The HubSpot Help Line - Mar 13, 2026

[00:02] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good afternoon, Happy Friday, LinkedIn friends, Value First Nation. Welcome to another episode of Value First Delivery. Here with Aaron Wiers. How you doing, Aaron? Aaron Wiers: I'm doing great. Happy Friday. Looking forward. Chris Carolan: Happy Friday the 13th, even. Aaron Wiers: I know. I know. Chris Carolan: Right? Um I'm not superstitious but I'm a little stitious. Aaron Wiers: I'm not superstitious but I'm a little stitious. Chris Carolan: Right? Chris Carolan: Uh, that is fair. Two months in a row, of course. Um, glad we could survive. Aaron Wiers: Although Aaron Wiers: I didn't even realize it was two months in a row. Chris Carolan: Yeah. That's fair. Chris Carolan: Um, uh, still time left in the day, though. So we'll see. See what happens. Aaron Wiers: Right, right. Chris Carolan: Um, in the meantime, we're going to continue our series on uh Value First delivery commitments. Today we're talking about strengths over standardization. Uh, let me share my screen real quick. Chris Carolan: And uh, commitment number four, we will build on distinctive strengths, not just apply standard methods. We recognize that unique value comes through unique capabilities. We will shape delivery approaches around specific strengths and context, rather than forcing all work through standardized methodologie that ignore valuable differences. Chris Carolan: Um, this means we will identify and activate unique capabilities in both provider and customer teams, rather than applying generic best practices. Chris Carolan: We're going to customize approaches to fit organizational culture and existing strengths, rather than requiring cultural adaptation to our methodologies. Chris Carolan: We're going to combine specialized expertise in ways that standard packages cannot, rather than limiting solutions to predetermined offerings. Chris Carolan: We're going to evolve methodologies based on what works best for specific situations, rather than maintaining rigid adherence to proven frameworks. Chris Carolan: And we're going to challenge best practices that ignore valuable organizational differences, rather than assuming one size fits all solutions. Chris Carolan: And it's hard not to just be so reminded of HubSpot onboarding situations. Aaron Wiers: That's yeah, that's exactly what comes to my mind as well. Like, I as you were reading those like, I was trying not to just nod my head so hard that my like it rolls off onto the floor. Um, because yeah, it's like the the cookie cutter implementation plan. Aaron Wiers: It seems so odd to me that that be be even became a thing because the reason most people don't love HubSpot when they have it implemented for them is it's not fit to their business. Like it doesn't work out of the box for most businesses because most businesses are fairly complex and and don't just fit into the objects the way um they were kind of designed. And what I have always found is is like the the beautiful part of HubSpot is that you can design around people and you can make it user friendly for the actual end users. Not in theory, like in practice, you can make people's lives easier by, you know, mirroring the language that they use or um making sure that you're providing kind of like a baseline for every everyone to operate from. Aaron Wiers: And so the idea that you would buy HubSpot and it doesn't work out of the box and then go and have a cookie cutter implementation that's also not going to work outside out of the box. Uh, yeah, I just don't know how it became a thing. It just seems so counter intuitive to me. Like the whole point of this is to customize it so that people will use it. And uh, yeah, that just seems to have gotten lost um a little bit. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Um Oh man, it's so well, easy for me at this point. Uh, but like when you just look at how this has come to best, it all can all relates to like just dehumanizing the whole like the whole SAS industry of like from start to finish. Chris Carolan: Because what you just described happens because people see HubSpot can do things like lead management and lead scoring like, oh yeah, we need to do that. Chris Carolan: It's like, okay, well, if you're going to use HubSpot, it's going to be can be needs to be done at least in the past, not so much now, needs to be done a very specific way, like here's your stages, these are the things you can and can't score on, right? So if that's what you're buying for, then that's what we're going to deliver. And in order to deliver that, like here's the 90-day checklist that we're going to go through and it's not built for your business at all. It's the one that everybody's taken through. Chris Carolan: And you're just not paying attention to the human beings involved and either side, like customers or like the people that are needing to implement HubSpot. Uh, you just can't especially now, you cannot take that into account and do it in some kind of like pre-planned way, right? Chris Carolan: Because now, especially now, like when we when we say distinctive strengths, everybody is one AI conversation away of having a brand new distinctive strength, right? Chris Carolan: And that's where if this has been your your game, where you're like, oh, that's for me, that's what I do. So that's my role in this project. Like you're just setting yourself up for um for a for a rough delivery process because even if they sign the contract, this takes us back to all of the the previous commitments. Chris Carolan: It's like instant remorse. Like instant like, God, this doesn't feel right, right? And if we can't help people move out and lean into that, like why doesn't it feel right? Oh, you can't. Yeah, you can do that with AI. So let me help you do that and now there's this space for for doing stuff over here, right? There's always so much opportunity and if we can't take a moment and this is also why like the current state brief, like that we do for value for scoping is so important. And that is not just this is what your HubSpot looks like, right? Chris Carolan: It's like this is who is in your organization and this is what they can do and this is what they're responsible for and that's where you start to find, you know, these strengths and you build around that. Aaron Wiers: Right, right. And I think one thing that I'm reminded of often is that that a lot of our job is the technology, of course, but there's equal if not more work to be done on the human side of things and and humans are emotional. And so like you're almost like selling them a a feeling, like you're going to trust your data, you're not going to be frustrated going through your daily processes. You're and and you need to kind of understand how fragile that is. Like you need to be doing everything possible to achieve that that feeling. Um, and even if you're chipping away at it. Like this is not an overnight kind of change, but you do need to be mindful of like you said, the the pieces that are on the board and and how you can build around them and in a scalable kind of way. Um, so yeah, it's it's very surprisingly human problem or for technology implementation people to be uh dealing with. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Uh, such a good way to say that. Except now it's like my one of my goals in life and this is like value first is kind of about that is like understand first, the current state of this industry is dehumanizing everything to try and like get the next buck, to get the next implementation done, to to get the next upgrade. Chris Carolan: And so if you don't like that, that means we got to humanize some stuff. And that means human management. And like that's where uh like best practices and again, this is where like if you're go if if if you want to keep going to that route because AI can certainly help you scale the hell out of some standardized practices, but understand that best practices like they're like averaged. It's a solution that has worked, right? But it's averaged across context at best, right? Chris Carolan: They're designed to be safe. Aaron Wiers: Mhm. Chris Carolan: That doesn't necessarily make them effective. And now any best practice that you see with AI or any kind of results context, it's just so human and organization dependent on whether or not you can do that thing too, right? If it's not somehow based in like first principles, you know, like Okay, like value first in terms of like is does the thing create value? Okay, let's try it. If there's some other like, oh yeah, we're going to we're going to get 200% more lead conversion if we do this on our website because it's AI. Like, nope. Chris Carolan: That's uh it's not working in terms of being able to standardize. Now there's lots of places we can standardize and find it all over value first. Things like the value path, using humanized language, right? That everybody can agree on. We can standardize there all over the place. Um and that leads to strengths that, you know, people probably haven't been revealing in terms of like how they want to take care of customers, what they are capable of. Aaron Wiers: Mhm. Chris Carolan: Um, and so how have you approached like or what are your thoughts when it comes to best practices and the usual conversations around that? Aaron Wiers: Yeah, I think, um best practices that phrase just reminds me of another phrase which is the best laid plans. Um, where like best practices to me kind of exist in a vacuum. Like best practices are is like all else being equal, these are the best practices. And that like all else being equal is the thing that is fundamentally not true. So, um, I think it's it's helpful to know best practices so that when those things are equal, you can apply them. Aaron Wiers: Um, but you yeah, you really just need to to be able to put them in the right context and realize that like some these things are not immutable. Like these are not always true in every case. This is like a an average essentially. Um, and I think one of the smartest questions that I get from clients during the sales process that lets me know like they're not looking for something like cookie cutter is, you know, what other uh build outs have you done in this in my industry? And and like what were the the similarities and differences essentially. Uh I think that is such a good question because it it shows me that like you understand that you have an industry specific business model but it's not going to be the same as every one of your competitors. Um, when somebody says, have you done this before? Can we just roll that out? That's a red flag. Um, because it's like, yeah, we did it that way for them because we went through this whole process and like figured out what was best for them. Uh, and so that might not be true for you. So I think, um, if you can find a way to kind of organically work that into your conversations in like your kind of first talks with prospects. Um, I think that's a good way to kind of get aligned on some of this like underlying uh foundational knowledge that like we're we're trying to convey without just like saying it to them in the sales process, you know. Aaron Wiers: Um, so being able to articulate what what an industry typically does and then a couple of ways you've done it differently, um, I think really shows that flexibility of like, yes, there are best practices and sometimes we do implement similar things. Um, but we arrived at those conclusions independently uh is the is the key part. Chris Carolan: Yeah, like we're confirming and like right. All of these uh like commitments are usually A over B. Like not A instead of B, right? So we're going to still find ways to standardize where we can because that makes things easier. Aaron Wiers: Right. Chris Carolan: But most of the industry has kind of started there and everything's got to work out of the box and can we just plug and play and uh I wish It works until it doesn't. Aaron Wiers: Yeah, like I really wish it was that easy. But then I mean, you and you and me wouldn't have a job if it was that easy. Um, so yeah, I think it's it's something that uh we we all kind of need to wrap our heads around in the in the industry. Chris Carolan: Right. And since we're on this kick. Chris Carolan: We had a profoundly uh kickoff yesterday all about AIOps and like just trying to help people understand what's going to be required to successfully like leverage and have success with AI in an organization right now. And and usually people in RevOps or HubSpot admin roles are like in the best position to really just take hold of of these kinds of roles. Um, I've been working on uh figuring out stream apparently. Um, but uh we've been working on like what does the role need to look like? Aaron Wiers: Mhm. Chris Carolan: And of course, and so I did an episode with Trish Miriam. Uh, we do a series on AI data or data readiness for AI. Aaron Wiers: Mhm. Chris Carolan: And we've been getting into like organizational readiness, like because that's what you need to have the data data ready. Aaron Wiers: Mhm. Chris Carolan: Um, and we talked about this earlier this week and she did her job description, right? Which is pretty cookie cutter when she asked Claude to do an AI orchestrator role and it was all about I mean, honestly, you like all the words that I was seeing on the page like I was like, yeah, Aaron can do that. Like she's the one that you'd call in for that. But it was all about like just like living in the AI systems, you know, setting, setting those up, understanding like at the deepest of levels of all the developer work that needs to be done and it's just like, uh, are we not learning from our SAS past where if you don't involve humans in the process, like it doesn't matter how awesome the build is. And what we're finding is AI cannot overcome all the context gaps created naturally, you know, by humans. Chris Carolan: And so can we help people and I've been saying this about HubSpot admins for a while. Like if you don't know how to talk to your colleagues, if you're not good at that part, like good luck getting the adoption you need. Aaron Wiers: Oh my gosh. Chris Carolan: Because you got to manage people at some point or you need somebody else right there with you that can manage those people, right? So this job description is all about like, can you coordinate AI plus humans to successfully like implement AI in the organization. And it's just a completely different read here, right? Chris Carolan: Like designing AI plus human workflows. Like I don't know if I've seen that phrase like anywhere. Like it's just automation or it's AI or it's agentic or it's like all these things, right? Chris Carolan: And it's especially when we get into the conversation about production, right? Production level that we're dealing with, um uh this is where I'm probably getting out of my out of my depth a little bit, but these systems are not deterministic. Aaron Wiers: Mhm. Chris Carolan: So if you think you're going to get to like 100% uptime and accuracy without humans involved somewhere, like that's you got a special business model if you can get there. Chris Carolan: Because it's going to take liberties and it's going to need help. But if you at the same time, if you embrace 95% is okay and then you know exactly what that 5% that's coming from the humans like man, we're seeing some really wonderful things. Aaron Wiers: Right. Chris Carolan: Right? But whether it's 95 and 5 or 50/50, it's always human plus AI, right? Aaron Wiers: Right. It's like the AI orchestrator to me needs to be able to understand the nuances of AI and where what what things it's really good at, what things it's not good at, where it needs oversight, where it needs context injection. Aaron Wiers: And you also have to do the exact same thing for the humans. You need to know what the humans are good at, what they're not good at, like where they need supervision, where they need extra context. It is the same problem, it's two sides of the same coin. And so the AI orchestrator role like really needs to be able to like hit either one of those sides at any given time to be able to figure out, you know, how to how to make the system work for everyone involved. Um, because what and I've seen this before in in trying to implement some like big AI things or even just like more complex like HubSpot architecture where someone on the team or someone who's expected to use it was not involved in the decision and is going to like actively work against you and like like the the human element of like sabotage of like, oh well, the AI is just it's not good enough or like it's not doing, it's not doing the things I would do. And so you have to be able to manage those feelings too. Like you need to like my kind of philosophy coming in to any situation where I'm adding technology to a group of people who've been doing something the same way for a very long time is to just kind of like let's let's plant a flag in the ground here. Aaron Wiers: I am here to make your job easier. I am not here to tell you what to do. I am not here to, you know, dictate processes to you that you've been doing for years. Like I am here to make things easier. And if everybody understands that, we're going to have a a better time doing this. Um, because I'm never, I think it's important that people know, like we're never coming at it from a like I'm trying to sell you this piece of software because I get a cut or like I'm trying to um, you know, make you follow best practices because that's what I learned in a book one time. Chris Carolan: Yeah. No, we we aren't. We aren't for sure. Aaron Wiers: Right, we aren't. My people. Aaron Wiers: For sure. So I think, yeah, it's all part of that like opening conversation that you need to have with with people to kind of level set expectations and and get everyone on the same page about like we're really trying to make this system valuable to you. Ideally more valuable than what you're putting into it. Like I would like for all of the things that I build to be revenue multipliers and not, you know, things that we pay for as like overhead operating costs. Like I truly want to add value to what you're doing with the the technology and um, yeah, through that lens everything looks a little different, I think. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Uh, for sure. And as we as we were talking about it, like you mentioned like that's a great preface by the way. Like but I'm here to make your life simpler. Like let's let's make things easy. Uh, I also like to make sure everybody has permission to say, uh, that I don't know why we do it like that. Aaron Wiers: Right. Chris Carolan: Or I don't know why we would do it like that. That doesn't, that doesn't make sense for us. And as I was thinking about that, like standardization applies like to what you've been doing every day in your business. Like you've standardized, normalized some of these crazy processes that make no sense and that gets brought to the team. Chris Carolan: Well, and so if you don't give people permission to be like, yeah, I don't know why we do it like that. It would make sense. Like there's a strength being discovered there of like, yeah, uh, the organization's strength is this, yet we do it like this. Right. Like let's not do that anymore. Chris Carolan: And when we can like you have to like the the the knee jerk reaction is like, oh no, that could be like more scope and we're not ready for that and. Chris Carolan: It's just like meanwhile, the person that brings it up might just be willing to like solve it. Aaron Wiers: Right. Chris Carolan: Themselves and like in that moment you're like, okay, there's there's some more strength. And um, yeah, let's let's embrace those things. And we can only get that if there's like this level of pushback on the way things have been done. Chris Carolan: And best practices and like it's not to say we want you to start from scratch either just because you're the business and not like any other business so everything's got to be customized for you, right? Chris Carolan: That's that's another issue. But the the the balance in between, um, like now and this is where AI can be your best friend or it can just help you be real middle of the road. Like it knows every best practice ever. Chris Carolan: Right? And if you say that's what you want, like it's going to it's going to give you one. Aaron Wiers: It'll take you a look and give you exactly that. Chris Carolan: Yeah, but like it's not going to see your unique, you know, context if you give it to it, like and especially capabilities, right? Which is kind of like one of the superpowers if you do give it a capability that is usually not around, like in an organization. All of a sudden you get some of the most innovative like approaches that you've ever seen because somebody somewhere has probably done it. It just was not in your industry or not in your job role or whatever, right? Chris Carolan: And if we don't take the time to to uncover those, which we won't if we are trying to deliver out of the box onboardings and implementations out of the time, right? Chris Carolan: We're just going to get, you know, more of the same and more people frustrated with uh things not working well for them. Aaron Wiers: For sure. And I think our greatest tool um and maybe it's more of like a me thing, although I think you're probably the same because we're both just nerdy and uh passionate about what we do. But I think as the the person leading the charge to to implement the changes, um your greatest tool is enthusiasm. Um, because that's infectious and the leading indicator of success on everything else is everyone else's enthusiasm. So if you show up and you're like, hey, I'm going to make things easy, like talk to me, how can we do that? Um, get people involved. Like the the light bulbs that you start seeing and like I've been on calls where I could see it happen. Like I'm lot I'm watching this dude's face and he's his like face lights up. Like I just gave him a Christmas present and he's like, what if we did this this other thing? Because if we're not doing this and it's like, yes, like that's the collaborative like vibe that we're trying to have where everybody's input matters because it's unique to that person, to that business and it's adding value to what we're trying to create. Um, so yeah, I think and and I'm just a big nerd and get super excited about the things that I build. So it it comes very naturally to me, but I think if if that's not something that comes naturally to you, um, if you can kind of get in the mindset of like, how is this going to materially improve their daily operations? And and just at least be somewhat jazzed about like, hey, I helped you out with this. Um, you can kind of chip away at that. Um, you don't have to come in like a big puppy dog like I do like, oh, look what I brought. Um, so uh, so yeah, I I think enthusiasm is is key to all of this. Chris Carolan: Indeed. And apparently, did we talk about the provider disruption last week? Like I'm trying to I'm looking at the notes here that uh Claude has provided. Speaking of strengths out of nowhere. Chris Carolan: Says, connect to the provider program disruption. Practitioners who only offer standardized skills are exposed. Uh those with distinctive capabilities in client context are not. Uh, and well said, Claude. It's like this is everything. Like there's no again, it's such a switch from the norm of standardized delivery and builds. Um, like and finding that and doing that as a way to like build margin and build scalability. Like everything I've ever been taught, right? Um, it's switching like taking a step back and if you can put that standardization towards like scoping questions and understanding their business, it's just a different way to standardize. Chris Carolan: Right. Chris Carolan: And when you know that because everybody has a distinctive strength now if they want it and that is building with AI. Like everybody's got that. So that's why whether you want to or not, like you got to find a way off of this like cookie cutter approach to to building and and checking boxes, you know, during delivery. And you know, hopefully this series is helping you at least think about that, but also do it. And this is where like especially in this world where you can talk with AI about anything, like coming at it from these commitments, right? Chris Carolan: Just like all of a sudden the decisions you have to make like if you say, all right, I'm going to commit to you know, strength instead of standardization. automatically you're in a conversation with somebody and they say, what if we did it like this instead? And now you're just completely open to the right conversation. Chris Carolan: Mhm. Chris Carolan: Um, and there is just so much value to be had for everybody that has their own experiences and their own expertise to to be able to do this stuff, right? Um, so that brings us to uh next week. And I think if that's the like if there's a takeaway, like that's it. Like you just have to like be okay with people revealing their strengths. Chris Carolan: And then just going down the rabbit hole, like if you need to. What's possible now that this new information like has assist. Um, uh next week we're going to talk about commitment number five. I love how these all fit together. Integrate learning throughout implementation. Chris Carolan: So the strength we just learned about integrating it in to the implementation rather than separating education. Chris Carolan: Mhm. Chris Carolan: Oh man, I'm excited for that one. Uh, there's some good ways we could go with that. Um, but uh, yeah, uh training, enablement during the process. Aaron Wiers: Right. Chris Carolan: It's it's a must now. Aaron Wiers: It it can't be an afterthought. Like Right. You can't expect because these are these are large scale changes and you know, if you try to do it all at once at the very end, what you're going to end up with is a bunch of people who are just overloaded with information and their brain is going to pick out what they want and forget the rest. Um, so yeah, it's it's you wouldn't want to just sit down and read a textbook. I mean, I might because I'm a nerd, but most people don't want to just sit down and read a textbook. Like you don't want to take in information that's that dense. Um, and so figuring out how to spread that density out across, you know, we just implemented this this first part. Let me explain how that works and then building on that as you go is so much easier than trying to just learn it all at once. Chris Carolan: Yeah, especially like when you can take that enthusiast like when you can catch those enthusiastic moments. Aaron Wiers: Mhm. Chris Carolan: To just build a little bit little bit more knowledge on what like, oh yeah, you're excited about that. Aaron Wiers: Mhm. Chris Carolan: This is how easy it is to do that, right? In. It's so easy to do this exact same thing over in this spot of and there's just so much that starts to build off of that. Aaron Wiers: Right. Chris Carolan: So I'm excited to dig into that with you. Aaron Wiers: For sure. Chris Carolan: Um, another uh fun conversation with you and I appreciate you taking the time today, Aaron. Aaron Wiers: Yeah, thanks everyone. Chris Carolan: Have a great weekend.