¶ HubSpot Implementation and Ongoing Support
Hello everyone , welcome to On the Move . I am Jennifer Karpis-Romain , executive Director of the Transportation Marketing and Sales Association , which is a trade nonprofit educating and connecting marketing and sales professionals inside the transportation and logistics space . And today on On the Move I have Chris Zaskampowski . I knew I was going to mess it up .
I practiced it so many times , but I tried . He is I will let him say his own name in a minute because , you know , totally messed up , but he is VP of corporate business development at Bennett family of companies and he has a long time TMSA member and supporter , so I should in fact be able to say his last name at this point . My apologies , chris .
Welcome to the show . Hey , jen Zabkowski , zabkowski I even practiced it beforehand , like four times A miss . Well , welcome to the show . So happy to have you on here . So I've known you for quite a few years . For those of the people listening and watching the show who don't know you , can you tell us about your journey and career in the industry ?
Sure , I started at Bennett Family of Companies in 2012 , september . I had been in marketing for 17 years prior to Bennett , but I had never been in the transportation and logistics industry . So when I started and I wanted to get embedded into the industry , I was looking for where the birds of a feather flocked together .
And it didn't take me too long to find some information about Transportation , marketing and Sales Association , tmsa , and within a year I was attending my first event . Everybody was so kind . I learned very quickly that this industry is all about helping one another succeed . Competition doesn't even matter , it's all collaborative . Everybody helps .
Onboard me to the lingo , you know what the different companies are doing in this space .
And for the next 12 years at Bennett , I ran our marketing department and religiously came to TMSA events , participated on committees , led content , that kind of stuff , just because I believe so much in giving back to this industry and all that y'all have given to me to help me learn and get into this business .
That's awesome to hear . That's obviously . We met at TMSA back when I was a member as well , before I took over the association , and probably my favorite thing was when we did the speed networking and you were our coordinator and you had the cowbells and you would ring it and it was very funny .
But last September you switched from then VP of Marketing and Communications at Bennett over to VP of Corporate Business Development . So , how has your experience prepared you for that role ? What has it been like switching that positions ? Why did you want to do that new challenge ahead ?
I'm sure yeah , you know when , when you want to grow in your career , sometimes you have to shake it up . I had been . I had done everything that I could humanly do in my role in marketing . So I thought we made it through our 50th anniversary at Bennett , which included writing a book , doing giant events , doing a full marketing campaign , redoing our website .
I mean all the things that I could imagine having done in marketing . I kind of had done , and I wanted to be able to get out of bed the next day and go okay , here's something , here's a challenge . That makes me really uncomfortable . So sales and marketing seems to go together and us marketers always want to have a better relationship with sales .
And as I started to chat with my management team here at Bend , I said I'm looking for another opportunity . What do you think that I could do ? And they said , hey , with your skills , how you know the business , who you know , we think that you can do business development . I said , well , I'm glad you think so .
I've never done it before but I'd love to give it a shot . And so I started that journey . Probably middle of last year . I started taking on some projects that crossed over more into the sales and business development side , and then I really started my role on November 1st of last year . I kind of had to define my own role .
There was no such thing as a vice president of corporate business development .
At Bennett we are 14 different operating companies , all with their own leadership inside of their own business units , and so this role has me looking across the business units to try to bring the Bennett family of companies solutions to the marketplace , make it coherent , make it easy for a customer to understand so that when they want to engage in any of our
different services they kind of have one way to get into the business . So it's kind of a cool challenge . I will say one of the areas that I dove into straight away was a HubSpot implementation , so I'd love to chat with you about that . That's been a journey so far .
Yes , so we are a HubSpot shop at TMSA as well , and that was one of the things that I did when I came at TMSA was we had used it , or they had used it for marketing , but then we implemented all the sales , our websites in there , the member portal , all of that stuff , and really figuring out where you want to put things and how to get people to engage
in that . So kudos for leading that charge and getting that up to speed .
Yeah , surprisingly , this company has been here since 1974 . They've had fits and starts in CRM , but to have one central CRM across all of our units and try to onboard I mean we're looking at between three and 400 users across the companies we engage . When we engage HubSpot directly , come to find out their implementation .
Partner for the logistics and transportation industry is none other than lead coverage , and lead coverage was a great opportunity to be able to engage with Kara and Eric at that company and have them help do the implementation . So we're I don't know eight months into probably a year and a half process to put HubSpot in place . I'm super impressed with the system .
As you know , it started as a marketing engine but it really got itself more towards CRM as time has gone on and I have salesforcecom whiplash from my past life and HubSpot has been a lot more pleasurable than that so far .
And so you mentioned it's been ongoing , and that's something that I was going to ask you about , because I think one of the biggest mistakes .
So when I first came into TMSA this is for why we're talking about this I was a HubSpot implementation partner and I was very versed in CRM and all those things , and so one of the biggest mistakes that I see and I still see people making is investing in implementation but not ongoing support , and there's continual changes going on in the system .
They're constantly trying to make improvements , making things easier and better , but if we're not training our employees how to do that , then it can get really lost , and so I'm interested in hearing about your journey and , like making sure that's a lot of people to use a system and to get on board and to feel good about it .
So what type of support and training are you offering your team to get them to actually use it ?
Holy smokes , don't I know it . You know , every , every human being that engages with the system has their own personal journey with technology , which is what I'm finding it's like . It's not even that you can do it across a business unit or a group sometimes . Sometimes it's literal death side support .
So , as I said , you know the implementation partner and lead coverage . Their job is to get this setup going and they've provided some initial onboarding training for some of our business unit groups as we've gone through . We have one technology adoption specialist on our IT team .
That's helped lean into this a little bit , with some desk side support and just sort of some of the basic onboarding . But I'll tell you what it is nonstop need , from my perspective , to continue to engage with users directly , with groups , directly with the senior leadership that want dashboarding . Like you , I was actually very surprised .
I'm like , oh , we finished a business unit . No , we're just beginning Like they sort of they start to use it . We're gonna have to hire a HubSpot admin . There is no doubt in my mind it's gonna have to be internal . We can't afford to outsource forever . It's just not financially possible .
So we have to build our capability with a new individual and I'm training some of our operational folks that are used to dealing with analytics and numbers on the op side . Anyway , they need to learn the new system and help me embed it into the business .
So I'm really trying to attack it from the bottoms up as well to try to get some of the people that are dealing with customers every day , that are dealing with communications through other systems and they just have to kind of migrate their activity into HubSpot . So it is an absolute journey and I'm just beginning .
You know , nine months into it , I feel like I'm just getting started .
But you said a few key things there . Number one you talked about talking to all users , which I think is so important and a step that people often forget . Of course , you want buy-in from senior leadership . You want them to know what the system is doing , what they can do .
But if you're trying to build efficiencies and trying to get people to use a system , engaging with the people who are actively using the system is incredibly important too , and then getting that feedback from other people that are going to be using the system , like operations .
Hubspot does have a huge amount of reporting and analytics tools , and so being able to efficiently use that that's something at TMSA that we started doing and we're building . Now we finally have everything in there .
But how can we even something like tracking okay , who went to Elevate last year to this year , like building the properties and making sure that we can easily build a report ? It took a minute to figure out how to effectively do that , but now we're in a rhythm and it is streamlining our production of being able to do something like that .
But it took us a little bit to figure out how to do that get the right properties in place , talking to the right people who could help us , and so it is a process and also that source of truth . Ok , everyone's going to need to be in HubSpot . This is where the information is going to be .
Everyone has so many different types of technologies , so many different capabilities , but knowing , okay , this is where you can go for this type of information , where you should be putting this type of information incredibly important . So you may feel like you're at the beginning , but I think you're doing a great job of putting all those pieces in place .
Well , thank you , I appreciate you saying that , and it sounds like I might have another committee to listen in on once in a while , because , I mean , learning is very important at this point . I am not an expert , but glad to hear that y'all are at TMSA , so that's good .
Yeah , I actually , earlier this month , I spoke at the Transportation Club of Tacoma and this is part I was talking about software integration and how to maximize the technology to get the most from your team .
To get the most from your team , because your team is who is able to talk to your customers , to show empathy , to have relationships , to build that really great relationship . Use the technology to be able to give them , to streamline those conversations , or to be able to look at the reports , to be able to have the analytics and all that .
So I think that's so important . So it's funny that we're talking about this now , because I literally was just talking about it not too long ago . So Awesome , very cool . So one of my favorite things that you've been doing over the past couple of months is you started your playing with trucks . Is it just a YouTube series or can people access it somewhere else ?
I found it on YouTube .
Yeah , we've been posting it on YouTube . I've also put it just on my kind of LinkedIn channel , my personal account .
And the strategy there is , if you think about how companies ought to brand their subject matter experts , if you start it on their LinkedIn account and then share it through the company account , you're trying to bolster the subject matter experts within your company . So that's our strategy is ?
You know , I don't post it from Bennett , I post it from me , and then we reshare it that way . So LinkedIn and YouTube , basically .
So tell us about playing with trucks . What is the origin story ?
of this and what can people expect if they tune in . So this is the kind of thing that happens when you start a new job . You're like , well , how do I figure out this new role and I coming into it ? I said , well , I have my marketing background .
We've been working on videos at bennett for the last 10 years , um , and I said there's , it was always like , uh , twisting arms to get sales individuals to do video work . I just just not in their wheelhouse . I said , well , I don't , doesn't bother me a bit . So I figured , first of all , what can I do bringing marketing to business development ?
And then I just started thinking , okay , well , what's my unique angle going to be ? To explain what the Bennett family of companies does and make content that people want to engage with . And I just remembered how much I loved playing with you know matchbox cars and trucks in the dirt as a kid . And I figured I could use , you know , toys .
There's toys on the market that sort of represent a lot of the different things that we do . And I figured if I could build my own sets and have some of my own props , sort of in a room in front of some cameras , it'd be very easy to explain some of the more complex aspects of trucking and logistics .
We do big , weird , heavy and ugly stuff , so to try to explain that in any other way is a challenge .
So my goal is to simplify it , like if I can dumb down wind and early energy logistics or a government hazmat transport or you know manufactured housing transport to something that you know a kid would understand and you know use some of the props that are you know toys which , by the way , it's fun to order those and get them in the house and figure out how
I'm going to do that . That was just like yeah ,
¶ Sales and Marketing Alignment Impact
that was the idea . And , um , honestly , I got to tell you ChatGPT is my friend .
I mean me and Chat talked a lot about this series until we got it to a point that I was happy with , where I was going to take the episodes and as I sit and write those scripts and figure out how I'm going to go through a five-minute segment on a particular aspect , I definitely heavily lean into getting some assist from AI .
So and so one . I am a fan of chat GPT too , but the way that you just used it like you're still fine tuning the message , you're still the thought leader , the expert , but working through that . So you mentioned a couple of the things that you've explained . What has the response been ? Have people been like oh , this is great . I now understand .
Is it something that you send to customers ? How are you utilizing the videos ?
Yeah . So first of all , just from an awareness standpoint , like I said , stepping into a new role , as soon as I started posting those things , people started to go oh , you're in a different role , you're doing different things and you're really helping me understand stuff I had internals .
The first response was from people internally at Bennett going oh , I didn't know how that worked . Nobody has explained that to me . That's simply here at Bennett . So it started internally and then , the more that I've gained some momentum with it , it's turned external and I've had folks reach out to me with that .
I would plan on continuing to send out those pieces as just an icebreaker when I do reach outs for prospecting . That to me is you would put a face to a name . Here's a little piece of content about me and just sort of a different way of attacking prospecting .
So yeah , other than that , it's helpful content for for Bennett to put out there too from their social channels . I think that helps to humanize the brand too , to be able to meet you know some of the individuals that are doing the business every day .
And do you plan to continue to do more videos or are you kind of utilizing the ones you've already done ?
Oh , I wish , wish . So we had a wonderful social media specialist , the , the guy that we had , your young kid that just pushed bennett and us as a marketing team toward reels and and this quick hitter content stuff . He's just a great video editor . I can't build the content and edit at this , you know , it's just , it's too much .
I really wanted a weekly cadence and I was there for about 10 weeks and now I just have to wait until we get another video type of person in house at Bennett to really pick the series back up .
I mean , I could do it , but I would be spending every , probably every every minute of my week working on it , unfortunately , because you think about it , you gotta write a script , come up with the toys , do that stuff , then perform the piece and then you got to have it edited and editing could take , you know , a day . So I just need an editor .
So if anybody out there wants to play with trucks with me and I'll send you the material , then you can edit it for me and whatever other than that . It may sit there for a while until we get some momentum again , but for now I got ten , ten or so pieces that I can put out there that explain different aspects of the business yeah , they're really cool .
I mean I will . I , I like to educate myself and all the different parts . There's so many things to learn .
It doesn't matter how long you've been in the industry you will always learn something new , and so having the opportunity to watch it in a really fun and engaging way , or even being able to show my son , who also loves to play in the dirt with all of this stuff , it's really cool . So I that really stood out to me .
So now that you are on like the business development side , but you have the experience in marketing , do you find that you're building , like , sales and marketing alignment in in Bennett , like , are you able to really bridge those gaps together in a more meaningful way ?
Oh , a hundred percent . That's so interesting to be on this side . Now you realize that it's not all about the marketing material . You look at the ways in which these folks need to reach out . It's still really tough to get through gatekeepers to decision makers and build out the account system and really get a good knowledge of all of your funnels .
And I'll just do a little pitch here , cause I have been consuming Kara's book , the revenue engine , um , because we've been working with lead coverage and I just respect Kara very much to to create a process for a discussion around sales and marketing alignment .
Um it , I understand the marketing side now , but to get salespeople to talk about funnels and really three of them , it's the strangers , it's the nurturing that you're trying to get . You're in a process of building a sale , you're touching base again until they're ready for a sale and finally trying to close the deal .
And then what we tend to focus on a lot at Bennett maybe unlike , probably unlike most of the really aggressive logistics companies we work on our customers all the time , like we are so focused on the customer funnel and just that repeat business and the customer funnel that you know . I think sales here gets real operationally oriented .
They're very mired in making sure a customer gets served very well and being very responsive to that . But so what I see just from that marketing and sales partnership is the need to lean as much as we can toward the prospecting funnel . You've got to keep that pipeline full and that's definitely where I have a lot of work to do at this particular company .
The prospect I don't know if it's trucking in general , because I know logistics companies out there all the more aggressive , you know , dollar for dollars type of a situation . I mean they're prospecting all the time , but for us we're operating all the time we're delivering , we're loading , we're dispatching , and it is that prospect funnel that needs the most work .
Good to know . Good to know , good to know . Yeah , I think that having that experience on both is so helpful and really understanding . Is there one thing , now that you are on the sales side , that you wish ? When you were a marketer , you knew .
Um , it's as I said , I think there's a lot of technique to sales and in the different , I guess , personalities of individuals that get into this business , I always on the marketing side I think I had one point of view of what a successful salesperson looked like very extroverted , very , you know they would always stand out at a party or whatever , but that is
I didn't know that . You know you can succeed in sales to be very mild mannered , a different personality type , and I'm actually taking a lot of sales training . Sandler system is what we're working with right now .
We just started a very in-depth process and learning , um , the personality Styles of your prospects through like a disc assessment and that kind of thing . There's different strokes for different folks across the spectrum of sales . So , um , I think some of our most successful sales people are not the most I don't know bubbly in a room , if you will .
So that's , that's something I didn't know in marketing . I thought everybody was sort of cut from the same cloth .
Yeah , I think that's a really good perspective , like people engage with people , but how ? Their preferred mechanism of that , and because some people , you know , yeah , they like that , like hard hitting salesperson , some people really just want to build a relationship .
I think in both of those they want to be able to trust the person , but like , how do you get there ? So that's a really good perspective and I do think it's important to think about what your customer wants , where they are , how to engage with them best , even something as simple as being like what's your favorite way to communicate ?
Is it email , is it phone ? And just knowing that ahead of time , so that way you can engage with them in the way they want to be as you know , there is no such answer as the customer at any of these large accounts .
The customer is consistent of between , you know , 5 and 15 decision makers , all with different personality styles and different needs in the relationship . So your ability of any person on the sales side to connect and engage inside of that group is how successful you're going to be . You know , maintaining an account for the long term .
Absolutely Well . This is great . I do want to touch a little bit on your involvement in TMSA , because you have been around our organization for a long time . You've served on the education committee , like we talked about at the beginning . You were the facilitator for speed networking . In the past , bennett has received both purpose and trailblazers awards .
I'm sure probably compass awards in years past as well . Now you have kind of shifted your career a little bit , but how has your engagement in TMSA really helped your career ? And if people are considering joining you know , what would you say to them ?
It's all about what we've talked about
¶ Building Community and Career Advice
today . I mean sales and marketing is a continuum , and so , as I've been involved in the various committees and met the different individuals at TMSA , it has helped me immensely go from a complete neophyte in the industry to somebody that knows enough to be dangerous but also be very aware of the different roles and steps in everybody's journey .
And it's to me whether , when you serve on the education committee , as example , now you got to put the hat on of okay , well , what does ? Does Jen want to take back from a conference ? No-transcript , it's all about giving back and it's all about trying to help other people , and there's so many .
I definitely have learned there's , I mean , 10 different ways to do that at TMSA and use your talents in different ways .
As an example , you know I do a lot of event planning in my past role at Bennett tons , and the Elevate conference is a giant event that you personally are in charge of , and for a while I was really enjoying that aspect until I realized that the involvement at TMSA and my day job felt very much the same and I'm like , okay , well , that's not exactly what I
want to do , so let's work on just the education side and help put content together . So your membership and your participation can evolve over time . And obviously the biggest benefit is also just the networking , the individuals that come in and out of the association most come in and most never leave once they're here .
You build lifelong friendships with these individuals . I can call on any one of my close colleagues here at TMSA for all sorts of different insights , favors , business advice , vendor suggestions . That has been my number one place to find vendors in this industry , to find people that can provide us with services at Bennett when I need them .
Well , I love hearing all that . It's always great to hear the support of the members , especially the ones that have been around for many years and still finding value in the organization , so thank you so much for that .
We did talk about the award submission , so I do want to let everybody know that we have three categories up for submissions right now Purpose , trailblazers and Rising Stars . You can submit for those awards now , through the end of March , so get in on that .
Purpose is , if you have a community-based or sustainability-based program , trailblazers , best of Marketing and Sales , and then also Rising Stars . If you have somebody that's really awesome on your team , that's been in the industry for five years or less , you can nominate them for that .
Let me give a plug on that . Okay , you know what gets people out of bed every day ? It's recognition .
And it's surprising that people in this industry if you look at all the other associations , ata , tca I don't know any of you go to the Matt's truck show nobody in our particular profession is getting recognized for the hard work that they do , and I know personally everybody in this business and marketing and sales just works really hard .
So giving that little bit of recognition to your company's efforts or to the person on your team is just like invaluable career support for them . So highly encourage members to submit their recognition , if nothing else , just to help people feel good about their life and career .
Absolutely . And you do get free submissions as a member . So there's really no cost to participate other than just putting in the work to get it done . So thank you for that . And then I have one last question for you . It's something I ask everybody that comes on the show .
If you could go back in time and advise a younger Chris , anything personally or professionally , when would you go back to and what would you say ?
I would go back to , like probably right out of college , so let's say 22 years old , something like that . So let's say 22 years old , something like that , and I would just say to be open to all sorts of different inputs into your career . So I feel like I felt like I had to compete against others and try to make it on my own and prove myself .
And if I had known then that there's a community of people like this in any industry . But so let's take this one , for right now it's to lean into that . Lean into the circle of people that are also doing what you do for a living . Lean into the people that are one step ahead of you , that are leading the charge , that you can ask questions to Community .
Just being more open to to community , just being more open to talking to individuals about what they do and how they do it . That's I would . If I knew now . If I knew then what I know now , I'd be even more dangerous .
So I think that's really great advice getting out there , networking , building a community really important , I do think it makes you feel less isolated , too , and being able to have that support when you need it . It can be hard , and so sometimes you just need people to help you through , so that is great advice .
Thank you , chris , for joining us on the show today and everyone who listened to us . If you want to catch us next week , we'll be talking to Whitney Cowell about all things going on at Virago Marketing and what she's doing , and then she also helps us with our community give back at Elevate , so we'll be talking about that .
So I will catch you all next time and thank you so much for Chris for coming on the show today .
Keep up the great work , jen , appreciate you .