The Most Important Things We Learned During HubSpot’s INBOUND 2021

HubSpot's INBOUND, one of the biggest marketing events in the world, takes place every year, and last week was 2021’s turn.

Through educational sessions focused on the future of marketing (which, let’s face it, is everyone’s future), INBOUND 2021 unified noteworthy thought leaders from every area of digital marketing and culture with forward-focused industry professionals all over the world for some dynamic learning and change-making. 

At INBOUND, HubSpot announces its upcoming tools and updates for its clients, and since we’re Platinum Partners and help organizations get and utilize HubSpot tools, we couldn’t wait for what INBOUND 2021 would teach us about what’s to come. Like every year, it did not disappoint, and we wanted to share it. So, here are our takeaways. 

The Future is in RevOps!

THE keyword for this year’s Inbound is RevOps! If you don’t know what that is, we have a blog for that. 

If you know RevOps, note that we’ve structured this whole article around the concept in the same way that it’s beneficial to structure your business: equally in support of sales, marketing, and customer success. HubSpot focused their sessions on showing us exactly how it works in each area of your business. 

Including how teams actually work...like, WORK work. 

The Future of WORK

“Ownership”

The word ownership popped up again and again during INBOUND 2021. For B2B firms: take ownership in the work your clients do. If you consider that you can play a part in their success (and own that), it drives how you serve them and how successful you both become. 

On the workforce front: leadership that fosters ownership in their companies for their employees will see exponential growth as we enter into the next phase of the Great Resignation. 

In other words, companies that see their workers as their greatest assets and treat them as such inspire a sense of ownership in the work that people do for those companies. 

People who see how their work creates their own paychecks (i.e., they feel their value to the company as a whole) grow companies. They not only stay, they contribute in ways that define the word ownership itself. 

As our work continues to move toward hybrid remote teams (and it will continue to do so far into the future), it’s becoming increasingly imperative to inspire this type of thinking in your people: show them HOW they contribute to your bottom line and value them with real-world support accordingly. 

DNI Makes a Big Appearance at INBOUND, AGAIN  

Last year, HubSpot put up a Black Lives Matter billboard in their interactive map that served as the landing page for Inbound 2020. This year, they proved they meant that by inviting even more BIPOC thought leaders and sponsoring even more sessions that educate people about diversity and inclusion. 

HubSpot as a company reflects this philosophy and urges other companies in its ecosystem to do the same. It’s refreshing to see a company that walks its talk. 

Check out just SOME of the BIPOC thought leaders who shared their knowledge at Inbound 2021: 

• Spike Lee
• Oprah
• Cynt Marshall, CEO, Dallas Mavericks
• Amita Balla, Regional Director of Sales, West Coast, Crunch Fitness
• Tristan Walker, Founder & CEO, Walker & Co. Brands
• Andrew Lindsay, SVP, Corporate & Business Development, HubSpot
• Hasan Minhaj, Host & Creator, Patriot Act
• Afiya Addison, Global Program Manager, LinkedIn
• Alex Moore, Sr. Partner, Marketing & Tech, Stratagon, Inc.
• Amanda Green, Agency & Channel Education Lead, LinkedIn
• Amit Kulkarni, Co-founder, CEO, Heymarket
• David Chang, Chef & Founder, Momofuku
• Andrew Hong, Co-founder, CEO, Tobe Agency

Breakout Sessions Advancing DNI

• Deep Dive: Wholly Shift: A New Conversation about Unconscious Bias & Discrimination
• Mentorship & Advocacy in Black Business Leadership
• Designing Inclusive Digital Content
• Equitable Event Experiences as a Winning Strategy
• Debate: Hiring More BLNA VCs to Fund BLNA-Led Startups v. Encouraging More BLNA Angel Investors to Fund BLNA-Led Startups
• Why Marketers Need to Listen to Black Voices
• AMA: Raising the Bar with DE&I Insights for Marketing Teams

From Customer Experience

When Steve Cornwell, CEO & Founder at Northpass and Courtney Sembler, Senior Manager of HubSpot Academy, spoke about “Customer Education: A Must-Have for Growth,” our Account Manager, Ashley Lilly knew they were speaking her language:

“It’s just as important to train your clients about what you do as it is for them to train you about what they do. One can’t help the other without a true understanding of processes, tools, teams, and products/services.” 

It’s essential, for instance, that I invest time toward helping a client understand why we’re asking for certain information or how to use their HubSpot CRM tools. They can’t explain it to their team if they don’t understand it themselves. And their teams can’t use the tools we give them if they’re not trained. It’s important to me that they all feel empowered to do that.”

“This statistic got me: trained customers are 70% more likely to actually use what we give them! That’s really important to me. When clients learn from me what they need to know to use the tools we give them to grow their businesses, it feels like a valuable use of my time, knowledge, and energy.”   

Customer-Centered Tools are Coming!

Inbound’s announcement about new HubSpot tools in beta and coming in 2022 generated tons of excitement, and customer experience teams were the big winners for all their new tools coming down the pike. But, then again, when customer experience wins, we all win!

Customer Portals - Customers will be able to keep track of their own support tickets and learn from your company’s customer service resources in order to take more ownership of their experience with your business.

Custom Feedback Surveys - Now, you can create your own surveys in HubSpot to ensure your customers feel heard and valued so that you can continue to delight them (and keep them!) far into the future.

Native Payment Processing - Oh yeah! Right from your HubSpot CRM, you can easily request and accept payments from your delighted, connected customers. You got it: embed payment links into email, quotes, websites, and live chats. How exciting is THAT?!

From Sales

Our own Director of Sales, Will Davidson, listed his favorite session as “How to Close 6-Figure Deals with Team Selling” with Devin Reed, Head of Content Strategy, Gong!, because of quotes like this one: 

Will says: “The team selling mentality is what we have at Growth. 

Team selling is the spirit of RevOps. When experts from your customer service or marketing teams help with sales, it’s an investment of their time and knowledge that builds trust and credibility with that potential client—and increases the chance of closing a deal by 119%. 

Team selling also allows for a shared experience that teaches people exactly how they contribute to their own income. If the business brings on a new client, obviously that creates company stability and revenue. 

But when people feel true ownership in bringing in that business with their expertise, they’re inspired, and that’s important. In the other direction, workers who are invested in what they do, stay to help build a strong business that lasts far into the future.”

From Marketing

Growth Automation Engineer, Chris Bialeck, was inspired by Jeff Conners, CEO of Aptitude 8 who led a session called the “Rise of the RevOps Developer.” He shared his key takeaways from Jeff’s talk: 

“RevOps developers create and implement automation solutions that un-silo teams through the merger of data and processes within a business into an inclusive and integrated system that’s more efficient and helpful to everyone.”

“In the Operations Hub, HubSpot offers tools to create custom-coded objects, APIs or  workflows for things like subscriptions, orders, shipments, tools, contractors, or anything else for which data must be gathered, tracked, and analyzed.”

“A RevOps developer can even build a custom web app for your business on top of your HubSpot CMS.”

“The tools that HubSpot has given developers make it possible to move into that RevOps developer role in order to build automation that support the revenue-building of the companies they work for.”

Want to know more about how we’ve been moving forward with a RevOps mindset at Growth? Just ask us! We can do it for your business, too!