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INBOUND 2019 Recap from a HubSpot Insider's Viewpoint
59 Plays6 years ago
On this episode of The B2B Marketing Mix, we talk with HubSpot's Channel Consultant, Alex Desnoyers. We recap some things from INBOUND 2019 and he gives us an inside look at what channel consultants do while at INBOUND and insights from his perspective about the conference.
He shares:
- What a Channel Consultant does at HubSpot.
- From an insider’s perspective, how this year's INBOUND event stacked up against last year?
- If channel consultants get to meet some of the celebrity guests.
- What channel consultants are doing during INBOUND.
- What he would do differently for INBOUND 2020.
If you'd like to connect with Alex online, find him on LinkedIn.
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Transcript
Introduction to B2B Mix Show and Hosts
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the B2B Mix Show with Elena and Stacey. Each week, we'll bring you ideas that you can implement in your own marketing strategy. We'll share what we know and advice from industry experts who will join us from time to time here on the show. Are you ready to mix it up? Let's get started.
00:00:19
Speaker
Hey everybody, I'm Stacey Jackson. And I'm Elena Jackson. We are the co-founders of Jackson Marketing. And in case you still haven't heard, we are also sisters. We're bringing you another episode of the B2B Mix Show. Stacey, what's the topic of today's episode?
Topic Reveal: Inbound 19 Conference and Guest Introduction
00:00:34
Speaker
Today we're going to talk about HubSpot's inbound 19 conference. Alaina and I got to attend and we talked to a lot of great people heard some terrific speakers and went to some great sessions. But today's episode isn't about our experience. Today we're bringing you an insider's view of the conference from our HubSpot channel consultant Alex Denoyer.
00:00:55
Speaker
Elena, why don't you introduce Alex to our listeners? Alex has been with HubSpot for almost two years as a channel consultant working with HubSpot agency partners like us. And his past jobs and client services roles has helped him to gain the skills to create, nurture, and maintain impactful relationships. Alex approaches partners with a balance of empathy and expertise to help them grow their business.
00:01:20
Speaker
Alex, welcome to the B2B Make Show. Thank you so much for having me, guys. I feel like we were just speaking in person only a few days ago, so it's really great to connect so soon after Inbound. I know. It was funny when we messaged you, you were immediately walking past us and it was like, oh, I think that's Alex. So that was cool that we actually got to physically see you right after we sent you a message. Yeah. That was a great example of what I think is a pretty common occurrence at an event like Inbound where
00:01:49
Speaker
You would think that with 20,000 plus people around, it would be really hard to find people. But I have a lot of those serendipitous moments where I just bump into people out of the blue like that. So I was really glad to be able to meet you guys in person and find out about your experience at Inbound. Yeah, we had a couple of those moments too, where we were like, oh, yeah, we know you. We've seen your picture on LinkedIn. Definitely. I had my share of starstruck moments. I'm sure a lot of people have as well. But yeah, it's really great. I work with
00:02:17
Speaker
partners and customers all over the country, even out of the country sometimes too. So it's great whenever folks get to come to our neck of the woods or in Boston and being able in person just always makes a different relationship. So I was excited to do
Role of a HubSpot Channel Consultant
00:02:27
Speaker
that. Okay, Alex, before we get into the nitty gritty details about inbound, maybe you could tell our listeners a little bit about what a channel consultant does at HubSpot. Yeah, great question. So
00:02:40
Speaker
HubSpot has become a pretty big organization at this point in our growth in year 13. So I actually work in what's called the agency partner program. So I get the pleasure of working with our lovely agency partners such as yourselves. Really what that means is I'm a consultant that acts as an inbound success coach, if you will. Our agency partner, they act as an extension of HubSpot. They help us find customers, sell to new markets.
00:03:03
Speaker
and bring people onto the platform and then really help them see success with HubSpot toolset. Once they become a HubSpot customer, you know, your end customers, that's really where I kind of stand as someone who has experience with other HubSpot customers.
00:03:17
Speaker
from a strategic perspective and just poaching along the typical path to helping someone onboard onto the platform, see success with tools, and continue to see value in both HubSpot and in the agency. So it encompasses a lot of different little things, but I think it can be best summarized as I'm an inbound success coach for our agency partners.
00:03:37
Speaker
Yeah. And you definitely are someone that lends an ear to your partners that you work with. Like if we're going through something or need to talk through something, you're always there to work with us through that. And so that's one thing that we love about it is having that person there to support us like you do. Yeah. Alex is great to Alex's boss. He's terrific. You hear that Christina.
00:03:59
Speaker
Well, I appreciate you saying that very much. And I think that's an important distinction too. I gave kind of a high-level definition of the role, but really what I love about it is that I get to get very involved in the businesses and the day-to-day operations of my partners. And a lot of what we focus on is specific to the HubSpot product.
00:04:17
Speaker
let's build out a specific workflow for this nurture program or helping someone implement a conversational marketing strategy with new chatbots and things like that, where we very much are getting into the product. But we've all had conversations about hiring and growing your team and culture at your agency, which are all things that are very important to us here at HubSpot. And before coming to HubSpot as a consultant, I used to work in the agency world. So I just love being able to share my experience. And a lot of the time, it's
00:04:45
Speaker
You really just very much appear to be a relationship, you know, where we're bouncing ideas off each other and, you know, your success becomes my success. So we're all sort of aligned in the vectors of what we want to see within the part of program. And that just gets me excited when I can see my partners succeed. I never take any of the credit. You guys all work very hard, but I'm just really here to help in any way that I can. So let's dig into some inbound talk from an insider's perspective. What is it about this year's event and how it stacked up compared to last year?
Inbound 19: Integration and Connectivity Focus
00:05:16
Speaker
Yeah, great question. So last year, I think one of the phrases that I heard a lot, the big focus at Inbound is usually about what's new with the HubSpot product. Inbound has become very much an industry event, though it is in a lot of ways bigger than just HubSpot itself. But a lot of what people come for and are excited about is what's new with HubSpot product. Last year, I think the phrase that a lot of people used was HubSpot was completing this week. We shipped a lot of brand new product
00:05:42
Speaker
the enterprise level on the sales hub and the service hub. And we really got to that point for the first time in our history where we had starter pro and enterprise level features on both marketing and sales, and then now the service hub as well. So there was just a lot of net new product that HubSpot was shipping, which was obviously really exciting. And that was really the flavor of last year. There was just, there was so much new HubSpot. When I think about that as the focus of last year,
00:06:08
Speaker
This year had a very different flavor to it. I think another way to really think about the difference was this transition from all in one platform where everything you need is in one platform, all those enterprise features to a more all on one platform with a huge focus on integrations and connectivity. Now product spotlight was still very important this year. Christopher O'Donnell is always one of
00:06:30
Speaker
my favorite speakers. He does the product spotlight as an SVP of product, but he had a different tenor to it this year. I think one of the things that really stuck out to me in his keynote was his slide where he really was harping on how much we make these changes based on feedback from customers. And the slide said, Dear HubSpot, I need this to be easier. I need more. And I'm on budget. And all of those things really perfected into the changes we made this year. So there were no new hubs, no new whole new SKUs like enterprise and different places. But
00:07:00
Speaker
The focus was really on taking feedback from our customers and making the existing product better making things easier having more depth and and then really leaning into that all in one aspect into the all on one with making it easier to connect with all kinds of integrations text acts are getting bigger these days and we realize that people are using other pieces of software not just up spot and we want to make it easier for everything to connect.
00:07:23
Speaker
Right. And user experience and the ability to maneuver through the system is huge for people, especially when you bring on new agencies, you want them to have a good user experience and make it easy for them. So I think that that's a great focus that you guys were able to hone in on.
00:07:40
Speaker
Yeah express is a huge part of it right i think that's always been saying that you know i don't know if i don't know if i don't know if i don't know if i don't know if i don't know if i don't know if i don't know if i don't know
00:08:03
Speaker
becoming differentiated by the experience you provide is really the trend we're seeing. And so it was really cool to see a lot of real examples of that. I think one little call to action that I do have to plug is, again, the feedback loop is so important in the HubSpot product ecosystem. I think it's with that question that pretty much every single thing that we launched this year or is in beta or is now live after inbound is based on specific, actual feedback that we got from customers. So
00:08:32
Speaker
If you're listening to this and you're a HubSpot customer or a partner, be active. If you have a customer success manager or a channel consultant, get under your feedback. We appreciate that honest transparency. You guys know I always tell you that. Go to community.hubspot.com. The Ideas Forum is a very active place. Upvote ideas that you want to see made and post your own ideas if you don't see it already there. We are listening. Hey, folks. Let's take a break to hear about today's sponsor.
00:09:03
Speaker
And we are back. So I'm sure some people listening might think that you HubSpot people get to be so lucky and hang out with cool guests like Jennifer Garner or 10 Sessions. However, having done a user conference myself, I'm guessing you probably have some other responsibilities.
00:09:23
Speaker
As a HubSpot channel consultant, what are you doing during Inbound that most people may not be aware of?
Responsibilities and Strategy at Inbound 19
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's a great question. You know, it's not as glamorous as maybe you might think.
00:09:35
Speaker
There certainly are opportunities to meet with some of these great people, but I think what I love about HubSpot approach is that you sort of have to earn it just like anyone else. So just kind of a day in the life of a channel consultant at Inbound. I'm spending a lot of my time finding ways to meet with customers or partners that are in town, again, coming from across the country. So again, shout out to you guys for making the trip all the way up.
00:09:57
Speaker
I know there was also a lot of people that were concerned about hurricane that was bearing down and it really is a big effort for a lot of people to come to boston and attend this event on my end i try to make myself as available as possible to meet with people in person have strategic conversations and i think the hidden part of that that a lot of people don't realize is.
00:10:18
Speaker
Help spot employees we do a lot of volunteering to help run the event so what is such a success because of so much time and everything goes into making that that way so we try to do as much as we can to do our part as simple as volunteering at the information desk so we can help people navigate their way around a very big convention center.
00:10:38
Speaker
We also are joined by the West End and the Aloft hotels, so it's become a very expensive space for being a speaker concierge or an usher for the different breakout sessions, just helping to ensure that everything from an AV perspective is set up beforehand and people find their seats. There's a lot of moving parts and there's a lot of ways to help, so I do spend a lot of my time at Inbound just helping run the show. So again, I won't take any of the credit. We have a dedicated Inbound team that works on running Inbound 365.
00:11:05
Speaker
But you know when it comes to be the weekend bounce we all try to do as much as we can to help help run the show. So did you get to meet any cool people.
00:11:15
Speaker
Well, I got to meet you guys. Well, true. So I do have a few of my colleagues that were able to meet some of those celebrities, very great starstruck moments. I didn't myself. I think a lot of what you can do is depending on how many hours you volunteer, you can get access to a little meet and greet opportunity. But there are so many to choose from too, I think. I'm sure I'm not giving anything away here. I'm a local boy. I'm a big Boston sports fan. And there is a panel.
00:11:45
Speaker
Alex Cora and Jonathan Kraft and Brad Stevens. So from a local sports perspective, a lot of us that were really excited, but there's just a lot of great entrepreneurs. Like you mentioned, you know, Jennifer Carter was there. It's, it's become a very big event. And I think a lot of what I really enjoyed is the smaller breakout sessions. You know, there's some people that I've never heard of that all of a sudden I was getting the information of a lifetime. So it's really great. We're kind of spoiled for choice when it comes to bounce speakers.
00:12:11
Speaker
which you kind of lead me into something I wanted to ask about. What sessions did you get to go to? I know you're super busy, so you probably didn't get to go to a ton of them, but it sounds like you made it to some and which ones were your favorites and if not, what did you hear the most buzz about from other sessions from other people? Yeah, great question. One of the frustrations is there's so many great events and a lot of them are happening at the same time. You do have to make some choices.
00:12:37
Speaker
I love, you know, I talked to a lot of my agency partners that are in town that have, you know, two or three or four members of the team there. It's very much a divide and conquer strategy, you know, so fortunately and unfortunately, there's only one of me, and I'm spending a lot of time meeting with people too, so I did not get to attend very many sessions.
00:12:55
Speaker
a couple that I heard a lot of buzz about. Sean Henry of Pepperland Marketing, he's another one of ours. He did a session on 21 automated workflows to keep your CRM squeaky clean. And I actually saw a lot of buzz on LinkedIn about it, which was really cool. So that was a good one. And it sort of kept in line with one of the product updates this year, which was the ability to deduplicate contacts, keeping your CRM clean is really important for marketers. And so I thought that kind of tied in nicely. I do have to say I heard
00:13:25
Speaker
a tremendous amount of buzz about Daniel Harmon of the Harmon brothers, you know, creating ads and their story is so cool. Uh, that one definitely was a big talk out on the floor. I didn't go to any of those. I don't know if Stacey did or not, but no, but it sounds like I missed some good ones. I know that's what I was just thinking. So I guess a big question that some people will have, will we get to see those if we went to inbound? Will that sessions that we didn't get to make it to, are they recorded or anything like that?
00:13:51
Speaker
that's a great question you know i think i think a lot of the sessions and you know how they handle the like the slideshow for example is sort of handled by the speaker themselves and i think for example a lot of people will do you know they'll have a bit the link where you can download the slides and maybe recording from after the session that they'll provide to the people that attended this session so i mean even for me it's it's frustrating i i like wish i could be
00:14:15
Speaker
in 10 places at once and go to all these events. But a lot of the stuff is already available. For example, the keynotes in particular. So I mentioned Christopher O'Donnell's product spotlight earlier. Obviously, Brian and Darmesh are up there being as entertaining as always. So those bigger keynote events are already live on YouTube. And there are some things like that that you can find on there. But yeah, not everything is made available. We want to make sure that the folks that are taking their time to attend the sessions, get the value out of them. Of course, if that changes, I'll be the first to let you know. Sounds good.
00:14:43
Speaker
Okay, so you've attended two different inbound sessions. What would you change for the upcoming 2020 inbound if you had the power to do that? And what would it be? Yeah, that's a great question. I think the good news is that I don't have like a lot of bones to pick, right? You know, I think inbound in any event of that size is really difficult to put on. So I'm always very impressed with how well it's run and
00:15:12
Speaker
and all of the opportunities that we have. I think maybe selfie one thing is you can never have enough free coffee bars. As we talked about at the very beginning, you know, before I think before we start recording, just
00:15:23
Speaker
It's an exhausting event. You're on your feet all day. You're walking around between four different buildings. I think being properly caffeinated does always help. So maybe if I had a personal barista, that would help. But I think, in all honesty, to get there is, though, I think it's such a sea of people. One thing I did find myself noticing this year is what's great is that everyone has their pass or their badge on. And so you can see people's names pretty clearly. But the name of their company or their organization is actually quite small. I had a few moments where I felt like I was staring at people.
00:15:54
Speaker
trying to figure out if I could read what their company was, you know, so that I could figure out if I knew this person or if I wanted to, you know, try to create a networking opportunity. But that would be one very nitpicky little thing is, you know, let's make the names of our organizations a little bigger on the badges. Aside from that, though, I think it's really sort of like just an open call and a wish that they just continue to evolve. You know, I think again, just coming back to the difference between last year and this year,
00:16:21
Speaker
The way that the conference was run was very much the same. There's subtle tweaks in terms of the overall layout of the main club inbound area. Nothing that really was going to affect my experience too much, but I just love that the conversation and the types of speakers that we have coming and the customer stories that are being highlighted are evolving in the way that HubSpot's evolving and the way that inbound marketing is evolving and that we're not set in stone. So I always really liked that. That's why I love working at HubSpot is
Tech Stack Integration Strategy
00:16:51
Speaker
We're trying on a daily basis to stay on the front edge of how things are evolving and move the way we make a product and the way we help customers and partners based on the way customers are interacting and what they need. Again, I'm struggling to find more things to suggest here. I think it was a great event. Aside from having my personal barista, there's not much I would change.
00:17:14
Speaker
Yeah. And I, and I think back to what you were saying earlier that it's more of an industry event now. One thing that I thought was kind of cool is that you see other people representing companies that might be considered a competitor, but because it is an industry event, it's for everybody. It's not just only if you're using HubSpot and I think that's one of the cool things about it too, because. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think one of the best examples of that is HubSpot.
00:17:43
Speaker
announced not too long ago are our renewed partnership with WP Engine. And I think if we're being honest, obviously the HubSpot CMS is a fabulous product. It's a great fit for a lot of customers. It integrates so well with your existing CRM and there's so much data that you can leverage when you have so much on one again. But the integration with another CMS is
00:18:06
Speaker
going to be a more logical solution for some of our customers. And we read the writing on the wall and we thought rather than just having all these enemies out there and just treating them like competitors, let's work together to make sure that people have the tech stack they need. So whether it's Wix or WordPress or any other CMS, HubSpot's motivated to make sure that customers have what they need. I've heard some crazy statistics about the size of the average tech stack in a given company and
00:18:31
Speaker
depending on how large your organization is, you can have dozens and dozens of pieces of software that you use. And so HubSpot's motivated to remain an open platform and increase our API capabilities so that you can continue to integrate. So you're right, it's very interesting when you kind of look at it on paper and say like, there are some people here that would be competitors, right? But it's very much about finding the right solution for the right people. And hopefully what we think is one of the best ways to kind of run your businesses
00:19:01
Speaker
to have HubSpot be at the center of as much that as possible, but integrate with everything else. So before we move on to our final just for fun question, is there anything else you want to share about inbound and why our listeners should start looking at considering going next year in 2020?
00:19:18
Speaker
Yeah, I would say, obviously, from an educational perspective, there's so much content to absorb. So if you're out there and you're a small company or a medium-sized company, and you're on the fence about whether or not to send someone from your team there or attend yourself, I think there's a lot you can get out of it. So one is, obviously, you can go and absorb a lot of grid content and try to sharpen up your skills as you go into Q4 and get ready for another year. So staying on the front end with the latest and greatest in thought leadership is really great at something
00:19:45
Speaker
inbound. But the other thing is, as you mentioned, there's a ton of vendors there. So it's a great opportunity to find out, maybe I should talk to the people at Vidyard because we've been thinking about getting into our new video strategy. Or maybe we should investigate how some of these other agencies have done really well. So let's talk to them. They have a booth here at inbound as well. Lastly, I think one of the biggest things is it's just an incredible networking opportunity. You get a chance to meet a lot of people that are in your shoes.
00:20:11
Speaker
and doing similar things. So whether it's a similar business that's in a startup phase like you are, or another agency that's, you know, going through the same sort of scaling pains that you are, there's, I'm always
00:20:23
Speaker
impressed and delighted by the amount that our customers have for each other. And there's just this openness where people are constantly lending a hand and give advice. It's a very like welcoming community. People are very giving knowing that they've gotten helpful advice in the past that are trying to pay it forward. So I think there's a lot you can get out of it where you can meet people that are really going to be able to turn that light bulb on in your head. So whether it's a particular breakout session, someone you met at a cocktail event or a vendor that you didn't even know existed,
00:20:52
Speaker
did that suddenly offers this perfect solution to a pain point for one of your customers. There's just a tremendous amount of people that are incredibly smart that are there to help you. And I think, again, it's like an extension of my own experience at HubSpot. Something my dad used to always say, which is one of my favorite phrases, is if you're the smartest person in the room, you're in the wrong room. And fortunately, when I'm at HubSpot and when I'm at Inbound, that's never the case. I'm never the smartest person in the room.
00:21:22
Speaker
I'm always just trying to be a sponge and talk to as many people as possible and absorb as much as possible. So that's my long-winded call to action to consider attending inbound. And if you are considering it, reach out to your existing HubSpot customer, reach out to your representative, your channel consultant, your customer success manager, anyone that you're in contact with about planning for that as early as possible.
Personal Growth and Speaker Highlights at Inbound
00:21:43
Speaker
One thing that we ran into one of our friends we used to work with at a different company and one of her points about inbound was she felt like she got not just professional like training kind of lessons, but even like some life lessons from different speakers. So I thought that was an interesting point. I know I got one from Elizabeth Gilbert about just being calm and relaxed because I lost my wallet at inbound.
00:22:08
Speaker
And at first I was not relaxed, but then I remembered her talk and I'm like, I'm just going to relax. Elena couldn't believe how relaxed I was. I was, I was waiting for the Hulk to come out or something. See, see that's fabulous. Well, so did you end up finding a wallet? Yes, it was at a lost hotel. Thank God.
00:22:30
Speaker
But that's a great example right there in and of itself. I think we get so focused. It's an industry event. It's a work event. I work at HubSpot. I'm so focused on doing my job and trying to be the best consultant I can be. But there are these great moments at Inbound where you just get to feel like a human. And that sounds like a perfect example of that. We have some of these passionate speakers that allow you to step back and think about it in your own life. And there's so much we could talk about as far as
00:22:59
Speaker
work-life balance and lessons you learn on job that can help you in your personal life and your personal relationships and vice versa. But that's really cool to hear. Yeah, it's always great to hear directly from customers and partners about particular experiences they had at Inbound that had an impact on them. So to wrap up the conversation with a fun question, if you weren't working as a channel consultant for HubSpot and you could have your dream job right this second, what would that dream job be? My gut reaction
00:23:27
Speaker
was to say, you know, I'm thinking I want to do something totally different. I would love to be like a park ranger and just be outside all the time. Now that'd be cool. Is that totally weird? No, no, that's not totally weird at all. Yeah. I, uh, you know, I love hotspots so much. And I think one thing that's so great is they do give us a lot of flexibility in terms of, you know, if you need to work from home or if you need to take a few days off or take a vacation, they're very supportive of that.
00:23:51
Speaker
So it's not like I feel like I'm cooped up all the time, but I think I could see myself in another life maybe just having a national park be my office, that would be really cool. If I had my druthers and could wave my magic wand. Is there a specific park you would choose? I mean, down to Yosemite, I think that'd be easy pick for me. Yeah, that's nice. That's a great one. Have you ever been? Yeah. It's beautiful. What's next on your travel list?
00:24:16
Speaker
I've never been to Las Vegas. Oh yeah. Yeah. I'd like to try Las Vegas. I'd like to go to Australia, but all the things that can kill you, all the spiders and stuff, it scares me, but I'd still like to go. I camped across the country when I was 19. So I've seen all the parks pretty much, but haven't gone to all the cities yet. That's right. Yeah. So I've been to Vegas once. I recommend it. It's a wild experience.
00:24:40
Speaker
I agree about Australia, and HubSpot has an office down there, so I'd love to be able to go down and visit our friends in the Sydney office, but I'm not a huge arachnophobe, but you know, I've seen a lot of videos on the internet about the giant spiders and monsters they have down there, so I would be a little concerned. Yeah.
00:24:55
Speaker
Snakes that are just deadly. I don't know. It's just like all kinds of stuff that yeah, just walking around you'll die from Probably seems like when you watch videos on the internet because everything on the internet is right. Yeah, exactly I believe everything I read well Alex Thank you so much for taking time to speak with us today if our listeners would like to follow you online or get in touch What's the best way to connect with you?
00:25:20
Speaker
Yeah, find me on LinkedIn. Alex Denoire, D-E-S-N-O-Y-E-R-S. I always love connecting with other like-minded, compassionate people that are in digital marketing or SaaS or whatever it may be. I'd love to connect with anyone on LinkedIn. All right, so there you have it. It's a wrap. We know all about the Insiders edition of Inbound and Alex
00:25:42
Speaker
has encouraged you to find out more for next year, so hopefully you will. And if you want to get in touch with me or Stacey, you can hit us up on social, on Twitter. You can find us at Stacey underscore Jax. That's S-T-A-C-Y underscore J-A-X. And you can find me at Elena underscore Jax, A-L-A-N-N-A underscore J-A-X. And if you're not a Twitter fan, you can always look us up on LinkedIn under Stacey Jackson or Elena Jackson.
00:26:08
Speaker
And finally, don't forget, you can leave us a voicemail on the Anchor mobile app. I hope to see you next week. Have a great week. Bye.