Value-First Data - Jan 27, 2026

[00:04] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good afternoon, good evening. LinkedIn friends, Value-First Nation. Welcome to another episode of Value-First Data. Here with Klemen and Casey. Happy Tuesday. Klemen Hrovat: Happy Tuesday. Casey Hawkins: Happy Tuesday back again.

[00:26] **Unified Customer Views** Chris Carolan: Back again. Uh, what have we learned so far about talking about unified customer views? Klemen Hrovat: Don't skip the basics. Casey Hawkins: That's yeah, that the foundation is so critical and people wanting to like rush ahead is not going to add value in the way that they hope. But isn't that true of like so many things? Klemen Hrovat: [inaudible] I was just want to say. Klemen Hrovat: It's not probably only if you unified customer view, it's you know CRM in general or everything. Uh you know, it's just a tool at the end of the day. Uh that should support the business, not you know. Don't start with the tool. Start with what you want to have. And what's the goal and then when you implement it, it will work and it will be adopted. Casey Hawkins: I think a lot of times and unified customer view is not an exception to this, but a lot of times I think people are implementing these thing you're implementing the unified customer review because you want to figure something out. You want to figure out how to better define your audience or you want to you know, you have this end result in mind and you think that the unified customer view is what's going to get you there. But it's the foundations for that. I think that are are are really the most important piece. Um and so I that's why I think people are rushing because they're like, well, I need to get this view so that I can answer all these fundamental questions. But at the end of the day, I'm like, I can't build you a view if you can't tell me what we should be viewing. Chris Carolan: Yeah. And I think like what I'm hearing, what I usually hear is very rarely like the view. And like like the the score or the the one piece of information or clean data or like these things that traditionally have been very hard to you know, do it in a vacuum or before the rest of the system is set up or before you bring in the other people on the team that need input or will have input into how that's being built. Um so when I'm hearing like the basics, it's it's definitely been like who's involved, who needs who needs like unified views, what do they need? And uh bringing in leaders to drive this initiative. Um since last week, there's been a few different conversations where it's like even as a like a consultant, like there's an interesting thing happening right now. Everybody talks about time to value. And meanwhile, people are very wary of taking three months to go through discovery, understand the business and then maybe after three months of paying an agency, now we get to see results, now we get to start executing. So there's this push pull between that and like quick wins. We're finding that people are okay with a documented customer view as a quick win. But it feels really unnatural because it's not anything itself that's going to create another lead or close another deal. But it's like this this back door approach to enabling your damn team, right? And since you don't want to make time for a specific training like if we call anything like training, right? Now it's like, all right, priority like four or five maybe, we'll make some time for it, but we never do. So it's like, let's just get some stuff out the door and we'll get to the training later and then we never get to it. Um it's been interesting over the past week to see that and have to stumble into it, right? It should be at this point, you even I need to build the habit of like, all right, this is how engagement starts. Like instead of discovery, right? We can get that discovery done through this very tangible like outcome that is the unified customer view. Um and it's really suited to whatever department or whatever set of users are asking like to get help, help with something.

[10:29] **Understanding a Concept and Patience** Klemen Hrovat: What I see challenges in in people I talk to is as you said, it takes time and patience to get through that where you know, everyone is, no, I know that workflow is broken because it's messing up my my hub spots. So I'll just make a quick fix of it. Even though no matter how bad that fix it and you know, tomorrow we'll talk about the same workflow doing something else wrong because the concept of workflow is is wrong. Um it it hurts when you try to convince. no, let's just stop for a day to to to set it up correctly and I know, uh to me they don't listen often. I keep trying. I keep you know, asking to to have a strategic discussion because that's how you should fix it. There's no way around. There's no quick win if you need to strategically align things. Uh that's why I said no, you need to not skip the basics. Um yeah, we're getting there. Chris Carolan: Right. Casey Hawkins: Yeah, I mean, so Chris, you and I had a little bit of a back and forth on this just this week where um we were proposing the unified customer view as a quick win and I was really struggling with that being a quick win because it felt like a step backwards from the request. Um, I acknowledge that it's not necessarily a step backwards or I mean, maybe even it it's a foundational step that if we skip, it doesn't matter what the the rest of the of the stuff that we do is going to be uh not done as efficiently because we don't have the foundations. Um I don't know, can you speak to that at all? Like what you what did you tell me? Chris Carolan: Yeah, I mean, so much of this is getting to the point where we can have productive conversations that we need to have and without that some kind of immovable thing that we decided on together, which can be a unified customer view. Like, it's just so easy to get buried in the tool and the tactics. And I was just talking about this with Tricia, like you start to go from tactics perspective. Okay, we need more leads. We need to send an email out. Who do we need to send an email out to? Uh this job title. Oh, we don't have that data. Okay, let's go get it. Oh, what about like some of them call themselves chief technical officers, some information officers or data officers. They all kind of, okay, uh let's build the workflow that brings them all together and handles all the different scenarios. And then we're going to go like build a LinkedIn scraper so that we can bring in all that data and then we'll be ready and then we send that email out. And it's like, oh, we didn't have this data ready. So we can't see if the email even is good enough. So let's add that property and now we can build our report and it's like starts to become like immediate tech debt basically, right? Because we knew because the goal was like more leads or we need to get the email out, right? And what we're trying to do, like the actual outcome is getting the sales people, you know, more qualified opportunities, right? And helping them with visibility, right? And that's why like we have to change the report or change the way the email looks like to create that data so that they can make sense of what the email open like, okay, that person opened that email. Now I'll see any other data. I don't know. That like does that help me, right? So then we start to build scores and all these other shortcuts. So, I think we certainly have to be careful saying like, okay, unified customer views is like the answer like to all those goals, but what it is is it will give us a clear path because we'll know right away we're either 10% of the way there or 50% of the way there or 80% of the way there. And we know that getting 100% is the goal and we should not be doing things that do not start to close that gap. Right? And I think when we put people in those situations, should to get real innovative. Like, oh, well this data this thing actually is over here. And if we just move it over here now now we're like an extra 10% of the way there. I think that's for humans. If we start to enlist help from AI, but just taking a screenshot of that view and asking Breeze, hey, do we have any data like in the portal that might fill in this this gap, right? There's intent data all over the place, there's engagement data all over the place. And it kind of takes it out of the hands of the you know, subjective humans that are in their different roles, right? Um but I think that's why like the documentation of the unified customer view is the quick win. Not that we actually have achieved it, right? Casey Hawkins: That's a moving target probably. Chris Carolan: I think that's a good way to put it. Like it's always a moving target, right? And we have to be able to sit down and get people to sit down and tell us what they actually need um to support the goal. Casey Hawkins: I think that's fair cuz I think of the amount of projects I've worked on and I've scoped, you know, someone says hello, I would like you to build out this nurture series and I say amazing, I got you. We'll do it. Um and then as soon as you start setting it up, you realize oh your email domain's not set up? Oh, your who are we sending this to? We don't have any job titles. But you said you wanted to send this to IT directors, but we don't have job titles for anyone. What do you mean? Um so yeah, I think like you said, there's so many I I think a lot of times you open up any tech project and you think you know what you're doing and then you get in there and you don't you don't know what you don't know and so the unified view as a starting point gets everyone on the baseline because then maybe you're like, wait, why are we even targeting IT job titles? That's not relevant to anyone who buys your stuff. Like what what are we even doing here? Um and so a lot of that can be found up front. Chris Carolan: Yeah. I think it sounds like it's the difference between the tactic, the gap between us getting the tactic done and the data and getting the view done and the data, right? Because automation starts to come up where it's like, oh man, we don't have any job titles. We need to get this email out though. Okay, let's pull down data. And now based on this activity that's very focused, we're going to build workflows that start to normalize that data because it's brought in, right? And because we don't want to ask our sales team to fill in like 200 contacts like worth of data even though we know they have the context. We know they could, right? But it's time intensive and like they got to be selling, right? If we give them like a better reason than to just send out emails that maybe will create some leads that we know probably aren't that great and going to qualify and now those sales are always harder than the referral sale that comes in. Like we got to create this space where teams can align on what CRM is actually supposed to be providing. Um Yeah, that's that's that simple. So I think I just describe what usually happens when we go right to like the reason we get to automation, right? Quickly. Is we're trying to do something uh and we need that data instead of putting the team in a position to like understand that data and then take action on it. It's almost like, well, HubSpot needs the data, so that's why we need to automate it. Klemen Hrovat: Yes. Chris Carolan: And that gets us to the. Klemen Hrovat: Just because we can, does not mean. And and and related to that, I was just posting today about deduplication. I think is somewhat related to to to to that discussion. Um we're often asked, you know, hey, yes, we have a lot of duplicates. Can you help us do that? And I'm always I'm pushing back, no, the first question is not let's dedupe. It's first understand the data sources. Understand what you want to do, how you want to have the the data model work. Do you have parent child relationships between companies and without knowing that, there is no way you can be successful with deduplication of contacts and companies. There's just no way. We'll we'll be merging records where in a week you'll be pissed off because we merge them because they should not be merged and there is no way back. Um so yeah, that understanding of the business is is yeah, really important to do any meaningful work. Chris Carolan: Yeah. That reminds me of another client conversation where they understand they need to unify the data, right? But there's all these systems and the one that's the considered the source of truth because it has all the logins, has the least amount of information in it, right? So what happens is we export that data and then bring it into the other systems to send out the emails and to we do that over and over and over. And we started like, okay, we just started accepting that that was the source of truth and we started technical solutioning for like how we're going to connect that data and we hadn't even like confirmed that that was the starting data set yet, right? And you start solutioning and again like it's so easy to just get buried in the tool conversation because then it depends on what tool it's coming from and how we're going to connect? Oh, can we even connect, right? And meanwhile the data might be sitting in another place because often the other teams need that data or they've already brought it in, right? And um so yeah, avoiding that solutioning uh because when you do get it right, like again, the power of HubSpot should be like the automation, right? So it's easy to understand why people just go right there. Um, but let's look at some examples. So, up to now, so we did the work of making sure we understood what teams are involved and what they need to see, which properties uh have gotten added to the system to support that including associations between records. I don't think we talked about that much this week. Um, now, we can get to uh the the automation.

[27:33] **Automation Only Works With Proper Steps** Klemen Hrovat: Which can work only if you did the first steps. Otherwise, we'll just amplify the mess you included in everything. Chris Carolan: Yeah, and it says, these workflows keep your customer contacts current without manual data entry. Uh, so that doesn't mean without ever doing manual data entry, right? You got to do that part first. That's why I press and press upon like the importance of a salesperson doing the association of records. Like at least a couple of times before you just say, oh, we got to we got to associate this to deals and we got to associate buying role and decision maker going to make sure all that stuff is automated because it's tedious and we shouldn't ask our sales people to do that. The salesperson themselves are the source of truth of that relationship between all of those things. So if you don't have them do that at least once or twice, like you end up doing that, creating a mess, they don't trust the data and now they're like they're not going to use the system. Yeah. So, I'm looking at workflows here. I'm not a workflow pro. I have love some other thoughts on uh what we're seeing on the screen here. Casey Hawkins: I have a couple of and I'm trying not to like I I think my brain often works like a hub spot workflow. Like that I'm like you're polar opposite in that way like all I know all I know is hub spot workflows. Taylor Swift and hub shot workflows. That's that's it. That's the only thing going on up here. Chris Carolan: That's scary. Casey Hawkins: Sorry world. But I've accepted it at this point. Casey Hawkins: So I'm trying not to get like too in the weeds cuz like I've like my brain is like and what's the what how do you organize this? What's this blah blah blah. Um but how how much should someone be tailoring these essential workflows for their business or are these, you know, contact is associated with a deal at any stage? Like how much nuance is there? Are these do these work? Klemen Hrovat: Uh quick the button uh coming in. The carrot, uh see the first one, the researcher. Chris Carolan: I think the first step is understanding like when we can like all the pipeline stages in Hubspot in any pipeline and any object. We're trying to automate that movement. Either moving the stages or having the stages like be the thing you click and then it fills out or creates a bunch of other you know, data based on that. So when we say like moving researcher buyer value creator here, like I think that's pretty common in terms of life cycle stage movement is a place we often start when it comes to workflows here. Casey Hawkins: Yeah. Yeah. Chris Carolan: So as you see these implement implementation steps, I'd love for you just talk through the the trigger, the action are these things you normally would see in a workflow like this. Casey Hawkins: I don't trigger a lot of workflows off of like from I don't trigger a lot of workflows like this based on have they visited this page in a certain period of time. The risk here in my head is like if someone is currently in the buyer stage, then they might be visiting our website a lot. Like, you know, where where making sure that we're preventing them from like flipping back. Um but as you know, I would probably for that researcher one, use lead scoring. Um to measure their recent engagement level and then that I would trigger it based on the the lead score score. But with that being said like doesn't matter. I probably not. I made a post just today about, you know, on the call and show last week, uh you Chris, George and I all had different answers to the same question and all of those answers worked. I think in the same way while I may build this as a lead score, that doesn't mean it doesn't work as its own trigger. I don't like the word trigger. I know I've said this before. It's just when I say it too much. Chris Carolan: I won't That's because [inaudible] won't go through the obvious joke there. Klemen Hrovat: Just because you can only work work with workflows. To like you can say it once or twice and it feels fine, but once I start like saying it multiple times I'm like, oh my god, this is a big word in my mouth. Chris Carolan: Um I think what we're seeing now also doesn't have to be one or the other, right? Like there's context all over the place and the thing that I want to point out is that like if we don't know what researcher means when we see it on the view, right? It doesn't matter if we did a bunch of work to move like and and automate the researcher stage. This is why getting teams together to say, okay, is knowledge base like the way our knowledge base is set up? We think that it's an obvious candidate for like I mean somebody's researching. Like sales team has somebody ever mentioned knowledge-based articles like on their journey to becoming uh um a qualified, you know, buyer. I think in some spaces it's probably that could definitely be a thing. Like when it's technical, you know, kind of products and you need to really understand how they work. Um but that's just you know, one space, right? But I think that's a good framework here like the goal of like what are we keeping automated? What what data are we trying to keep maintained and that's you know, data that tells us who they are and and where they are in the journey. Klemen Hrovat: And what probably changes I don't know, which websites are relevant for which business, based on what you have, where you see people walking around and then converting. Um but I think it's a combination. you have kind of those two. that you can then claim someone is at least a researcher. Chris Carolan: Yep. Anything else? I think these are pretty straightforward in terms of, all right, so the core, we're talking about the core data here, which is trying to sum up in a stage. Like where somebody is in their journey and what they've already done like to get there, right? Casey Hawkins: Mhm. Chris Carolan: Does it matter and I does it matter at in this who the person who the person is? Like does any of like the qualifying data matter here? Which is probably mostly relevant for a researcher. Klemen Hrovat: I would argue not because someone can be a researcher even though they don't feature ICP criteria. So you might not qualify it for you to to bother investing and know sales reps resources. But they are still a researcher. Um so I would I would treat that separately. Chris Carolan: Yeah, I think so. Like and again, I think we're starting at the foundation here. Like if we if we had to choose one thing, right? And so below this it says recommended workflows. Like add these once the essentials are working, right? Um Klemen Hrovat: as a technical implementation question that is in my mind here. Um is it better to have value path stage as a you know, custom property or modify life cycle stage properties. I I mean I I guess you have a lot of conversations around that Chris and I'm really curious where you currently are with that. I I see pros and cons why one or the other. Uh so don't know what's the right answer. Chris Carolan: So what are the pros to uh not changing the life cycle status life cycle stage property themselves. Klemen Hrovat: There are some baked in automations within HubSpot which you can leave as is. Um because historically those MQLs SQLs were used. Let's put aside the discussion how useful that is, but these are the terms that are used across the the the market. So people think they understand what it means. So let them still be there, build you know, value path stages on top of it or in parallel. Um KPIs in the past were based on those life cycle stages. Uh so that you don't broke historical data. Um but then you have two separate properties which you need to maintain for somewhat the same reason. Um Casey Hawkins: I yeah, I mean, I think the advantage is and this is just transparently, I think the advantage is from a change management perspective, like taking a step instead of just like demolishing the house. Chris Carolan: Yeah, I think I'm good with change management excuses and the humans the humans won't like it excuses. I'm not okay with the this is how HubSpot works like excuses. Um especially now, there's so many ways that we can recreate those that level of visibility, right? It's just a part of the reason why we're here is because if we want to report on life cycle stages in Hubspot, it has to work like this. it never works like this. So then we start building processes and like measuring KPIs like on that stuff. Um, I think this also highlights though, it's very it's harder to optimize like into this. And in terms of like in the best case scenario you're choosing transformation over optimization, right? We can definitely put them next to each other. But I'm interested in what kind of outcomes we're going to see in terms of um it doing anything more than making it super obvious about why the old way is not not good. It's going to be hard to say like here's a researcher and then comparing it to MQL SQL. it's just like different different categories. So as long as they there's awareness around like you can get more information and context with the separation I think. Um but you also have to be careful like, well, I'm I'm I'm measured on MQLs, like not researchers. So I don't care about that that data or we're not going to work to like define that stuff. Um so I think starting out in a fresh portal, definitely putting in like value path as the as the life cycle stages. Um but I think it's fair to say like based on the humans involved, you really have to have to have to manage expectations there. Klemen Hrovat: So in an older Hubspot start with two properties and then collide. It's about the HubSpot coming. Chris Carolan: I I know. I know but uh It's about the humans, the humans using HubSpot because I've also been surprised by how quick some people have been to embrace like this language, right? So, I think it's a conversation again coming back to like, okay, this is the unified customer view. Imagine it says this versus this where is this says researcher? And this one says MQL, which one needs more context next to it, right? And even just being willing to have those conversations because it's it's for me it's great like when you when I start to get a sense that they don't like the words that they're saying like lead MQL and just the like they know it hasn't been great, right? That's the opening to say like, well, what about this, right? We're not going to rip everything out from under you, but we at least need to consider like watch how much easier this view gets when we start changing these words, right? Which again, like you can't get there unless you've already decided like what you want the view like to be, right? Um, let's look at some of these recommended workflows before unless you guys want to dig into these other stages. Klemen Hrovat: These are the essentials. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Because these We have to pretend like we're going to get through like a single page of this. Chris Carolan: Uh engagement level calculation. Casey Hawkins: I just don't know for that first, I don't know if that first one a workflow is the most efficient way of doing this, but I could be wrong. I haven't built a workflow like this. Casey Hawkins: you just said it it should be lead scoring. Casey Hawkins: It should be a score. Why why are we building workflows to do scores, Chris? Chris hates scores so much. And he's proposing workflows, which he also doesn't like instead. Chris Carolan: Oh man. Let's see, how do I qualify this or justify it? Um No, I think you're right. Uh having said that, we have had to create workflows in the past to um go beyond just contact and company fit, right?. And that was like last year. Yeah. Before the new scores came out, so Yeah, new scores were like February of last year ish, I think. So now that we have those new scores, like how has that been different in terms of um I think it sounds like we agree that engagement level scores are a good idea like right next to that stage uh you know, label. Casey Hawkins: Yeah, I mean, I could set that up as a score pretty quickly to see how much activity they've had in a period of time. Um, the labels themselves, I think there's only room for kind of for three engagement score labels, so if you wanted like four, you might still. And sometimes I do still translate the out- of-the- box labels into I like use a workflow to translate the out- of-the box labels into something that's more readable for humans, like, you know, dormant or something like that. Um but that's all possible. Um then active service counts when the service changes. What are service counts? I don't know if I understand those words. Chris Carolan: Uh like deliverables. Casey Hawkins: Okay. So how many like like how many licenses uh like how much um you know, like how active is that company or that your business. Casey Hawkins: And that's what pretty much all of well those first two are really measuring and then the last one's just measuring or not measuring anything. the last one's just ownership. Chris Carolan: And then we have our favorite at the end here. Advanced workflows. Casey Hawkins: I did don't don't worry. I I did see that you had a account health calculation workflow. Um I mean, I don't know. I'm not even totally like opposed to building these as workflows just in I mean, I've said to you, Chris, this week, I said I think one of the biggest problems people have with scores is that they try to make them more complicated than they need to be and with both of the scores if you will that you build, it's pretty much like is this true then then hot. If this is true then medium and I think I don't really understand why scores need to be any more complicated than like that. I think because scores can be more complicated, people build out this like complex web of logic where you're a high intent if you've gone to this page on a Tuesday and so on, but. Chris Carolan: But one of our biggest deals came in on a Tuesday, Casey. Casey Hawkins: Causation or correlation everyone. Causation or correlation. Did they visit your page website? Like have have they engaged with you this week. I oftentimes don't think it has to be a whole most hubspot instances that I've worked in we're not talking data sets so large that if you don't look at you know, engagement this week. it's going to bury you. Chris Carolan: Do you think when the concept of automation uh and like automatic automatic maintenance of data comes up, people think of scores? Casey Hawkins: No. Chris Carolan: Sounds like maybe they should. Casey Hawkins: Maybe they should. And once again, I have made this session about scores. My job here is done. Chris Carolan: Another week. Casey Hawkins: get your a better mic so you can drop it. I think this last one like I think we're going to get to a place where um again, if we can give the guard rails to AI, there will be like one a few different data points like a like an overall score of everything that they're doing. Um like because transcripts, right? Transcripts are going to show like, okay, five they engaged, they saw a bunch of pages, they did this kind of engagement in five days, right? Did they say anything about it on the call? And if not, like should that be should that be important? Because they when it does have an impact or it does create it, they will guarantee say something about it. Like on the call. Klemen Hrovat: But even call itself just, you know, increases the the health tremendously. Uh and and then understanding what was discussed in a call is just a next level this is possible. Um and from what I am seeing with maybe you know a push back on the workflows, um as the implementation way of incorporating that um building a workflow with with that complexity. I mean, good luck anyone understanding what's happening. Um it should be a code, I guess or you know, a lead score or a code step in a workflow somewhere because then, you know, then it's only this and anyone can understand that. But if that translates into 50 branches something will go wrong and no one will understand it. Um and then then we're talking with limits. Chris Carolan: And so I got to build this like special time delay stuff that then I can just let it all run and it's great. It's the prettiest little workflow that you've ever seen. It's actually a giant workflow. Um and then you have, you know, an urgent firefighting call evening on Friday. Hey, I we just figured out marketing is telling us 50 MQLs are are lost in that workflow which should route leads to the right reps. Why is that so? I mean, because of that workflow because you you know, you you didn't think through correctly. You didn't fix it. you just added a delay from two to five minutes. It's not going to fix it. Klemen Hrovat: anything today. Chris Carolan: Workflow is not always the right answer, but lead scoring is. Casey Hawkins: Thank you. Thank you. That is what Um what did we learn today? That automation the automation is there is I think one thing I learned actually. I've talked to you a lot about the value paths and one thing I've internally struggled with is like how do I know? How do I know? How do I know if someone's a value creator like or if they're you know, when when do these things change. And I don't I think to follow my own advice, I think I was over complicating it. Maybe it doesn't need to be so complicated. Chill out. Chris Carolan: Yeah, I think uh at the end of the top of the view here it says, so your team always has accurate information.. That's the goal.. And if you feel like you're in a spot where you're having to build 15 20 workflows, uh maybe you need to rethink of what that accurate information looks like. Um again, we get there by not having unified customer view, my opinion. Um because you're like, oh, I want this data and I want this data and I want this data, right? And now, I think with these views, you can give AI a very clear picture of what accurate information looks like. And with one run, it can look at the meetings, the emails and give you the most accurate picture you've ever seen. Um so, uh good to understand how we can over complicate it. Uh I think we highlight the complexity of like you want to understand these outcomes that the workflows are getting you. Um but automation like through workflows is not always the best way to get there. So until next week. Casey Hawkins: Until next week. Klemen Hrovat: See you next week. we have. Have a great week everybody. Take care.