Can Hubspot Beat Salesforce?

0:00Speaker 1:I think there is a world where outbound can be incredibly effective, but you have to completely change what it looks like from what the stuff that's hitting my inbox.

0:09Speaker 2:I mean particular with it service providers.

0:11Speaker 3:My god, Cio is like, you can HubSpot beat Salesforce as the king of CRM?

0:24Speaker 1:LEXI, we were talking about this last night. You've got some thoughts take it away?

0:29Speaker 4:Yeah, I think for me, like truly, I think Hubspots already beat Salesforce in some ways. And maybe that's just the way that I've come about them because for myself, you know, I was journalist turned marketer, so I didn't really you know, have an understanding of a CRM and what that meant when I was going through college and becoming who I am as a professional today. But I was able to instantly relate to HubSpot's material by the way that they positioned their content online and it never once felt to me branded, you know, specifically going to HubSpot.

1:01Speaker 4:And I have to get hubspots CRM to know how to do these things on the flip side. You know, I've heard of Salesforce, I've used it. It's a big CRM. But I can't like draw any comparison or relatable fact like of what I've done in my career or how I've learned and upskilled some of my professional qualities from Salesforce. And I think that's the biggest thing there. As we start to head into the future and there's new marketers that are coming, I don't really see Salesforce making that play of we're thought leaders in the space here too, kind of you know, pick our brains, here's what we have to share with you. When I look at their social media or any of their content, it's very much them Salesforce focused, whereas HubSpot is very much you like, here's how you can build your skills, Here's how you can become a great content marketer that you know gives me, it inspires me, And I think that that's kind of missing from Salesforce. But you know, at the same time, Salesforce is a huge company, and I think the question that we can kind of came to last night was like, well, do they have to be relatable to keep their spot

2:05Speaker 4:on the crown? Is that something that they have to invest in? And for me, I think it is because you know, ultimately, if they don't make this play to build an audience around them. Outside of the events and the product itself, they're going to lose steam. You know, somebody can come in and maybe there's a newsrem It's not even HubSpot that we have to worry about that's going to shake things up for them.

2:27Speaker 2:Tyler, what are your thoughts?

2:28Speaker 5:Well, here's a big question that could shape this. What is going to be more important in the future, sales or marketing like in general for businesses? And the reason I asked that is clearly HubSpot came from marketing roots and expanded into CRM. But you asked nine out of ten marketers out there, would you rather use HubSpot or Salesforce one of sales products? Yeah, nine point eight out of ten would choose HubSpot as their marketing automation platform.

3:00Speaker 5:If you ask, you know, CROs, what would you like for your CRM, the majority today would still say Salesforce for a lot of good reasons. Right, those two will continue to collide more and more and fast forward five, ten, thirty years whatever it happens to be. To say, it doesn't make sense to have disparate sales and marketing solutions anymore. It only makes sense to have an integrated platform they're two of the big front runners to be that. If marketing becomes more important to businesses than sales, HubSpot wins.

3:34Speaker 5:If sales continues to be and I'll say continues to be because today it is more important than marketing, Salesforce wins. So let's see what happens. I don't know I was going to say, I wanted I want to say, James, I want to say. I want to say that you know, as the years go by, five, ten years from now, businesses are much more going to be marketing led than sales led. And I think there's a lot of good argument for that based on, you know, the evolution of like how products even like get to market, and how audience is engaged with companies, the fact that AI is just going to take out salespeople entirely.

4:12Speaker 2:Yes, I said it, I'm just kidding, but.

4:16Speaker 5:I think that's a really good like, it's really good framing, right, Like, if marketing becomes the engine of a company, they're going to double down on HubSpot, and Salesforce is in big trouble. And I think if Salesforce doesn't get their act together around being a platform for marketers long term, I think that is a mistake.

4:32Speaker 2:Yeah, Kelly, what are your thoughts here? Yeah, and I agree.

4:35Speaker 6:I think we've all battled like the tech stack bloat, right, and so we're starting to see more and more how these companies are trying to integrate multiple tools, which is a great selling point not just to sales teams and marketers, but also your CFO and you know, the financial team of like selling them on the fact that you get one invoice every month and one contract that you have to negotiate every year, which is very, very enticing for a business, especially since we're all dialing into this efficiency play of how can we do more with less, less people, less resources, less budget. But again, you look at the current B to B marketing play right now, what are all of our goals attached to? Right? I don't know about you, but pipeline and bookings. I think that's pretty common in the B to B space. And so if marketing goals are still attached to revenue goals and sales goals, then you know, it's obvious that sales is always going to be like the biggest lever that we have to pull.

5:35Speaker 6:And as we were discussing last night, is like salesforce is so deeply integrated into the businesses that are their clients. It's almost like, how do you win, how do you capture and steal that audience, or like you said, do you go after a newer audience? And like you and I have both discussed when we were up and coming marketers or you know, all business owners, they captured us when we were fresh and new and we were bought in very young.

6:06Speaker 2:I don't know if Salesforce.

6:07Speaker 6:Has to do that. I mean, they don't necessarily have to go after BDRs as they're coming out of college and being like selling them on the software. They're just automatically like this is now part of your job. Whereas HubSpot, like we had it top of minds and not necessarily every marketer that learned from HubSpot uses HubSpot. But you still have this affinity for the brand because it shaped who you became as a marketer. And I don't think Salesforce necessarily has to do that.

6:34Speaker 1:The thing we talked about last night that I want to elaborate on here is the brand of those two companies.

6:42Speaker 2:It seems like HubSpot.

6:44Speaker 1:Has very much captivated the affinity of gen Z with the people earlier in their career have a tribute HubSpot to being instrumental in how they learned and grew in their business acumen and the way they've executed their podcast network, I've said multiple times was absolute masterclass. Then you've got Salesforce who launched Salesforce Plus. They attribute six hundred and fifty million dollars in pipeline to Salesforce Plus.

7:13Speaker 2:From last year, which I don't know.

7:16Speaker 1:That seems pretty generous to tie that much pipeline to content. That is from what I saw, very very top of funnel, but who knows what's going on behind the scenes there. They are taking a stab. Salesforce is taking a stab at owned media. It just doesn't seem that Salesforce Plus is a drop in the bucket of what they need to be doing to change the brand's perception in the market.

7:44Speaker 2:Now.

7:44Speaker 1:Salesforce, to your point and what we were talking about last night, they're so embedded in. That's just that they're embedded in the companies that they're currently their clients, but their clients are mega, mega, mega corporations.

7:59Speaker 2:That it's when you're as embedded.

8:02Speaker 1:In these massive organizations, it's very hard to rip something out. So I loved your point Tyler about like a lot of them are just using both and is sales going to be more important or is marketing going to be more.

8:16Speaker 2:Important you alluded to, like, okay, pipeline.

8:20Speaker 1:And bookings are the thing that is everybody's an horse star.

8:26Speaker 2:What I'm not sure that I believe that.

8:30Speaker 1:The current sales motions that I'm experiencing, at least on being on the receiving end of a lot of sales motions, I don't believe that that go to market motion of just putting BDRs and pounding you know called emails LinkedIn dms, like it doesn't work today. Nonetheless, three years from now, ten years from now, especially your experience is fascinating to me Tyler. And that you built a media brand for Vidyard called sales feed, So you have been inundated in like the life of a seller. Now you're a technology advice you sell to marketers.

9:07Speaker 2:You've got this.

9:08Speaker 1:You are a marketer yourself, so you understand both positions very well. Elaborate a little bit on like tell me, I guess Steelman, you said, I want to believe that marketing will win out, Like if we look at ten years, marketing will be more more important to businesses than sales. Steal man that argument and tell me why sales could potentially win out because yeah, what I'm seeing from sales, I'm like, this can't win three years from now and none the less ten years from now.

9:34Speaker 5:Yeah, I don't know that that's the case though, because I bet three years ago you would have said the same thing. I don't think this is going to work three years from now, and it does still work. It does still work outbound sales. Companies would not continue to invest in it if it doesn't work. So as much as we all think, and probably all of us here say, I don't answer the phone when somebody cold calls me, Like who would in their right mind? And in reality, companies are generating tons of pipeline from cold calling. Right, It's still work despite the fact that you know, many of us can't believe that it does. And will it keep working, you know, three five years from now, ten years from now, I don't know, but I would not say it's not going to work. And I think there's you know, part of I think what does always work in sales, which is the same thing that will always work in marketing, is that human to human connection and sales is such a critical part of that. Whether it's cold outbound warm inbound relationships we have today that will always be say always, because the bots will start selling

10:37Speaker 5:to the bots, right, we made a fun video about that, but the AI seller and the AI buyer and it just gets into an infinite loop and it could never close a deal because but you know, until we get to that point, the the like real and it's it's not just the like the connection, like the relationship like that's part of it, but the ability for us to have these like meaningful conversations, for people to act as trusted advisors. That word trust comes into play a lot.

11:02Speaker 5:Sales has a massive role to play in that, and I think it always will. And so I think what we're seeing is the evolution of what great B to B sales is. Right, It's moved in many cases from being much more. We've gone through waves of like consultative selling, more transactional selling, and challenger selling, and that ebbs and flows with the needs of the market and sort of the state of things. And so I think we'll continue to see these evolutions of like what does sales look like?

11:26Speaker 2:What is it?

11:27Speaker 5:But I don't see a time at any point in our lives where that person to person connection, that trusted relationship, the ability for a salesperson to truly dig in and help understand, like what's going on with you and your business where it is that I might be able to help let me figure out and be kind of a solutions provider to you. That's going to continue to be important.

11:50Speaker 1:And I believe that. I guess my question is to get to that. The pathway to someone trusting another individual that they no don't know from Adam to become a trusted advisor to them requires great marketing. Yes, it requires great brand. Trust requires authority and thought leadership, and I mean it's why we're so big on owned media and this.

12:15Speaker 5:Like yeah, it often does, but I wouldn't say always, because I'll tell you what. Sometimes I've got like a problem that's top of mind. I'm like, you know what, like frick, we really need to launch a great customer community this quarter or later this year, and like I just we haven't figured it out yet. It's kind of like sitting in the back of my mind and then somebody drops into my inbox just the right time, right, they probably already emailed me thirty times I didn't even see it. But then they drop in at just the right time of like trying to figure out how to build a customer community, and I'm like, oh, actually, okay, cool, I'm going to forward this at this person on my team who I was talking to about that yesterday, right, and they started into a conversation. I have no idea who this company is, but I check out their website.

12:58Speaker 5:I'm like, this actually looks pretty darn great. We get into a conversation. They were first to market to be in my mind, as a solution provider for this. We get into a conversation, there's a pretty good chance I'm going to buy that solution, even if there's others that have been in market talking about it, because I haven't been out there listening. So to me, like it reinforces that all of these tactics are important for businesses. It's not going to be like it's going to be one or the other, right, So there's scenarios where that's the case and that outbound motion hits the right person at the right time. It's still a numbers game, right. It's not the most efficient thing, but it can bear real fruit.

13:33Speaker 5:But at the same time, more and more like how we scale is this, Okay, we need to be top of mind with these people through our marketing efforts, so we're not just rolling the dice every quarter, and we have this evergreen foundation that we're building. So I think these two things are always going to work in concert. I think there are ways that things like outbound still really work, but they are absolutely amplified when you have that strong brand, that strong reputation, and it becomes more a warm outreach even if it's cold, when that person has a positive affiliation with your brand.

14:06Speaker 4:So absolutely, I was gonna say I couldn't agree more with that because, as you were explaining, you know how you got that email at the right time, I'm kind of the opposite, where like, if I get those cold outrages, I'll remember your brand and I'll know not to go to you right based on how you've kind of messaged me. So I think that's where marketing will hopefully have a big impact in sales, and hopefully marketing can be the winner is because you really do even if it is outbound and cold outreach, you still have to think about the long game with it. It's not just that what email how is this going to reflect on my brand?

14:39Speaker 4:Is this going to make someone totally unsubscribe from everything and never hear from me again? Or is it going to make them curious enough to at least go follow me online so that when they are ready to buy, they know to come to me first.

14:50Speaker 1:And that could look like outbound weirdly enough, becoming sitting under the brand umbrella. I've heard somebody make that argument before, and in our EXPERI I mean, we've done outbound. We've been around for nine years, and we've had different spurts where it's like, Okay, let's maybe there's something to this and we'll try it. And one of our recent new clients came to us because we did cold outbound a year ago. They weren't in market, but they started following us we launched the Creator House.

15:20Speaker 2:They liked what we were doing at the Creator House.

15:22Speaker 1:They came back around inbound and now they're a customer paying us money. But that fundamentally changes what the outbound looks like when you're thinking about this as a as a brand play, this is a touch point that we are going to have if we're going to blast out messaging to our entire total addressable market. We need to be really thoughtful about is this US centered? To your point about Salesforce seems to be very US centered, where HubSpot seems.

15:48Speaker 2:To be very you centered.

15:49Speaker 1:And I think there is a world where outbound can be incredibly effective, but you have to completely change what it looks like from what the stuff that's hitting my inbox with it service providers.

16:01Speaker 3:My god, CIO is like you, yeah, well.

16:08Speaker 6:And that that's the thing is like personalization is becoming more and more prevalent, Like you have to understand who you're talking to, and you know, you have these like sales intelligence companies popping up like six cents where they provide you with that intent data and you can dial into specific companies that you want to target or markets that you want to target, and really understand who your target is and what tapping into, like what those pain points are?

16:35Speaker 2:Are they using a different solution?

16:37Speaker 6:Are they struggling with these specific pain points that you can address directly and you're talking to the right person at the right time about the right thing versus like you say, like I get those emails all the time, Like I'm not a cro Why am I getting this email right? Rather than like the shotgun approach is like I got to name in an email for this company, I'm going to send them this blanket message that I send everyone on versus having that personalized conversation that makes them understand you know who I am on the other end and you get me. Yeah. Yeah.

17:10Speaker 1:And that's where I think so much of the opportunity is with media because now if we fundamentally change how we think about outbound and it's no longer this transactional Are you in market? Are you a part of the three percent that's ready to buy my product right now? Okay, let's take that off the table. That's no longer going to be our first touch with somebody that has no idea who we are.

17:29Speaker 2:Our first touch can now become, Hey, we've got this.

17:33Speaker 1:Really interesting premise for our newsletter where we break down, you know, insights from the top cmos in your category and we distill you know, want the biggest insight each week from you whatever these thirty publicly traded companies that we're tracking that you we thought you might also be interested in. Well, that's a newsletter I would actually want to get value from creative premise?

17:57Speaker 2:Its interesting? Oh like yeah, that's that's valuable to me. I'm into that.

18:03Speaker 1:Well, now you've you've got me opted in to something that I'm going to now go back to your point.

18:09Speaker 2:Tyler, continuous engagement.

18:11Speaker 1:You were talking about how you preach that to You just stepped into technology advice as a CMO, and you've already been like pounding your team with this idea of a continuous engagement. How can we embed our brand into a regular rhythm of this market, whether it's a newsletter that they look forward to every week, a podcast they listen to three days a week, whatever, a social account that they always laugh at the memes when they come across the page. And I think that muscle is going, like as marketing teams figure out how to do that stuff, well, the continuous engagement, I think it gives marketing a fighting chance at actually winning that battle of what becomes more important to it.

18:50Speaker 5:And when you connect that back to the sort of the outbound conversation, you know what we're like, Really, what we're talking about here is a lot of traditional like strong out bound was based on leveraging great content from the marketing team, right, so the outbound wasn't always just like hey can we talk because I want to sell you.

19:07Speaker 2:It's there'd be all these like.

19:08Speaker 5:Sort of value give touches of like, hey, we just you know, I thought you might be interested in this pretty cool new research that just dropped, you know, curious for your perspective, right, and those things can work well and I think what we're you know, to your point an advantage of starting to think more holistically about your media strategy, it actually does dovetail into being resources for your sales team or for those more cold outreach where you're no longer just like, hey, check out this ebook wrote and people are like, I've been done with.

19:35Speaker 2:Ebooks for thirty years.

19:36Speaker 5:Yeah, we honest, But it's like, hey, this like really cool new podcast episode just dropped about ABC, or like did you see this meme over here?

19:44Speaker 2:Like, oh my gosh, does it? Like can you relate to it?

19:47Speaker 5:And as you all know, I was up late last night on the hammock outside here writing one of our first email nurtures at Technology Buys. Some funny should say about the newsletter. Literally the subject line of the second email and that nurture is not another snooze letter.

20:03Speaker 2:Yes, right, that's the subject line. And then it's the same thing.

20:07Speaker 5:It says like, you know, hey, it should be top of mind, but I was up late.

20:12Speaker 2:I'm like, what the hell does it get? But it's it's that same mind, yeah, right, and that same nurture.

20:17Speaker 5:Like that nurture email is all about like actually it goes something like you know, what do you get when you mix like you know, buyer insights, amazing memes, this and that, and it's like, find out for yourself in the next edition of the Marketing Insider's newsletter because there we talk about all these great things. Plus you get this exclusive access to this checklist in the scorecard, right like if that sounds cool, like go check it out. We'd love your feedback on it. And now if they do bite on that, now we're in their inbox every week or two and we're not talking about us.

20:48Speaker 2:We're talking about stuff they care about.

20:50Speaker 5:And it's like, now that's my new nurture, right Like my pre nurture is the traditional nurture. That's to get them into my real nurture, which is my ongoing newsletter. My ongoing newsletters.

21:00Speaker 2:You can weave in technology advice.

21:03Speaker 1:You can weave in more bottom up funnel like content into that newsletter if you can make that newsletter compelling enough where someone wants it in their inbox. And that's where I just think there's enormous opportunities for marketers to.

21:16Speaker 2:Get really creative. The marketers.

21:19Speaker 1:I mean, I've talked to marketers every week that like they want to be doing this more creative work.

21:24Speaker 2:It's like, this is the stuff that's actually going to move the needle.

21:28Speaker 1:Now you've got to have executive buy in, and you've got there's got to be some patience to actually start to see the fruits of it. But man, yeah, I really like that framing of whether will HubSpot or Salesforce win depends on will marketing become more critical to the business or will sales be seen as more critical to the business.

21:47Speaker 2:And that's that's.

21:48Speaker 1:Going to be a really fun thing to follow over the next three, five, ten years. So thanks for having this conversation with it, James.

21:55Speaker 5:Before we end this segment, I do want to let viewers know I have trademark the words newsletter.

21:59Speaker 2:So so if anybody tried, that's my subject. Lilo artists come in from the moss