• What should a modern B2B tool stack look like?
• How HubSpot can consolidate your tool stack
• Live walkthrough of lifecycle stages in HubSpot

The Tool (Tech) Stack

Having know-how is important.  If a carpenter is going to build a table, it is essential that he knows the proper steps and is able to identify the type of wood needed for the job.  To actually construct the table, though, tools are also needed.  A carpenter could have a perfect plan in place and be a master of his craft, but without tools, the table cannot be built.  

Similarly, a company can have a firm grasp of their Business Model and corresponding GTM motions, know where they are on the Growth Model, and understand the Data and Math Models inside out.  However, without tools, the revenue engine framework cannot be built.  The tool/tech stack, which sits squarely on top of the Math Model, makes everything work.   

The Modern B2B Tool Stack

Because tool stacks are such an integral part of the revenue engine, many companies end up overspending here.  To avoid this, it can be helpful to think through the process of how a tool stack should be assembled.

4 Categories of Tools

• Platforms 

• Every company today is a tech company; you cannot survive, or even compete, in the modern business world if you do not run on a digital platform  
• These platforms include:
  • CRM (customer relationship management)
  • MAP (marketing automation platform)
  • CMS (content management system) 
• Unless you’re running a lemonade stand, these are non-negotiables       

• Integrated Apps

  • These are apps that support the platforms above  
  • Examples:  
    • Proposals
    • CPQ (configure/price/quote) 
    • Contact enrichments (such as ZoomInfo or Clearbit)  
  • Basically, these are other platforms that integrate with your systems, but you're still touching the data in your core platforms     

• Stand Alone 

  • These do not integrate with your core apps
  • Examples:  
    • Social media scheduling
    • Scheduling apps
    • SEPs (Sales Engagement Platforms)
      • In certain situations, SEPs can be considered a core platform

• 3rd Party Services

  • Examples:  
    • Call centers
    • Someone doing outbound prospecting with the purpose of securing meetings
    • An agency doing inbound 
    • RevOps consultant who maps out all of this information for you

Rules to Live (and Die) By

Some rules are meant to be broken.  These are not those rules.  When it comes to your tool stack/platforms, there are certain actions and beliefs that can cause them to either work for you or against you.  Hint:  you want the former.

Rule #1:  Adoption is your true north.  Without adoption, your process means nothing; without adoption, your tools mean nothing; without adoption, you have nothing.  Adoption is the greatest good, and, to be done well, it must be thought about continuously and at all points by someone within your organization. 

Rule #2:  Less databases=good.  Why?  Because managing databases becomes exponentially more difficult as you add more.  (note:  SaaS and database mean the same thing)

Rule #3:  No Integration is not an option.  

• No integration=No hypothesis, no monitoring, no measuring, no iterating, no changing  
• No integration=No ability to see how conversion ratios are affected
• No integration=No revenue operations 

Rule #4:  If it does not fit, get rid of it.  When choosing a SaaS product (application), you. need to consider how it will help affect and fit within your data model.  This, in turn, will enable you to talk about ROI.  When an application can assist you in accurately predicting conversion ratios, it becomes very easy to justify spending money on it.    

The Big 5

Every modern B2B company is going to have the following five (if you don't, you should):

• CMS (Contact Management System)
  • Quite simply, your website
  • Platform where you manage the content on your website
    • Examples:  HubSpot, WordPress, Webflow
• CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
  • Without this, you’re not doing RevOps (or you’re doing it extremely poorly)
    • Excel ain't gonna cut it
    • Examples:  HubSpot, Salesforce, Dynamics 365, Pipedrive
• MAP (marketing Automation Platform)
  • This is what HubSpot began as
    • Examples:  HubSpot, Salesforce Pardot, Marketo
• Ticketing/Service
  • A service platform to track and respond to customer issues
    • Service portals/Helpdesk
    • Manage contracts, upsells, renewals
    • Examples:  HubSpot, Zendesk, Freshdesk
• ERP (EnterPrise Resource Planning)/Billing
  • Your system for revenue recognition and billing people
    • Account receivables, account payables
    • This is where your finance team lives and breathes
    • Examples:  QuickBooks, NetSuite, Infor

Why HubSpot?

An examination of the above lists and examples should make one thing glaringly obvious:  HubSpot is awesome and it does a lot of stuff!  Instead of, for example, using Webflow for your CMS, Salesforce for your CRM, Marketo for your MAP, and Freshdesk for your Ticketing/Service, you could just use HubSpot.  Period.  

As obvious as this may seem, many companies utilize the varied tool stack just described.  Pro tip:  make your tool stack as uncomplicated as possible.  

Tools Needs For each GTM Motion 

(note:  not all-inclusive; only for revenue teams)

Marketing

• Must haves
  • MAP
  • CMS
• Inbound (may or may not exist)
  • Must have platform for SEO 
    • Semrush is a good option
  • Must have a blog as your CMS platform
  • Must have a way to make landing pages 
    • HubSpot is a good option
  • Must have a chat bot
  • Must have webinars
• Prospecting
  • Need a tool that can do sequences
  • Need a database where you can pull contacts from to make lists
  • Need email validation 
    • To prevent sending to bad email addresses and hurting email deliverability
  • Need an IP address
• ABM
  • Need 3rd party intent
  • Need email signature 
    • So you can change your email based on who you’re talking about and the next event you’re going to
  • Need direct mail
  • Need to go to and start hosting events
• Target
  • Gifting
  • Events
  • Ads

Sales

• Must haves
  • CRM
• PLG
  • Need product data and reverse ETL (extract,transform,load) 
    • Hightouch, Syncari are good options
• 1 Stage
  • Need an inbound calling system
  • Need CI (conversational intelligence)
• 2 Stage
  • Need sequences
  • Need a dialer to be able to call outbound to
  • Need calendar and scheduling links
  • Need digital signatures
• Field Sales
  • Need CPQ and complex deal hubs
  • Need ways to make proposals and customize proposals
• Named Accounts
  • Need proposals
  • Need to start responding to RFPs

CS

• Must haves
  • Ticketing system (or how you’re capturing all communication)
• Community
  • Must have a knowledge base
    • Platform where people can “self-serve” and fix own problems/issues
  • Must have a chat feature inside and outside the application itself
• Helpdesk
  • Must have service portals (someone can log in and submit a ticket)
  • Must have chat
• Account Management (Volume,Segment,Named)
  • Must have NPS scores
  • Must have CSAT
  • Must have surveys

General Support

• Must have
  • Data quality engine
    • Syncari or OpsHub in HubSpot are good options
• Database Management
  • Nocode automation
• Reporting
  • Visualization

How to Consolidate your Toolstack

Your toolstack needs to be as integrated and cohesive as possible so that you can execute and think through your data model.  This, in turn, will help you do RevOps at a high level.  In order to accomplish this, you need to have the least amount of tools possible.  Here’s why: 

1. Doing RevOps well involves thinking through the ability to measure your data.  
2. The ability to measure your data is predicated on the data being accurate.  
3. The key to having accurate data is having less databases to manage (databases=tools) so that you can better apply science to the process.  

Basic Tool Stack for a 2-Stage Company

Marketing 

• MAP and CMS 
• Integrated apps 
  • Lead scoring mechanism
  • A way to make social posts and a scheduler
  • Website chat
  • Campaign attribution 
    • So that you can see how your marketing activities are affecting closed won revenue
  • Database enrichment (ability to create lists and enrich it)
  • Phone dialer. 

Sales

• SEP and CRM
• Integrated apps
  • CPQ mechanism
  • Call recording
  • A way to do digital signatures
  • A way to create proposals
  • Ability to track commissions
  • Calendar service for meetings    

CS

• Ticketing/billing/ERP systems
• Integrated apps 
  • Surveys
  • Contract management system
  • Way to look at renewals/upsells/crossells      

Again, this is a basic tool stack for a modern B2B 2-Stage company (revenue team ONLY).  It is comprised of 20 apps.  20.  20!  For a majority of companies, these are almost all individual, different tools.  It doesn’t have to be this way (nor should it be this way).   

How to Reduce Your Number of Apps

Put all of the following on the SAME platform:  MAP, CMS, SEP, CRM, ticketing/service, surveys, phone dialer, CPQ, contract management, campaign attribution, call recording, renewal/upsell/cross sell management. Social, website chat, digital signature, lead scoring, and calendar service.

All of the above tools can be accessed via HubSpot, reducing your apps down to 5 from the original 20.  That’s the magic of HubSpot.  That's how you do RevOps better than your competitors.  

RevOps Fundamentals (Measurement):  The Cherry on Top!  

The very top of the Revenue Engine Framework, RevOps Fundamentals (measurement), sits on top of the tool/tech stack and includes things such as methodologies, lifecycle, lead scoring, and sales process to name a few.  This final addition to the framework is essential because it answers the question, “how do we measure?”  

More specifically, it answers “how do we apply and start measuring inside our CRM?”  These questions are vital to a company’s success because if you can't measure, you can’t iterate; if you can’t iterate, you can’t grow; if you can’t grow, your business will fail.      

Doing RevOps Inside HubSpot CRM with Lifecycle Stages

Describing how a revenue engine framework is built and going in-depth on the various models is a worthwhile and necessary exercise.  However, actually taking the data model and all the other pieces of information and learning how to do it inside HubSpot is where you can go from the theoretical to actually learning how to do RevOps!

The following walkthrough procedures and demonstrations are based upon the following parameters:

• Subscription business model with NRR and MRR
• Sales GTM - 2 Stage
• Marketing GTM - Inbound
• CS Motion - Helpdesk
• Data Model - Bowtie

What are Lifecycle Stages?

First things, first:  what are lifecycle stages?  The term “lifecycle stage” is a standard HubSpot property designed to correlate to the phases of your customer journey.  Put simply:  every single phase in the bowtie model is a lifecycle stage for the customer.  It is also important understand the following key elements of the lifecycle stage set-up in HubSpot:

1. For implementation to be successful, your data model (and accompanying definitions) must be clearly set up.
2. Contacts cannot move backward in the lifecycle stage.  Why?  Because this is meant to represent the furthest point that a contact has gone within a customer journey.  Even if a contact technically goes backward (e.g. closed lost opportunity), they cannot be moved in such a way inside HubSpot.  If they are moved backward, the conversion rates will be inaccurate.      
3. You cannot skip stages.  If you do, contacts who have skipped will not be pulled into the conversion reports.  (note:  it is very easy to accidentally force contacts to skip stages)
4. All stage changes must contain a timestamp.  (i.e. the first day that a contact moves into the new lifecycle stage the date is timestamped)   

New Functionality in Beta for HubSpot

There are a few features in HubSpot that are in the beta phase right now, and although not widely available at this time, they should be over the next few quarters:

1. Under the contacts object, there is a new lifecycle stage tab where you can set up automation to sync stages based on things such as Contacts Created, Deal Created, or Deal as Won.  This assists in automating customers and moving people through the customer journey. (note:  it is not recommended that you turn this on for when a deal is created or when a deal is won)    
2. New lifecycle stages can be added and moved around.  After “Customer/Commit”, there are now the stages of “Live”, “MRR”, and “LTV”.  Prior to this beta program, it was not possible to add custom lifecycle stages past “Customer”.   

How Lifecycle Stages Fit in the 2-Stage Data Model

The lifecycle stages (in order) are:  Prospect (default status here is Lead), MQL, SQL, SAL, Customer, Live, MRR, LTV.  Although there are eight stages here, 99.9% of businesses only use five of them, choosing to stop at Customer.  This practice paints customers with a very broad brush.  

The problem with this method is that not all customers are the same, as 80% of revenue tends to come from your top 20% of customers.  The Bowtie Model can be used to reflect differences such as this by tracking beyond the Customer stage with Live, MRR, and LTV to further segment the best customers that are the most profitable.  Tracking customers in these additional stages brings the CS team into picture.  

The output, or data produced by this model, are the conversion rates between each step, average time between each step, and volume within a time period of each step.

Reporting Example

One of the benefits of using HubSpot to accurately track customer lifecycle stages is the ability to see a percentage breakdown of how contacts are moving through the process.  Without accurate and complete tracking through the entire process, the conversion rate will show as 0% for each stage, leaving the entire list of contacts in the Prospect/Lead stage.  This would be the case, if for example, a contact skipped a stage.  A contact must go through each stage in order, one-by-one, to have a proper conversion rate.

In contrast, when the proper steps are implemented, there are proper conversion rates between each stage.  The outcome is that you are able to see the percentage of contacts that progressed from one stage to the next, with each assigned a percentage.  One area of note is that the LTV stage will typically have a very low percentage because customers must be in the model for roughly a year or two for that stage to even be an option.  

Roadblocks to Implementing Lifecycle Stages in CRMs

Every company wants their conversion reports and time reports to be correct, but almost every company does it wrong…why?  The short answer is that it’s just really difficult to do well.  Here are some common problems and mistakes:

1.   If a contact skips a stage, which is very easy to do accidentally, it will not be in the funnel report.  This is because if a contact never went to a certain stage, there is no timestamp and therefore it cannot be used in a conversion report.
2.   If a contact misses the list trigger, causing it to not be automatically added to the list, it will not be in the funnel report. 
3.   If you choose to use the automated triggers from HubSpot, but don’t have a high level understanding of how it works, it will result in contacts skipping stages and, subsequently, not being in the funnel report. 
4.   Once you move a stage forward, you cannot move backward (one-way street).  Example:  if a contact accidentally skips a stage, you cannot simply automate it back.  Although resetting back to zero is an option, you overwrite your timestamp dates and your average time reporting numbers will not be correct. 
5.   There are helpful checkboxes in HubSpot to help in syncing stages, but without a deep understanding of their function you will end up causing a lot of contacts to skip.  This will result in data errors.     

What is Needed to Complete an Accurate Lifecycle Stage in CRMs?

Upfront, there are a few key elements that must be in place before lifecycle stages can accurately be tracked.  To begin, it is important that all lifecycle stages are clearly defined for every part of your customer journey.  

When it comes to actually transitioning a contact from one stage to the next, you do not want this to be manually adjusted by sales reps or anyone on your team.  Instead, you want there to be triggers which automatically push contacts through these lifecycle stages based on a clear and standardized process.  It is also important to understand the amount of work required to have this system function properly, which is approximately nineteen lists and roughly fifteen workflows.  But, the dashboards and the reports are endless.     

Overview of Steps to Complete

1. Define lifecycle stages based on customer journey
2. Define triggers
3. Confirm process aligns to triggers
4. Build lists
5. Build workflows
6. Resetting lifecycle stages for incorrect contacts
7. Turn on inclusion workflows to get contacts in new, correct stages
8. Build your funnel reports
9. Monitor constantly to make sure flow is working

Note:  these steps are very difficult to complete and require an in-depth knowledge of RevOps.  You must understand how the entire customer journey connects together from the prospect/lead phase all the way to when a customer is renewing on a yearly basis.  An integral part of this is the alignment of the sales, marketing, and CS teams. 

Demo of Lists:  Lifecycle Stage Tab

In HubSpot:  Settings—>Data management—>Objects—>Contacts…there is a new “Lifecycle Stage” tab (currently in beta, will be officially rolled out in the future).  The benefit of this tab is the option to automate the following:  sync lifecycle stages, set lifecycle stage when a contact or company is created, set lifecycle stage when a deal is created, and set lifecycle stage when a deal is won.  

Depending on your business, it may be right to have all or only some of these checked.  For example, you may choose to have some of it turned off if you want to set when contacts automatically get moved to the stage instead of having the system do it.    

Further down the page is where you can configure the various stage names.  These new functionalities add tremendous value to the CRM.  Here, stage names can be:

• Renamed (e.g. changing Opportunity to SAL)
• Dragged and dropped to a different stage  
  • The order matters because this is how conversion reports are built
• Added (e.g. Evangelist)

Demo of Lists:  Contact Record

Trigger Examples

Every business is different, but here are some examples of what would cause (“trigger”) a contact to move from one lifecycle stage to the next:

• Lead/Prospect
  • Targeted list upload
  • Targeted outbound list
  • Opens a few newsletters
• MQL
  • Form submission
  • Lead scoring threshold
  • Event contact/webinar attendee
• SQL
  • Demo request on your website
  • Discovery meeting booked
  • Conversation at event
• SAL/Opportunity
  • If a contact is associated to a deal, the deal has been created
• Customer/Commit
  • Contact is associated to a closed won deal
• Live
  • Customer has completed kickoff call and Revenue Engine Diagnostic
    • Paid one-time fee; begun onboarding
• MRR
  • Customer cross-sold from NRR to MRR
  • Customer completes first term
• LTV
  • Customer is in the second (or future) term and has no specific contract end date  
  • Customer renewal, upsells, or crossells

Live, MRR, and LTV are new categories that not many companies track, but it is a way to further segment your customers further down the customer journey.

Demo of Lists:  Inclusion Lists

Demo of Lists:  Reset Lists

Demo of Workflows (step 1):  Lifecycle Stage Reset 

Demo of Workflows (step 2): How to Avoid Skipping Lifecycle Stages with Correct Bucketing and Timestamping

Demo of Reporting

Q: How does the role of RevOps relate to product managers and data product managers?

A: What is the growth mechanism of a PLG motion? The product. So what is a product manager doing? They are having to think about the data that is signaling sign ups to trials, PPLs to opportunities, and they are helping think through how to affect the conversion ratios so that we can end up with more end users that are activated and on the right side of the funnel renewing and becoming brand ambassadors. So yes, product managers and data product managers are core competency inside the larger science of revenue operations that fit squarely in understanding how the data mixes, how you segment it, doing data standardization, and there’s a whole host of things that come after that.

Q: If your company is working with multiple GTM motions from a CRM perspective to track conversions separately, do you recommend using a separate pipeline for each of these?

A: This is a large debate in CRM communities. Another debate is over whether you should have a lead object or a contact object or track everything in contacts. If you go into a Salesforce ecosystem, they come out of the box with a lead object. HubSpot days we don’t have lead objects, we only track the contact level. There are a lot of enterprise businesses that choose to have separate CRMs, literally separate instances where separate teams work, because of this data collection. If you can afford it, I recommend you have separate CRMs if you’re different GTM motions. That is how you’re going to be able to set these up and have conversion ratios is having separate CRMs. But how do you standardize on the back end? There is a whole genre of net new tool stacks called RevOps enablement platforms, like Syncari, that help you then think about going back and keeping all that data together. You have to understand entity relational databases intimately and you can speak data as a core competency.

Q: What if we can’t do separate CRMs? (related to answer of last question)

A: You have to make multiple customer life cycles and totally different triggers and it’s going to get complicated. You’re going to have to give up some data integrity and likely just have everyone in the same journey and you’re going to have to segment it by product type. So there are some segmentations you would do. Example: if you have 2 Stage in PLG, you could technically use prospect email at SQL and then segment by the product they’re purchasing instead of having separate CRMs.

Q: Should you firstly look at these models and especially manage your proper reporting of the metrics data model before you start doing a project?

A: Yes, yes! That is the correct summary. At RevPartners we ask, “can you tell me with complete confidence that you have every record in your CRM in the correct life cycle stage?” That is the very basis of all science, being able to measure. If you can’t measure, you can't iterate and you can’t prove hypotheses.

Q: Should lifecycles be tracked in the same pipeline as a sale, or should they have a new pipeline?

A: We’ll go over exactly how to do life cycles today and Brian will go through it. It will be a step-by step guide with visuals inside of HubSpot.

Q: Can one use the same HubSot instance with ring-fence ownership based on teams for a separate CRM?

A: Yes, you could do permission-based and separate it. The issue isn't the permission base, the issue is you need to have segmentation so that, for example, if you wanted to see all MQLs for this product line and do conversion ratios and you’re going to have to have OpsHub to do this because you’re going to have to create separate data models, which is an enterprise level OpsHub.

Q: Our product is stand alone, however we also offer an API for customers to integrate currently with their dashboard. Does this make us a hybrid between integrated app and stand alone?

A: Yes. What makes integrated app is if you have an app that has been ordained by Salesforce by HubSpot, by Pipedrive as an official app and if you just have open APIs I would still call that a stand alone because to have open APIs means whoever you’re working with is now still managing their database. They have to send it in, they have to transform that data and they have to submit it in, so it is not integrated, it's a mix between the two. I would say it leans further to stand alone.

Q: Can you expand on what you mean by less databases? Data warehouse is a big thing at the moment (e.g. snowflake)

A: Every SaaS tool you use is a database; not just your aws server, not just snowflake, not just your SQL database/SQL server. Every single SaaS application you have is a database. When I say have less databases I mean have less tools, consolidate your tool stack. It does not mean have less snowflake instances.

Q: When should we add or how do we know to add a data warehouse or a CDP (common database platform) to our tech stack?

A: So CDPs, there’s things like Segment, you’ve heard about them. When you have multiple GTM motions inside your database there are different triggers: Are you doing PLG and are you doing them in separate CRMs? If you, you have that CDP and they’re usually used when there’s a product. So if you are doing PLG and you have a product where people are living it and they’re doing actions, you need RevOps enablement platforms (instead of saying CDPs) because they are allowing us to do this measurement outside of a CRM and pushing it back so we can have our measurements (volume, conversion, time).

Q: What tech stack should be your master platform where you build around the tech stack?

A: Traditionally, this is your CRM. So whatever CRM it is, then that’s what you’re building everything off of. So Microsoft Dynamics and HubSpot or Salesforce, and then you build everything else off of it. So when you think about your weapons of choice you need to get really good in the ecosystem of choice.

Q: What do you do for data integrity, data validation, deduping?

A: OpsHub is a really good way of doing that for data integrity. There’s also a tool called InCycle that we’ve used in the past that you connect to your database, and it will run, you put in rules and it will dedupe or transform or capitalize. OpsHub does that same function.

Q: Do RevOps and data analysis converge? If so, where?

A: RevOps is the empirical analysis and science of generating revenue, which inherently means you’re doing data analysis and understanding it. There is no convergence, they’re the same thing. You can’t actually think about revenue operations and not be doing data analysis.

Q: If you’re tracking long-term customer values, should a CRM not be considered mandatory for customer service as well?

A: When you’re thinking about your LTV and these SaaS metrics, your ERP has all your billing. So because CRMs are not run well, because it’s the sales team and you’re looking at bookings inside a CRM, we usually don’t pull in our ERP information. What happens is your CS team actually uses the ERP as your source of truth and so you can get all your bookings and you can get all your contract data from there, pushes it in and so that’s where the disconnect occurs. Preferably, you want your sales, marketing, and CS teams on the same system looking at the same data and you’re pulling in that ERP information. So you’re looking at the customer, not the billing information worth pushing out.

Q: How would you integrate an outbound prospecting motion with HubSpot’s terms of service only allowing contacts to be brought into the system with prior commission?

A: This happens daily. I work with so many customers that have a follow.io as a database, or zoominfo, and you say these people are my ICPs, they’re my personals, they pull them into the database, you then route them to the correct SDR team and then they use sequences to prospect into them. That's how you get around it, you just do it anyway. A lot of people do it, for better or for worse. The other way to get around it is instead of using HubSpot, you can use Salesloft which is a specific sales engagement platform that doesn’t have that at all. Its entire life is built around helping SDR’s do multi-channel sequences and tracking those. They are better than HubSpot sequences, however you have just introduced another database, so I actually prefer to do all sequences inside HubSpot if possible.

Q: Why can't a contact move backwards (in HubSpot CRM lifecycle stages) and what does it do to the data model if they do? If you can’t move backwards, how do you create segmentation?

A: If you look down at the bottom, these are all the lifecycle stages all on the customer journey in the bowtie model. These are meant to articulate the furthest along the customer journey that someone’s been to. You can’t move backwards because it’s a one-way street and you can't do a conversion rate if you just keep moving things forwards and backwards. So it messes up the conversion rates, it totally changes the time between each stage and you are unable to track the volume of these as well if you keep going back and forth willy-nilly based on this. Nonlinear things are tracked on lead status.