Value-First Data - Jan 20, 2026

[00:01] **Introduction** Klemen Hrovat: Good afternoon and good evening LinkedIn friends, Value-First Nation. Welcome to another episode of Value-First data talking about the unified customer review with Casey and Klemen. Happy Tuesday. Casey Hawkins: Same to you and to everyone else. Chris Carolan: Happy Tuesday, we're back. Klemen Hrovat: We are back. Uh, and uh, I'm addicted to talking about unified customer views and unified views in general. So uh, we're going to continue our our conversation. Any thoughts um, after the conversation we had last week.

[01:28] **Power of Unified Customer View** Casey Hawkins: I think um, I think my overall thoughts on the unified customer review is that it's very powerful, but it always seems to me like this north star that's just like out of reach. So what I liked about what we did last week is we kind of we talked about kind of the first steps, the foundation needed. Um, so I appreciate that this series is bringing that North Star like into into reality, into our orbit. I don't know. There's, you know, you need to keep going. Chris Carolan: That works. That that analogy works. We're going to build this out as we go if you didn't tell already, folks. Um, but yeah, it hits. Klemen Hrovat: I was, I was asked by my CTO now several times. So, how to set up a unified customer review in HubSpot? And I said, Bear with me. Chris Carolan: Give me a couple more weeks. Klemen Hrovat: We started. I'll tell you, I'll guide you uh, when we're done. Uh, but we started. Um, we had a lot of concrete implementation questions, discussions. Um, so I'm I'm really looking forward for the next few weeks to, you know, go through that. Um, one is to have a framework, which we I think now have and now it's really what to do with that? How that is translated from paper to HubSpot or any other system. Um, and and this is where, you know, the devil is in the detail. I think, yeah, it's it's expected now to to be revealed what what we understand and and how to go for that. So uh, I'm super excited for for that series. Chris Carolan: Yeah, I think that's fair and I think that's like you kind of highlight the value um, of just framing the conversation that we need to have to get to data cleanliness, data to using tools like HubSpot uh, in better ways, right? While somehow overcoming all the things that have gotten in the way up to this point. And I was just talking to uh, our friend Tricia about the the messaging I'm using on the website on the About Us page, it says uh, you know, um, AI trans- it's focused on AI native transformation, right? And that used to be on the homepage of Value-First team. And but once I understood that this message of unified views was resonating specifically with the HubSpot like ecosystem, I then uh, made that the focus of the homepage. And when I said that and that the purpose is to focus on HubSpot, you know, audience, she read it and didn't see the word HubSpot anywhere. And I was like, that's exactly it, right? Like if we can keep this conversation away from HubSpot tools, right? And around this unified customer view, these other concepts, I'm just finding it like people, they stay engaged a little bit longer. They they care a little bit more. And since we've always skipped over that part, right? That's why we don't get to adoption, we don't get to clean data, we don't get to understanding like everybody's role in this process. Um, so it's it's been powerful. Uh, it is a mountain, like a very high mountain, right? On the horizon. And I think through all of this it's like however tall the mountain is, but you got to get there. Like if you want AI to work for you and the beauty of it is now AI can help you get there. Like if you decide you want to go there, AI can help you get there faster and easier than ever before, but you've got to decide that you want to get there. So I think we've exhausted all of the metaphors um, at this point. Uh, So uh, the other thing I'll share since last week, I've been getting to expose others as we on group calls together with clients with you know, with prospects starting to see like it resonate, you know, with the people that we're trying to help has been, like that happened several times last week after our show. So it's been exciting to to feel, feel that. Um, so hopefully this can help others, you know, in the same situation on on either side of the conversation. Uh,

[09:02] **Defining Properties for a Unified Customer View** Chris Carolan: So, the the majority of what we did last week was just deciding like who's involved? Who's in who's in charge? Who's who All right, we're already at 16% done. Chris Carolan: I know. Uh, and again, this is the part that everybody skips and we usually come right to here, right? Um, and so this contact object setup, I don't know that we should go through all of these properties, but I did want to ask, how are these properties and the properties that we need usually decided? Casey Hawkins: In the original setup what like? Chris Carolan: Like we're going to use HubSpot. Casey Hawkins: Uh-huh. Chris Carolan: And the and the the implementer says, okay, what properties do you want? Casey Hawkins: Um, Klemen Hrovat: I don't think this is a question for for the other side. This is what the implementator should suggest because with that new concept, you need properties that you can't think of. You don't necessarily know the use of it down road. As someone being onboarded to the value path or unified customer review. So for the time being, I I think it's more of the implementator to walk through to just confirm all of those are valid so we don't create properties you don't need to. But rather guide that process and suggest and explain why you need that. If if, you know, everyone who we defined should be around, don't understand why that is there. It will be hard to further build on top of that. Sorry Casey for taking you the word. Casey Hawkins: [inaudible] Chris Carolan: You're good now. Casey Hawkins: You're good now. Casey Hawkins: Okay. Great. Things are fine. Everything's fine as always nailing this. Um, well, I think Klemen you're right, that's how it should be done. But if the question is like, how is it usually done, um, then it's I think usually done by like where is the data? Like where's our CRM data coming from? Are we coming from another CRM? Is this like a set of spreadsheets that we have, um, in which case create all values and especially now that HubSpot importer, I love that HubSpot importer makes it easy to create properties. However, in this step in the setup process, it can create so much tech debt is my word of the month. It but it just creates so much tech tech debt and the number of portals I've been in that have job title one, job title job title two, job title used this one, um, because oftentimes it's because that importer didn't find the right field and so they created one or either the importer tool or the importer human didn't find the property and so they just created a new one. Chris Carolan: Yeah. And I think what I'm hearing, if I can bridge all of it together, there's usually a use case, there's a need to implement the system. And what we're describing through this series and through this methodology is that value path and the unified views using that as the use case, like is going to result in in better outcomes. What we've seen and and what I'm familiar with is we need to do lead generation, which means we need to send some emails, which means we need to build lists, which means we need to know everybody who went to this trade show for the past uh, 10 years. And where's that spreadsheet? Okay, this is the spreadsheet, we're going to bring that in. Um, let's name the properties. We need a trade show field, right? So let's add that. Oh, but we have a lot of trade shows. So let's build a uh, a dropdown field. No, wait, sometimes they go to more than one trade show. So let's make it multi-select and like those kinds of things drive which properties. So when you build it out that way, especially if you're talking about marketing and sales, that marketing might might need that a lot. But then when sales sees things like that and it doesn't pertain to their job, it creates noise like in the CRM. And um, that causes, you know, less usage of of say that, something that comes to mind, but also reporting. Like we need to see this report. So all of a sudden we're building properties just for reporting, right? And the more that you make decisions from that perspective, the harder it's going to be to align all your data and actually get to meaningful meaningful views. Um,

[15:23] **Integration with Another System** Chris Carolan: So uh I think that looks like you have some thoughts there, Klemen. Klemen Hrovat: Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just collecting my mind. Um, to two things that came to my mind. One was recent experience with one of our customers where now we were asked to to help them build an agent to search for specific data. So they, they could not integrate another system they have for additional data for, you know, researchers, professors at universities. They could not integrate that but the information if a professor has a recent, you know, research funding is a super important information to score their leads. Because they could not integrate those two, they asked us, can you help us build an agent which would, you know, search for that data? Yes, we build the agent and then the question was, you know, how do you want to have that data presented in HubSpot? And we took the approach, okay, we'll suggest all seven different properties we can build for you. And then you you as a user should decide how and which of that data is important, how you want to have it presented. But we suggested which properties we can create, all of them if you need all of them. But think which ones are relevant. So they had no a catalog not just asking what kind of data do you need from that agent? But we said, okay, all those seven types of data we can easily present to you, which is relevant? So which one will be used in in lead scoring further? Which ones do you want to have so you can be, you know, efficient what sales reps need? So they can act efficiently. And they followed that, you know, our suggestion. They were not rejecting anything. Uh, but the the conversation was not what do you need? But hey, this is what we can bring you. What shape and form would be most useful for you and and what you will be reporting on? Uh, and the other one, um, we when we are talking about data cleanup to, you know, job title one, job title two and and even more importantly, I think it's around the masses around all the location, variations, country, and and city and and IP and everything. You have so many different sources throwing in. And we are not taking the approach to have one which is a cleaned version, standardized version. So you can for the time being you can keep all the others and with a unified system we'll be cleaning up all the random type of scenario thing in in one and this is then the one that should not be changed manually and the one that will be used in the KPIs and in reporting and in you know, pushed other systems. So let, you know, get data messy from LinkedIn, you know, it's a free text of of location uh, and and people get creative where they are. Um, and and and there is no way you can prevent that. But if the system is suggested as, hey, there will be one which you can trust and then others can be there as long as you have enough properties. So that's why I think, you know, for for that implementation, it's it's fine to start just adding all the ones that are relevant and later we can reduce if we don't need ones or we can replace others. Chris Carolan: Yeah, I'm so glad, like scroll down a little bit just show these four, right? Like where are they in the journey? Like what are they doing? engagement level? When did they do it? last meaningful action? So you can name these properties like whatever, right? But this is what we need to accomplish to make all the other stuff work, right? Who owns it? like relationship owner, right? Like if you don't have these things, inevitably you will you will fall into these conversations. And I think what I'm landing on is what you've known for a while, like if you don't have an aligned goal throughout the business, it is impossible to avoid these tool focused or department focused like approaches because that's the only thing that's tangible. There's nothing to bring. like RevOps try to do this, right? But often like it's just somebody transformed from marketing, from sales, or from service and now all of a sudden they're RevOps, but they still have that other hat on inevitably and it just has a way to drive the conversation and leaders have not been able to step up, step up and solve for this. And that's what I think like unified views and unified customer view is a is a meaningful and alignable like goal, right? Um, because we've got to find a way to stay away from the tool, the tool focused conversation or you will just keep running in into that, right? Um, if you scroll back up a little bit, right? So there's let's dig into these these different groups. So we've got the value path, which is five properties, delivery summary, right? So this is explaining like their relationship with you overall. Um, uh, let's keep going. And like what's interesting and why I'm I'm confident at the place that HubSpot is right now versus like maybe unified customer view or 360 view has always been like in the marketing lingo. But prior to back like two years ago or less, you really, it was hard to bring all the data together and get a true 360 degree review. Right? Now you can, but you have to ask for these like delivery related properties, commercial related properties, um, engagement throughout the the life cycle. So really we're just trying to help everybody give give yourselves permission to actually put this data in HubSpot like in the first place. It doesn't have to replace every single system all although we are building situations like that uh, where it's coming in and doing everything but accounting basically. But when you can just bring the data in, now you actually can achieve like a unified view. Um, and I would love your thoughts Casey on this engagement score that says calculated score from signal activity and some of your recent thoughts you've been having about like lead score of old versus lead score of new. Casey Hawkins: Yeah, um, so you and I spoke earlier today and one thing I'm struggling with right now, um, just like vulnerably is creating more documentation and honestly creating more lead scoring content, um, which is what been my whole like bit for oh by year now, yeah, a year now. Um, but I've been struggling to like what do I talk about with lead scoring? Um, and to be honest, it's actually not because I've been talking about it for a year and I'm just like tired and I feel like I've said everything because I actually don't really think that's true. Um, what I think is more true is that lead scoring scoring, whatever you want to call it, is going to change. Instead of having us building these scores and putting these um, like saying job title as CEO is 10 and whatever, um, I think we are not far from a world where AI is scoring for us and constantly making changes for us to say, hey, CEOs actually like this week we're not hitting with CEOs. so their score is going down and last week we might have been hitting with them, but this week they're just not. Um, so they're just a lower priority. Um, and so on and so forth. And so I like the and what where that also gets cool is like Chris, you, every time I speak to you and I have spoken to you twice today, but usually I'm talking to you at least three times a day and every time I speak to you, it you have something new that you published from the site or you built or something. Like the volume of things that you're creating is so high that it's unsustainable like for me the practitioner to be like incorporating all of those things in the score constantly. Like I just wouldn't be able to keep up with that. So those are a lot of thought, I said a lot of words. Klemen Hrovat: I, I have two follow-up questions to that. Uh, by You see all Klemen Hrovat: Creating a lot, a lot of new content, you mean it will be hard for you as a human being to incorporate those new links in the scoring system. Casey Hawkins: Correct. Klemen Hrovat: Okay. I mean I would have to multiple times a day go in right now. I would have to go in multiple times a day and add whatever thing Chris created in the last 20 minutes. Chris Carolan: So it's a full time job. Casey Hawkins: You're on mute. Chris Carolan: I want to share an example of this. Um, so if you can scroll up and we're going to stay on this page, so we're going to open up a like a we're going to right click open here. Uh, uh, go to learn and Education Hub. And uh, in the foundation dropdown at the top. Should go to the top? Klemen Hrovat: Oh, sorry. Chris Carolan: Yeah, so there's a dropdown. At the bottom it says Value-First scoring. Casey Hawkins: Oh, you did it. Chris Carolan: So uh, yeah. Klemen did most of it. Um, but Written by Klemen and Casey, that's funny. Chris Carolan: Um, and like this was a couple hours ago where where Casey gave me the material she was working on. And the way that I think people should relate is that this is in relationship to trying to help a client, right? Like this stuff is created. So imagine in the old world like a few months ago we're making slides, we're trying to explain concepts, we're putting slides together, right? Very manual. Most of the time those slides don't get put together and we're trying to like have verbal conversations to create understanding and then the champions on the other side have nothing to share except a long an hour long call recording that none of the other people in their organization want to sit through. And even if they say, oh, yeah, send it over. Like do you are you going to record this? Cool, send it to me. Like, okay, how many of those get get watched? Um, now we can create these kinds of materials and now measure signals and engagement related to these things, right? But to Casey's point if we are able to be this agile and create, we're not always going to know exactly where the signals are coming from or exactly how it's going to be called. Like this page didn't exist three hours ago. So did we really take the time to go into HubSpot and then pick the page and add it to the score, right? And if we want to like this is the difference between optimization and transformation. is starting at least in my mind it has for a few months. It's very hard to build traditional lead scoring methodology into this world where AI is always watching and can turn around and give you a really great, clear understanding of what's happening with that contact, right? In a way that like let's say because this is actually it has happened, right? Like sales has been doing this for a long time. Not marketing doesn't usually like it, but when they know they need to create something cool, they're they're good at creating their own PDFs, their own slides. They share it. They feel the engagement like in the moment on that sales call. But that's the kind of stuff that never like makes it to the CRM, right? So we don't do more of that for the salesperson. They might ask marketing to do that thing for them next time, but all of the context of the situation is lost so it doesn't hit as well the next time. Um, so uh, thanks for bringing this up uh, Klemen. Um, I also just and I'm I don't mean to make this a scoring conversation, but uh, I don't think it shows like the future of all this. Um, and how value first kind of because we're talking about this in a scoring framework, but this also has to do. Like how does AI tell us where they are in the value path? Um, there's AI is certainly going to do better at that than we are because we're probably going to be optimistic about them. Um, and the same thing is true when we are doing scores. We have these um, I always call them like aspirational scores. Like the when we start scoring our CEOs even though our CEOs are never a part of our like core buying committee because we want them to be. Um, and I mean the same is true, you know, all over the place. And when you talk about like, okay, we need to increase MQLs because we need to increase sales. How are we increasing MQLs because if all we're doing is lowering the threshold for an MQL. We're not, I mean that's not going to double the sales, that's just going to waste some people's time. Um, and you know, when we look at our value path stages, if we just lower our threshold for um, researcher. That's not going to get us more researchers, it's just going to change represent audience Chris Carolan: Misrepresent is a better word yeah. Casey Hawkins: Misrepresent That's what they like it's so and it's really easy to get alignment on this. Like the first step is understanding, like second step is like having the guts to change a goal away from number of MQLs, right? especially when people are compensated based on these kinds of KPIs. But starting with the understanding like when you can use a word like researcher, like you don't get to say the other person is, oh, they're all of a sudden researching, right? Because they're not. They haven't shown you any kind of evidence to suggest that's where they are. And if you can give AI the guard rails, then it can actually, you know, help you do those things in objective ways, right? Also it like because it can create an objective conversation, an objective view, teams stop pointing the finger like at each other uh, based on what may or may not have what went into the score, right? Um, I would love for you to click on association verification if you can. Yep. Yep. Um, this only works if you get this part right and we have to go beyond making sure every deal has a contact and company associated and that's the only like thing that we're doing to make sure. Like that's been the shortcut I've seen. And it still amazes me. Kind of not, not really. We just have to get better at talking about this part. Like the best person to confirm this part are the people closest to the to the other human, right? And so often we're trying to automate associations in HubSpot because everybody sees it as a tedious activity when it when it makes the rest of the system, you know, work. Um, so I just wanted to highlight, like it's great to to put objects up and and properties and places and make sure you have the data in, but this part is so so important. And if I could ask any sales rep to do one thing manually, it is making sure the associations are are correct. Um, Oh, we could, we could go for a while here. Casey Hawkins: And we will. Klemen Hrovat: We will. Chris Carolan: We're not done yet. Casey Hawkins: Okay. I don't think we made it very far today but that's because everyone sent me on a side quest that I couldn't resist. I I've been telling people um, on calls that I'm the personality higher that that I'm just I'm just there for the for the bit. Chris Carolan: Everybody's got a role. It's all good. Um, but I I think like it's it inevitably it inevitably gets to the scoring conversation because we're and when you get all this data right, you want to be able to learn very quickly like the state of any human in your system. And if we can do this correctly, you can get to some very meaningful scores that the whole team trusts that you're not arguing about and and creates this really objective view very quickly that is super complex underneath. But it takes away a lot of complexity like if you can get there. And at the end of the day that's why a lot of leaders turn to HubSpot. They heard about lead scoring and and the promise that is very rare to see in practice. Now we're suggesting that you can you can actually get there. Um, but it does require you doing the work of sitting down and and saying what's important like to this organization, right? Um. And I I think I feel we'll have more of lead scoring conversations in the next sessions. Um, why? Because this is how we go from we'll just you know, have a unified customer view for the sake of unified customer view, but scoring is one of the use cases of unified data. This is one manifestation of unified data. You have the scoring, you can trust and you can use and then you know, sales will not complain about, hey, that MQL is really not useful. I just waited a month of my time following up. If you get unified customer review and data right, then, you know, you can try the forecasting. You didn't need to spend five days preparing the board of director presentation. You can just open up data. So everything we're now talking about unified customer review, the data beneath it, enabling unified customer view, it's not just for the sake of clean data, but it's really enabling the organization to use that data for the right lead scoring, for reliable lead scoring, for forecasting, for reporting and and everything. So we'll get to lead scoring again for sure. And at some point maybe we start calling it Value-First scoring. Um, or or health scoring. Uh, I'm excited. We've got an unboxing coming up with the scoring uh product managers at HubSpot for lead scoring and health scoring. So that's when I'm going to start making the case for them to remove certain words. Uh, but it it really does set a good boundary. It's it sets a a possible boundary to help differentiate what has been versus like where we need to go. Casey Hawkins: I'm trying to refer to it just as like scoring in hopes that that doesn't trigger Chris as much. I I bet we land on health scoring because whether it's the health of people in the beginning of the process and their their interest levels, their trust, health of them as a customer and that relationship, or even the health of an opportunity, like when you get to deal scoring and stuff like that. You're really trying to understand very quickly like is this a good, is this situation good for the business right now? Um, and I think there's going to be, I think we'll get there. Uh, But that's also why we're unboxing like both both sides and that's why you can see HubSpot bringing these things together, right? It's not it's not rocket science that we need to care about people throughout the journey. Um, so excited to do that with that that team. Chris Carolan: All right. So I guess next week we will get to um our our number three section of the playbook.ling this person. Uh, can you, are you able to click on that part, yeah? No. Okay. Um. So for the next show you can click through all those. Just just like you planned. enables me. Yeah, go build this, Klemen. You have to go build it now to check off all these these boxes. And tell us how it went. I I'll give you a shortcut it's already built in in the Value-First HubSpot. So So I can just take the boxes. Klemen Hrovat: And trust you. That's There you go. Um, but that that next section is all about, okay, we built the system now people have to learn it, learn what's happening, build capability within the organization. Uh, so I look forward to uh, digging into that with with you both. Klemen Hrovat: Likewise. Casey Hawkins: All right, thank you. Casey Hawkins: Thank you. Chris Carolan: I'll see everybody next week. Bye.