you about what are the tools people are not thinking about maybe in Service Hub, things in the CMS hub, maybe in operations?

Because I want us to have a whole dedicated time when we're talking about snippets, sequences, setting up those knowledge libraries. There's a whole question dedicated just to that. But one of the things we talked about in the last episode is that this is a whole company initiative y'all. This isn't just sales and marketing. So what are the components that people are overlooking in HubSpot that don't immediately maybe connect the dots to sales enablement.

Devyn Bellamy: What I was thinking about and people do think about it for sales enablement, but it's also excellent for service as well. That is documents. If you're accustomed to sending out PDFs or sharing a link to a PDF. And you you know that PDFs don't give analytics. There's once you have the document out there, then it could be viewed by 1 person or viewed by a 100 people.

Who knows? Who knows who it's getting sent to? That's the cool thing about documents tool in HubSpot is that it gives you a little bit more control and visibility on what's going on. And when you're talking about that cookie cutter statement that you, have, say, for snippets on a particular product, can also drop that, spec sheet or the brochure for the same thing. And, oh, man, would that come in handy for service 2.

And the very first line in the troubleshooting dock is, did you turn it off and on? And you know they didn't because you can see that they didn't open the dock.

Liz Moorehead: I think the other thing I love about documents too is, like, when you talk about enabling people to remove friction, when you have, like, a bunch of sales collateral that you're sending around, a lot of times people are, like, spending time trying to find that in whatever folder they saved it in, going and downloading it from the other location that was central to get the latest version, not knowing if they're sending the newest one or the older version or whatever. Having that stuff, like, right in there, just like, yeah, it's convenient, but the big thing is that it's gonna shave a whole lot of wasted seconds and even minutes finding stuff. Right? And, like, when you add that up over a day, you're enabling people to have less friction, you know, in their day. In terms of, Liz, what you were talking about, like, other parts of the tool, service hubs are really, like, interesting piece too because, like, you know, while you're while people, like, sometimes only look at HubSpot for engaging with folks outside of your company, like, the people that work at your company are people too, and they could just as easily be contacts in your system.

When we talk about, like, listening to what's going on and the fires that you have to put out from an enablement perspective, you can use the surveys tool on your own, folks. You can build knowledge bases that are private, that only your your employees can access, and give them, you know, give give that as a resource to them too, whether it's, you know, with enablement documentation, internal knowledge based articles, things that. There's a lot of ways that you can take the tools that you're using to, you know, traditionally just communicate with customers and prospects and turn them inward and use them on your own people for new

George B. Thomas: Oh, teacher. Teacher. Teacher. Call on me. Call on me.

I I understand the assignment. I understand the assignment. Listen. Here's the deal. The assignment was what other than marketing and sales hub can we be leveraging for sales enablement?

By the way, before I go into my diatribe, ladies and gentlemen, I love documents. The fact that you can give visibility where there was darkness inside of emails and PDFs if they were downloaded or not. I am a big fan, but here's the deal. If you wanna derail sales faster than, I don't know, snot on the I don't know where it's gonna be. But if you wanna derail sales, give them some dirty data.

Right? So dirty data. So immediately, are you using the operations hub quality command center to make sure that the data in the system that the sales reps are trying to use to actually have those calls are the data that they need to be paying attention to? That's 1, operations hub and data cleanliness. 2nd one, CMS.

Are you using your products for more than just your quotes? Are you using products on the CMS side where you can actually have updated pricing because it's looking at the products in the back end of HubSpot to pull in the pricing for your actual stuff on your website pages. Because by the way, if you didn't know, it's possible. You can do that. And so making the back end of your system work with the front end of what the people actually see is a way that you can enable sales, because they're not like, is that last year's pricing?

No. No. No. It's just pricing is pricing. That's how you can enable sales.

They're not confused. They're not lost. They're streamlined. The other one is the service hub. Service hub, man, if you're listening to this right now and your marketing and sales teams do not have a voice of customer system in place where you can understand the latest and greatest demands, the the the major pain points that they're facing right now, not 6 months ago or 6 years ago, and able to have conversations whether it be through snippets, templates, or process driven through playbooks or sequences, then you definitely should be using Service Hub to have a voice of customer.

I'm sorry. I had to go a little bit on a little bit of there for a second.

Liz Moorehead: But what

George B. Thomas: do you mean?

Liz Moorehead: That's what I want. People want. The one of the challenging all of you to like we're about to, by the way, this we're about to get to the ninja part with Sales Hub and Marketing Hub. But one of the things I think that is so critically important that people forget is because there are more hubs and they exist for a reason. And that's why we have this dream team of hub heroes, right?

Because you guys do the work. You know the tools, and people don't look at them. They look at ops hub and service hubs and go, how what does that have to do with sales? We've already sold to them.

George B. Thomas: Everything.

Liz Moorehead: Exactly. But George

Liz Moorehead: We've gotta talk about we gotta talk about playbook.

Liz Moorehead: Oh, yeah. Of course. Okay. No. So actually, can I can I set the table for you guys?

Liz Moorehead: Please.

Liz Moorehead: I just want you to talk about your favorite dreamiest parts, all the sales tools. Let's just go sales wild.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah.

Liz Moorehead: George, I I want you to start because you were off on a passionate tear. You let me bring us back on course, but now I wanna let you fly.

George B. Thomas: Yeah. So first of all, they kinda stole a little bit of my thunder because the un like, they need to be like a group of people need to just lift it up and carry it through town and let everybody know that it's a hero that most times people aren't paying attention to, and that is the documents tool. The ability to see the amount of time in the pages that somebody looked at in a PDF, a PowerPoint type presentation, and sales to actually get the visibility that somebody stopped on page 6. Well, why is that important? Holy shit.

Page 7 is where we talk about price. They don't know anything about price. So what does that mean? Well, when I get on the call with them, what am I gonna do? Hey, Jimmy.

Do you have any questions about the pricing? Well, no. Not really. Jimmy, you're a liar. You did look at page 7.

You don't know the pricing. Now, of course, that's not what we're gonna do, but we're gonna ease into the conversation. Well, well, it's good that you don't have any questions, but I just wanna make sure that you understand x y z a, b, c 123, the main three things that are important about our pricing. Then you actually get into the real conversation. But you have that intelligence and understanding if they're full of crap or if they actually understand the process that you're about to talk to them about.

So that that is a major thing. But I will say that the other thing that I think is vitally important for people to understand about these sales tools is because and and, again, it's it's about the way we position things. I can tell you, I myself have said this. And if you go and watch any YouTube channel on sequences versus work flows. People will position it that sequences is the, like, little baby brother, cousin, whatever of workflows for sales.

It's it's sales automation. Listen. There is some automation to it, but what sequences is, if used right, it is a process machine. I need you to connect with them on LinkedIn, and a day later, send this email. 2 days later after that, I need you to do this thing, AKA a task that might be internally focused.

2 days after that, you can go ahead and do this other thing, which is maybe send them a personalized video, and a day after that, another email. Like, the things that you can customize to be happening from the beginning to the end of a sequence is not, I wanna send an email, and then 2 days later, another email, and then 3 days later, another email. And my biggest worry is, well, what if they reply? It stops. Oh, no.

Like, no. No. Stop it.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah. Salespeople, start stop LARPing as marketers with the sequences. It is not you it's the sequence tool. Let me get the just just so everyone just to make it so clear. The sequences tool is not an email marketing tool.

Your salespeople are not email marketers. They're probably some of the worst email marketers that there could be. If you're just using sequences to monsoon people with emails, you are doing it.

Liz Moorehead: So it's not a battle axe of wrath.

Liz Moorehead: No. It's not a battle axe of wrath. No. No. You know, the you gotta think about how can a sequence enable someone.

Well, it can enable them by saying, hey. Whatever situation you find yourself in, whether you're reaching out for the first time or following up with someone in a certain situation, and you need to be able to automate stuff so you can save a lot of time but still have those opportunities to make it personal. Having sequences for different scenarios is gonna be great for that. Right? Because it's going to make sure you're spending less time wasting time creating the next follow-up task for yourself and reminding you to do it and maybe getting that reminder or maybe ignoring that reminder.

Right? The other thing too that it's great for doing is ensuring that you're not filling up your sales reps, like, task queues with a 1,000,000,000 unneeded tasks. Right? Like, there are so many people that, like, just add task after task after task after task through workflows, when if you deployed those through sequences, those tasks would only get created if they actually had to happen. Instead of having a bunch of unused tasks, because at that point, you're adding a bunch of friction in your tool, and you're making it, like, a burden to have to go do a bunch of, like, useless clicks and actions in there rather than something that's actually, you know, contextual.

Right? Which is like a task served at the right time telling you to do the right thing. One little quick quick quick thing on documents too that, like, a lot of people, like, overlook is when you have documents inside of HubSpot, you can upload these documents. Why is that important? Because one, me as the sales rep, I don't wanna have to worry if I'm sending the most up to date version.

I just wanna send it from one place all the time and know it's the most up to date version. Someone else can make sure it's up to date. Right? Because I don't wanna waste time going and finding it, and I don't wanna, like, be like, oh, am I sending the right version? Right?

So if you have things that like like pricing catalogs or stuff that updates frequently, you can keep updating that one document and it maintains its activity history. That way, I always know I'm sending the most up to date version of it. It's not something that has to take up brain space in your rep's head, and you wanna be reducing the amount of stuff that takes up, you know, mental calories in your rep's head if you're gonna be enabling them in any way, shape, or form. So just a little detail, but it's something that a lot of people overlook.

Liz Moorehead: Just a little detail, just spit and fire. No big deal.

Liz Moorehead: Just a little detail.

Liz Moorehead: Yeah. Devin, what about you? I need some sweet that needs some sweet Devin spitting fire. I need it. Sure.

Devyn Bellamy: Sure. Well, 2 places that are off to overlook. The first one is in pipelines.

George B. Thomas: That Talk to me, daddy.

Devyn Bellamy: There there's there's 2 big issues that I have with the way I've seen people use pipelines. 1, you have different verticals that have different buying processes or different sales actions, but you're running them all on the same pipeline. Don't. That's like that that's it. That's that's

Liz Moorehead: Do not and stop. And

Liz Moorehead: Yes. Don't do it.

Devyn Bellamy: You can have more than one pipeline for your different kinds of businesses. Like, for instance, I work for a company used to work for a company that sold showers. Right? I think I've talked about this before. We have, different pipelines for the different verticals.

And we, like, we have a b to c pipeline, which is significantly shorter and fewer steps. We have our university pipeline, which is a completely different process than the hospital pipeline, even though they're all ending up with the same product, the moment from when they engage to sales, from the moment we take their money and beyond, that it's a completely different scenario. So don't try and make your single pipeline the the the the single source of truth for all of your different possibilities. That that's the one thing. The other thing is start focusing on your conversion rates.

So then you're able to calculate your weights within the pipeline. And so you can get accurate deal forecasting. So I've been in so many different sales meetings where they say we have $200,000 in the pipeline right now. We have $500,000 in the pipeline right now. But if you look at your analytics, most of those deals like, you have a 50 50 percent chance of getting through the pipeline.

And so, like, let's say your closed one rate is 33%, and we'll we'll say 25%, make the math a little easier. At that point, what that really means that, no, you don't have 500,000 in the pipeline. You have closer to 300,000 in the pipeline because looking at all the money in your pipeline is a vanity metric that it doesn't actually mean what you want it to mean. If you're able to say, I know that we close 75% of the deals once they reach this stage. I know that we close 50% of the deals when we reach this stage.

I know that I've sent the contract out. We have a 95% close rate once the contract's been sent. Then I know that if I have a 100,000 dollars in the closed or in the, contract out section, I can probably guarantee that I'm gonna have 95% of that in the bank at some point. If you don't calculate your deal, weights, and and you don't have your conversion metrics, you're not not just about improving your conversion metrics. That's a whole separate conversation.

Just knowing what they are so you have an accurate idea of whether or not you're gonna be able to make paychecks this week.

George B. Thomas: Which, by the way, let me just throw in here. Part of enabling sales not to get lost is making sure you're battling against being confused. They cannot get confused. I cannot tell you, Devin. I'm so glad that you brought that up.

The amount of conversations that I have had people email me or they've asked me on a call of, like, why don't the numbers match? Like, I know that the number is this, but it's showing me this. And I'm like, do you understand what close probability is? Because some marketer, when when they set up your sales pipeline, thought that it was 20%. But you in your mind are, like, calculating 100% of that number and understanding, like, why does

Liz Moorehead: it only say 2,000? It should be, like, 5,000,000,000.

George B. Thomas: What, like, what's going on? Educate, educate, educate to the process and what these properties actually mean in the CRM that they're using and why it's gonna spit out data in a certain way. And then all of a sudden, they're like, oh, well, yeah, that's what it's supposed to look like. Let me move on with my day.

Liz Moorehead: As we're heading into wrap up here, guys, there's just one question that is on my mind. Let's say someone has listened to both of these episodes. Just one. I know. Just one.

I know. This is impossible. This very challenging. But let's assume somebody has listened to both of these episodes. They're dialed in.

They're thinking about the right human elements, process elements. They're not just staring at sequences thinking it's the only way to enable sales. Right? They are looking holistically at HubSpot as an ecosystem that can transform form them into the hub hero they need to be for sales enablement. Right?

What is the one thing they need to do after this episode in order not to screw this up?

Liz Moorehead: You gotta talk to people. You gotta like like don't make your decisions in a silo. If you're proposing a change, you need to first get buy in. Make sure people actually think it's gonna be helpful. And then you need to be prepared to bail on that idea if it's not helpful.

Right? Obviously, give it some time to test out. Right? But I think the biggest thing is like, you've you've gotta listen to how people need to be enabled, not just like assume. Implementing a bunch of these tools isn't gonna do anything if it's not actually gonna help someone.

Right? And you need to know what help they actually need before you pro like, start to provide it. You know, there's a reason you don't give CPR to someone who needs the Heimlich maneuver. Right? You gotta you gotta figure out triage what's going on first.

Devyn Bellamy: I would say get your change management hat on when you're talking about implementing any new system, or looking at it. Because this is one of the things that I mentioned earlier is that you're gonna run it into some internal friction from somebody. And you might be making somebody's job harder in their mind than it is because what they might actually be going through in their mind is that they still have to do all the convoluted silliness that they were doing before this new tool would be implemented. So be prepared to be the the agent of change, when it comes to training and from bringing from the old mindset to the new mindset. One of the things that, will really help, like Max said, is listening.

Because then when you're able to bring when when you do bring in this new tool, you're able to speak to the new tool through the lens of experience that the people who are doing it the old way and are happy with it will understand. Help them understand about this pain point that they didn't even really understand was a pain point because they're just so used to document everything in Excel. It's fine. It's whatever. But you can say, hey.

You remember how you used to have to do this, this, that, this, and that? Well, now all you have to do is this, and they will be blown away 10 times out of 10.

George B. Thomas: Alright. Ladies and gentlemen, when you stop listening to this podcast, you're gonna go into HubSpot if you have HubSpot, and you're gonna go, Don't worry. Don't tune out yet because if you don't have HubSpot, I got something for you. Just stick with me. But if you have HubSpot, you're gonna go into your main navigation.

You're gonna hit reports. You're gonna hit analytics tools. You're gonna go to sales analytics, and you're gonna click on the tab that is coaching reps and teams. Once you're at coaching reps and teams, what you're gonna do is you're gonna look at each individual human that happens to be part of your sales team in your organization, and you're gonna have to change your mindset. Here is the hashtag one thing.

Too many times when we talk about sales enablement, we talk about it like it's a company wide strategy or tactic. It is not. It is sales enablement is meant to be an individual human tactic or strategy. Jimmy is really disorganized. He needs tasks.

Susie is not good with process. She needs playbooks. Billy really can't close the deal. He needs shared deals and joint close conversations. Where are your people weak?

Use technology to make them strong. It is not for the org. It is for the human.

Liz Moorehead: There we go. Human.

Liz Moorehead: There it is. I know.

Liz Moorehead: I was waiting for that.

Devyn Bellamy: There it is.

Liz Moorehead: Give us give it give it to us give us give us a good one. Give it give it give it to us.

Liz Moorehead: When I say who, you may.

George B. Thomas: You may. Oh, god.

Liz Moorehead: You're making this off okay. George, you are making this so awkward. Just say your favorite word one more time.

Liz Moorehead: Just give it to us. Give it to us deep and guttural.

Liz Moorehead: Oh, yeah.

Devyn Bellamy: There it is.

Liz Moorehead: Can I put that

Devyn Bellamy: that Liz said humans before George did in this episode?

George B. Thomas: She did. She did.

Liz Moorehead: Was that true?

Devyn Bellamy: Yeah. I was listening for it. God.

Liz Moorehead: Thanks, bud. I win. And on that note, of Liz being the best, I love you guys so much. Did you guys have fun talking about technology this week?

Liz Moorehead: Yes. Yes. We did.

Liz Moorehead: I can tell by. We didn't

Liz Moorehead: even we didn't get into we didn't get into playbooks.

George B. Thomas: And we said we would too. Isn't that crazy? There needs to be a whole episode.

Liz Moorehead: Should we do a bonus segment?

Liz Moorehead: Bonus segment. Question. Next week, do we talk about playbooks?

Liz Moorehead: Just call it the

George B. Thomas: playbooks episode.

Liz Moorehead: A whole episode on playbooks. You guys are so thrilled about. Okay, I literally asked you the question. Alright. Let's dig into the sales tools, and nobody said playbooks.

Well, Max did. I opened the door.

George B. Thomas: Well, Axe did and then caveated delayed. Let's make sure we get back and talk about it. But

Liz Moorehead: Yeah. I did well, I did, but then we ended up getting super deep on each one of which we're supposed to. Right? So I guess, yeah, we can have

Liz Moorehead: a whole So a whole episode on Playbooks next week?

Liz Moorehead: Playbooks episode. Oh. Well, that's what is there enough? It's still I mean, probably

George B. Thomas: Well, here's the thing. You know? Here's here's the thing.

Liz Moorehead: Like, if we can't

George B. Thomas: do that. If we're gonna do that no. This is still going. Noah, keep this all in because this is how the sausage is made. This is how we this is how we cook up good meals.

If we're gonna do this, then it has to be playbooks for sales, playbooks for service, playbooks for marketing. How can your entire organization, tips, tricks, and examples, playbooks for the entire org next week, served up for your beautiful whatever

Liz Moorehead: face. We're doing great, guys. Beautiful. We did we're

George B. Thomas: we're do

Liz Moorehead: so I was gonna say something nice like

Liz Moorehead: George, you're a mind reader because that's exactly what I was

Liz Moorehead: thinking of. But to everyone else who is listening, first of all, godspeed. Send us your therapy bills because I know this has been a chaotic, emotionally traumatic episode with lots of daddies and various other things. But I hope you at least feel enabled with sales. Change is hard.

Suck it up, cupcake. You're gonna be fine. But we'll talk to you all next week about playbooks.

George B. Thomas: Okay, hub heroes. We've reached the end of another episode. Will Lord Lack continue to loom over the community, or will we be able to defeat him in the next episode of the hub heroes podcast? Make sure you tune in and find out in the next episode. Make sure you head over to the hub heroes.com to get the latest episodes and become part of the league of heroes.

FYI, if you're part of the League of Heroes, you'll get the show notes right in your inbox, and they come with some hidden power up potential as well. Make sure you share this podcast with a friend. Leave a review if you like what you're listening to, and use the hashtag, hashtag hub euros podcast on any of the socials, and let us know what strategy conversation you'd like to listen into next. Until next time, when we meet and combine our forces, remember to be a happy, helpful, humble human, and, of course, always be looking for a way to be someone's hero.