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Speaker 1: (00:08)
Hello, and welcome to Elevate a podcast on Rev ops, brought to you by APT Sud today. Uh, I'm your host, Connor Jeffers, ABT SUD today ceo. And today we are very excited to have with us Ryan Finklestein, the Rev Ops team lead at Aptitude eight. Ryan, thanks so much for joining us today.

Speaker 2: (00:24)
Thanks for having me. Great. Of course.

Speaker 1: (00:26)
Uh, so today we're gonna talk a little bit about Salesforce verse HubSpot as a CRM in 2021. But before we jump into it, uh, Ryan, can you share with us a little bit on professional experience prior to joining us at a eight, and then a little bit on, uh, what you sort of focus on with, with you and your team in your role today?

Speaker 2: (00:45)
Yeah, absolutely. So my background is in sales ops and rev ops with a a dash of of sales, uh, having worked mostly in the, in the SaaS world, uh, along with a little bit of consulting prior, spent quite a bit of time working with both platforms that we're gonna talk about today. Uh, HubSpot and Salesforce leading, uh, I don't know, dozens, let's say of of implementations across both. And today, I, uh, I manage the, the Rev ops team, uh, which mostly does HubSpot and Salesforce implementations, along with, uh, larger consulting, uh, projects, along with, uh, some larger integrations. We work with SaaS companies, uh, product manufacturers, and a whole host of other businesses. Uh, and our ultimate goal is to help orgs connect all their systems. And usually it involves one of the two platforms we're gonna talk about today. So for sure, pretty excited about this. And

Speaker 1: (01:40)
I think for, for folks listening, and Ryan and I have been looking forward to this for a little while as well, uh, for folks listening. So we're gonna primarily on, uh, both platforms in, in 2021. So both Ryan and myself, uh, started our careers working entirely on Salesforce long before HubSpot as a CRM platform existed. And, and host I was sort of the blogging and email tool, uh, as we knew it 10 years ago, uh, has changed recently. And I think for maybe a starting point is from, from your perspective, Ryan, like what, what's the, the epochs of sort of HubSpot as a platform? Like what, when did HubSpot become like, Hey, we have a legitimate CR r m and not just like a whole bunch of contact records?

Speaker 2: (02:20)
I'd say pretty recently. I, I think, I think, uh, they first released their free version 14 or 15 something. I mean, something

Speaker 1: (02:30)
Years ago. Yeah,

Speaker 2: (02:31)
It's four five, take a free version. And to, to whatever extent it was a crm, I think really was just, uh, exactly what was already there to a small extent with, with, uh, the marketing hub. Um, but very quickly, I mean, they, they've clearly invested a lot of time and money and energy and thought into, into developing this. And I think that the big transformation was releasing their, their sales hub tools. So things like sequences and connecting your calendar. I, I think, think the HubSpot, uh, calendar, the HubSpot meeting tool is arguably the, the best one that I, I know I've used. Um, so I think that really changed the, the game and people started thinking about, hey, actually use this, uh, you know, organizations that are slightly larger than a one person shop could use this for, uh, for their business operations. But, but they've really come on very strong in the last year or two.

Speaker 1: (03:22)
Yeah, no, I totally agree. So the angle that hub side has sort of come at this from is building tools for that end user and sort of doing that like product led experience of how can we get individual sales reps, or how can we get individual managers to go and use this tool so that their teams can do their jobs easier, do their jobs. But I think like the, the meetings tool of like, oh, now I can just like, send someone a link and that's great. And that's, I, I honestly, the speed with which things are getting commodified is increased dramatically, right? But like that, that was a significant, uh, differentiator 18 months ago, even two years ago. And I feel like now everyone has something, uh, but tools like that to be able to allow for those people to do their jobs a little bit easier, and that being sort of their way in, which I think from a persona type of angle, right, you have those individual sales reps that are loving the tool, uh, obviously lagging behind a little bit for the ops folks, but that's changed a lot in the last year too, right?

Speaker 2: (04:22)
Yeah, tremendously. And, and just wanna touch on what you were just saying, it's not a conversation that I find myself having internally and externally all the time. HubSpot clearly is focused on, on the end user, and I think even if you go back to when they were just, uh, a marketing product weren't necessarily the most feature packed product, I mean, usually had pretty much everything you need. There were, you know, a couple products that maybe can do a little bit more, but their, their mindset has really always been, it needs to be usable, uh, to, you know, anyone that can actually come on here. So the products are designed in incredibly intuitive fashion, and I think sometimes, uh, additional, uh, features are withheld or delivered very slowly just so they don't affect the user experience. It's a, it's a totally different, um, totally different delivery than Salesforce, which is the other one we're gonna talk about today, which is, let's get everything in here, uh, and make it, uh, much more operational focused tool rather than a user focused tool.

Speaker 1: (05:21)
I think there's also an element, right? That, that Salesforce side is like, build whatever you want, but I think the big piece there is like build is the operative word. Uh, yeah. And I think we always saw, and I remember, uh, and, and we as an organization, right? I mean, we started out doing Salesforce builds, and then our, our sort of foray into HubSpot was as a marketing product. We plugged in, uh, and sort of we growth of Hub said as a CRM platform and doing a lot more work there. But I remember even in the early days, and it still happens today, that we see people who either we sold Salesforce too, or they bought Salesforce, and now they're like, wait, I need to pay an implementation partner, like 30, 40, 50, a hundred, 250,000, millions of dollars, depending on the size of your company to actually make it usable. But like, the operative word there is really built, right? Like when you log into Salesforce on day one, you can't do much.

Speaker 2: (06:09)
Nope. It's like, here, here's a plate and here's some meat and some vegetables, and you could make anything you want. So some people I think that, that have a ton of experience and come into, come into that saying, okay, I know exactly what I need. I want to be able to come and shape whatever I want, uh, and, and make it and potentially more rigid, but I know exactly where I want to go. I think there's a lot of benefits to that. But on the other hand, HubSpot, and again, I think is where that user focus really shines, is that they're gonna come in and say, here's exactly how you should actually run your crm. And you're gonna have a little bit less, you know, flexibility there, but it's built so that everything will flow nicely. One of the big pitfalls, and I think there's a lot of really great things that Salesforce does, but definitely the biggest pitfall is Salesforce. No matter how much you tune it up, it will never, ever come close to usability versus HubSpot. Um, I think we'll talk more about, I that's definitely true, the opposite side of that argument, but

Speaker 1: (07:04)
Totally, totally. Yeah. And I think it, it's both ways, but I think the thing that is, if so, to, we'll, we'll give HubSpot sort of like a win in the usability category. And for anyone who, uh, is unsure, you can set up a trial on, on their site, go log in, and, and within like 30 minutes, you'll be able to figure out like, oh, cool, I can send emails from here and I can send calendar invite. Like, I can actually go and, and configure this and make it do what I want. If you set up a Salesforce trial, uh, and we, Ryan and I both love Salesforce, we'll, we'll talk extensively about what it does really well, but, uh, there's a way that within, you know, a day, you're gonna be able to do most of those things, uh, if any of them both, because Salesforce either doesn't have that end user, like tooling functionality, and you're looking at adding on other products, but also just in terms of complexity. So I, I want to talk a little bit about, if we give a hub side sort of a solid win in the usability section, wh where do you see the, wh where does HubSpot get weak, right? So does that over focus on the end user sales tool compromise on, uh, sort of that operator or, or the operations folks? And then how do you think that that's either has changed recently or, or where do you see that going based off where it is right now?

Speaker 2: (08:17)
It's definitely changed, but I, I would say without a doubt, from, uh, as a person who spent, uh, who spent time in, in an ops role, uh, and in sales roles and, and being at a management role, Salesforce wins hands down today and probably for the next, you know, couple of years. Uh, I think HubSpot's making really big inroads, uh, on that front. So they're, they're definitely making a play at it. The interesting thing I think with HubSpot right now is, is that they are, they're stuck in kind of a, not stuck, but they're, they're in a interesting place. They're, they're trying to go market cater more to operations, um, looking at bigger organizations, but they've been really successful, which is also what gets me excited. They've been always really successful at like delivering a product saying, here's some customization, but like, we know what you need and here it is, and you don't really need anything else, right? We're gonna give you exactly what you need, uh, and you're not gonna think about it. Uh, and I think that that's sort of at odds, uh, from an operational standpoint because there's so many types of businesses, uh, out there, and so many people need to do different things. They have different apps they need to integrate. But I, I think releasing Operations Hub, uh, which was this, this year

Speaker 1: (09:28)
Operations, so operations hub of this year, and I think the two things this year,

Speaker 2: (09:32)
Was it huge, huge change

Speaker 1: (09:33)
Year is crazy, right? I mean, so yeah, for last year at Inbound, they launched custom objects more generally. Uh, you have, you can build whatever, and that, like, that was huge. We talked, it's huge. If you're, if you're new to our content, then you know, we have , we have infinite articles on why we that's awesome. Uh, but you can sort of customize the data model to what you needed to do. But I think the operation sub piece is key too, because now you can actually write code. So instead of, like, to your point, HubSpot says, you show up and they say thing that we think that you need. And up until this year, you had, uh, if you were like, Hey, hubs, I actually need something else, they'd be like, oh, that's crazy. You should miss submit a feature request. Like, maybe we'll build it one day. Uh, and now you can code it, you can build whatever you want. And we're seeing I, across our team, and I think in the market in general, people building really, really impressive, uh, on top of it. Because you can now expand it the same way as sort of you might do in Salesforce with some custom functionality as well.

Speaker 2: (10:28)
Exactly. And your users can do it. I mean, so you can have someone who's technical come in and write some code to do certain things, but you're still leveraging HubSpots, uh, maybe slightly less functionality, but from a user, uh, standpoint, much more user friendly workflows and those types of things to go in and actually build, build what they need. But you can still communicate, uh, with your apps, you know, someone closes a a deal, it kicks off, creates an account in an app, and all of that's possible now and HubSpot, that wasn't possible, uh, prior to that. Um, so

Speaker 1: (10:57)
Where do you, where do you see

Speaker 2: (10:58)
Salesforce changing,

Speaker 1: (10:59)
Excelling right now? So

Speaker 2: (11:01)
If you're like, I was just gonna say that,

Speaker 1: (11:02)
Go

Speaker 2: (11:03)
For it. Yeah, the gap, uh, Salesforce still excels, where, where HubSpot has a, has a big gap. And I think it's from an operational standpoint, uh, one operational standpoint. So the ability to maybe lock down the org isn't the best way to put it, but to control

Speaker 1: (11:19)
Like, permissions, those like

Speaker 2: (11:21)
Data, yeah, permissions, uh, uh, permissions. And also, um, consistency as well. So having, having things like validation rules and those types of things, not, uh, to, to govern the process, I think really makes a huge difference to keep data cleaner. Not necessarily totally clean, but that certainly helps. I think there's a, there's a little bit of a, the other side of too much of that obviously can create a bad user experience, but

Speaker 1: (11:48)
Anyone who's ever met in a Salesforce org knows the dreaded like red error message, you know, I have access to see, to do this field.

Speaker 2: (11:56)
Exactly. So I, I think that there's, look that's just poor implement, or not poor, but that's just the struggle with implementation sometimes. But I, I think by and large, the ability to control permissions and Salesforce's ability to, to do all of that is vastly superior and not even close to, to what HubSpot can do today. And then I think the really, the, the other major thing, which I think HubSpot is trying to get there, but is the platform, right? So the, the, the exposure of parts of Salesforce to developers, consultants, uh, and all of those types of things that you can build. I mean, really anything, Salesforce is a, a totally different animal when it comes to their, their platform and building entire apps on Salesforce that can do, you know, virtually anything, I think gives, it gives a lot of power to, to kind of bring everything together. Obviously I've made a ton of acquisitions on that front. Uh, so their, their ecosystem is significantly larger, uh, and more capable today. So, you know, it depends on where you're at, right? From an org standpoint.

Speaker 1: (12:55)
Yeah. To your point, right, like the main piece that I sort of, this is surface level. So to take out that you're gonna invest in any, any folks like Ryan or, or building out some additional functionality or other pieces like table stakes, if you go to Salesforce, and I, I'd use this metaphor I feel like all the time, but I think that it's hubs a kitchen of, you can go there, it's pre-built, you can set it up yourself, uh, you can customize your cabinets, you can change some things around. It's still, it's got kitchen effects and you can put whatever else you want around it. And like Salesforce is a trip to Home Depot, uh, with lumber and pipes and faucets, and there's like anything you could possibly imagine you can build. And that matters a lot, right? I mean, I think if you are a, if you're a giant organization and getting something perfect matters tremendously, more than both the investment upfront, but also you're ongoing management costs, then that makes a lot of sense, right? I mean, you're a builder. You're, you're a, fundamentally you're building a subdivision and like

Speaker 2: (13:54)
You Yeah,

Speaker 1: (13:56)
Any of those compromises were on the other side. I think if you're, and I, I, it's most businesses in, in some degree, right? Not that there's a lot more money to be made at that upper end of the market, but that most business all into the category of they really do need Nike a kitchen. And they might need it to look a little different. They might need it to be shaped a little different. They might need it to fit in a different type of place, but most of what they need is gonna be there, which I think is a, is a pretty stark difference.

Speaker 2: (14:21)
I think. I, I mean, I think it's a great example, uh, for sure. I mean, maybe you don't wanna be a key kitchen because you want, you know, a certain wood type of cabinet, but hey, look, you're gonna paint them anyways. It doesn't matter. Uh, I, I built enough stuff in my house to know that, uh, most of the time you wouldn't actually know once things are painted, and the reality is it's gonna hold up just as well. It'll, it'll look just as nice. And in the end, you've, you've saved a little bit of money, but also peace of mind, I think was, was the other, is the other big part of that. Uh, ultimately HubSpot I think has enough flexibility for most orgs, especially at sort of the mid-tier and below for sure, uh, that maybe there are a few sacrifices, but most of those sacrifices probably are not mission critical. And the benefits far outweigh the cost, uh, for, again, for, for a lot of orgs. And it depends on your sales force and, uh, and those types of things. But it's, it's a very interesting dynamic where they're growing. And I, I could certainly say maybe use both, uh, but that's not the, the discussion here, right?

Speaker 1: (15:21)
Sure,

Speaker 2: (15:21)
Sure. It has to be one of the other, and,

Speaker 1: (15:23)
And we do, right? I mean, again, something is like, we're, we're partners with both. We use both. Um, and I think where we, where we use Hubot is sort of that front end customer experience tool, right? Still a crm. It's where our sales people work, it's where our markets work, it's where we track and manage, like what have we sold and what interactions are we having with people. And then we're using Salesforce as a far more backend operational management analytics product that helps us sort of track what are our projects, what's our time logged, what's the cost of that time? Uh, almost like e r p type functionality. Yeah, I think that part, right? And I think that's where Salesforce sales, right? Formulas, objects. Like you can build really complex stuff, but I also know that that was the tool of choice only because a lot of the folks that are in operations roles, uh, including myself for the org, like have a tremendous amount of Salesforce expertise. And so I think that like if we were, if we were a different type of company where our people didn't know that already, like it would be ridiculous for us to,

Speaker 2: (16:20)
This doesn't make any sense. I have to edit this in seven places to do one thing. I don't need to do this. It's not that important.

Speaker 1: (16:27)
not, not important to me. We talked a lot about where, so hubs, zoc wins, user experience, Salesforce obviously in terms of like depth of custom, most organizations, that's not as essential. Where, where do you think HubSpot like wins? Like not, not from a, maybe this is cheaper, maybe it looks nicer, maybe it's easier to use, and I'm willing to make some of those, those compromises. But where do you think HubSpot just like crushes it and is so significantly different than something you would look at in like a Salesforce stack?

Speaker 2: (16:54)
From an org standpoint? Uh, or from just a functional standpoint, i

Speaker 1: (16:59)
Functional product org. Like where do you think HUBOs, just like if you, if you're trying to build something like this, like hubs, HUBOs, just like the place to do it and take out any, any of the sort of other criteria that,

Speaker 2: (17:11)
Uh, I mean definitely and something I, indefinitely, it's something I, I know we've talked about. If, if I need a user portal component, uh, for whatever I'm doing, uh, so our customer service portal, those, I'm gonna build it on HubSpot and then have that integration there for sure. Uh, much better product, easier to use. Um, I think the capabilities there, especially over the next couple of years, we'll, we will be so vastly superior here to Salesforce. Uh, maybe there's, there's a level at which, and you could actually probably speak to this a little better, where, where you might be limited from, um, from a hierarchy and, and pure data standpoint. But if I'm building portals, uh, so I can combine I guess the power of the marketing and some of the data behind it, um, I, I'm going HubSpot for sure. And, and

Speaker 1: (17:55)
Is that, that's, that's all CMS hub stuff, right?

Speaker 2: (17:57)
Correct. That is all CMS hub. Um, so I think there's, there's a ton that you can do there. Having, having spent time working with enterprise level portals, I can say that the power that you have there is unbelievably incredible. Uh, and whatever HubSpot shortcomings has from a, from a functional standpoint, I think are, are made up because you can do a lot of things on the front end. But, um, but I definitely would go that way. If you have an external facing business and you only can pick one product, I would definitely pick HubSpot. Um, from,

Speaker 1: (18:25)
I think in terms of like, like types of businesses there, right? So like, we see this all the time, like marketplaces, like if you have people who are log, if your CRM data isn't so much about just managing like your internal folks, but you sort of have a people who don't work at interface with your crm. And I remember when, I feel like when Salesforce communities was first announced, this was like this game changing, like, oh my God, like we have the crm, we're gonna open it up to our partners, we're gonna have a customer community, we're gonna have like a support community And Salesforce communities. I remember, like, we took on a bunch of those projects and they like, let's not do these cuz they're so hard and so complicated and you just like can't make them work the way you want them to. Yeah. And it just like did. And I feel like that's why Salesforce ended up like buying, now you can build a full web application, but now you're into like custom web development like Yeah. Is where you have to different to build anything. Yeah. Totally different analyst.

Speaker 2: (19:20)
Salesforce. Salesforce lives, there's no question they're going after diff a different type. I mean, there's plenty of smaller orgs, but they're, they're going after right now at least, uh, a much more sophisticated organization that has full development in house and, and all those types of things. But I would touch Salesforce communities, uh, with a 10 foot pole quite candidly. Uh, I think it's a

Speaker 1: (19:39)
Terrible Totally. And the thing I

Speaker 2: (19:42)
Like and say, it's not a good product. If I need to build a portal, I will integrate into Salesforce. I will not use Salesforce communities.

Speaker 1: (19:48)
I, I'm super excited and we've, we haven't seen much of this yet, but I do think you're gonna see, so now that you have that custom object sync back into Salesforce from HubSpot, I think you're gonna see CMS solutions that are like built on HubSpot, pulling in that Salesforce data to service it. Because the things like procedurally generated pages, right? So like you can automatically generate a page on your website. You can throw it behind a login if you want to, uh, b based off of, of object data. Like, I mean, I think just before this I was talking to our internal marketing folks about like, oh, like if we wanted to publish case study site, like how would we do that? We're like, oh, like we make a case study object, we put in the like five fields and then it just generates one on the site. Uh, but you can extend that to so many other pieces and then at people interact with them. So like deal portals, like we're seeing lots of cool stuff, uh, with people building partner portals and deal portals and customer portal. Yeah. People can not only see that information but then edit it and instead of that being edited somewhere and then now you're trying to go and reconcile it, it it's, it's just literally the CRM solution, which is like, I don't know, I think it's pretty crazy

Speaker 2: (20:51)
. Yeah. And well, it allows for a much more dynamic, uh, dynamic delivery of data too. So I mean, it can be really just dr Everything's driven off of your crm. HubSpot's tools are, are pretty easy to use, even if you're a developer. Like why would you not want something? It's relatively easy. You can still do all the things that are at technical level, but being able to, to generate something that is more of a, uh, template sort of format and then deliver things that are purely data driven and be, and allow you to, um, create, like create a completely dynamic experience based on the user or things that if you can do in Salesforce, they're extraordinarily tough. And I, I've worked with, like I said, o other enterprise portal platforms that you can do it, but the amount of development effort that it takes to do it in computing power, uh, and the actual delivery of it is, is not, not good. Uh, and these are some very successful portals. And I think HubSpot yeah, really has a huge capability, uh, huge, uh, market there. It's probably okay

Speaker 1: (21:48)
Piece that's real will probably win, right? I know that like CMS hub is, and it's early days for all of this, but I think that CMS hub is something that, uh, was built to take on WordPress, be a marketing site builder, but the fact that you can extend that to all of these portals and you're not trying to go build like communities and it uses a completely different framework than web development. And so, like build a successful community is like, be a really advanced Salesforce consultant and a web designer and have like a pretty good grasp on like JS and html, whereas like with Hoda, it's just like, Hey, do you, do you know how to build front end sights on things like WordPress? Uh, cuz cuz we can help you do that here. Uh, and you can connect it to all that functionality easier, sort of like skillset to, uh, to access.

Speaker 2: (22:34)
I think I, I actually want to capitalize on that. It's very, very, very important thing for anyone that's, let's say, deciding between the two, if you have to pick one, uh, you also have to think about staffing at some point, right? So you're gonna have to support the, the, the usage of the system to build out and all of that. And it, while there are definitely less people that are hyper familiar with, uh, with HubSpot, from a an operations standpoint, a management standpoint, training people is slightly easier. But also from, you know, we're talking CMS hub, um, developing, you only need to know one framework and one set of tools. You don't have to learn a million different ones that are all different and brought together from different companies over the years. . Um, so that the learning curve is, is is definitely less steep.

Speaker 1: (23:18)
I think that translates the cost of cost of ownership too. Yeah. And I, i I to give Salesforce credit where credit is certainly deserved, right? I mean, it is a infinitely vast, infinitely capable solution. And like, you're really never gonna run into, or at least rarely to be be fair. Like, Hey, we, we can't solve that problem. It's gonna be No, no, no, we can do that. It's a lot of hours and it's a lot of money, but we can definitely make it happen. But I think that that a, as a result, complexity generally rises, uh, and on the HubSpot side, you might get a lot more of do that today, but anything that you can do is gonna be significantly easier and significantly easier to build and maintain. And that cost of ownership is really where I think a lot of companies get bit long term.

Speaker 2: (24:05)
Yeah, I can, I can think of it like this. So again, with mostly cuz of my background, if, if I'm helping to deploy something across an org, I need salespeople or marketing people to, to use it, uh, and it's pretty out of the box. I'm choosing HubSpot, it's easier to document, uh, easier to, to follow for the user with without a doubt. Like the, the biggest problem that I've solved with HubSpot is, is actually getting people to use the system. Uh, there's, there's no question about that. Uh, especially salespeople. Um, but if I, if I use like medic or one of those different sales systems and I need a very customized experience, uh, again, it doesn't have to be sales, but that's just the, the, uh, the general example that I, that I would use. I, I can, I really create an entirely custom experience that's unique to my org. Especially, you know, if I have a, a huge amount of people in, in the system and I need something that's top down, consistent, very detailed and very specific to my org, I'm going Salesforce every time. Yeah. Like, not, not even a question. HubSpot is not even close to there yet.

Speaker 1: (25:06)
But I think like I to your point, right? I mean that's the difference between are you gonna be, are, are you an organization and you look at your operational tools as something that's built and designed so that you can, like you, your end users to do their job better. And and I think that that's like one philosophy. And then I think the other philosophy is like, we're going to, and I think that this matters in terms of dollar investment too, right? Are you gonna invest in more expensive upper level managers, operations folks whose job is to think about what is the journey that people need to be moving through in their day-to-day lives? What buttons should they be able to click? What are those journeys they can have? And then I'm gonna build that. But I think that the flip side of that is you, you can, is you get scale certainly.

Speaker 1: (25:52)
So you can have giant team in South America phone agents who answer the phone and say, oh, you know, what phone do you have? Okay, I'm gonna click the Apple button. Okay, do you have a, do you have a nine to 10 or 11? Okay, you an 11, I'm gonna click that button and it's just gonna like guide me down this path. And you get scale there. But at the same time, you have to overin senior expensive operational folks who are gonna build, maintain, and manage those systems. And you're gonna need to hire. And, and this is the reason that like Accenture has giant Salesforce practice worth billions of dollars in revenue in a year, right?

Speaker 2: (26:19)
And

Speaker 1: (26:20)
All these,

Speaker 2: (26:20)
These companies, all

Speaker 1: (26:22)
These companies are paid to do it. Like, it's incredibly hard. And and I think it makes you less agile. And if you're a giant organization, how do I, how do I control and manage process adherence over giant swaths of people? Salesforce is an amazing product for that. I I honestly don't even think anything compares. No. And on the flip side, if you're a growing, if you're a, a growing organization, maybe you're earlier in your life cycle, you aren't a billion dollar company yet. And you figure out like, how can I iterate quickly? How can I empower my users? How can I make them more successful and productive, uh, hubs, that's gonna give you a lot more ability to do that easier and probably at a lower lower.

Speaker 2: (27:01)
Yeah. And we're at a really interesting inflection point where I think HubSpot is very clearly going after some of that business. It'd be very interesting to see over the next couple years, like how, how much inroads they can make in that period of time. But Salesforce is not slowing down. There's no question about that. Do,

Speaker 1: (27:15)
Do you think it's mindset change? Like do, is it, does HubSpot have to convince, it's kind of like I think about as like that Apple Microsoft dichotomy, right? Like, does, does HubSpot need to convince employers, Hey, you need an easier to use, like more better looking, better feeling more adherence, like, and that matters. And so we're gonna, we're not gonna overinvest in some of the areas that Salesforce does, and we're gonna con that our philosophy is better. Or do you think that they're gonna have to win at like a feature parody level?

Speaker 2: (27:43)
Uh, it's, it's honestly something I think about all of the time to where, you know, clients will ask. I, I mean this, this, anytime in my experience of HubSpot, I just, you know, I need to be able to do this. Well, you can't do it. I mean, HubSpot does a lot obviously, but there, there are odd requests, you know, that, that come across that are, they're extremely detailed and you unique to the order where you just can't do it in hub sweatt. It's not possible. Maybe there's a workaround, which is a, a lot of times just as good, but I, I always just think like, doesn't hubs, isn't HubSpot trying to go up market? Like how come they haven't developed in this area? This is absolutely critical. Thinking about from an operations standpoint, like on a permission standpoint, they, they've done, you know, quite a bit, uh, of development and, and product releases on that front, but they, they still have a long way to go.

Speaker 2: (28:27)
And I know obviously the ability to develop and release features is, is limited, but sometimes I, I, I stop and I'm like, why, why doesn't HubSpot do this? Or, or they don't want to do this. You know, the, the product manager will clearly say like, we're not gonna do this. And then I stop. I, I think it reflect on it, and I'm, and I just think, I probably always said this about HubSpot, but what the hell do I know? Uh, they're remarkably successful. Uh, you know, you and I I think talk about it all the time. I, I use an Android phone. I've never owned an Apple device. Just, I like the customization, uh, aspect of it, but I can't knock Apple. Like they have an remarkably well built sticky ecosystem because things work . So like people don't care. That's, and I know it's a little bit different cause you're talking consumer versus business.

Speaker 2: (29:11)
Uh, so some of those things don't matter, but, you know, so I just, I sometimes find myself getting down on HubSpot, uh, which is obviously, what, what do I know? They, they've been successful with this model. Like I said, they, they did not always necessarily have the most, uh, feature packed product, although, you know, competitive enough where they had most of the, if not all of the features that you really needed. Maybe other products did a couple of additional things. But, but user experience has been so great. Adoption is great. And, and ultimately that ends up winning out and yeah, I mean, we'll also complain about not having certain features, um, that salesperson might have or other, other products might have. But it's a very interesting mindset that they have. And I, I don't see them stray from that, to be honest. Yeah, I think that they, I think it's a strength. It seems crazy to me that anyone could do that, maintain a great user experience, but also have enough to, to service an enterprise org. And they've gotten to where they are in a complete surprise to me. And I, uh, I'd be shocked if they don't continue to do it,

Speaker 1: (30:10)
For sure. Well, I'm gonna wrap us up. I think our conclusions, you are, uh, you're preset in all your processes. You're looking to manage, you're looking to control data security, and those are the things you care about most. Uh, Salesforce is the place to be. And if you're looking for something that's a little easier to use for your end users, uh, gives you, uh, some customization and functionality, but also is gonna come with most of what you need, uh, already, pre hub's a great choice. And we'll let the, let the war continue to play out, uh, across the board. But Ryan, thank you so, so much for joining us today. Uh, if anyone wants to find you online, what what is the best place?

Speaker 2: (30:47)
Um, a LinkedIn. LinkedIn profile. Cool. For sure.

Speaker 1: (30:51)
Well, thanks everyone. , just, just the name. Ryan?

Speaker 2: (30:55)
Yeah.

Speaker 1: (30:55)
Uh, I'm Connor. Thank you all so, so much for joining us.

Speaker 2: (30:59)
Thanks Connor. Have a.