Jessica Scanlon, CEO of Hot Dog Marketing, joins the podcast to share her team's journey in transitioning from standard retainers to an agile retainer strategy. As Jessica explains, by leveraging the agile methodology, the planning cycles and production sprints of her team’s retainers now allow for more flexibility, responsiveness, and better client results. We start with a breakdown of agile retainers (what they are and why they matter) and the impetus was in making this transition. We then unp...
Jul 27, 2022•41 min•Season 1Ep. 74
In today’s episode, Ranya Barakat, CEO of CRM Toolbox, joins the show to talk about the major transitions, pivots, and inflection points her team has navigated over the last few years—as CRM Toolbox, a firm offering migration, integration, and complex onboarding services, used to be IDS, a LATAM full-service agency. Ranya starts with the why: what sparked the change in name and branding, the pivot in services, and re-classification to a North American partner. We then dig into her team’s service...
Jul 20, 2022•43 min•Season 2Ep. 73
Eric Baum, Founder and CEO of Bluleadz, joins the podcast to share the makeup of his team’s sales org, including the roles, responsibilities, comp plans, and performance benchmarks for his SDRs and AEs. We talk about each team's focus areas, the handoff criteria and qualification thresholds for prospects, the places in which he builds for scale, and how he thinks about the sales team’s role in fielding inbound leads vs. more outbound prospecting. We even get into the role of his customer success...
Jul 13, 2022•42 min•Season 1Ep. 72
Jason Azocar, Founder and CEO of HubSearch, joins the show to share his interpretation of the HubSpot talent shortage. We look at the opportunity in front of partners through three lenses: putting your best foot forward before hiring, best practices for facilitating a candidate through the hiring process, and the importance of sustainable onboarding plans and talent retention strategies. Pre-hiring, we talk about where and how to source, the going market rates for HubSpot talent, and how to posi...
Jun 29, 2022•44 min•Season 1Ep. 71
This week, Matt Bolian and Brendan Tolleson, cofounders of RevPartners, rejoin the show. When we last checked in with the RevPartners team, they were the fastest HubSpot solutions partner ever to reach the Diamond tier. Now, about a year later, they return to the podcast as the fastest ever to reach the Elite tier. They offer actionable insights, frameworks, and the specific steps they took to reach the Elite tier of HubSpot’s partner program in under 16 months. First, we discuss scaling operati...
Jun 22, 2022•48 min•Season 1Ep. 70
John Heritage, President of Evenbound, joins to highlight, and then digs deeper into, the learning and development focus of his agency's culture. We start with its origin built on both his personal and professional experiences before moving to how he positions these learning initiatives around both HubSpot, and its growing, changing, expanding platform, as well as his team’s productivity—in other words, how does his team balance KPIs like utilization rate and billable hours with dedicating time ...
Jun 15, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 69
Steve Whittington, President of Roadmap, joins the show to talk about the oftentimes *unspoken* aspect of systems implementation—the ripple effect and impact a new CRM can have on an organization's culture. Steve talks about how he views and defines the culture change that comes with a new CRM platform, the differences at the individual-level and company-level, and whether it's a change in mindset, behaviors, accountability, responsibility—or all of the above. He then shares how his team impleme...
Jun 08, 2022•32 min•Season 1Ep. 68
Today, we have Michelle O'Keeffe, CEO of Engaging.io, on to discuss how she and her team dispel the notion that HubSpot's CRM platform isn't customizable, extensible, or powerful enough for enterprise-level businesses. She first calls out that while that notion is swiftly waning, she still highlights the fundamental differences between platforms when comparing HubSpot to other CRM platform options in the market—and how HubSpot's single codebase and crafted platform vs. cobbled-together competito...
Jun 01, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 67
Amber Kemmis, Chief Operating Officer at Revenue River, joins us to talk about senior leadership—specifically, why they're important and others should be thinking about and planning their own tier of senior leaders. Amber starts by sharing where senior leaders fall in her org chart and their primary roles and functions. She then shares her interpretation of the talent market and why its so hard to discover senior-level talent in 2022. We wrap with her tips, tactics, and recommendations for findi...
May 25, 2022•37 min•Season 1Ep. 65
Steve Galligan and Joseph Mohay, CEO and CRO of Integrated Digital Strategies (IDS), join the show to discuss IDS's target niche—franchises. We star with IDS's history and their pursuit of franchises, and whether the business was built with this niche in mind or if it was a discovery over time. We then pivot to the engagements themselves, including what these services offerings entail, the typical buyer's journey for franchise prospects and clients, and the biggest or most unique considerations ...
May 18, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 65
This episode, we have Doug Wendt, founder and president of Wendt Partners on the show. Doug discusses the growth and globalization of his distributed team and the methods he used for growth—including full-time employees, contractors, freelancers, and services providers. We talk about how partners should think about marketplaces for securing freelance and contract help and his thoughts and the pros + cons of staffing firms. We also discuss the advantages (and disadvantages) of professional employ...
May 11, 2022•39 min•Ep. 64
Conrad Saam, the President and Founder of Mockingbird Marketing, joins the show to talk about his commitment to transparency and clarity on salary—specifically, what that looks like and how it's reported and communicated to employees and candidates. He digs into the history, the process, how he established baselines, and why it's been so valuable for the firm. We wrap by discussing how compensation transparency has changed over time as his team grows both in size and in depth of knowledge—and ho...
Mar 30, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 63
Connor Jeffers, Founder and CEO of Aptitude 8 who joins the show to talk about solutions architecture. We start with his definition of solutions architecture and how it compares to other technical roles like systems administrators, RevOps professionals, developers, and sales engineers. We talk about solutions architect development and how to raise the bar for technical expertise and systems design—and whether these folks are primarily homegrown or sought externally. Lastly, we wrap with A8 Labs ...
Mar 23, 2022•38 min•Season 1Ep. 62
Daryn Smith, Chief Sales and Innovation Office (and co-founder) of Huble, joins the show to talk about his team's customer experience consultancy service offering. Specifically, what it entails, where and how customer journey mapping factors in, and his team's involvement with defining (and/or introducing) process on top of software implementation. We then talk about the sales conversations, unique value propositions—and how marketers offer a valuable, important perspective on CX content and tou...
Mar 16, 2022•35 min•Season 1Ep. 61
Romi Dexter, Director & Co-Founder of Hype & Dexter, joins the show to talk about customer service engagements with clients. Specifically, what customer service services entails and how involved her team is with defining (or introducing) process on top of software configuration. We talk sales and value propositions—and how conversations, points of contacts, and points of entry may change. We then wrap with how her team reports on success and the KPIs, the value adds, and the process impr...
Mar 09, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 60
Andrew Hong, Co-Founder of Tobe Agency, joins the show to share his team’s video podcasting strategy and service offering for clients. We discuss the role video podcasts can play in a larger pillar content strategy, where and how you can build and repurpose podcast content, some tool recommendations for production and distribution, and the unique and emerging use-cases for podcasting that he’s most excited about.
Mar 02, 2022•30 min•Ep. 59
Doug Davidoff, the founder and CEO of Imagine Business Development, returns to the show to discuss how he navigates HubSpot's sales organization and builds relationships with HubSpot sales reps as a means of business development. He shares his recommendations and suggestions for others to do the same: how to build these relationships from the ground up, what folks need to set up organizationally to enable these relationships, and how partners may need to rethink their role in these types of coll...
Feb 23, 2022•34 min•Season 1Ep. 58
Rikki Lear, Managing Director of Digital22, joins us to talk about the key inflection points his team navigated in their 10+ years of growth. We start with the decision of going all-in on HubSpot. How and when did he make that decision and what ripple effect did it have across his existing client base? We then discuss process and project management, automation, and other guardrails to enable faster scaling. Lastly, we talk about the recent acquisition by Avidly—specifically, how those talks bega...
Feb 16, 2022•39 min•Season 1Ep. 57
Dave Meyer, President, and Trygve Olsen, Director of Buzz Development at BizzyWeb come on the show to talk about the discovery stage of their sales process—specifically, how they diagnose problems for prospects, how they build trust with prospects, and how they balance data and facts with the emotional, soft-skill based relationships they build.
Feb 09, 2022•43 min•Ep. 56
Daniel Fonseca, founding partner of Netfluence, joins the show to talk about process consulting. We start by first defining process consulting and outlining the value it brings to clients and to his company. We then discuss if and how process consulting matches up with product implementation—does it come before, after, or simultaneously? We then wrap by diving deep into Netfluence's process for process consultancy—and the particular framework, model, or processes he follows—to help our listeners...
Feb 02, 2022•27 min•Season 1Ep. 55
Nicole Pereira, CEO of Remotish, joins the show to talk about her team's emphasis on employment experience—and as she points out, employment experience is something small agencies and smaller organizations can derive the MOST value from... it’s not something necessarily reserved for large teams. We talk about the systems and processes that make it happen. Things like career crafting and role progression, entrepreneurial projects and cross-training, work-life integration and intentionally asynchr...
Jan 26, 2022•40 min•Season 1Ep. 54
Agency Unfiltered this week comes with a twist—as we sit down with Ekin Pehlivan, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics at California State University Channel Islands and Leslie Cortes, a student at Cal State Channel Islands. Ekin shares the history of Cal State’s student-led agency—how it started, and why. We dig into the agency's go-to-market, the types of businesses they serve, the services they offer, team structure, process development, and...
Jan 19, 2022•31 min•Season 1Ep. 53
We talk to Dave Scilabro, Chief Growth Officer at harvestROI. Dave digs deep into CRM implementation. He walks us through his team's choice to focus more on CRM implementation as a service. We talk through his team’s definition and approach to systems implementation or migrating between systems, data and its role in successful implementation, how he ensures clean data when rolling out a new system, and the role data plays in enabling departmental handoffs.
Oct 13, 2021•34 min•Season 1Ep. 51
In this week’s edition of Agency Unfiltered, we talk to Lara Triozzi, CEO of MarketLauncher. We discuss her focus on prospecting and lead development efforts specifically targeting C-level executives. We talk about the approach other firms need to take for their clients when targeting the C-suite, where and how it intersects with ABM, and how to best identify when C-suite is the right point of contact you need to sell to. We then discuss FANS, or formal account, new success—and the revenue attri...
Oct 06, 2021•32 min•Season 1Ep. 51
Brendan Tolleson and Matt Bolian, co-founders and CEO and CRO of RevPartners grew to the Diamond tier of HubSpot’s Solutions Partner Program faster than any other partner before them. We talk about what RevOps means to their team and the problems they solve by offering RevOps support.
Sep 29, 2021•41 min•Season 1Ep. 50
Jonathan Franchell, CEO and Founder of Ironpaper, talks us through his team’s approach to building up their roster of senior leadership positions. He shares his process for assessing the need for various Director-level candidates, how he balances internal and external candidates, and when he knew it was time to add folks that don’t correlate to billable hours.
Jun 30, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 49
Brian Shilling, VP of Sales and Client Strategy at TSL Marketing, shares his team’s commitment to “renewing their vows” with HubSpot and the partner program. What does this mean for TSL and their team? How does this change the way they source and manage talent? Brian shares the approach, the early results, and his recommendations for new partners.
Jun 16, 2021•30 min•Season 1Ep. 48
Heather Park, Managing Partner at Rent Bridge, joins the show to talk about the PMOS, or Property Management Operating System, the unified property management automation solution built entirely on HubSpot. Heather discusses the experiences that lead to the property management niche, the nuts and bolts of the PMOS, and the balance between templates and custom setup.
Jun 02, 2021•22 min•Season 1Ep. 47
Noah Berk, Co-Founder of OBO, joins the show to talk about how his agency was able to consolidate the focus areas and services they offered their clients. Noah talks about the value in pulling back from “full-service”, how he identified what to focus on, and the implications this had on people, process, growth and the client experience.
May 19, 2021•29 min•Season 1Ep. 46
Alex Moore and Ryan Burkett, senior partners at Stratagon, sit down to talk about people development—more specifically, people development in the newly remote-first world. They share the tools and processes they use for supporting growth, aligning collaborators, and building teams that embrace diverse communication styles and preferences.
May 05, 2021•26 min•Season 1Ep. 45
