This beautiful frustration 13 Apr 7:24 PM (4 days ago)
Of being in flow, and the time flies by.
Yet at the end of the day wishing I had got so much more done.
84 to 85 = shoulder pain 13 Apr 7:19 PM (4 days ago)
I’d been wondering why I was getting pain in my right shoulder recently.
Nothing sharp, just a dull ache by the end of the day.
I realised (by accident) that it was the height of my standing desk.
I’d bumped the height switch a few days prior and the height had gone from 84 up to 85. And in the following days the shoulder pain started.
I took it back down to 84 (ie 1cm lower), and the pain stopped after a day or so.
It’s perhaps surprising that such a simple thing as the height of your desk can make such an impact. But in hindsight it makes total sense. It affects the way your hands rest on the table, and how they interact when typing. And it moves the impact up your arm until it has no where else to go but to hit your shoulder and lower neck.
Lesson learned.
Game Changer 13 Apr 3:32 PM (5 days ago)
Game changer
Definition:
Any new feature—no matter how basic or specific to a particular area—which is talked about breathlessly on social media as if it’s going to unlock some amazing new level of productivity or performance.
Usually accompanied by at least one fire emoji.
Ideally, if it is in beta, that makes it more of a game changer.
Bonus: if it’s a private beta, then it’s even more of a game changer (because as we all know, controlled access to a feature is inversely proportional to game changing-ness).
The Game Changer Criteria Checklist:
- Is it new?
- Is it in beta?
- Is it in private beta?
- Is it very specific to a particular area that not many people will relate to?
- Is it hard to understand at first?
- Is it something you haven’t actually used yourself but have only seen the release notes for?
Add a point for each.
For each point, you are allowed to include an additional fire emoji in your over excited social post about it.
If you score more than 3 points you are also allowed to refer to it as an ‘insane update’.
Why I cancelled Duolingo 4 Apr 7:49 PM (13 days ago)
I’ve been using Duolingo for a while.
I pay for the Premium (Super) version.
But I cancelled this week.
Not because I don’t use it.
Not because I’m replacing it with another tool or ChatGPT.
I cancelled it because I’m sick of so much upsell.
The bottom set of icons used to give me access to different features. Now two of the six are just for upsells.
I’m fine with upsells if I’m a free or trial user. But when I’m paying $129 a year, I expect a little more respect.
See ya Duo.
Reporting Slop 4 Apr 5:27 PM (13 days ago)
Reporting slop is a subcategory of Process Slop.
Reporting Slop is all the reports that get created simply because AI suggested them as a good idea for your business, your department, your clients…
First, let’s take a step back though.
I think we’ve all had that experience in our careers where we’re asked to create a report (or to continue preparing a report) for the business that seems like busywork. No one seems to know why the report is needed or what value it provides, other than “we’ve always prepared it each week/month/quarter, we need to keep preparing it…”
Instead of killing the report, we look for ways to automate it. When it’s automated we don’t mind that it continues on because it’s just noise in the background – it’s not wasting our time anymore. Sometimes this is miscategorised as efficiency (lol), but it’s really just noise.
We can all live with that I guess.
But along comes AI, and now the problem scales.
Previously, the people asking for reports (eg managers, clients, other departments) had actually thought about they needed.
Now people don’t even think. They just ask ChatGPT what reports they should create – and blindly take the ‘advice’ as if it were good.
We’re starting to see these requests come in: “Can you create these six reports in HubSpot please” and they list off a bunch of reports. The list is a mix of:
- already existing out of the box reports (ie easy to provide), combined with
- confusing report requests that make no sense (ie waste of time).
When we drill deeper and ask them why they need the report, they’ll unashamedly (and often proudly) state “I asked ChatGPT and this is what ChatGPT said were the reports I needed to create for running my business/department.”
We’ve outsourced our thinking and don’t even bother to sanity check the ‘insights’ we get back.
I’m not quite sure how to respond to this…
It’s great if you sell reporting tools, especially based on a consumption model, but it’s not great if you’ve got to waste time building (and maintaining) these reports for your business (or team or client) when deep down you know they’re providing zero value.
This is reporting slop and you should probably prepare for a deluge of it.
Process Slop 21 Mar 11:00 PM (27 days ago)
I think we all understand content slop by now – the low value content pumped out by AI (usually at scale).
Annoying, yes – but mostly harmless. One of the lacklustre side effects of AI advances.
However, there’s another type of AI related slop coming – what I’ll refer to as ‘process slop’.
It’s the side effect of people taking the ‘advice’ of AI when it comes to setting up their company processes and systems.
Business Trends
Perhaps you’re seeing more of this lately: a push within companies to self-solve internally, encouraging staff to self educate (often in their own time), and – not coincidentally – avoiding external agency costs as much as possible.
I’m all for self development, and I agree we should be continually striving to learn and grow our skills. And a big part of that currently is using AI tools. All good so far.
Domain Knowledge Problems
The problem comes however, when users don’t have a good grounding in the tools and platforms they use. They can’t tell whether the guidance the AI tool gives us is actually efficient or not. They don’t know what they don’t know…
A simple example to illustrate.
One of the first things I like to do when playing with a new AI tool is ask it this question:
“What are some common HubSpot workflow approaches for managing life cycle changes?”Based on the responses I can quickly tell me how reliable it is in understanding HubSpot and business processes.
Recently I played with Le Chat (it was flavour of the month a month or so ago).
You can read the full details of the guidance it provided in my post here, but the summary was: it provided a bunch of suggestions that sounded useful (perhaps even insightful), but were mostly bad advice.
Admittedly some were good (the first two for example in that post), but the others were busywork at best, and maintenance/technical debt at worst.
The suggestions included creating processes and workflows for things that were already controlled by simple settings, through to vague concepts that would send new users down rabbit holes of confusion (eg ‘build a partner nurture workflow based on joint marketing and co-selling activities…)
The Tip of the Iceberg
Concerningly, we’re starting to see the effects of this already appearing in prospect’s portals – in short: they’re becoming a mess.
Here’s the types of things I’m seeing:
- Unnecessary workflows (replicating existing simple settings)
- Complicated workflows (lots of complex triggers and multiple branching)
- Duplicated properties (created for storing interim data for criteria that wasn’t needed in the first place)
- Complicated and Unnecessary lists (attempting to segment these unnecessary properties)
- Attribution impacting changes (eg overwriting conversion properties)
- Complicated Sales pipelines (eg unnecessary additional deal stages, with confusing naming)
- And don’t get me started on Reporting Slop.
I can understand why users in companies go down this path – they want to save costs and time: why wait to work with an expensive HubSpot consultant tomorrow if they can get 80% of the way there using ChatGPT today? Or so the logic goes.
False Economies
But I fear that the cost savings may come back to bite, when they (or their replacement) realise in a year’s time that their HubSpot portal is out of control and they need to pay the ‘expensive consultants’ to come in and clean it up.
(Aside: I think there’s probably a lucrative ‘Fix up the mess AI made in your portal’ consulting opportunity here… A friend quipped that it’s the AI version of the ‘We fix $5 haircuts‘ parable.)
Impact Isn’t Equal
Note though: The impact of the mess is related to the area of the business.
For example, using AI tools to spin up landing page variations and ad creative variations is fine. Test and measure.
And if you use AI tools to build your new website (assuming it’s just a marketing focussed website), that’s probably fine too – it doesn’t matter about all the bloat and technical debt because when you refresh the site in a few years time you can just start over.
But when it’s internal business processes (eg sales pipelines, marketing nurtures, management reporting, customer support response procedures), and you’re building the platform that serves as a foundation, it’s really important to get it right. You need to avoid unnecessary complexity across processes and data architecture.
HubSpot of course has coverage across all these areas – websites through to CRM data structure through to management reports. So you need to be careful which parts you cut corners on.
Accelerate (Don’t Substitute)
To reiterate though – I’m not anti-AI. I’m definitely all for it. We use it all through our own business.
But we use it as an accelerator, not a substitute, for strong domain knowledge.
Next Steps
How then to address this?
There’s no easy answer, so I’ll just mention the high level approach, simple as it is:
The first step is to acknowledge that there’s a looming problem, and be careful about the processes you implement based solely on AI guidance. I’m going to assume that’s reasonably self-evident.
The next step, and most important, is to be clear about which areas of your business are crucial to get right:
- What are the foundations that need to be solid? Don’t skimp on those areas. Work with experts.
- But move to a Done With You model where possible (as opposed to Done For You).
- Aim to train your teams using experts – to equip them to implement (ie accelerate) with AI tools.
Then, organise quick, regular reviews with experts to validate the implementation (and course correct as required).
Notes:
- [1] Companies use so many tools these days, it’s rare that many staff are going to be experts on using them. And if they are, they won’t across all the tools, it will be a small subset.
- [2] There’s an old business maxim that you can tell a dishonest consultant because they add complexity to the situation (good consultants will simplify). This can potentially help when reviewing the guidance from an AI tool. Is it making thing simpler in your mind, or it is adding complexity? If the latter, then you perhaps you need to reconsider the approach.
- [3] Yes, I’m a consultant, and yes I can help you review your HubSpot portal (book time with me here if appropriate).
Don’t Tell Your Story 19 Mar 6:25 PM (29 days ago)
One of the things that’s taught in Marketing is around the power of storytelling and the exhortation that you should share stories.
Often, people mistake ‘storytelling’ for telling their own story.
But of course, nobody cares about the storyteller, they only care about themselves. Prospects and clients want to hear the story about the problem you solve for them.
Hopefully we all know this by now.
But it’s a lesson that hasn’t been learned in most business and personal development books yet.
We’re still forced to endure books with 30 or so pages of real content padded out with endless anecdotes (ie storytelling guff) about the author and their experiences.
I wish there was a setting in Kindle where you could turn off or remove anecdotes from the author or anecdotes about people – just get rid of all that fluff and filler:
Stop storytelling. Just give me the facts, give me the information, keep the signal-to-noise ratio high.
Is it just me?
HubShots episode 311 19 Mar 6:15 PM (29 days ago)
Ian and I recorded HubShots Episode 311 a few weeks back.
You can watch it here on YouTube. And full show notes are available here.
Here’s what we covered:
- 00:00 Introduction
- 00:20 Deep Thought of the Week?
- 01:10 Should you Build your Website on HubSpot?
- 05:48 Subscribe to our HubShots Daily Tip
- 06:22 Canva integration with HubSpot
- 08:49 HubSpot SNIPPETS Helper
- 09:26 View Activity Summaries on Records
- 12:57 HubSpot Dark Mode preview in emails
- 13:31 Using the Form Reports
- 17:38 Google Calendar Extension
- 22:40 Workflow Action Types filter
- 24:01 Domain Security Settings
- 27:12 Using Quick Filters in Help Desk Views
- 34:01 AccountScout
- 38:59 Property list labels export
- 42:38 Listener Feedback
- 43:00 HubSpot’s Breeze Enrichment Strategy
- 55:35 Quote of the Week
- 57:12 Building a HubSpot Campaign from Start to Finish
- 59:20 HubShots Daily Tip
- 59:33 HubShots Framework
- 1:00:15 Outro
Sucking your AirPods clean 19 Mar 6:08 PM (29 days ago)
My right AirPod had been playing up for the last few months. It was considerably quieter than the left one.
I’d done all the obvious things – cleaning away wax build up, resetting and repairing, checking balance levels in Accessibility settings etc. No change.
Then I came across this post that suggested I ‘suck’ the AirPod speaker. At that point I was happy to try anything. And it worked. Incredibly well. To the point that when I first put it back in my ear the right one was so loud now it felt like the left one wasn’t working by comparison. So I sucked the left one clean as well.
It’s like a new pair of AirPods. So clear, so loud, so crisp. Beautiful.
Reminder to self: suck my AirPods clean every few months.
Rewards 19 Mar 1:33 AM (last month)
Many, many years ago I was going to a nightclub with a group of friends.
We got there and one guy in our group was denied entry by the bouncer because of his shoes (he had pointy toed boots – winkel pickers were having a resurgence at the time). So we all had to leave (we weren’t going to leave him on his own outside).
We walked back to his hotel, where he changed his shoes, and then we walked back to the nightclub.
As we lined up to get in again, the bouncer on the door recognised him, called him to jump ahead in the queue, and let him in for free in as a reward for taking the time and effort to change his shoes.
But the rest of us had to wait, and then pay to enter.
I’m sure there’s a lesson in there somewhere for me, but I’ve never really worked out what it is.
It was a good night though.
Frustration and Learning 18 Mar 7:06 PM (last month)
Another quote, I saw somewhere on social, but have no idea how to credit the original person…
Frustration isn’t a sign you’re not learning. But ease is.
The Expertise Blind Spot 18 Mar 3:53 PM (last month)
Or: Why We Can’t See the Gap Above Us
(I saw this idea while scrolling on social, but then got distracted and when I came back my feed refreshed and I lost it… but if I find the source again I’ll link to it here.)
There’s a theory that we can’t understand or differentiate the levels of expertise above us. We can only differentiate them below us.
If we have reached a certain level of experience, we can reflect back and understand the levels we went through and see where people below us fit into those levels. But for expertise above us, it’s hard.
We might know someone’s better (or even way better), but we don’t understand those levels. If we’re not musical and we see a classical pianist in concert, we can’t tell how good they are. We know they’re amazing, but we can’t distinguish those higher levels…
What does this mean? It means we need to be careful when there’s someone obviously above us in expertise. We shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking it’s only a small gap – because we don’t understand the level they’re at. The frameworks mentally they’re using are often out of our comprehension.
When we try to debate or argue or discuss with them, we’re arguing from a different mental model. This highlights to them our lack of experience and expertise but gives us a false impression of where we stand.
When discussing a topic with someone who is way ahead of us in terms of expertise, sometimes – if they have time – they’ll be able to come down to our level and discuss at that level.
But often they can’t. They’re time poor. They have better things to do than discuss at our level. And so we fall into the trap of thinking they don’t get it. When in reality, they’re speaking from another level of expertise we can only hope to achieve.
The obvious ‘armchair experts’ on social fall into this trap all the time.
As do you and I, most likely.
Which life will you live? 18 Mar 3:46 PM (last month)
Living all your different lives.
There’s not enough time to live all the different lives you’d love to live.
Different locations, different jobs, different circles of friends.
So because the time is limited, you’ve got to choose carefully.
Which life do you want to live?
It’s time to be ruthless. With all key ingredients. That make up your recipe for life.
Content Slop Example (Le Chat) 14 Feb 6:33 PM (2 months ago)
(This post will make more sense when I refer back to it in a future post covering the topic of Process Slop)
If you’re like me, you probably like playing with AI tools.
Recently, I had a play with Le Chat (Mistral AI).
When testing I like to put in some pretty standard HubSpot related prompts just to see the kind of output I get.
Here’s a typical prompt I test with: “What are some common HubSpot workflow approaches for managing life cycle changes?”
At the end of this post, after the dotted lines I’ve pasted the output from the chat verbatim (I kept prompting to get 60 suggestions, but I’ve only put 20 below).
At first pass, you might read through the list and think, “Oh, actually that’s not too bad,” or maybe “It’s better at least than the usual AI generated content slop I see in my LinkedIn feed.”
But read a bit more closely and you’ll see most of it is just noise.
The first two are actually not too bad, and they kind of give you some cues on how to implement.
But 3 and 4 are potentially unhelpful because most of the time you’ll just use Lifecycle settings to manage those changes (as opposed to using a workflow).
After that they get more vague and unhelpful.
At best they are OK ideas, but at worst they’re busy work and confusing.
Take number 5: “Re-engage inactive customers or leads by sending them targeted content and updating their lifecycle stage based on their renewed engagement.”
OK. Can’t disagree with the idea I guess, but how do you implement it?
How do you define ‘inactive customers’ and what is the ‘renewed engagement’ criteria. And how do you match that with ‘targeted content’?
The idea is simple. The execution is hard.
So this is the first problem – vague ideas that sound useful, but no guidance on when to use or how to implement.
To be fair to Le Chat, you can then ask it to expand on any of the points and then you’ll get some guidance.
But take a typical marketing team member, who is new to HubSpot. They’re looking for help, and turning to AI as an option (as they should be), but getting this kind of guidance.
If they don’t know the platform well, they might proceed with the suggestions 3& 4 and build workflows to set Lifecycle stages.
Not the end of the world I guess, but certainly adds unnecessary maintenance debt.
It gets worse of course though. Here’s the second problem…
Consider a time poor content writer for an agency, tasked with getting this week’s HubSpot related blog post out.
They look at a list like this and think, “This isn’t too bad. I’ll use this as the basis for my post.”
They don’t copy it outright of course, because this is ‘ideation’.
Instead, out of the 60 or so, they pick the top 20, tweak them a bit, and there’s their blog post done.
Next they’re into ‘content repurposing’ and the list becomes a downloadable checklist, social thread, and god help us, a webinar ‘event’.
The slop cycle has come full circle. It’s only a matter of time before the blog post ends up feeding further AI crawlers, and the noise perpetuates.
We’ve all seen this ‘content’ getting spewed out over the past year(s).
But it’s getting worse, and it doesn’t seem like there’s any end in sight.
Prompt: What are some common HubSpot workflow approaches for managing life cycle changes
Everything below is verbatim from Le Chat:
Managing lifecycle changes in HubSpot typically involves using workflows to automate processes and ensure that contacts are moved through the lifecycle stages appropriately. Here are some common HubSpot workflow approaches for managing lifecycle changes:
- Lead Qualification Workflows:
- Automatically update a contact’s lifecycle stage from “Lead” to “Marketing Qualified Lead” (MQL) based on specific criteria, such as form submissions, page views, or email engagement.
- Sales Handoff Workflows:
- Move contacts from “Marketing Qualified Lead” to “Sales Qualified Lead” (SQL) when they meet certain qualification criteria, such as requesting a demo or meeting specific lead scoring thresholds.
- Opportunity Creation Workflows:
- Update the lifecycle stage to “Opportunity” when a deal is created in HubSpot, indicating that the contact is actively being pursued by the sales team.
- Customer Onboarding Workflows:
- Transition contacts to the “Customer” stage once a deal is marked as “Won.” This can trigger onboarding emails or tasks for the customer success team.
- Re-engagement Workflows:
- Re-engage inactive customers or leads by sending them targeted content and updating their lifecycle stage based on their renewed engagement.
- Evangelist Identification Workflows:
- Identify and update contacts to the “Evangelist” stage based on their advocacy activities, such as referring new customers or promoting your brand on social media.
- Other Lead Status Workflows:
- Update lifecycle stages to “Other” for contacts that don’t fit into the standard stages, such as partners, vendors, or job applicants.
- Data Cleanup Workflows:
- Regularly review and update lifecycle stages to ensure data accuracy, such as moving inactive leads to a “Subscriber” stage or removing invalid contacts.
- Nurturing Workflows:
- Send a series of nurturing emails to leads who have downloaded a specific piece of content, gradually moving them through the lifecycle stages as they engage with more content.
- Event-Based Workflows:
- Update lifecycle stages based on event attendance, such as webinars or in-person events, moving attendees to a more qualified stage like MQL or SQL.
- Feedback Collection Workflows:
- Automatically send feedback requests to customers after a purchase or support interaction, and update their lifecycle stage based on their satisfaction scores or Net Promoter Score (NPS).
- Upsell/Cross-sell Workflows:
- Identify opportunities for upselling or cross-selling to existing customers and update their lifecycle stage to reflect their potential for additional purchases.
- Churn Prevention Workflows:
- Monitor customer activity and trigger re-engagement campaigns for customers who show signs of inactivity, potentially moving them back to an “Opportunity” stage if they re-engage.
- Partner Management Workflows:
- Manage partner relationships by updating their lifecycle stages based on joint marketing activities, co-selling opportunities, or referrals.
- Content Engagement Workflows:
- Track engagement with specific types of content (e.g., blog posts, videos) and update lifecycle stages based on the level of engagement and interest shown.
- Subscription Renewal Workflows:
- Automatically send renewal reminders to customers whose subscriptions are about to expire, and update their lifecycle stage based on whether they renew or churn.
- Lead Reassignment Workflows:
- Automatically reassign leads to different sales reps based on changes in lifecycle stages, ensuring that the right team members are working on the most qualified leads.
- Customer Success Workflows:
- Trigger tasks for the customer success team based on lifecycle stage changes, such as following up with new customers or checking in with long-term clients.
- Welcome Series Workflows:
- Send a series of welcome emails to new subscribers or leads, gradually introducing them to your brand and moving them through initial lifecycle stages.
- Product Usage Workflows:
- Monitor product usage and trigger workflows that update lifecycle stages based on how actively customers are using your product, identifying potential upsell opportunities or churn risks.
- Anniversary/Milestone Workflows:
- Send anniversary or milestone emails to customers (e.g., one year since sign-up) and update their lifecycle stage based on their continued engagement or additional purchases.
- Abandoned Cart Workflows:
- For e-commerce, send reminders to contacts who have abandoned their shopping carts and update their lifecycle stage if they complete the purchase.
- Webinar Follow-up Workflows:
- Send follow-up emails to webinar attendees with additional resources and update their lifecycle stage based on their engagement with the follow-up content.
- Survey-Based Workflows:
- Send surveys to contacts at various lifecycle stages and update their stage based on survey responses, such as moving satisfied customers to an “Evangelist” stage.
- Content Download Workflows:
- Update lifecycle stages when contacts download high-value content, such as whitepapers or e-books, indicating a higher level of interest.
- Event Registration Workflows:
- Automatically update lifecycle stages for contacts who register for events, and send them relevant pre-event information.
- Post-Event Engagement Workflows:
- Follow up with event attendees post-event and update their lifecycle stage based on their engagement with follow-up content or offers.
- Customer Health Score Workflows:
- Calculate a customer health score based on various engagement metrics and update lifecycle stages accordingly, identifying customers who may need additional support.
- Referral Program Workflows:
- Encourage customers to refer friends or colleagues and update their lifecycle stage to “Evangelist” if they successfully refer new business.
- Seasonal Campaign Workflows:
- Run seasonal or holiday-specific campaigns and update lifecycle stages based on engagement with these time-sensitive promotions.
Etc, etc
Daily HubSpot Tip in your Inbox 7 Feb 2:12 PM (2 months ago)
I’ve been sharing a quick, daily HubSpot tip/reminder on my social channels over the past months.
Yes, a new tip each day.
Now I’ve add the option to get it in your inbox – a new HubSpot related tip in your inbox every day.
You can sign up to receive it here (you can easily unsubscribe any time).
(And you can always see today’s tip here.)
What’s if 7 Feb 2:09 PM (2 months ago)
I have a bad habit of saying: What’s if…
eg: What’s if we get pizza tonight?
My wife reminds me that there’s no such abbreviation. Instead I should just say: What if…
But I can’t shake the habit (after all these years).
So, I’ve decided to make up what the abbreviation is. Here’s what it is:
What’s if = What is the situation if
(I’m going to stick to this)
How to respond when someone waves at you that you don’t know 7 Feb 2:05 PM (2 months ago)
Was walking down the street the other day, and a car passed by.
A woman in the back seat was looking at me, and started waving.
I didn’t recognise her but she obviously thought she recognised me.
In that moment I was a little paralysed – Are they actually looking at me?
Do I wave back? What’s if I’m mistaken and they aren’t looking at me – will I look like a goose if I wave back? Should I look around?
Do I ignore? Do I just look confused?
Here’s what I decided afterwards:
- Give them a big smile and a gentle head nod of acknowledgment
- That way, if they are looking at you, they feel acknowledged (and you don’t come off as rude)
- And if they aren’t looking at you (you misread it), you don’t look like a goose
- Plus, if they were looking at you, and they were mistaken (they thought you were someone else), now they’ll wonder if you are actually someone famous and they just got a nod and a smile from a celebrity…
It’s a win all round.
Being disliked 6 Feb 2:18 PM (2 months ago)
I read a quote on social somewhere (possibly Instagram) recently but can’t find the source (possibly it’s a version of the Andre Gide quote).
The quote stayed with me though:
“Better to be disliked for who you are, than liked for who you aren’t.”
Impressively Useless 2 Jan 4:05 PM (3 months ago)
Let’s chat about those impressively useless people you’ve probably come across over the course of your career.
In corporates mainly, and mostly guys by the way.
They’re well meaning, nice people, so they’re not not terrible people by any any stretch.
But they don’t get much done.
They’re really good at presentations, lots of meetings, lots of catch-ups, lots of slide decks, lots of talking, great communicators, quite confident, trying to be helpful, trying to be friends.
But not actually driving much value.
And you know how you can tell if someone’s impressively useless?
When they leave – which they ultimately do two to three years on in their role off to their next corporate ladder climbing position – they don’t leave any holes behind.
There’s no disruption. No loss.
People remember them: ‘oh yeah nice person’ but what did they do?
‘Not quite sure what they were doing but yeah great person…’
There’s a whole strata of these people in corporates, but not for long.
People have been saying lately that AI is going to be replacing jobs, getting rid of workers…
Well this is a type of worker that’s going to be gone, because anything that they were doing – impressive slide decks, communication in meetings, etc – stuff like that is easily replaced with AI.
Impressively useless.
Soon to be gone.
Craving Connection 31 Dec 2024 3:06 PM (3 months ago)
Connection. Relationships.
What does this even mean these days?
Perhaps it’s my years of marketing that have jaded me, but I’m starting to lose my soul seeing all the new automated tools that CRM platforms and AI companies are pumping out.
A few years ago HubSpot was speaking about connection with customers – but what does connection really mean?
Is it about personal relationships – you know, like you used to have with your suppliers – or is it just about scaling pretend relationship activities?
The joke when ChatGPT first came out was: people using it to flesh out emails to send, and then the recipients using ChatGPT to summarise it back into a few bullet points (before using ChatGPT to create a bloated reply back again).
Now the joke has moved to voice agents. Using AI to scale your outbound sales calls, only to have receivers use AI tools to divert them (like Daisy, which harks back to the days of ItsLenny). It’s AI tools talking to each other, all the while chewing up energy in data centres.
So much activity, so much automation, so little connection.
Where are the real relationships?
Fake relationships aren’t new of course – just think back to a few years ago when ‘handwritten cards at scale’ was a thing. Companies automating sending out ‘personal, handwritten messages’ to your contacts. You can’t make this shit up.
Amidst all this, we want real connection more than ever before.
Locally I’ve seen the craving for real connection in the most interesting of places.
There’s a pottery crafts place on my walk home. In the window recently I saw them promoting Thursday Tinder Nights. The idea is that singles can meet, and do some pottery together. ‘Good luck with that…’ I thought. And yet as I walk past, I see it is packed.
The local pub has run a few Tinder Trivia night events lately. It’s always bustling as I walk past.
In the most personal of relationships, people are tired of online, automated, non-real, activities.
They crave the real connection.
Why would our business relationships be any different?
Sure, we all love the efficiency of self service websites for a ton of things (eg I don’t want to talk to anyone when I’m ordering my socks), but for many other parts of our lives – large and small – we value the advice and connection with a real person.
We don’t want the automated IVR phone system, we don’t want the dumb chatbot that apologies for not understanding us half the time, and we don’t want the AI driven cold call for fuck’s sake.
We want exceptional customer experiences. (Maybe we need to call it ‘artisanal customer service’…)
Customer Experience matters
Think Amazon, WP Engine, HubSpot – all beautiful support experiences.
Why wouldn’t we also want that beautiful experience on the sales side too?
The opposite of banks, telcos and insurance companies – who daily contribute to the anxiety and stress of society with their cost reduction focussed ‘support’.
Big corporates, reporting to shareholders, will continue to slash costs (ie people) and replace with AI and automation.
In some areas it’s an improvement (Klarna is the poster child). While in others, not such much.
So what does this mean for us smaller businesses?
Opportunities
There’s a window of opportunity here for smaller businesses who carefully embrace AI where appropriate, and avoid it where not.
The simple rule can be: if automation and AI enhance the customer experience, then embrace it.
Otherwise avoid.
Consider the simplest of examples:
- Preparing for a call – embrace AI (summarise, ideate, review, brainstorm, pre-fill, etc).
- But making the call – avoid AI. Keep it personal. Keep it real.
Seems obvious, yet not the norm.
If it were the norm, you wouldn’t be getting the annoying cold calls, the spam emails, the ChatGPT replies, or the Apple Intelligence ads that help you lie or be that lazy clown in the office that should have been fired years ago.
If you can spot an AI bloated email, you can bet your prospects and customers can as well.
Which brings us to the opportunities ahead. Especially for small business.
Whilst big business is off ‘streamlining’ costs, you can be creating real connections.
This Year
We’re going to double down on the customer experience.
We’re going to continue to embrace AI for the areas of business where generative models make sense.
But focus on avoiding the AI driven ‘connection’ stuff.
Real connection matters.
HubSpot Hub Tiers and Feature Allocation 8 Dec 2024 12:37 PM (4 months ago)
I’ve been thinking through the reasons to recommend upgrading from HubSpot Pro to Enterprise (when chatting with clients) and the broader implications of HubSpot’s pricing strategy.
It’s such a complex area – I’d love to be a fly on the wall when the HubSpot product teams decide which features belong in Pro versus Enterprise and how they adjust these over time.
Feature Allocation
Worth noting that some features initially exclusive to Enterprise are sometimes made available in Pro. For example, Playbooks was once an Enterprise-only feature.
Attribution: Stronger attribution features tend to be in the Enterprise tier.
Upgrade Incentives: Certain features seem designed to encourage upgrades. For instance, making sequences available from workflows is an Enterprise feature, which many Sales Pro users would love – and are tempted by (to avoid the manual workarounds they currently use).
Contradictions
Single Sign-On (SSO): It’s frustrating that SSO is an Enterprise feature across many tools (not just HubSpot). I believe SSO should be a security feature available to all users, even those on free plans.
I’d love to see HubSpot lead the way by making SSO free – but I doubt it will ever happen since SSO drives a fair chunk of Enterprise sales.
(Aside: this is something I’ve been saying for years)
Pricing Considerations
Value at Lower Tiers: The free and starter levels offer significant value at a low price point, which is commendable.
Pro Tier: While some find the Pro pricing steep, it provides substantial functionality and can save time and effort compared to integrating multiple platforms (the amount of time I see companies burning through trying to connect a bunch of different platforms is staggering…).
Enterprise Tier: The jump to Enterprise is significant, especially in marketing, often justified by enhanced attribution and reporting features. The pricing also reflects market competition, as higher pricing can sometimes lend credibility to the product.
Market Perception
Pricing Strategy: Pricing is a delicate, complex balance. It must keep customers happy while ensuring company growth. Interestingly, some companies dismiss HubSpot due to its lower price, assuming it’s less capable than competitors. Thus, pricing must also position the product as a serious contender in the enterprise market.
Overall, it’s a fascinating area. I’m not being critical – except for the SSO issue – I’m curious about how these decisions are made. Balancing customer satisfaction with business growth is no easy task.
Panadol versus Vitamins 7 Dec 2024 1:12 PM (4 months ago)
You’ve probably heard the panadol versus vitamins cliché a million times – and been ‘encouraged’ to decide on which one you’re going to offer.
But it’s not about choosing one of the other, it’s actually about timeframe.
What does your ideal client need now (versus later)?
Most new clients need a key short term problem solved before they can think more longer term (with you).
For example, focus on quick on-demand support and sharp training initially, before moving to more transformative engagements.
Unless you’re a well known brand, clients usually (but not always) need a quick win in order to trust you fully.
(Further: the above also highlights why being a well known brand is so important)
Slack Notifications in HubSpot 6 Dec 2024 8:11 PM (4 months ago)
A reminder about getting Slack reminders in HubSpot.
I quite like how granular you can make the out-of-the-box ‘Other App’ notifications (eg Slack) in HubSpot.
eg to get Task Reminders:
And then you’ll get notifications in you HubSpot channel in Slack:
You can also get further control by using Workflows. Lots of flexibility here (simple example via a Company workflow):
The boring but impactful things our clients are doing 9 Sep 2024 4:50 PM (7 months ago)
Data 3.0
I’m in my mid 50s now, which means I’m in that stage of life where I’m highly focussed on health. I want to live not only a long life, but also a healthy life.
One of the books I’ve been re-reading is the excellent Outlive by Peter Attia.
If you’ve read it you’ll recall he discusses the topic of Medicine 3.0.
As a quick oversimplification:
- Medicine 1.0 was the initial medical approach a century ago, starting to identify issues (eg diseases and ailments).
- Medicine 2.0 is about treating the conditions (eg treating cancer).
- Medicine 3.0 is about preventing issues (eg preventing cancer).
It seems obvious that we should be preventing health issues, yet spend a moment thinking through your typical medical experience (eg visiting the doctor or a hospital) and it will mostly be about treating an issue. That’s Medicine 2.0.
The focus for longer and better health is all around Medicine 3.0 – preventing health issues before they even start.
Let’s turn our attention to business now.
I’ve been reflecting on what a number of our clients are focussing on lately. In many cases it is about preventing future issues.
Often it’s around how they work with data (ie their company lifeblood if you will).
There’s parallels with Medicine 3.0, which I’ll refer to as Data 3.0
We could say that:
- Data 1.0 is the initial ingesting of data – just get it into a system (eg spreadsheet, CRM, database, Inbox) somehow.
- Data 2.0 is the cleaning up of data – treating the issues of data duplication, corruption, missing items etc.
- Data 3.0 is the proactive processes with data that ensure it is going to be useful in the future.
What’s new about this?
Data confidence (or data quality, or data integrity, or however you want to refer to it) isn’t a new topic of course. Everyone wants reliable data in their CRM.
Yet, many of the data quality projects we’ve been working on over the past years have been solely about ‘fixing’ data.
However, what we’re seeing lately, especially in the bigger, more strategic, companies, is a focus on putting proactive, preventative processes in place to ensure data is reliable.
Some examples:
- A HubSpot to SAP project – at first this seemed like an integration project. But the integration piece isn’t the time consuming part. Instead this company is spending (significant) time analysing business processes and streamlining sales processes to ensure contact and deal data is correct and complete, long before it ever gets sent anywhere outside of HubSpot.
- Multiple NetSuite projects – again, these present initially as integration projects, but the details are all focussed on data protection – ensuring any data entered or updated is carefully guided. This is from both sides (both in HubSpot for the sales and marketing, and in NetSuite for the financial data)
- We also have clients who are a hybrid – they are fixing data issues, but spending the time to ensure the cause is understood (and corrected). Examples include contact and deal data coming from WooCommerce and Zapier integrations – we have two clients currently with this issue. Sometimes it feels like ‘whac-a-mole’ fixing one issue and then uncovering another, but the end outcome is a system that provides reliable data downstream (for more targeted marketing, and better forecasting)
These are the boring, but strategically impactful, projects that will pay off for these companies in the coming years.
They understand the value of reliable data, and have the budgets to put the ‘boring’ processes in place now.
When I reflect on these companies I can see they are going to be long term players – they are setting the data foundations for long term success.
But what are the specific benefits?
Whilst intuitively we know reliable data is a good thing (right?), it’s worth considering what the specific value of these projects will be – after all how do these ‘expensive’ projects get approved by the CFO?
One example: For the SAP project, their process excellence team has identified one of the key benefits is that they can shorten payment cycles. For a company with millions in monthly billings, even just bringing payments forward by a day has significant impact. Imagine shortening by a week… These kinds of changes can be transformative. And it all starts with data.
Another example: For NetSuite projects, one key benefit of associating sales and marketing data (HubSpot) with financial data (NetSuite) is the ability to accurately segment companies for better marketing. Deal data is the start, but confirmed financial data is the full 360 view.
The ‘privilege’ of reliable data?
A final observation though.
Thinking back to health and Medicine 3.0 I’m aware that prevention is actually a privilege. In a cost of living crisis, with many people working two jobs to make ends meet, it can be hard to be proactive – just getting through the week is challenging enough – let alone proactively working on health.
So too with many businesses. The day-to-day of putting out fires doesn’t leave much time for proactive data improvement.
Sometimes it feels like cleaning up data is something only the bigger companies with deep pockets can do…
Getting proactive about your data
There’s definitely some truth to this, but there are simple ways we can all start down this path:
- Firstly, just by considering the topic (if you haven’t before today), you’re making a start…
- Second, make it a conscious habit that any time you consider changing a sales pipeline process, or add another property to a contact screen, you think through the future implications: do we really need this new property?
- Third, consider permissions that users get by default – many of our proactive clients have ‘locked down’ their systems so that well meaning users can’t go adding in new properties, changing layouts, importing data and creating confusing workflows.
- Fourth, regularly review old properties and archive (or delete) them if they are no longer needed
- Fifth, remind yourself that making a process simpler is the hallmark of expertise (and adding complexity is often the hallmark of overpriced consultants). What can you simplify today?
- Sixth, ensure you are tracking activities automatically (emails, meetings, calls, tasks) eg in Stage 1 of the HubShots Framework, the focus is on getting the basics of good data tracking in place. Too often we see custom properties and processes being added that could be handled by out-of-the-box features already in HubSpot.
- Finally, a reminder that getting the basics in place (eg sometimes a training refresher is all that’s needed) is usually much more impactful than chasing all the shiny new features (eg getting distracted with the latest lead scoring tools when the basic data isn’t even being added)
Sometimes less is more.
Canva and HotJar price update 8 Sep 2024 10:58 PM (7 months ago)
There was a bit of angst on social when Canva announced some price increases last week (up by 300% in some cases).
Not to be outdone, I received the following ‘hold my beer’ notification from HotJar a few days later:
Admittedly this is less about a price increase right now, and more a removal of a legacy discount against price increases a while back – but to the end user (ie me) that doesn’t soothe the pain.
I’ve been using HotJar for around a decade now, but that’ll all come to an end in a week or two (I’m cancelling entirely).
In both Canva and HotJar messaging they point to the new features, and especially AI tools, that are now in the platforms – positioning them as valid reasons for the price increases (ie more value).
What they fail to understand though is that many users don’t use any of those new features (ie zero value).
I’d be happy if there was an option to restrict my access to just the tools I’ve been using for years, if it meant I could keep the price. But I realise that’s not how SaaS software works.
Personalisation versus Personalisation Tokens 8 Sep 2024 10:13 PM (7 months ago)
In marketing we often talk about personalising our marketing activities – which is a good thing.
We all want to be like Amazon – those emails all seem like they have been personally curated for my interests and tastes.
That’s a good thing.
But often the extent of personalisation in corporate email stops at: inserting the person’s first name in the email subject line
Which as you may know is usually what all spam emails look like.
As soon as I see my name in an email subject line I ignore it – you’re probably the same.
So why do so many marketers think doing the same for their corporate email nurtures is a good thing?
It’s because they don’t understand that personalisation is actually about relevance.
We all like to hear people use our name, I get that, but what we really like is when the conversation is relevant.
Next time you get a cold call from some poor telemarketer trying to sell you on switching energy providers, listen to how much they overuse your first name. It’s an instant red flag.
That said, my final comment is: always test and measure. YMMV
Value 6 Aug 2024 2:19 PM (8 months ago)
Whenever I start doubting[1] my value[2] to customers, I remind myself that there’s plenty of thriving businesses charging a lot of money for things that would have been laughed at years ago.
Here’s a company[3] that sells ‘luxury orthopaedic dog beds’ – I’m not making this up.
If you have a dog you probably want to buy them one, if you don’t have a dog you perhaps think this is crazy.
- [1] usually weekly
- [2] ie those decades of experience
- [3] Just to be clear – this is not a sponsored post or paid link, I have nothing to do with this company, but I have set it to be a nofollow just in case anyone wonders
Smile broadly and answer the call 1 Aug 2024 9:04 PM (8 months ago)
If you’re out in public and your mobile rings and you recognise the number: smile broadly and answer the call (even if you don’t really have time or want to talk to them).
Although it’s rare, perhaps just a few times every year or so, the person calling has spotted you from across the street, and your reaction will live on in their minds for years to come.
Modern Websites are built on a CRM 21 Jul 2024 3:37 PM (9 months ago)
Sales and Marketing websites that is
If you’d asked people 10 years ago what was the mark of a modern website, most probably would have ended up talking about how websites needed to work on mobile devices. At that time the conversation was around whether to have responsive websites, versus mobile-specific websites (ie remember all those m.companydomain.com sites).
These days we all take that for granted – of course a website needs to work on mobile.
So, what is the new indicator of a modern website?
I’m going to suggest that modern websites need to be built on a CRM. Actually, to clarify, modern ‘sales and marketing’ websites need to be built on a CRM. (Other sites eg a developer site or doco site or KB site, don’t necessarily need this).
So what does this mean?
A modern sales and marketing website needs to be able to track the journey of a visitor right through from initial visit to potentially being a long-time customer.
This is one of the reasons we’re so bullish on HubSpot’s CMS (ahem ‘content hub’) functionality. Everything to do with tracking the customer journey is built in – forms, analytics, page views, key marketing events, reports, campaign management, deals, revenue, and attribution reporting.
There are very few other platforms you can coordinate all this so easily.
We used WordPress for years (decades?) and combined it with Google Analytics (and other tools) and parts of HubSpot (eg tracking script and forms) and could only really get part of the way. Having now moved all our sites over to HubSpot entirely, we have much more clarity (and it’s easier).
That’s not to say the picture is complete – there’s still a bunch of holes (eg if a visitor blocks cookies then you miss a lot of key touches).
Worth thinking about for your company websites – I’ve been chatting with a number of companies lately who didn’t realise HubSpot was an option for their entire website (ie not just landing pages and blog posts). They’ve been excited to consider the possibilities.
Interested in a deep dive into HubSpot’s complete website feature set – check out our monster guide to building a website on HubSpot, using Content Hub (download here – no signup required)
Ian and I chat through this further in the shot 6 of HubShots 308:
Artisanal content 15 Jul 2024 8:43 PM (9 months ago)
The Content Opportunity (Artisanal Content lol)
I’ve mentioned this previously, but it seems more than ever the rise of AI content slop is creating an opportunity for people who create high value content.
With every new, ‘easier’, scalable way to do anything there’s sometimes an equal and opposite opportunity to focus on the old, ‘harder’, manual way to do something.
It’s why we have ‘artisanal’ everything these days. Artisanal clothes, artisanal coffee, artisanal soap, etc.
I wonder if there’s a growing opportunity for ‘artisanal’ content. I’m only half joking…
Or put another way: quality content
The sheer quantity of AI generated slop being pumped out is creating a massive ‘noise’ layer, that perhaps makes it easier to stand out with quality ‘signal’.
This can be considered across all parts of your content generation – focus on quality (not quantity) – from writing, to images, to video production.
It also perhaps creates opportunities in how we engage – expect the one-to-one messaging channels to gain more traction. But importantly, it will be in the prospect initiated channels (eg WhatsApp), not the outbound channels (eg LinkedIn DMs).
For more on this, a reminder that Noah Smith’s essay is a good conversation starter. Interesting times ahead.