Alright. Well, I guess one zero one, I think we can go ahead and, kick it off. My name is Colt Steingraber. I am a the demand capture team lead here at RevPartners. I've been with RP a little over three and a half years, and in the HubSpot ecosystem, a little over five.

Joined by a true HubSpot expert, Isaac Jacobson, a former HubSpotter and now a RevOps strategist, here at RevPartners.

And, really excited. I think we got almost a hundred and twenty registrants for this, event. So clearly a hot topic. We, we know retention is important.

Some are calling it the new growth at all costs. And, if you guys have any questions during, the event, please feel free to shoot them off in the chat. We've got a couple of other RP strategists who can help support. We'll also have a q and a session at the end.

So any larger topics, we'll be able to get to then. But with all that being said, Isaac, I'll hand it over to you, and, we'll kick this thing off.

Sounds great. Yeah. I really appreciate everyone joining. And, Colt, thanks for the intro. Couldn't agree more.

I think this is a topic that any business that's dealing with recurring customers is thinking about, because the bottom line is it is easier to keep a customer than to get a new one. We wanna maximize the number of people that we are holding on to. And this conversation is basically gonna be about how we can do that. So we can just go ahead and jump right into it.

The first thing that we're gonna be talking through today is what it is that we're actually discussing, what is revenue management and retention management.

The second thing is how can we then organize our data properly so that when it's go time, we know exactly, what we need to do. We have all the information that's necessary to maximize renewals.

And then the second piece of that is processes. So we have the data together. We can see clearly where each of our different customer stands.

How do we then organize all of our different strategies into one streamlined process that will help us to maximize those numbers? And then last of all, certainly not least, how do we take the people that are gonna be involved in that process and place them where they're the strongest so we can work together and maximize renewals?

But first things first, let's define our terms.

Retention management is a subject of today's webinar. And, basically, what that means is the group of strategies and processes that will help us to ensure that we keep the most people possible, and we lose the least amount of people possible. So when that renewal time comes around, we're as organized and efficient as we can be in making sure that as many of those customers sign on the dotted line to continue their work with us as we possibly can get.

And the first part of that is the data. So the big question here is within HubSpot, what can we do to organize all of the information that we have from our customers to ensure that at that point of renewal or more likely a couple months before, we know all the information that we need to know to ensure that they do end up renewing with us.

And the first thing to talk about with this is revenue models. The revenue model is basically gonna be the high level, system that you're running that allows a customer to purchase from you. So there's really three main options here. The first one and the one that's gonna be the most relevant to our conversation today is the recurring revenue model.

And that basically means that there is a reasonable expectation that at the end of the contract, you're gonna go ahead and renew that contract. I think a good example of this is gonna be something like software as a service, maybe some professional services. The one that comes to mind for me is Hulu. Right?

So unless there's a really specific football game you wanna watch or the finale of The Bachelor, you're probably gonna end up renewing your Hulu contract at the end of the month, and you're going to continue with that contract in perpetuity until you decide either it's too expensive or you don't need it anymore, something like that. Then you get into non recurring revenue. And this is gonna be where there are more discrete units.

You start to see things like manufacturing or retail. Right? When I go and buy an iPhone, I certainly hope it doesn't say in the fine print that I'm gonna continue buying an iPhone every month, for the foreseeable future. I go in, I purchase the product, and that is the end of the so called contract.

And then the last one here is the usage based model. And that basically means that how much I'm gonna pay for that product is dependent on the amount of people, the amount of time, or the tier that I'm using that at. So I think a great example of this is gonna be something like Zoom or HubSpot's new, sales and service seats model. So maybe I have fifteen people at the company.

They're all using HubSpot sales seats. We hire another five sales reps. Okay. We're gonna have to upgrade that.

That's gonna determine how much we're paying for that contract.

So before we go on here, we wanna take a little break to talk through some of these revenue models and how they apply to you all. I think Colt has a poll for us that we wanna send out here. So, that should have just popped up on your screen.

Yeah. We're looking at, and we're gonna be looking at the bow tie model. So we're we're curious to see, from our users, you know, who's got it already implemented, who is, unfamiliar with it, or, you know, who's looking to to implement that revenue model in their business.

Alright. Lots of data coming in. We've got seventeen submissions. Eighteen now. We'll share the results here in just a minute. We'll give everyone just about fifteen more seconds to submit.

Alright.

We'll share the results.

So about twenty five percent of submissions are already using it. That's awesome. Sixty percent. What is the Bowtie model? Glad you're here because we're gonna be, looking at that next. And then not yet, but we want to. Well, we can definitely help with that too.

Alright. Good result.

There we go. Yeah. This is why this is why we're here. Right? So talking through the bow tie model, we're gonna cover each of these three, revenue model options real quick.

The basic idea behind the bow tie model is we can essentially divide the presales and the post sales activities into these two segments. Right? And we will move every customer through the phase of potentially, you know, being interested in finding a solution, being aware of our company's offerings, speaking to sales and being educated on the specifics of those offerings, and then making the purchase and selecting us as their vendor. So that's gonna cover the marketing through to the sales side of things.

And, really, what we're talking about today with retention management is that other side of the bow tie model. So, really, what happens after the sale? With the nonrecurring model, let's say I go into the Apple Store, I buy the iPhone, I don't get AppleCare because that's the bad decision I've made a number of times, that's the end of the transaction. Right?

There's not really any service built into that. There isn't any kind of checkup that I have with a customer success team.

Really, the go live is I connect it to Verizon. I turn it on. I download my apps, and I'm off to the races. So that's gonna be what the bow tie model looks like for a nonrecurring revenue.

Then we get into something like usage. Right? It's gonna be similar on the front end there. So marketing into sales, I say, boy, I really wish I had a way to speak with people, remotely.

Okay. I find out about Zoom. I talked to a Zoom sales rep. I purchased it for my company.

Then we have the go live, and, really, what happens there depends on the specifics of this usage bow tie model. One way that we could see this expanding is, like I said, the seats. Right? So we have more people that are buying seats.

Okay. Maybe that means we're expanding on the account or potentially we're purchasing new services. Right? We need more minutes.

Alright. That's another way that we can expand on that account. So there are a couple of different ways that the usage based bow tie model can grow, but the bottom line here is that the amount that I'm paying month over month is going to depend on the amount that I'm using the product. And most likely because that is going to affect the company's bottom line, they're gonna wanna communicate with me about that in some way.

Maybe I have a customer success rep. Maybe I have an account manager that works with me after sales.

There's going to be an ongoing relationship in some form.

And then the one that we're gonna be talking the most about today is the recurring bow tie model. So marketing into sales, into the purchase point. And here's where things really get interesting. When we talk about the recurring bow tie model, a lot of different things can happen after I purchase the initial product. So let's just say, for example, that I've bought Hulu and I'm getting set up and I've started to use the product. I know that I'm gonna pay a certain amount month over month.

Well, maybe I say, hey. This is really great, but I need to add, I don't know, more users to my Hulu account. Maybe I can then upgrade my account or I can, you know, expand on it in some way that's going to increase the amount of revenue. Or maybe I decide that I wanna do a cross sell and that I wanna buy the Hulu Live package. Right? There are a number of different things that can happen here that are either going to expand them on that revenue, or decrease the revenue, and we're gonna get into that in just a moment sort of how those different, revenue categories can affect a customer. But really what you need to know here is that with these recurring bow tie models, you're gonna see a lot more customer interaction after the sale because the amount that I'm spending is really dependent on how happy I am with the product, whether I wanna use different products from the same company, or whether I wanna expand upon my account.

So within that recurring model, there are a number of different revenue categories that we're gonna want to address as we get into the conversation around retention management.

And these are the main six. The first one is gonna be net new logos. Don't really have to explain that to you. It's a new customer.

They haven't bought any of the products yet. They become a customer when they sign the document. Okay. Great.

Once that person has closed, the rest of these are different revenue categories that affect an existing customer.

A cross sell is gonna be something like let's say I have HubSpot Marketing Hub, and I want to invest in a sales tool. It's not the same product, but it is the same company. So I'm going to engage in a different product category on an existing account. The difference there with an upsell is gonna be if I already have Marketing Hub Professional and I want to expand, I might get Marketing Hub Enterprise. Right? Same product category, but I'm expanding on that account, within that category.

Then we get into kind of the the corollaries to those, which are gonna be a downgrade, which is the same as, an upsell in the other direction. Right?

At Marketing Hub Pro, I decide to go down to Marketing Hub Starter. That's gonna be a downgrade.

Renewal is gonna be if at the end of that contract, I decide to continue at the current rate that I already have in in place. So my contract from Marketing Hub Pro is up. I continue it on to the next year. And then there's a churn, and a churn is gonna be when the entire account closes.

So, I had Marketing Hub. I didn't have anything else. Now I have nothing. Maybe I'm using free, but that's still a churn.

And these are the six categories that you're gonna wanna keep in mind as we go forward in this conversation here.

Something else to note and that will be relevant to our conversation is that when we talk about retention management, there are really kinda two pieces here. There's the process side, which is let's get our customer success team, our sales team, anybody that's gonna be touching that account, all organized and ready to get to the payment. So we'll take them from the beginning of the renewals process all the way through to the moment when we start processing the payment. And then there's the transactions and revenue side, which is more about organizing the payments, themselves. And that's gonna be an internal finance motion.

We're gonna be talking about the process part of things today. The revenue and transactions part of things is gonna be a separate conversation, and we'll give you some more detail on that going forward here. But most of what we're gonna be going through on this webinar is gonna be in this first bucket here.

We do wanna give you a quick peek at the transaction side, though. This was some, dummy data that was spun up in our Playground account by one of our own, Shaddab.

And he was able to pull together a chart in HubSpot that basically puts all of these different categories side by side and says, okay. Month over month, here's how much we're doing in expanded revenue on existing accounts, on net new, on churn.

This is really a pretty amazing feat. It's a Herculean effort by him, so shout out to Shaddab.

But this is something that we'll be getting into in more detail in another conversation. Just wanted to let you know that this is sort of what that's gonna look like when we do engage in that in that dialogue.

But now back to the matter at hand. So when we talk about the retention management side of things on the process oriented part, there are a few different data collection methodologies that you might wanna keep in mind. And these are really just different ways that your team can keep track of customer sentiment, of how things are going, of how likely the renewal is to happen so that when it is go time, you have this information and you can say, alright. I'm buddy buddy with this person or we better be delicate here because this is more likely to churn.

The first and probably the easiest one would be the net promoter score. And that really just comes down to one question. Hey. How likely are you to recommend us to a friend?

That's gonna be on a scale of one to ten, and you can basically figure out from there, alright. They're a nine. It's pretty good. Right?

That means they're probably not gonna recommend us to a friend and also ditch us themselves. So that's a good thing. If it's closer to a, you know, a two or a three, that's gonna tell you that you probably have some more work to do on that account.

But then we get into things that are a bit more quantitative and less subjective, like product and usage data. And this is gonna be really tailored to your product or service offerings, and these are really just kinda guidelines that you can think about when going over, the product and usage data options that you wanna put together. So one example would be, how often is your product being used? Am I actually logging in to my account a lot?

Am I using the product? Because if not, I may end up determining, okay. This isn't worth the money. I'm gonna go ahead and close that account.

The second one would be, how well do I understand the products? Right? Does it look like I'm using all the features that I paid for?

Am I intelligently, you know, activating whatever it is if it's a SaaS solution, that I am invested in? And then last of all, and I think this is a really good one, how often are service tickets being created? Because although the service side of things doesn't necessarily demonstrate negative sentiment, if in those service tickets you can see things that would, show that they're frustrated, if a lot of these things are basic questions, you'll start to see, okay. They probably don't understand it as well. They're not as happy. So these are all things that you're gonna wanna consider, when you're putting together a usage score here.

A couple other things you'll also wanna think about would be onboarding, number one. Something that we've talked about a lot and that I think is often sort of overlooked is the fact that within the first month or two months or even three if that's how long on onboarding takes, most people have a pretty good idea of whether or not they wanna renew.

And that initial impression, it really is like a first impression when you're meeting someone, is gonna tell you, I like this. I don't like this.

And as a result, it's really, really important that that onboarding process goes well.

So number one, did the onboarding process go as planned? Did we close it out as quickly as we were planning on it, or was it prolonged? That's something to think about. Then the second one is, were they actually satisfied with the onboarding process?

You can get this either from the person who did the onboarding and say, hey. Was the vibe good there? Did it seem like there was a lot left to be desired? Or you can do things like set up surveys for the end of onboarding that would say, hey.

Are you happy with this? Do you feel like you understand the product well? Are you ready to, you know, keep chugging forward with this? So that's another way you can address onboarding sentiment.

Really, really important piece there. And then the last thing is the service or product tier. So taking the HubSpot example again. If I'm dipping my toes in the water with Marketing Hub Starter, it's gonna be a little bit easier for me to get rid of that and kinda go on my merry way.

Right? Whereas if I've taken my sales team of a hundred people, I've gotten them all on Sales Hub enterprise seats, and we have integrated our entire system into Sales Hub, I'm probably gonna be more emotionally invested in that. So that's another thing that you might wanna think about when you're collecting data on the, on the renewal management process.

So speaking of renewal management process, now now that we've talked a bit about the data side, how do we wanna collect information, what are the different categories that we're working with here, we're gonna dive into some real world examples of what do these processes look like when you put them into place.

The first thing with the process organization is gonna be figuring out which pipelines you wanna use. And, really, it comes down to four pipelines in this case, but we also wanna talk through, the different goals of each of the different motions that we've been discussing. So net new, pretty easy. Right?

I wanna get the customer. I want to sign up this new account. I wanna bring them aboard, and I wanna go from there. And then once that happens for onboarding, we wanna get those new deals aboard as quickly and as efficiently, and as completely as possible so that they're happy and they're using the product as desired.

Once that has happened, we get into things like cross sell, which, like we said, is selling a new product to an existing account or upselling or downgrading or churning.

The only thing to keep in mind there is that the goal of the churn isn't really to get them to use more product. It's to manage that exit as gracefully as possible.

But all four of these last categories can be put into the same pipeline, and we'll just call that the renewal pipeline.

The only categories that are gonna need their own pipelines are gonna be the cross sell one because you can effectively think about that as selling something brand new even though it's an existing customer. And then the net new pipeline, which is just gonna be for your sales team to sell in new accounts. Last of all, the onboarding pipeline. This may be something that you decide to do in Service Hub. If you have access to those, ticket pipelines, you may just decide to build out a new sales pipeline for this. The point is because onboarding is not a, quote, unquote, directly revenue generating activity, you're gonna wanna keep that separate from the other activities.

Now let's talk a little bit about what this process looks like. So a couple things I want you to keep in mind here as we look at this chart. When a deal closes, it could be a net new deal. It could be a renewal deal.

It could be upsell, any of these things. We want a new deal to be created in the renewal pipeline right away. And that might sound funny. Hey.

I just, you know, signed up this account. Why do we need a new deal in the pipeline when it's a year out for the renewal? The reason is that we want that to be prepped so that when that ninety day mark comes, we already have that information stored in the deal pipeline, and we're ready to start rocking and rolling, just straight off the bat. So very, very important that when that deal closes, a brand new deal is created, and we wanna make sure that the end date for the last deal, so that one that just closed, is the same as the start date for this new one.

So there's continuity between those deals. And what you can see here is when we actually get into the process flow itself, the net new deal closes. Okay. It's an MRR deal.

What we wanna do there is set the end date of that deal, same as the start date of the new one. We're then gonna say, alright. This is a renewal.

We're gonna have that renewal. The process happens. Fantastic. They renewed. And we go right back around to the start.

So something we want you to think about here is this is really more of a cyclical motion. Right? When a renewal happens, the goal is that that renewal keeps happening year after year after year. So we want this to keep going around, hopefully, at Infinitum.

Right? That's really the goal.

Now we can start to talk about the actual deals and the structure of the deal records in HubSpot here. So I'm gonna go ahead and click on this link, and that's gonna take us to a test deal at HubSpot. What I wanna bring your attention to are these properties over here on the left. So you're obviously gonna wanna have the deal owner. Last contact is property that's come in default here. These are the ones that are gonna be relevant to this conversation.

And the first thing we'll wanna talk through is, okay, what kind of deal are we actually working with? This is information that your reps are gonna wanna see, when they look at that thumbnail. So this is a renewal deal. Alright. We'll click renewal. Other options might be existing business, something like an upgrade, or new business.

So it's a renewal deal. I would recommend putting these as high priority just because when that renewal timeline comes around and you get the notification that it is, ninety days till renewal, you wanna be on that as quickly as possible. And, truthfully, this is a good way to just make sure that everybody is seeing that this deal is is coming up here.

What kind of revenue is this? So recurring or nonrecurring revenue? Another important marker for your sales reps or whoever else is owning the renewal process to keep in mind.

Then you get into revenue category. That's gonna be a breakdown of the different categories we talked through a few minutes ago. We'll say this is renewal. It's a six month subscription term, and that means that it starts on this date, ends on that one.

Make sure those are consistent and that when this new deal is generated, we wanna make sure that this is aligned to the end date of the last deal. And then there are sort of a few extraneous things that you'll wanna include as well. If there's a churn happening, why is that happening? We got a couple of built out categories here, that should kinda be a good high level example, but there are gonna be more specific reasons for your use case that you will wanna fill in on this property.

What product category is it? Maybe you have both a software side and a consulting side. Those would be good examples of the product category. So, okay, this is category two. It's the software side. And then within the software side, which of the actual products are we gonna be renewing here?

Maybe it's the third type, whatever that is for you. Just make sure that's selected so that your reps have that information on the deal and so that you're able to report on this accurately when the deal does close.

Few extra things here that could be relevant. If there are any notes on the contract that you wanna include for your reps, put those here. We'll wanna have whether or not the contract's already attached and whether or not it's already been reviewed. These are just kinda good placeholders to make sure that every single box has been checked before that renewal date comes up. Because the last thing that you want to happen is it to be a week out from the renewal and you go, okay. Well, we better start getting this together. These are things you want taken care of well ahead of time, and the way to do that is to have them up and ready on this deal record.

Hey, Isaac. Quick question for you from the chat. And I think this may be referring to that Miro map we looked at.

Who owns the renewal process in that flow that we That is a great question.

And it's something that we'll be addressing on the people side of things. So we we I guess that'll be sort of, like, the third piece that we're we're talking through today.

Do we wanna just Yeah.

I I think, if we cover it, then that'll that should be good.

Okay. Sounds good. But that's a great question and something that every company needs to be thinking about. It's great to have the processes in place. They don't move if nobody's actually owning them. So great question, and definitely something we will be addressing.

So second piece of this here, we've talked about the deal. Deal moves through a pipeline. Right? That's just what a deal does.

So when we get to whoops. I'm gonna try to click on that link again. There we go. When we get to the point where that deal is created, we wanna have the pipeline set up properly so that it's gonna be able to walk us through the entire renewal process from start to finish.

As we talked about here, when that deal is created, there's no need to say right away, okay. Get started. Right? It's a year until a renewal.

We'll just put that in the active MRR, deal pipeline stage because that way we know this is an active account, and we're gonna have to deal with this renewal, when it comes up, but we're not there yet. So we'll have that here. That's gonna be the first stage. Stage number two is gonna be, alright.

It's go time. Renewal is in less than ninety days. We need to start thinking about this. This is gonna be specific to your business, the number of days that actually, count here.

I would say ninety is a pretty good benchmark because it gives you enough time to organize all the people that need to be involved and make sure that you have all that data collected. So unless you have a very different cycle, I think ninety is a really good place to start.

After that, we say, alright. It's time to start thinking about the renewal conversation.

Maybe that first conversation is booked, so that would be the next stage. Then we have the actual signature or decision making call scheduled. That's gonna be another stage. We move on to go or no go.

This is where you'll know. Alright. The renewal is or is not happening. And this is sort of that really important juncture where you wanna make sure everyone is aligned and saying, okay.

Before we get to go or no go, we wanna do as much as we can to get that renewal to go through.

Once that becomes hopefully a go, that's where we get to pending signature. We all know that contract is out. You're sweating it out, waiting for them to sign it. Finally, they sign it.

Great. We're in close one. Time to celebrate. Or maybe not, but we won't even talk about that.

So, what you need to know here is these are stages that I would recommend as a framework. Your renewals process probably will look a little bit different, and I would encourage you after looking at this framework to think through when we do our renewals, what are the actual stages of that sales process, and how do they connect to our sales process for net new, just to make sure that you have something in place that will allow you to go step by step all the way up to the finish line.

Isaac, I've got one more question for you. Okay. Any comments on using deal properties versus line items for showing the products involved?

Definitely. I think my answer to that would be it can be great to use line items, especially if you're building quotes and everything like that. So I would recommend using that tool if you have access to it. I think the only reason I put these in the properties is that for me and my experience, it's easier to build reports. You could see the thumbnail a little quicker that way.

I would say for the sake of diligence, why not both? But if you want to track that in line items and you're gonna build out your quotes using line items, perfectly reasonable way to track that product category, product type information.

Awesome. Thanks for the question, Bob. If, you need any more clarity, let us know.

Most definitely.

So I bet one of the things you're thinking or, you know, maybe I've thought through in the past is great. We have this process in place. What happens when somebody forgets and all of a sudden it's crunch time and the renewal's coming up and we're not ready for it? That's one of the main things we wanna talk through today is how to prevent anything from slipping through the cracks.

And the answer to that, much as it's the answer to many things in HubSpot, is building automations. So got a couple of, simple workflows that I wanna walk you through here that I think will be really helpful in solving for that problem. The first one is, creating the new deal when the first deal closes. And, basically, all you have to know about that is you wanna say, when these deals close or I guess, more specifically, this is for renewals pipeline.

You'd wanna do this for net new as well. When that deal closes in this pipeline and the deal stage is any of closed won, no need to create new deals for a closed lost, we'll create a new renewal deal. We'll assign it to that deal owner, and we'll put it in that active MRR deal stage. So what this is gonna do is it's gonna save your sales reps the time and, make sure that nobody ever forgets that, great.

We just closed this new deal. Things are good. In nine months, we're gonna have that pulled up. It's gonna be taken care of for us.

Would highly, highly recommend creating this automation.

Then the other workflow that I think is a good starting point would be when the deal is ninety days out, you can basically do this by saying that contract end date for this new renewal is less than ninety one days from now, and it's in that renewal pipeline.

Set the deal stage to upcoming renewal is less than ninety days. All that's gonna do is it's gonna take us back to that pipeline, move us from stage one to stage two, and then you're good to go good to get started.

Once you've built these automations out, the next step is to make sure that the people who are gonna be involved in the renewals process actually know what's going on. And that's where the automations within the sales pipeline become super, super useful.

The way we get to this is by going to actions in the pipeline and then clicking on pipeline automation. And then it's gonna pull you up to this screen here where you can add in these sort of more lightweight automations within the deal pipeline.

So what I have here is when that automation moves us from active MRR into upcoming renewals less than ninety days, I want automatically an email to go out to that deal owner saying, hey there. Time to get started. We got ninety days till the renewal, and that's what this is gonna take care of. So as soon as the first automation does that, I'm gonna go ahead and get an, notification in my inbox saying, get your eyes on this.

It's time to get started. Couple other things that could be useful here are gonna be tasks. So in addition to the notifications to the stakeholders, you're gonna wanna have things like, okay. Meeting is scheduled.

Create that task for the deal owner to get ready for the conversation.

I'm guessing that many of your sales reps, if they're using HubSpot Sales Hub, are already using tasks for their prospecting activities, likely for their sales activities too. This will just drop that right into their sale or their task list for the day, and they can go ahead and get started on that. Maybe we get to go and we wanna say, awesome. We're getting started with this.

We wanna create the contract. So we'll just drop another task into their list saying, go ahead and write up that document. These are just some examples of how these sales pipeline automations can be helpful, but I would definitely encourage you to think through the stages of your pipelines and say, where are the junctures that we need people to be notified? That we wanna make sure that nobody ever forgets to do something really important? Or what are the tasks that it would be really nice if I just didn't even have to think about it if it just showed up for me? Those are the kinds of things you're gonna wanna put into this automation.

One more thing before we get into, health score, and then we'll talk through people, is the strategy and the tactics that kinda go behind all of this work.

I'm a chess guy, and I would say that, you know, tactics, that's really the fun part, figuring out how can we set ourselves up for success.

This is where you're gonna find the answers to those questions. And and and number one, like we said, with the onboarding process, people are gonna decide really early on whether or not they like the service. So they're gonna say, it's month one. I'm really happy.

Great. This is going well. I can't wait to adopt it further, maybe cross sell or upsell. Or they're gonna say, boy.

Alright. Well, I'm waiting out to the end of the contract. So really the main question you have to answer there, how do we set people up for success from day one? And that's really quick wins.

Right? What can I show them that's gonna knock their socks off and make them say, really glad that I made this purchase, and set that relationship up in a really positive way? That's gonna be the first thing. The second thing is, as onboarding is going on, within that first month or two, what are the value adds in addition to the quick wins that are gonna show them they made the right right choice that are really gonna impact their process or give them what it is that they want to show them that they can be comfortable in your system or with your product or with your service?

That's another thing I would certainly consider is how do we start making that deep impact really quickly?

The other thing you're gonna wanna get started with, and this is really the stakeholder that's gonna be responsible for this, is gonna be kinda dependent on, your specific business model. But who should be checking in with people periodically to say, hey. So how are things going? Right? Is Isaac doing well as a strategist?

Are you happy with our offerings? Are we seeing the progress we wanna see? These are the kinds of things that sort of a third party within your team is probably gonna wanna be checking in on because those are the questions that they're going to answer that are gonna tell you how things are going from a really early stage in the relationship.

And then the last thing here, when do I reach out? Is it ninety days? Is it sixty days? Is it thirty days? That's something you're gonna wanna think through as well. And the amount of time that you give yourself is really important because maybe you need more time to prep or maybe you know this is a really quick moving relationship, and I'm probably better off if it's, you know, thirty to forty five days beforehand.

Think about that and sort of try to apply that to your specific use case. But the things that are gonna be universal are, how do I know who I need to give attention to? Is it the end users? Is it the decision maker?

Is it the CEO? Depending on the size of the business that you're working with or the customer that you're working with, on who is involved in that process, know who needs to be kind of patted on the back and, you know, checked in with every once in a while to make sure that they're happy with that product. Then the last question is, how do I gauge the experience of the customer? We've talked through that a little bit with things like NPS and usage data.

I wanna get into this a little bit more with health score. And health score, in my opinion, is one of the best metrics you can use to tell you ahead of time, this is likely to renew, we need to give this more attention, or we really need to put some serious work into this account. There are a couple of different buckets that you can consider when building a health score. I do wanna tell you that the actual contents of the health score are gonna vary, pretty significantly based on what it is you offer, the kind of relationships you have with your clients.

But a few major ideas that you'll wanna think through are, first of all, usage and engagement. How much are they using the product? Are they really adopting it super well?

You know, that kind of usage data plays into the health score, score, which is really an overarching model for all the other data sources that we talked about. Then things like sentiment and financials. Right? We have things like QBRs. Are you finding that they're making really good progress on those, periodic meetings? Are they answering surveys and, you know, two thumbs up, really happy with how things are going?

Then there's the reality of the financials. Right? How do you know about or what do you know about how this company is performing? Are they doing really well?

Are their financials positive? Are they trending in the right direction?

Are they missing out on payments and having to go to collections with your team?

These are just things you'll wanna think through because the reality of the situation is even if somebody loves the product, they need to be able to pay for it in order to keep it. Right? So that needs to be played into renewals as well. Then we have things like, service tickets. Are there positive outcomes? Are there negative outcomes?

Are they all being closed in a timely fashion? That's gonna have to be a part of the health score as well. And last of all, this is really my favorite one, to be honest, is advocacy. So are they giving you references to other potential customers?

Are they writing testimonials for your website? Because if so, that is a really good sign. Right? Not a whole lot of people say this is my favorite restaurant ever.

I'm no never going there again. Right? Doesn't tend to happen too much.

That's a really, really good sign if those things are happening. And then you have similarly, are they participating in the blog or the community posting site that you might have online? Are they participating in a loyalty program? All really good signs that should contribute positively to a health score.

Now, to answer the previous question, we talk about people. And I think this is really gonna vary a lot based on your specific team structure, whether you have a separate customer success division versus sales. And that is why, really, all I can tell you for sure here is that the net new bookings are gonna be handled by the sales team. Right?

That's gonna be pretty consistent. Beyond that, you really need to think through, on your specific case, who should be handling onboarding. Is there an onboarding team? Is it customer success?

It's gonna be a little bit different for everybody. Same thing with cross sell. I know a lot of the time the sales team handles cross sells. Maybe there's an account manager who's responsible for both the customer success side of things and increasing the size of the account? So those are sort of the questions you'll wanna ask yourself when you think through who's gonna be involved in the actual renewal process, the upsell, cross sell, downs, downgrade, situations. And this is a chart that before you get to the point where you're actually having to act on this, you want this filled out ahead of time. You know exactly who to ping when it's a renewal situation or a downgrade situation.

And that really when you take those people and you put them into the processes, feed them the right data, that's how you put this all together to create a strong, efficient, predictable renewal management process.

I've got a quick question for you, Isaac. Yeah. Curious as to how HubSpot takes care of who owns it. Can you create automation for the renewal deals, or do they always go to the company owner? Meaning that if sales closes the deal and the renewal deal gets created, then the renewal deal gets created automatically.

That's a great question. And I would say, if if if the question is basically, can HubSpot assign the deal to, say, like, a customer success rep rather than the sales owner? Yes. Absolutely.

You can customize the workflows to make it so that, for this territory, if it's a renewals deal, we want it to go to this person.

If it's a cross sell, we want it to go back to the salesperson. So hundred percent, those workflows, you can just add in those if then branches, and that will allow you to customize who owns the deal.

Awesome.

Thank you.

Yeah. And perfect timing because we're at q and a. So, if there are any other questions, Colt, Hannah, that I can answer, more than happy to do so.

So far, I think we've covered everything. Hannah and Rashida have been very helpful in the chat. I'm fielding a lot. But if, fielding a lot. But if, any other questions, happy to stick around for a few more minutes and answer those. We've also got, I think, one more slide with just next steps and some other announcements.

See anything else that we can I think oh, wait?

Here we go.

One question about the financial thingy. Is it a cuss thingy is it a custom object? Do you pull data only from HubSpot?

Oh, okay. That's a that's a that's a big question. And the short answer is you're gonna want to include the, you're gonna want to include whatever it is your your your book it could be bookkeeping, excuse me, software is there.

That's gonna need to be pulled in. The reality is I wish I could give you a straightforward answer to that, but, that is why it's gonna have to be a separate conversation is there's a lot of intricacies and how you wanna connect that into HubSpot, what needs to be pulled in, how to organize the data. So short answer is yes.

You will want to include other things there, but the data ultimately will live in HubSpot.

I hope that I hope that helps.

And, one other question. Do we have any examples on how to display this in reports?

This being the, financial information?

I think so. David, can you, add a little more detail at what example exactly are you looking for?

If the if the question is related to the, to the financials question, it is a little tricky in terms of coordinating that just in a you could say, like, a chart in HubSpot. I would recommend that, you start to think through that as a table because there's a lot of data you're gonna want represented there. So the financial information is gonna be eventually, represented in HubSpot in a table. You're gonna want it month over month.

And that screenshot that we have will go out with the slides today. So that can serve as like a reference point. But in terms of actually putting that together, yeah, that's that that is a a conversation that we'll be we'll be diving into in in more depth.

Let's see.

K. Looks like we got another question. So if you split renewals by a group being automated, any other group being handled by a sales rep, would you still advise that all deals get created?

So if I understand the question, basically, we're wondering, do we want to automatically still generate a deal or not generate a deal every time the first deal closes if it is a renewal?

I would say absolutely yes. And the reality is you want that deal prepped with that information ahead of time as much as possible. Because when that renewal window does come up, it's just so much easier for your team if instead of having to say, alright. Let's go back. We'll generate the deal. We'll try to pull this information from all the emails that we've had with them in the meantime.

I would recommend that even if we're doing that manually, you should still create that deal as soon as it is as soon as the previous one is closed.

Great. Okay.

So just a couple of things. It sounds like there is definitely an appetite for the financials conversation, which is great because we are gonna be doing, a net revenue retention, which is the fancy title for the financial side of things, in November. So, Colt and I will be, working on that in the meantime, but look out for that, for information about that webinar. It is probably going to be, a two part series, but we'll get back to you all with more information on that. And we can really dig into how do we wanna organize our data on HubSpot, what other sources do we need to include, and then how do we, represent that at the end through reporting. So that should be a really good conversation.

Yeah. And word on the street is Shaddab will be joining that one as well. So Yes.

He'll provide a lot more value than me.

And me. Probably probably both of us combined. You know? He's the he's the wiz there, so we're gonna we're gonna defer to him. But it'll be a really good conversation.

Definitely recommend looking out for that. And then one more thing we wanna talk through is if this conversation has sort of made you think, alright. I would love for someone to just have a second set of eyes on my HubSpot instance. Maybe it's about the retention management and renewals. Maybe it's about something else entirely.

We are currently doing free HubSpot assessments where one of our solutions engineers will take a look at the problems that you're having. They'll audit your HubSpot, and they'll come back to you with some ideas. That's something that we're doing sort of for a limited time. So if you are interested in that, that will go out with the slides and this recording in an email that's gonna be going out later today.

Yeah. Absolutely.

Alright. So I'm gonna look out for questions one more time. Looks like we are good to go. Thank you all so much for joining today. This was really fun for us and really hope to see you in the in the webinar series that we'll be doing in the future here.

Yeah. Absolutely. Isaac, thanks. I think this was really helpful. And just, judging by the comments, I think people got some real value out of it. So great work.

Glad to hear it. Alright, y'all. Have a great rest of your Thursday and a wonderful weekend.

Cool. See you later.