Value-First Measurement - Jan 26, 2026

[00:04] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good morning, good afternoon, happy Monday. LinkedIn friends, Value First Nation, welcome to another episode of Value First Measurement here with Danielle. Our first time uh, in 2026, right?

Danielle Urban: I know. We've like really, I posted on LinkedIn that I was tiptoeing into 2026 and with Monday holidays and kids and travel. That's worked out perfectly.

Chris Carolan: Yeah, it's been interesting already. Uh, January is already done in in a few days. So, crazy to think about.

Danielle Urban: I hadn't even put that together yet.

Chris Carolan: Yeah. Uh, that's what I do. I help people understand this time ago slower, folks, like let's just go. Let's embrace the speed. Um, but yeah, I'm excited to chat with you about this topic. I've been hitting it in a couple different spaces and and kind of a new space for it has been with actual like, you know, humans on the other side of all this, trying to get business done and uh, overcome all of the challenges that we've talked about throughout this series. Uh, and it's starting to resonate. Um, faster than I thought it would, I guess. Uh, Unified Customer View. Uh, we did a workshop mid December, you know, with a couple few of our friends. Um, didn't get very far, honestly uh, in the hour. Um, so focus this quarter on like trying to make it more practical. Um, but also what I'm understanding is this ability to explain HubSpot without explaining HubSpot has been uh, super, super valuable in getting leaders and other like non-HubSpot users, right? to lean in and like stay engaged in the conversation in ways I haven't seen before. Like when I without being a part of any of these conversations, does this like make sense as something I'm excited about?

Danielle Urban: Definitely. Well and it's funny because that conversation that we had in in December, we can't even really call it a workshop because we truly did not get that far. Um, but that's been like ping-ponging around in my head because one of the things that we really got stuck on was like, how do you put all these pieces together to create a unified view? Is it truly that everybody sees the same thing and we just make the navigation easy or is it that we're creating dynamic versions to serve up, you know, the right information to the right role. Um, are we like customizing it so it's collapsed and like sort of deprioritized and certain things are floated up to the top. Um, but I I loved it. It like I love that that stuck in my head because I I think my philosophy on gaining adoption inside of HubSpot is like make everybody's jobs easier. And maybe that's oversimplified, but when you actually make the thing easy to use and make it so that it helps you do your job better, then everybody wants to use it. And it shouldn't be that hard. Like sorry for us, because we have to build all the pieces and figure out how to make it work best for that situation. But, um, you know, I'm overstepping into the the adoption side here, but I really I've always fallen back on that when you make the thing easy to use and you make it help people, then it's a no-brainer. People want to get in there.

Chris Carolan: Yeah. And like I think uh, our biggest mistake in December was not following this uh, genius uh, Unified Customer View playbook. Um, because the first uh, Value First data episode of this year with Clementine and Casey. Then we're going through this. And this should like immediately get to the heart of the problem and hopefully this connects the dot to like why you need people who don't usually lean in, to lean in, right? And it's like, okay, yeah, uh, we all know this part. It's like, do we have HubSpot? Do we have access to HubSpot? And like so many audits, like still seeing it. All right, I'm gonna, I'm building these tools to just go and look at HubSpot and then I'm gonna deliver like valuable insights, like without talking to the humans that have not been using HubSpot properly and they're gonna tell you how like, oh, this, this whole data set here that you audit is been, yeah, no that data is real.

Danielle Urban: We don't use it.

Chris Carolan: And I don't know how you could know why or why it isn't real. But, uh, yeah, so now like half your, right? So this is the easy part. That we went, we got to hear, right? And organizational readiness. Ensure your team is aligned and prepared for implementation. It's hard to just read through this without being like, yeah, we got some work to do, folks. Identified at least one other person who will use the unified view daily. Like to your point of making it easier to use, like how often do we have just the marketing champ can, admin be like, all right, I'm the person that's going to implement HubSpot. Let's go through this 90-day checklist.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Uh, right? Like when you don't get other people and what you can't possibly build the unified customer view, like for them.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: It's funny because I've lost deals to people saying, oh, we just want best practices implemented. Like, we just, we want the playbook. I'm like, okay, see you in a couple years.

Chris Carolan: Exactly. And like this is where and what I'm finding is like it takes a I guess I'm, I'm a special like soul. I It takes a special soul right now to be able to challenge effectively because that's all they want is best practices. And if you go ask this whole different conversation. Yeah, Native like stuff. If you go ask AI like Oakshard last week, like somebody came to him and said, um, GPT just said that HubSpot could never be the system of record because it's only for marketing and sales. Right? Like that's And when I asked Court about that, he's like, oh yeah, like millions of pages in my training data that says, yep, HubSpot equals marketing sales CRM. So your all of your strategies, Chris, like it's like prove it. And I was like, shit, I can't. Like nobody's doing it, right? Vicious cycle. But when you look at this kind of thing, so like the whole goal this year is like it's HubSpot implementation with by not ever focusing on HubSpot.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Right? And it starts here in terms of like, okay, we usually know we try to get through implementation without bringing the voices that might challenge us along the way, but they're the ones that need the views.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Right? Teams aligned, agreement on which customer-facing teams need visibility. And like this is where this is a, this is should be a slam dunk. Like if you're going through this and you're worried about challenges, like surprise, every customer-facing team needs visibility.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Right? So easy, like an easier yes, let's say. Uh, list of systems currently holding customer data. Even informal ones like email and I'd say people's heads too.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Uh, and then like, do you have time? Right? And can we be in a position? Like because all of this is happening alongside AI, right? So can we be in a position to like help them understand how AI can help make the space for the two to four hours per week that the humans need to spend working with each other and just sitting down and saying, okay, what does the customer, what does the unified customer view look like for you marketing, for you sales, for you service.

Danielle Urban: Mhm.

Chris Carolan: Right? And helping people break free from this this thought that like a system of record or a source of truth has one like vendor name.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Right?

Chris Carolan: Yeah. It's funny because I'm working through this implementation right now and it's like all of the teams. They're fairly small companies, so the teams are mostly one to two people, but there are so many conversations happening at once on how different things overlap. So, right before this, I was on a call with their web development team talking about how we get from a uh, form to a portal that creates multiple contacts. And so now we've got the web dev team involved, but that came from a conversation with the, you know, subscription management team. And then there's the marketing team that needs to know who has an active subscription and get that over to their system, um, that they're using for bulk emails, which is not HubSpot because it's very expensive in their case, or would be if we went that route. Um, and then we're working with finance because the way that we expected to process payments is not going to work potentially. So now we're trying to figure out how do we get that path so that all of the data can be inside of HubSpot and the people who are managing the subscriptions know if they've been paid for or not. And marketing knows if the subscription is active or not. And so getting all these pieces together, it's like we've had to have so many meetings just to figure out how do you currently do it? Why is it terrible? How do we make it better? Okay, now we have more information about how it works. How do we still try to make it better even though we've got some roadblocks? Um, and how do we get to the view? So, I've I've said before, I'm so excited to build their record views because it's just going to be right there. Like all the things that somebody needs, there's going to be like a membership card that's like shows the active associated subscription, shows their last payment, shows their, you know, contact status or contact relationship to the subscription, whether they're a billing contact or a marketing contact or a primary contact. Like it's all just going to be there. And they've never had that level of access across teams. It's always been locked into different systems. Um, and so we're even pushing, I'm hoping to push them into some more management of email or visibility of email back into HubSpot. Um, we'll see.

Chris Carolan: Yeah.

Danielle Urban: Integrations won't play nice, but we'll get there.

Chris Carolan: Right. No, it's huge because that and that's where like you mentioned towards the beginning like eventually it does come back to us because we got to build it.

Danielle Urban: Right.

Chris Carolan: And it's like, yeah, that's it. Like finding the people because this is the important part. Like everybody's it's so easy to just protect your own space, right? Especially when there's each everybody has a system that they work on and it's like the suggestion that, oh man, so much tried and true like advice. Like the whole goal of source of truth is to not duplicate like data everywhere.

Danielle Urban: Right.

Chris Carolan: Right? Because then it's hard to maintain. It's like, yeah, it doesn't mean that this team like, so what we've done is everybody's had to log into all the systems instead, right? Instead of just creating one source of truth system and marketing works out of the system and that's their source of truth and sales is here, right? And what this does, this concept of Unified Customer View, it is allowed me to like forcibly but gently keep us out of the tools conversation.

Danielle Urban: Yes.

Chris Carolan: It's a trap every single time. Like every time, especially if there's more than one tool. You either have more than one tool and you got to like worry about team defenses going up, right? Or somebody's never been in HubSpot before, right? And they're coming over to HubSpot and they want to uh, you sold them on the belief that HubSpot can do more than they can go research anywhere else. But then you start talking about like deals and all these words that they don't know what it means and then Right. and it's the cycle of like, of course, we want to explain those things, but it doesn't actually like have any effectiveness in terms of like getting their buy-in for whether this is the right decision or not, right? And the more it comes becomes about HubSpot, like leaders understandably like step back because it's not their responsibility to implement HubSpot and maintain HubSpot and run HubSpot.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: But what they will sign up for, at least I've in just the couple of months that I've been trying this, is they will sign up to lead the Unified Customer View, like initiatives, right? And it's so easy to get a yes from everybody because it should be very obvious that if you put a customer-facing person in front of a unified customer view, they will have what they need and their job will get easier.

Danielle Urban: Right.

Chris Carolan: But like you mentioned, until you get like the team to sit down and say this is what I need.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: And then you apply the current system to that, right? It might get 10% there, it might be 15% there.

Danielle Urban: Mhm.

Chris Carolan: Now that it's there, it's not about what to build. It's like what interaction do we need? Like what is not even coming into the system yet. Like when you put the data, you just create this contextual view they've never had before. Then all of a sudden, people get ideas, right? For like, oh, you know, I've always thought LinkedIn comments should be something that we should care about, but I couldn't even like the way people talk about CRMs, like what comments are just like extra and they're noise and like so there's no even place to put them.

Danielle Urban: Right.

Chris Carolan: Right? And now that you've given people the permission to say, all right, unified customer review at all costs, it's like just people innovate from places, you know, you don't expect. And that's because they know their business and their customers better than any of us could possibly know.

Danielle Urban: Right.

Chris Carolan: Yeah, it's been fun. I mean, that's always our process is like talk to the people first. And it's so interesting to like get their feedback first on the tools and then be like, all right, cool. So let's not talk about that anymore. Let's talk about what makes your job hard? What do you wish you could change in your day-to-day? And that's a a pretty deep conversation, like, you know, technic technically speaking, like we're, we're talking to the practitioners at that point, not talking to the leaders. But coming away from that conversation, it's like, cool, I've got a roadmap now for what needs to be fixed. I have some ideas on how, and we're going to take this back to leadership and say here's how we're going to make your business run more efficiently. And that's, like you're saying, there's no question about that buy-in, especially after you've made the sale. Like it's so easy to just say like, we're going to make this more efficient to give your team back like 50% of their week. And also we're going to improve it so much that along the way, you're going to get more inspiration about other things you want involved. And so the once they see what's possible at like the absolute baseline level and they get out of that like struggle cycle. Now you get them into a space where it's like, wow, there's actually so much that we could do. Let's start thinking about that. And there's my retainer. But like then we start looking at what else can we build into this? How do you pull other information into the view? Like LinkedIn comments are a great example of that because there are maybe one or two people who are using that effectively, but it might be the thing that's actually driving your revenue. And when you start to pull some of that into the place where everybody's working, then if one of those two people leaves or one of those two people gets promoted, now you've got a system of record for how that was effective and how to continue that effort. You just have to point people in the right direction.

Chris Carolan: Yeah.

Danielle Urban: Make more money.

Chris Carolan: Everybody likes that.

Danielle Urban: Yeah, and that's the thing like I get it, it's hard. Like people come in asking for a certain like help and a certain pain and you want to help with that pain. But folks, it's a, it's a trap when they ask for like help making HubSpot work better.

Chris Carolan: Yeah. Right. If you go to the leaders and say this is how HubSpot's gonna work better. It's like, okay, I hope that helps our business. I see how much I pay HubSpot too.

Chris Carolan: Right. And it's just like again, this bridge of, um, this everybody's got baggage. Everybody's been through three or four projects where this is supposed to work. It hasn't. Um, and like everywhere you look, as soon as they start talking about their experiences, it's about the tools. Right? And hopefully this is like at least what I'm finding personally and and as I do more project work with the Caseys and the Ryan Ginsbergs of the world. And like, it's pretty fun to watch like people who have never seen an alternative before, like all of a sudden it's like, oh, I'm not supposed to be doing it, I don't have to do it this way that I know sucks. Yeah. Right? It's like as soon as you get that feeling that they don't like what the words that are coming out of their mouth. Yeah. It's like if you can be there to say, no, it's it can be done this other way, it's just a little bit different way to think about it. Right. Right? Um, and it's, it's been it's been fun. Uh, for sure, but now the work is like, okay, because I think with Unified Customer Review, a 360 degree view, it's not anything new, right? But what I've felt is that, you know, it's been marketed as that, Hubspot specifically, but it's never been sold as that and it's never been delivered. Yeah. as that because we start from a place of let's just get the quick win out of the way.

Chris Carolan: Right.

Danielle Urban: Right. And like I I'm betting and I can't wait to start sharing more outcomes. Like some of the quickest wins are going to be like, hey, we know what our Unified Customer View needs to look like now. Yeah. Right? We've got that documented.

Danielle Urban: Yeah, won't that be a dream. It's funny because I used to work in the the data industry. It's gonna sound really dirty, but I like I worked for a company that sold a really fast database and all of our partners were data visualization tools and then I worked for a data visualization tool. And so the focus of my career has always been like data in aggregate and the shift now, and I don't think this is just my career path and my perception, but I really think there's such a focus to that one-to-one authentic relationship piece. And that's where we can take the focus off of the aggregated data, which we know was only like what, 70% accurate if you're lucky to begin with. And now put that into like manage the relationship, manage the humans first and let's get that piece of it dialed in because then the aggregate data will follow. Then when you get to the level of leadership and board reports, it actually is more than 70% accurate, hopefully, maybe, uh, because that individualized focus and managing the relationship first and making it easier for everyone to do their jobs right and do it effectively, just works. Like the rest of the downstream impact is massive whether you intended for that or not. And I think that focus of Unified Customer Review and the singular person and like contact management and relationship management is exactly where we all should be and are starting to focus. And I love that for us.

Chris Carolan: Yeah. I do too because there's we've never had we've never had more data than we have right now.

Danielle Urban: Right.

Chris Carolan: Like everything you wanted to know about a human buyer. Like is is available.

Danielle Urban: Right.

Chris Carolan: So why don't you just bring it in and it's like, all right, uh man, that's a mess. So let's just make the list and start calling.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Right? Like it doesn't have to, meanwhile, people are interacting like on LinkedIn, on Reddit and other spaces where it's like if you knew they were there, that's exactly who you're going to call and it's going to hit every time and like everybody on the team starts to feel better about the situation. They start to use the system. Um, you know, trust starts to build, right? Yeah. Uh, so this is going to be this relates, you know, I'm, I'm boxing, um, intent uh, data later this week. Uh, we're going to be unboxing scores uh in HubSpot. And even that team, like it's going to be lead scores and health scores together.

Chris Carolan: Right? Um, so I think we're entering the world where it's let's score the relationship with the human being, like wherever they are.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Uh, it's and it helps break down these barriers of like, oh, well, it's okay to score them right at the beginning and then start to plan these views because it doesn't necessarily matter like when they filled out the form. If we're open to just understanding like what they want us to understand, right? Which is who they are, where they are, what they care about. Every business, like that's the exciting part is, like you cannot say that these are not good things for your business.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: And it's it highlights immediately that the hard part is bringing your internal teams together like to get it done. The tool is like the tool's not it.

Danielle Urban: End of the spoon and end. Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Right? So, you'll be hearing uh, much more about this, this concept. Um, and uh, we'll be starting to share examples for sure. Um, soon. I don't make any promises, but it's been super helpful on Tuesdays to go through this, this playbook and just be like, oh, when you put the usual stuff within this frame, all of a sudden it's like, oh, seems pretty straightforward. All right, let's go.

Danielle Urban: Yeah.

Chris Carolan: Um, so hopefully, uh, we can we can help you, um, trust that this is this is the path. Uh, and if you're interested and this is resonating with you, like don't hesitate to reach out. Um, we'd love to help you get get stuff like this done. Sound good, Danielle?

Danielle Urban: Sounds like a blast. Please, I want to do more of this.

Chris Carolan: I know, it's, it's so good. It's like because people are out there. They they want to do it well.

Danielle Urban: And I would agree.

Chris Carolan: Right, that's all they want. It's just, can we start being better with about this? Like I can't find any good examples out there of it's actually working, right? Um, so we're gonna help you do that. Uh, until next Monday. Uh, everybody have a great week. Thanks, Danielle.

Danielle Urban: Thank you.