Scaling Manufacturing Marketing with CRM Strategies

Zach Hussion, HUSHinbound

Episode 33

In this episode of Missing Half, Bill sits down with Zach Hussion, founder of HUSHInbound, to discuss the impact of CRM tools, specifically HubSpot, for B2B and manufacturing companies. Zach draws from nearly two decades of experience in sales and marketing, offering insights into CRM implementation and marketing automation for late adopters, and the evolution of buyer behavior. They delve into how HubSpot's tools can streamline processes, increase ROI, and help marketing managers bridge the gap between strategy and execution. Tune in to learn actionable steps for leveraging CRM in your business and driving growth in today’s rapidly changing market.

This episode covers...

  • Zach’s Background: Transitioning from industry roles to founding his own agency, Zach explains how his industry experience helps him understand and solve real-world marketing problems.
  • CRM and Marketing Automation: Zach discusses his journey in selecting HubSpot as his preferred CRM tool back in 2014 and how it’s evolved to become a powerful sales, marketing, and service hub for businesses.
  • Buyer Behavior Shifts: The episode highlights how modern buyers prefer self-service, relying heavily on content and research before engaging with sales teams. Zach explains how inbound marketing and automation play a pivotal role in adapting to this shift.
  • Challenges for Mid-Market Manufacturers: Why manufacturing companies hesitate to adopt new technologies and how marketing managers can present new ideas to the C-suite effectively.
  • Scaling with HubSpot: The conversation emphasizes how manufacturers can quickly catch up with modern marketing practices using CRM and marketing automation, leveraging tools like HubSpot to drive better data integration, sales enablement, and customer success.
  • Key Takeaways for Marketing Managers: Practical advice on performing tech stack audits, setting up marketing automation, and choosing the right tools to improve efficiency and scalability.
  • Future-Proofing with AI: The growing importance of integrating AI with your CRM to keep pace with the rapid evolution of technology in marketing.

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Episode Transcript

Bill:  Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Today I have a very special guest with me, Zach Hussion. Zach has a lot of experience and we're really excited to dive into marketing automation, HubSpot and a whole lot of other topics. Zach, thank you for joining us.

Zach: Yeah, thanks for having me. Very excited to be on the show. Let's talk.

Bill: Yeah, Zach. So I think sometimes some of the best marketers are those who come from industry first, and then they go into the marketing agency, the marketing service provider space, because it allows us to have a really good perspective of the way things work, the way they're broken, where the problems were. And I know you and I both share those similar backgrounds where we came from industry and then we went into the marketing agency space. So could you maybe tell us a little bit about your background and how that led you to find some problems, solve those problems, and then launch your business?

Zach: Yeah, sure. Yeah, I just come up on 20 years now almost where I was working on just different manufacturing, industrial companies for the most part and different sales and marketing roles. So I was in the trenches as an individual contributor on a marketing team, as a sales rep, both leadership positions for both of those departments. And I guess it's kind of like you're a four-star general or you're in it hard, right? Like you're in the, I'm trying to be, I'm not swearing too much here. You're in the trenches, I guess I'll just use that again. And fast forward 10 years and it's kind of like when you wanna you know, go get advice from somebody. It's like, well, you could be, you know, the general who's never really, maybe never been in the trenches before. You can talk to the guy who or girl, right? Who's, who's kind of like really had to grin and bear it and get through some of the, you know, the tough times, make the mistakes, right? Like have those, have those challenges where, you know, things are going one direction one day. And then all of sudden, you know, something happens, right? COVID, supply chain crisis, new leadership direction, you pick it. And now it's like, crap, right? we just launched our website and nothing works or oops, I just accidentally ran this workflow and just screwed up the whole data. It's like all these things that you've been through, dodging these grenades that are getting launched at you. I think having that industry experience, right? So it's like, not only have I dealt with sales and marketing, like kind of low crap scenarios, but then specific to a manufacturing company or right, something like that. So, it's really, it's given me a lot of like unique perspective and how I approach things. I've, I've never really had the agency life and I never worked for an agency. Well, all right, I lied. There was an agency, which will remain unnamed. I did have a short, a couple months there. Things didn't work out so well. And yeah. So, I really didn't understand like all these agency nuances, right? With billable hours and how do you organize and track things and set all the different types of, you know, kind of touches that you need to have with your accounts and how do you keep those projects moving from how an agency would do it. So yeah, there's probably some agencies out there that have some better playbooks than I do when it comes to rolling that out. But being able to pull from specific situations that I've lived through and then take the things that I've learned there and then push it into a new project, right, or a similar challenge that someone else has had, I think gives me bit of a leg up in that area. And so after doing it for a while, trying to figure out how do I build a winning sales team or winning process for that team, or how do I really kick butt in marketing and answer those like, what's our ROI look like? And just trying out different tools and different CRMs, different marketing software, different sales enable, and just trying to pull all this data and stuff together and put together this solution. I struggled for a long time to come up with a way to do it that just was easy and made sense. It's like, why does this have to be so much? work for me to get this answer. It's like, can get it, but man, it takes a lot of work to get there and then there's all this maintenance and just, you know, it just wasn't a great experience. And then I found HubSpot. That was back in 2014. I was going through a project for a company I was working for. They were looking to select a new CRM. I think I spent six months researching CRMs and marketing softwares and, it's this HubSpot thing. And just like, immediately fell in love with it back then. And that was really more from like a marketing perspective, right? I mean, they had some CRM capabilities, which at that time I thought were still better than some of the alternatives and certainly better than what they had at the time. And then I did my thing there, went to another company, kind of, I think got a little distracted as a sales rep in that role and kept on moving over to the, know, the CRM sucks. Like why, you know, how come I can't pull this report? And then I came up with some things and the team was like, wow, this is great. Like I wish we had this information and I, you know, maybe I have something here. This is, you know, I keep on drifting away from like sales and drifting kind of away from these marketing roles and like always finding myself just like getting pulled in like a magnet to these other kind of, you know, business problems that were, you know, typically like software and process based, you know, more operational things. And so started kind of focusing more on that. And some of my, you know, later roles and started, you know, implementing HubSpot for folks when I came in as a marketing and sales leader, you know, gotta have it. If you guys want me to, you know, to answer these questions for you, then this is the way. Right? And that was kind of like almost non-negotiable, right? Like we have to have this tool otherwise, like I don't really know how to help you. Like I, you know, I, so, you know, found that to be successful and the universe sometimes just aligns in weird ways. And it was kind of just time for me to scratch that itch, which was always to just kind of be my own boss. And was very fortunate to take my last employer on as my first customer. And right. then they had a client that I had built a relationship with a little bit. Right. And I was able to take them on as my second client. So you know, it doesn't happen usually that way for most folks, but that's what I'm saying. Like the universe aligned. I'm like, whoa, like this is super uncomfortable and risky and, know, but like I have this kind of soft landing here that's going to at least get me going on almost day one. I mean, I think it was probably about a month where I was like, I have no income. I'm waiting for these contracts to be signed. I hope that all these people that I called and asked that this was a good idea, that they said, yes, it was. And I can't all be wrong. So just stick with it. And so that's, guess, a very long-winded answer to a multi-layered question that you had, which is, how did you get to where you are and what was that kind of journey along the way?

Bill: Well, no, and think that's what's important about that, Zach, is the fact that you found a solution in an industry when you were working for someone and then you found a way to leverage that solution and resell it to other people because they needed that. They had that same problem and you had a solution that was working. And then my understanding is you've grown with that solution. So HubSpot today in 2024 is certainly a different animal than it was in 2013. We've all seen their development. You know, they were basically a marketing automation platform with a embryonic CRM back then, I guess I would say. And now we have sales hub and service hub and the, and you know, Inbound conference was just here recently where they announced a whole bunch of new stuff, which I haven't even had time to digest it all and nobody has, but that's part of the game. But that tool, is certainly something that we rely on. And full disclosure, neither Zach nor I get any, are not being paid as influencers to promote HubSpot, right? This is just a tool we love. 

Zach: Wait, you're not getting paid? I got like a $10,000 check in the mail. You got screwed over, I'm just kidding, just kidding, just kidding, just kidding.

Bill: Yeah we'll talk, we'll talk. Yeah. We'll talk after the podcast. Cause I want a little bit of that, right? We need a little bit of a cut, but no, I mean, we just, we love the tool. It's worked really well for us. I mean, certainly there are use cases for other tools. And we're going to kind of move off of that conversation around HubSpot to more of the generic marketing approach. But, you know, I think one of the things that's valuable about HubSpot or if you use other tools is as marketers, we have to be preparing our clients for the shift in buyer behaviors because it's a totally different animal. So could you talk about maybe how, you know, and you can plug HubSpot in the way you're using it, because that's what you know and that's what you're really good at. But how we need to approach as manufacturing companies and B2B companies, how they need to think differently about approaching marketing? Because those buyer behaviors have dramatically changed. And I think the rate of change continues to accelerate every day.

Zach: Yeah, sure. And just to kind of take a quick step back, yeah, I mean, clearly very biased towards HubSpot. I've used Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, the big three, I've implemented them before on much smaller scales than I do things with HubSpot now, and that was a long, long time ago. But to me, what's most important is pick a CRM that fits your needs. I'm always going to kind lean that HubSpot direction just from experience, but I've seen many companies that do it, they have things set up very well in other CRMs, in other automation platforms. It might take a little more work to get there, a little more maintenance to keep them going, but a good strategy can still be executed on a wide variety of different technologies and still kind of get you to that end result. I've also seen like really know, awful setups of HubSpot, right? So it's not just, it's not, you know, the tool makes a bit, you know, it makes a big difference, but really it's just like strategy planning, execution, right? Tracking. Like if you, you know, if you put a lot of time into doing all that stuff the right way, you can do it on other systems. Just, again, you know, what's going to make your life the easiest. So, so that's just kind of going back on that. And then in terms of like, you know, buyer, the buyer behavior, right? Buyers have changed over the years dramatically, for sure. I you you think about back in the day, you know, the traveling salesman, right, would knock on your door and introduce you to a product that you never heard of that you didn't know that you needed. And that was a whole different, you right, kind of like creating that demand and right. And now it's, you know, it's like the complete opposite. Like people don't want to talk to a salesperson until very, very late in the buyer's journey. You know, so, you know, I'm not saying that salespeople aren't needed. They're just not needed as much, right? And they're, needed in different ways. I think now, which honestly, as a, as a, you know, living in the sales rep seat, you know, who wants to have 500 conversations, you know, about, you know, early stage questions when you know that they're just kind of kicking the tire a little bit and they're not going to buy anything for six months or a year, a couple, you know, whatever that may be. I'd rather have people get the information themselves, have marketing and sales collaborate to really make sure that they're providing that helpful educational information and answering all those questions. So allow people to kind of move through that self-serve journey that they want to. But yeah, it's very different. So we have to adapt to the way that we're selling to people, right? And especially if you look at the youngest generation that's coming to the workforce. By far, they do not want to deal with other people. I use the car analogy all the time. You're going to go buy a car. You don't just roll up to 10 dealerships and say, what car should I buy? You've probably spent a ton of time researching consumer reports and reading from other users and just doing all this research until you say, all right, I've narrowed it down to a Toyota 4Runner TRD Off-Road. And I want it, you know, in black with, you know, tan leather, you know, I'm just, all right, now there's like three dealerships that might have it like that, right? I'm going to go, you know, talk to somebody now. Now I need somebody to help me because I can't just, you know, well, I guess I kind of can at this point. You can click and buy a car online and have it dropped off at your house, right? Like Carvana or whatever, you know, no affiliation, but you know, that's why those companies, they're working. People are just like, great, I don't have to talk to anybody. So, you know, how do you, like, how do you handle that? Like, what do you do? Right. So I think it's like putting less emphasis on, like just hiring these big massive sales teams to go out there and just pound the pavement and, you know, kind of do more traditional salesy things. Cause again, it's just, it's inbound people again, want to just come to you when they're ready. And put a lot more emphasis on inbound marketing and content generation. And I mean, I can talk for a long time about building up that kind of contact or content database and building up data and building up all these things that you can now leverage and do things with to use AI as your prospecting agent, right? As your customer service rep, right? And so focus more on the strategy, focus more on the content, and then kind of let the self-serve stuff just kind of be automated and like, right? And then when it comes time, say, right, we've narrowed it down to three different potential vendors. That's when you want to hit it hard and say, right, now I want to build, I want to make sure you're talking to me because I'm going to help push this across the finish line. I'm going to make sure that I'm there to help, be helpful and answer any questions that you have, address any concerns that you might have, overcome objections to our solution. And don't forget, build a relationship too. Have that human-to-human contact, because people still buy from people.

Bill: What do you think is the biggest challenge we're facing when you look at some of the late adopters, right? You're looking at companies who are like, not Fortune 500 but like these mid-market companies, they're, you know, a couple people in the marketing department, still very sales led. Why are they so hesitant to change? What do you think is the big issue that like people like you and I are trying to overcome to move them from same old, same old to having great tools, having great content, and allowing people to self-service on that buyer's journey?

Zach: It's kind of like things have been good for a while, right? Like why think about something different? It's like, you know, like business has been steadily kind of growing, you know, we have our ups and downs and we kind of point to things of why that happened. Maybe it was the economy, maybe we, you know, right? A lot of times it's external factors, but, you know, you say, well, you know, our, when our customers are doing well, we're doing well. When customers are doing bad, we're doing bad. So it's kind like, well, as long as that cycle is just kind like, all in it together then, you know, and over the years we're kind of doing this slow but steady kind of thing. You know, it's like, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You know? And, and, and since things have never, like, I haven't had that pain, like I've had plenty of other pains, right? There's probably been like operational pains, quality pains, product rate throughput, like all this other kind of like, like more like, you know, sales, engineering, operations, know, that kind of manufacturing woes. That's where all the, you know, all the attention's going into that. Meanwhile, right, business is just kind of fine and dandy. Then boom, like this transformation happens and it happens, you know, relatively quick when you look at like, you know, the longer timeline and how things have evolved over the past 50 years. It was like, boom, all of a sudden like, the internet hasn't been around even for that long, right? When you put things into perspective, for some people that are maybe listening, they're like, well, it's been around since I've been born, right? But I remember playing with sticks in the dirt still, you know? So, you know, it's kind of like people were asleep at the wheel. They were complacent, like they had had no need to change. And now all of a sudden, like things happen really quick and maybe they're still riding that train where it's like, hey, customers are doing well, we're doing well, but it's, you know, inevitably something's going to hit the fan and it may not be that way. And then you're going to start looking like, okay, well, how do I solve that? And then somebody is going to say, well, you know, there's been this like whole other way that, you know, doing, you know, going to market, you know, if you look at it, these software companies and these finance companies and health, you know, like tech companies, right? They're, 10 years ahead of you, you know, manufacturing companies. And now they say, okay, great. Well, we want to do that marketing thing. You know, and you're like, great, give me 5% of your, you know, of your revenue. And you're like, what? What do mean I gotta give you hundreds of thousands of dollars? I'm like, well, actually you should probably give me more because you gotta catch up. But, you know, and then it's kind of like, wow, I'm not gonna give you that money. It's because well, now we have to go back and educate you about, this is what inbound marketing is. This is how the buyer's journey has changed over the years. This is why it's important. And you have to sell them on just, for some of us, we're just like, this is just basic, this is everyday marketing. And so that's, you know, the challenge is that you got to, you have to get to the right people who are writing the checks to make these decisions and get them to give you time to say, Hey, yeah, I'm willing to learn all about marketing, you know, and why the way things are different, right? Or, you know, but it has to come from somebody who's high up, you know, it's really hard when you have like that marketing coordinator who's like all pumped about, you know, HubSpot because they're just like, this is the best thing, right? Or Salesforce, whatever, you know. But I'm pumped about this tool or this philosophy of how to do something. Let's do it. They maybe never sold something to a C-level. It never goes anywhere.

Bill: What do you think the biggest challenge is for a marketing manager when they're trying to sell these new ideas up to the C-suite? Is it an experience, not having experience selling the C-suite, which has its own set of challenges and skills required? Is it the fact that they don't tie it into strategy, they just get too focused on the features and benefits? Or is there something else that you have observed that is a challenge for the marketing manager?

Zach: So I think that it's kind of the, well show me the ROI. What's my anticipated ROI of this? What's my return gonna be? If I'm gonna give you X dollars per month for software licensing, for the tools that you need, if I'm going to, maybe I'll let you hire another person because if you're gonna be doing all these things, it's kinda hard for this one person marketing team to do them all at that level. Or I got to give you money to give to an agency to outsource some stuff. So it's kind of like, okay, what's my return and all that? And it's kind of like, okay, well, give me two or three years worth of data and then I can kind of give you some ideas. But you're going from nothing to like, what's my return going to be on this in three? It's like, well, you have no data to tell me that you've been running an ad campaign and you you pump this much into it, you get this much out of it. Or we know that if we write this much content, that we get this many eyeballs and that turns into this many form submissions, that turns into this many opportunity. Like you have no data for me to make any even guesses off of. So I can use some industry kind of numbers, some best practice kind of things. You know, it's like, have to like, I can't just give you a number and you say, that makes sense. Like, let's go. There's a huge long story to these things and every situation is gonna be different too, right? You might have a ton of content, right? It's just you have no conversion paths and nothing's set up. So it's like great. You can take all this great content and do things the right way with it. Or you could have a great website, but no content, you know? So it's like.

Bill: I think a lot of clients really struggle because they may do one thing really well. Like you just said, they may have a great website, they might have great social media, but two things. One, they don't have someone in-house who can bridge the gap between the C-suite and the marketing function from a strategy standpoint, right?

Zach: Yeah, that's the main challenge, yeah, I think.

Bill: And help bridge that gap because I think, okay, let's say a marketing manager goes to C-suite and says, hey, I want this new tool or I want to do video or I want to do more social media or whatever it is. That just sounds like a thing. That costs money, that's a lot of work that the C-suite really, let's be honest, doesn't understand. I mean, they're very intelligent people and in their own right and in their space, they're amazing. But in this space, it's like, you know, they have no clue. And so then that strategy strategy bridge becomes a huge gap. And then a lot of times, the marketing managers, think what they do is then they lean on the technical part of it and they get down into the weeds. And like you were, they're like, what time is my tee time?

Zach:  Yeah, and they lose them right away. Yep. Where they're falling asleep, it's like, know, like, you know, meeting's over, like, you know, you lost me. You know, if you go into a CEO's office and say, hey, if you invest in this thing, doesn't even matter what it is, and it costs you, you know, 50,000, a hundred thousand, quarter million dollars a year, but I could turn that investment into, you know, an additional five, 10 million dollars of new business every year, would you do it? And they'd say, yeah, great, you yeah, my, no, no. But they have to have people that they trust and listen to, to just say like, can do this. Like if you give me the funds, I can do this. Right. And it's going to, it's not going to, you know, it's not going to take a week. It's going to take us, you know, 12, 24 months, you know, if you're building something from scratch. But if, know, if you, you know, if you buy into that, then like we can do it. But you know, unless that C-level like really trusts this person because they have a winning track record. But it's like, go to like a new CEO who just, you know, just joined the company six months ago that you have no relationship with and ask that question. You're going to get a very different answer, you know? 

Bill: So Zach, changing gears a little bit, whenever we go from a general marketing perspective and some of the challenges our clients may be facing, the industry's facing, down into your area of expertise, which is HubSpot implementations and optimizations for your clients. Whenever you think about those projects and those engagements, what do you think are some, like maybe some guidelines or some key ideas or concepts you would like to present to a marketing manager who's thinking about that as kind of some first steps or some roadmaps and not to get down into the 100 step framework, but just 50,000 foot. I'm thinking about proposing this for my Q4 budgets for 2024. And I need to take my company from stone age to implementation. What are some thoughts you would offer from your expertise?

Zach: Sure, you know, understand how systems are used and connected in your organization. You know, just because you're, you know, you're looking at things through a marketing lens, everybody's a marketer, everyone's a salesperson, everyone's a customer success manager. Right. And then whatever you do, there could be a domino effect for like, I just want to, you know, rip this thing out and do it this way. Well, right. That, know, you're going to break these other things. So it's like, understand the, the lay of the land and how, you know, what systems do you have? So kind of do your own kind of like tech stack audit. And then, you know, you have to, you have to build like do the foundational stuff needs to be in place before you just start buying shiny toys. Right. So make sure that you have a documented, ideal customer profile. Make sure that you've done buyer personas. Start putting together, do your keyword research. Make sure that you really understand your buyer and the buyer's journey. Have a plan for, once you have this tool, what are you going to execute with it? How do I get rid of other tools by getting this tool? Like don't wanna add just another tool to the tech stack. This, hopefully this tool gets rid of something else, right? Or if it doesn't, you know, kind of easily integrate into these other things, right? And so, so it's like, you you've done foundation, you you've done all this foundational work. You have a pretty good strategy in hand. And then, you know, now it's like, okay, if we are able to execute this strategy, then where our hypothesis is that we're going to be able to accomplish like this, right? So it's like, make sure that all makes sense. And then like, tool selection is just kind of, just like, you just gotta pick, you know, hey, I'm gonna, you know, I'm driving across the country. I've already mapped out like all the you know, gas stations and, you know, restaurants and, you know, the, you know, the largest ball of twine in Minnesota or something, right. And then we're going to stop and see, I think that's actually a weird Al Yankovitch song, to be honest with you. That little line that just popped in my head. but, give it a listen. That's a good one. But, you know, so it's like, you have that all planned out and then it's like, okay, well, it doesn't really matter if I drive a Ford or a Chevy. You know. To get there, but like if I just hit the road in any vehicle with no plan, you know, it's like I'm bound to run into some kind of like, you know, sleeping on the side of the highway situations. So it's like, have it all, like you have a good plan in place. And then, you know, in terms of like, okay, once we get approval for the plan, the tools that we need and it all, like it's like, great, like I signed my contract and I like day one, I have access to the tools. Right? Now what? So depending on what it is, it's like, what's your bandwidth and what's your appetite for learning? You know, like if you have zero bandwidth and you don't really have any interest in learning how to use a new platform, well, find a partner, right? Outsource. Have somebody basically take your vision and go do it. Right? It's like, we help them. You we do those things. Right? You do those things. You know, is your appetite. Well, I really want to become a master at this tool. Like I want to be, you know, intimately knowledgeable. And, you know, I don't, I don't, my style is I don't want to have to really, you know, rely on an outsource provider for this. I want to build my own, you know, in-house kind of knowledge. Great. I hope you have a lot of time because you're going to need to learn a lot. Right. So, but then that's cool. And I encourage people to do that because I think you can get, that's really like, when you have like an in-house team that gets really intimately involved with these tools, like that's where the cool stuff really happens. Right? Cause they, cause they have the time to kind of really go play and like, and figure out these, you know, these, these really, know, challenging, you know, things in their business they have to go solve for, right. Or just creative ways of approaching things. But, you know, if you're going to say, I'm going to go, I'm going to be that person then it's like, okay, well, you know, start consuming, you know, a lot of content. Start playing, before you just say, great, let's just start building stuff. Start learning about, oh I do this, this happens. So mock things up. Start building this thing out and then give yourself a decent runway to learn and play and roll it out over time. Not everybody has that luxury. Some people are like, well, my license ends for this one system here. I got nine months to go. They’ll probably hire a partner or something for that. But just dedicate either one direction, like I want to learn or I want to outsource. And then do all, again, foundational stuff. Make sure you go through and configure all your settings. And try to use everything that that platform natively has to offer as much as possible. Before you start looking for other solutions, other things to plug in, custom this, custom that. Go build, start building all that stuff out and leverage like that functionality. And I think that that's kind of like that walk, run or walk, crawl, run. Just don't give yourself some time. Don't just jump into it without a plan. Give your time to some, you're going to fail a couple of times probably at some things. And document, document, document, document, document, know, like that's a bit, you know, it's like, you might, if you do it from day one, it just, it's a lot easier than saying, all right, well, let's go back and look at the last two years of stuff we did and like put it into this giant, you know, working document.

Bill: One of the things we've found with our clients is when they have someone who's focused on their business and the marketing function and allows us to be that hybrid assistance on the technical side and on kind of like the activation and distribution, there is enough, once you get the data working, and you mentioned this, once you get the data working and everybody's involved with it, there are so many challenges and opportunities that arise that usually there's enough space just for that internal marketing person at that company to just focus on the company side and solving those issues. And then leaving us to do our stuff in the marketing automation, CRM, content marketing, and those type of spaces. Now, if you have a company you're working with that has five to seven or more on their team, they can take on more of that. But if they have one to three people, and let's be honest, we know they're wearing, it's like they're at one of those lids stores, they're wearing a million hats and they keep, there's no way that anybody, that one person can activate an inbound marketing strategy, a content marketing strategy and do HubSpot and, and, and, and, and while taking care of all the other things that happen every day as that internal marketing person. And we've found that hybrid approach to be more effective. But like you said, it's whenever you start to build that data that you actually can actually make something happen. Because that's when the magic comes together. So I completely agree with that. When you look at what we're trying to replace, what we're trying to offset in companies is the lack of salespeople and or that early stage of the sales cycle. Because people want to self-service, they want to find the information where they want it, when they want it, how they want it. They don't want to talk to someone at the trade show who's going to lure them in and say, hey, have you ever thought about this? They're going to the trade show to go to a booth of a company they research, a product they know and build a relationship. Or they're going to go online, ingest all this information. And then when they're there's all types of figures, 60, 70, 80% down the buyer's journey, they're going to contact the company and start that sales conversation. Why do you think companies are struggling with that transition? Is it because they don't know how to do it? They don't believe in it? Or what do you see as when you talk to these clients, why they're struggling with that transition?

Zach: I think, yeah, they, they, they, lot of them it's like experience. They don't have the experience. They don't have the know-how. So not everybody has like a guru that they've hired, right. To help kind of guide them on like, Hey, this is the way, you know, I worked at this other company for five years and we did this really awesome job doing this thing. Right. And I'm going to bring that kind of idea to you. You know, not everybody has, some people have had a marketing person, they've been the same marketing person for 20 years, right? Or the same sales director for 30 years. And there's nothing wrong with that. Just, I think it, you there's pros and cons. They know your business and your industry very, very well, but they don't know about anything else outside of that bubble really, very intimately, right? And it's like, you know, some people may say, well, you know, I looked at a guy or a girl like they've had, you know, a dozen jobs in the past 20 years. And that's a negative because they, you they got commitment issues. You know, well, I look at it say, well, I, I've seen a lot of different ways that people have tried to make things work. And I've seen things that work really well and things that don't work really well. You know, and you know, I don't know how else you get that experience, right? You know, you can read a whole bunch of case studies, I guess, but even that's not going to give you right what you need. So I think the struggle is like, you don't have the experience, you don't have the, you know, the people, I think a lot of it just comes down to education. You don't know what you don't know. 

Bill: When you think about the risk that is out there today for companies who are late adopters, who haven't done anything, that are not investing in their marketing, how much more risky is it today? And is that risk accelerating? I mean, the people who aren't embracing, I look at this with AI, AI search, if you don't have your information online, the buyers of today and tomorrow are going to go to ChatGBT or whichever one it is and type in, I want to buy this and compare this and that. And if you're not online with that information, you're not in the conversation. So do you see that risk becoming greater and the companies who don't invest and participate, they're just going to be on the outside looking in even more so every day.

Zach: Yeah, I think it's like people who have, or companies who have dragged their feet when it comes to investing in technology and software and processes and data, right? Data, data, data, data, data. If you don't even have good data today, then how do you expect to leverage that data for something that is as complex as like, weaving AI into your business, right? So, you know, that's already a big risk that you're exposed to, because, you know, it takes time to build these things. It's not like he can just toggle the AI button on and go, you know? Like, I wish it was that easy. And there is an AI button you can toggle on, but it's like, doesn't do anything unless you've done all this, you know, foundational work, right? And so it's like, okay, like if you decide today that AI is important, and you don't have great data and you don't have good systems and like you just don't, you're not set up with that right foundation. All right, well great, like maybe in 12, 24 months, right, you're starting to do more stuff and then, you you look at Moore's law, right, the computing speed doubling every 18 months. Well, AI in the picture now it’s every six months. So it's like, okay, it's gonna take me two years just to catch up to where people are today. Meanwhile, it's gonna you know, things are gonna change by 4x by the time I get to that finish line. So it's like, it's almost like, am I ever gonna catch up? And so I think that the companies that will survive that wake up call are the ones who are serious about it and really put the effort into catching up. And that's gonna be, right, a bit of a journey. And then the ones who are just kinda like, eh, know, this AI thing is hyped up and, you know, I like my filing cabinet over here and, you know, like, I still, you know, we still do our, you know, our sales, know, reviews with a pen and paper and in an office here with no data to support it. Just kind like, well, how do you think this month's going to close up? Right. It's like.

Bill: Sure. Touchy feely, right? How does it feel today? One of the things I think that's encouraging or should encourage anyone who's listening, if you have a company and you are way behind, if you're a late adopter, the speed at which you can catch up, it's never been more available because if you partner with a good agency or good outsourced resources plus an insourced team, it has never been more efficient to get caught up rapidly, right? And you can go across the spectrum, whether it's content, whether it's video, whether it's your social media, whether it's implementing these tools. I mean, the things that would have taken weeks and months to implement with HubSpot back in 2013, there are some of those things we can do very, very quickly if we have good participation and the right team. I mean, I'm generalizing a lot, right?

Zach: Yes, yeah, it's the yes, the yes, but yeah, you can do it. But right. It's like, need to put the effort into it. You can't just say, Hey, we're going to meet for an hour a week and, you know, ramp this thing up in 90 days. You know, that's very complex and has a lot of moving pieces. It's like, no, you need. You need to pump up like more time. And that's where I see things like they want to change fast and they bought into it, but they don't have, they can't dedicate the time or the, you know, it's like they have, they don't have the right like. I got this one marketing person, right, who is running the initiative and they only have, they already don't have any time. So, you know, even like, I can meet with you for an hour a week, but yeah, by the way, you have another like three to five hours a week, maybe 10 hours a week collectively between your team of things to do before our call next week. Right? If you want to, if you want to, if you want to go do this, right?

Bill: And if those don't get done, yeah. And if those don't get done, it snowballs, right? It just gets out of control quickly. But I think there's an opportunity for companies to spend a lot less than they would have even three to five years ago. So let's say we had a model where there's a company that's doing $100 million a year in manufacturing, they're a late adopter, and they look at someone who's that market leader in marketing, has been investing for seven years and has a great program. Well, three years ago, if you'd have said to me, well, how much is it going to cost and how long is it going to take? I would have said, you know, it take a million dollars in three to five years. I think now you might be able to do it for $350,000 in 24 to 36 months, right? Just because we're, think our space is that much more efficient and better. And also we're able to deliver more proven tools. You're not gonna go out and you don't have to do what you did early in your career and investigate 10 or 12 different CRMs that all were on the cutting edge and brand new and nobody knew which horse to bet on. Okay, there's two or three you should look at and you can really rapidly figure out which one's right for you, right? So I think the efficiency's there if the C-suite owners, whoever, are willing to write the check and then they're willing to allocate the resources of people, it has never been more achievable than it is today.

Zach: Yeah. I mean, if you just gave me like a whole bunch of caffeine and no distractions and you were to say, Zach, like take this company that was kind of like living in the stone age and like set them up on an intelligent CRM, you know, migrate some data over, which is probably going be dirty, but like, won't spend a lot of time cleaning it because I don't have, you know, I only have a couple of days to do this. You know, get, know, get their CRM set up, give them some, you know, like, you know, connect their social accounts, you know. Get them leveraging email marketing, get them like spin up all these, like that whole marketing machine, basic functionality. And then we can do some deal tracking and then connect to sales and marketing. So you can kind of do some attribution and some ROI tracking and then have like little bit of a cut. You can spin that up in like a week. I'm talking like no distractions. I’m working a 12 hour day, it's like, it's just like, if you, if like you wanted to get it done quick, you could throw time, you know, some time, you know, some not time, right? We just throw some hours at it in a short amount of time and, know, and get it done. It's just, you know, the word things get hung up is again, people don't have the time to commit to it. you know, maybe it is from a budget perspective, you know, yeah, like we want to do this, but like, we don't want to spend this type of money maybe to do right, to do it all at once. Let's take a phased approach over time. A lot of things can just make these things a little more difficult than they have to be, but that's reality, right? It’s like, and it just is what it is. Like when I first started out, it was like, I just was more of an idealist, right? I shouldn't, just say yes, just do it. But there's a lot more layers of moving pieces to get things moving along.

Bill: Absolutely.

Zach: Yeah, but if you cut the red tape, then you can move. The tools are just very user-friendly and the barriers to getting things done are low.

Bill: So Zach, the other thing I think we have to make sure we communicate accurately with the right expectation is you said in a couple of weeks, lots of coffee, no sleep, you could implement that kind of skeleton system to get them going. I want to make sure that we don't create the expectation with a C-suite or an executive person to think that their internal marketing person could also do that. 

Zach: No, no, no, definitely not.

Bill: Yeah, you have years and years of experience, you've been doing HubSpot specifically for 11 years. So you forgot more during this conversation than someone could learn in like that three week binge period, right? So you can't achieve speed, but it requires budget, right? Because like to get you

Zach: Yeah, of course, budget and experience, like you need a partner who's like, okay, like, I know that on day one, we're gonna go through this, and then I'm gonna collect this type of information, I got a bunch of questions, and we're gonna kind of map things out that need to be done, and I know that we gotta do this, this, this, this, this, this, and this, and we'll just go do it, right? Because we already created a recipe for success based on what your unique kind of you know, challenges and goals are, like it's, you know, it's revenue based. Okay, we'll focus on these things. Like, it's just leads, you know, and processing those. All right, we can focus on it. And you can't solve it all at once either, right? So you got to pick those three or five things that you can really move the needle on. But yeah, it's like, I've spent, you know, at this point now, right, thousands of hours learning and doing, and you know, sometimes learning the hard way. Right? Having, you know, like, crap, now I gotta fix that. Right? Like, don't want to have to go through that again, so make sure that you're more careful next time. Or like, like I've, you know, I had a, you know, I have a client who's got this one challenge and you're sitting there and you're just trying to figure out this workflow. And it's like a couple hours and you're just getting really, you know, it's like, why won't you work? And then all of a sudden you hit that like eureka moment. You're like, yes, I've, I solved the problem. Well, you know, next time you do it now, it's like, okay, great. That'll take me a fraction of the time. You do that for long enough and that's how we can help you, right? Spin things up quickly and help you make these business decisions that we know are going to help you out. And, you know, I wish I could just tell more people, you know, just shut up and listen to me, right? Just like, and I actually have one client who I did say that to and he did listen. We had a good enough relationship to say that. It was a great moment. But, and that's just kind of my style, I guess, but it's like, you know, just listen to it. Like listen to people who've been doing it and done it and made the, you know, gone through the headaches. It's like, we're telling you to do it this way for a reason, you know, not because it makes us a bunch more money. It's because honestly, like it probably might make us a little less money, but the headaches aren't going to be there for us or for you. And I don't want any more headaches and neither do you. 

Bill: Yes, we want it smooth. We want smooth implementation and outputs.

Zach:  Yeah. And I want it to work, you know.

Bill: Zach, whenever you, let's just talk about when it works for a minute. Whenever you get an implementation with a client that has matured, right, we're in that 12 to 18 month range, we've built the foundation properly, we implemented the tools, maybe paint a little bit of a picture of what that magic can look like once you start to get that together and you start to see the things interacting properly.

Zach:  So it's like, someone starts out on day one and, or, very early on and they, they are excited and they have these ideas. Like, you know, want to do, this, this email, you know, nurture campaign. I'm like, okay, great. You know, what do you have for assets that we can include to make it helpful and educational? And then they're like, right. Like I have nothing, right? Like I got this piece of sales collateral from, you know, updated three years ago. So, okay, great. Like go spend a bunch of time now building the assets, right? And it's like, I know you're excited, but you gotta kind of go do like the kind of like grunt work of putting, pulling all this stuff together. And it's not really grunt work. It's actually like, if you do it the right way, can, you know, right. Have fun with creating the content. Versus, you know, we've already built the foundation for you. And you say, hey, know, let's, came up with this cool idea last night while I cooking dinner. And like, I thought like, this is how we can go to market and do this thing. Great, let's do it. And like, you can do it by the end of the day. Because it's like, we already have all the assets. We just gotta pick which ones we wanna use, right? And like, we already have the foundation built. So it's like, great, we'll just spin up a form and a landing page and an email. And like, we already have our list put together. So we'll pick, you know, this list, this list. We'll suppress this list and schedule for tomorrow and off we go. You know, it's like I built a landing page. I built my email nurture campaign. You know, I've put like all this in, I've done it in like an hour. And you know, we can now go do it. That's fun, right? Now you can actually start leveraging the machine to... I spent the last two years building my race car, I get to drive it.

Bill: Well, I like that. I like that because I couldn't agree more that whenever we get to that moment where we have the foundation set and we have the tools working, the ability to scale things and test them and like have this hypothesis of, okay, here's this buyer persona in this niche and we feel that messaging to them could work well. Well, instead of spending a million dollars in two years building it, let's test it. Let's get some emails out there. Let's get some social posts. Let's get some interaction. That can happen so rapidly that then it becomes more of a strategic play where you have to prioritize what you're going to test and not just throw everything against the wall. But that's more fun than being stuck in the weeds where you have, like everything is drudgery because you start from scratch with everything, right? They have a target market and a headline. Okay, great. That's like two of a hundred things we need to have a full funnel campaign, know, top, middle, bottom funnel and landing pages and nurture sequences and workflows and the whole nine yards. But now I agree that that can be magic and that can then the other side of that is then the data starts coming back real data or more real data. Like what is real data, but like better data that's more statistically significant that can lead us towards some conclusions. That's when it gets more fun. And where you can kind of really be out there on that developmental edge, right out there on the horizon and seeing things come home, whether that's in pipeline or in, you know, whatever the activation or conversion objective is for those campaigns. So.

Zach: Yeah, it's like, what's more fun, like being Dale Earnhardt, like just zipping around the track, right? Or being like the other guy, like in the garage, and they're all still wrenching away, like being like, I want to be out there doing that, but I got to finish building this car first. Of course, everyone wants to do more, you know, the fun stuff. And I remember having, you know, conversations early on in some campaigns, and I'm talking to clients, you know, just, it's gonna be so cool once we actually have some more time. I can't wait for that moment when we're like, all this upfront work that we're putting in finally starts doing what we intended it to do 12 months later. And I remember saying it, I know the feeling of being like, I just can't wait, I can't wait. Then all of sudden it happens, right? And you're like, you know. Leads are flowing through or we just won that one big deal that marketing helped nurture and bring in or like, it's like whatever we've been working on and putting all this effort into all of a sudden, you're like, I just sat in my race car for the first time. Then like, maybe we came in third place at the Daytona 500 for the first time around, but man, we have a shot at first place now, like next year.

Bill: That's right. We're in the game. We're actually participating. We're actually competing. I think that's a great analogy and framing of that whole idea. Well, Zach, this has been an absolute pleasure. You have a specific niche expertise in and around this space. I know you do a great job with implementation. So we also want to give you a moment to shamelessly plug your business. We always do that. So please take advantage of this opportunity if there's any of our viewers who really need that expertise. I certainly want to recommend Zach for that. He comes very highly regarded in the industry. So Zach, please pitch your business.

Zach: Don't call me, I don't want any more work right now. I'm enjoying my work-life balance and my upcoming vacation. I'll be gone for a couple of weeks, so don't call me. No, I'm just kidding. 

Bill: We'll publish this after you get back. 

Zach: Yeah, right, there you go. And then give me a couple of weeks to catch up and then call me. Yeah, so I figured that, I had a year of mechanical engineering under my belt in my undergrad, I've got this kind of techie mindset. I love gadgets and watching how things are made and all that. I worked with those kind of companies and I've always had like that infinite curiosity. And so that's why I started HUSHInbound to say, like, I want to solve these frustrating things that I ran into as a sales rep, as a marketing rep, as a sales leader, as a marketing leader.

You know, go help make people's lives easier. And help people scale and grow their businesses. If you can scale and grow the business, then you can feed that back in to make people's lives even better and make your customers’ lives better, hopefully, that's your mentality. I guess working for other companies, the sense of purpose wasn't as strong or maybe it was just missing a lot of times, right? And so it's like, kind of, you you go in, you do your thing, you go home, rinse and repeat. And, you know, it's kind of like, I'm trying to help people, but like, they're not letting me help people. It's like, now I get to come into work every day and just say like, hey, I got a smile on my face and like, how can we help? What's grinding your gears? What's, you know, what's keeping you up at night? What's frustrating you? What's causing friction? Let's focus on those things. And by the way, we want to try to make you some more money too. So that's kind of how I approach everything. And it just happens to be for like manufacturing kind of engineering companies. Why I think need the most amount of help, because they're 10 years behind everybody else. So I just also selfishly just see there's a big need there. And I've talked about it with other partners who are kind of in the similar space and it's like, I can't take credit for this specifically, but I will say that I kind of. I was thinking this before I heard the other person say it. So it's like, just never published it. So they're going to get all the credit for it anyways. But Chris, this one's for you. It's like, right? How do we, how do we create like a, an Amazon buying experience like in the B2B world, right? Like the B2C has it, right? Why just make it easy? You know, I don't want to get frustrated. Just like make the user experience easy and make, you know, make the actual person who's working at the company make their you know, employee experience easy and something that help people do that stuff. That's, know, that's what I focus in on doing. And I like to do it, know, hands on as much as possible and really like kind of be an extension of the team, whether it's kind of like a fractional CMO role or just like helping you to, you know, you know, build the team out or just like get your train, your existing team, or just get you set up with some outside, you know, outside sources. So really just like helping you like consolidate your tech stack. Focus in on like what's working and what's not working from a marketing perspective. You know, make sure that my salespeople are focusing on the right type of activities and the prioritizing like leads and deals. And I want transparency into my pipeline and right. How do we, how do we like align these teams for success? I mean, there's like, there's so many different little things that I can get my hands in on. But I really just like, I love the, like the RevOps. I love the like, let's get your let's get your CRM, like working for you versus you working for your CRM. And then all the things that kind of connect into your CRM. And then I also help with like inbound marketing strategy. And I'm not gonna go do the work for you. I'm not content writer. I'm not gonna go put your Google ads campaign together. I know people where I have partners who can help with that kind of stuff, but if you don't have a buyer persona as like laid out, you don't know what your ICP is and you haven't really documented that and you want to go through that whole like inbound marketing, you know, like, like journey, right? Like, well, I've got a, you know, I've got a lot of workshops we can go through to get you there. So then you can, again, like let's build that foundation so that you can, you know, I can, I can watch you zipping around the racetrack, like, you know, waving, know, waving, waving your flag out the window and a big smile on your face. It's just like. So that's kind of like what I offer, there's not a machine where it's like, let's get them in and get them out, get them onboarded. I don't really have the need or the want to have a big agency life at this point. I really like being intimate with a handful of clients and really helping them along the way for a couple of years.

And then also like there are going to be other people who just say, hey, like I need HubSpot and I don't need a partner because I want to go learn, right? Like I want to go take, I want to go down that journey of like, like I did, right? Nobody taught me HubSpot. I had to, I had to do a lot of learning and a lot of reading and stuff. So there are plenty of people like that too. Where like, would love to talk to you about HubSpot, help you sell it to your C-suite. And then once we get everybody to buy into everything and you sign your agreement, it's like, great, if you need help, call me. 

Bill: Sure. No, I think there's a definite need for that in the market because in and of itself, marketing automation, CRM, the hubs and what those tools can do, the market needs more assistance in streamlining that and making it move faster because everybody needs some level of it to scale. And cannot scale. I think HubSpot's thing is like, it's crafted, not cobbled. If you really want to hurt yourself as a company, try and cobble together a tech stack and then spend all your time replicating the time, energy and money that companies like HubSpot and these others who have spent hundreds of millions of dollars to make, to take that problem out of the equation. If you want to plow that ground again, I mean, whatever, good luck, good luck, because it will, that's all you're going to spend your time doing. And why solve problems that are 10 years old and have been solved, right? Let's solve the problems of today. And like we talked about before, let's let your internal marketing team focus on solving your company's marketing problem, not a tech stack problem or a process problem that maybe HubSpot, a tool has figured out or a problem that your agency or my agency has already figured out and can accelerate rapidly. That's where we can really get towards that magic moment where there's things happening. We're moving forward quickly. We're developing repeatable, scalable models. We're working together and we're developing and achieving outsized results for the client. That's where it all comes together. And I think that's what you and I try and work towards every day for our clients and do in our space. 

Zach: Yeah, mean, like what we're doing, it's not cutting edge, right? Like we're not reinventing the wheel, right? I mean, some of the stuff is cutting edge, right? But like take what a successful business has done, right? And just do it over here. And then, you know, so it's like follow the tried and true, you know, best practices, like, you know, listen to the people who have the experience and right, they've already, right? Like we've already kind of, you know, put in the work and kind of earned it, right? Like listen to us. You know, we're here to try to help and, you know, be open, right? Be open to trying out some new things. And then, you know, let the cutting edge stuff be, you know, truly spent on cutting edge stuff. Like right now, if you have a good marketing strategy set up and you're using the right tools, man, how cool is it to be able to have all that set up and then say, I get to spend part of my day playing with AI and how we're going to leverage that for our company versus, well, we've got all this catch up to do still. So I mean, there's hope for everybody. It doesn't matter what stage you're in. Just, you know, start doing something and make a decision and know that they're not all going to be the right ones. You know, and you're going to probably waste a little bit money here and there to learn what works well. But just, you know, have faith in the process. And it doesn't happen overnight. Right?

Bill: Absolutely. Well, Zach, this has been a great conversation. I know I've learned a lot in what's missing in some of these approaches with HubSpot integrations and just that foundational approach. Really appreciate you coming on today. So thank you very much.

Zach: Yeah, that was awesome. Thanks for having me.

Bill: Thank you for joining the Missing Half podcast where we're discovering what's missing in manufacturing and B2B marketing. Please like, subscribe, share and join the conversation. Have a great day.

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