Syncing EmailBison with HubSpot and Salesforce for Agencies

In this deep-dive webinar, OutboundSync founder Harris Kenny joins the EmailBison team to break down exactly how agencies and growth teams can sync outbound data to HubSpot and Salesforce CRMs.

Drawing from his own experience running a HubSpot agency and building a sales engagement SaaS, Harris walks through real-world use cases, technical models, and attribution challenges.

Whether you’re managing multiple clients or running a single outbound motion, this session explores how proper CRM integration helps prove ROI, avoid client churn, and unlock higher-value retainers. Bonus: see how to log every activity, track positive replies, and build dashboards that show your true impact.

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Transcript

00:02 Okay, so effecto alright man, floors yours. Let’s do this. Okay, hey everybody. Um, all right. Recording is on a nice to meet you.
00:12 My name is Harris Kenny. I’m really excited to chat. Um, big fan and user of email bison. Excited to talk today about a few different things.
00:20 Um, but you know, really the idea is we’ve got a lot to cover. Um, and we’re going to be talking about CRM integration and why you would potentially want to integrate email bison with your CRM.
00:33 Or your customer’s CRM, we’re going to, especially focus on the agency workflows here. And, um, in addition to that, we’re going to talk about, um, data models in general, and how the data model shifts when you’re going from a sales engagement platform like EmailBison to, uh, CRM, like HubSpot or Salesforce
00:54 . And we’re going to, I’m going to focus on those two, uh, those are the two that we integrate with right now.
00:59 May, may change that in the future. I think that everything we talk about that will apply, will apply to other serums that have simpler data models, um, but they have the most, uh, I think robust, most most complicated ones.
01:10 We can also touch on some even more complex things like a data warehouse product, like a snowflake or something like that as well.
01:18 Um, we talked about that briefly. That’s just, that’s kind of like more on the periphery. So if you want to just drop in the chat where you’re calling in from, um, see a bunch of people coming in which is great and a bunch of familiar names, um, Just saw an old, an old familiar name, Lance pop-in.
01:30 Hey, Lance, how’s it going? Um, and the way we’re gonna do it is if you want to drop in questions as you go, as you think of them, please feel free.
01:36 And then we’ll do questions towards the end, but if there’s something really urgent, I might hit pause and, uh, and cover that earlier.
01:45 Um, alright, so let me just pull up my screen and, uh, we’ll work through today. And Hassan, is there anything you want to mention at the, at this top here before we get going?
01:56 Uh, no, I think we’re good. Okay. Alright, let me get my screen going here. Uh, present review. I’m going to share my screen.
02:21 And let’s see if it’s going to let me do this. Alright, can you see my screen? Yes, sir. Awesome. Okay.
02:29 Um, so we’ve got a deck here just to guide the conversation. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to start with just a thought exercise.
02:34 Um, I’m going to talk through just a brief recap of how we got here. Now, bison users are power users.
02:39 So that’ll be really quick. I think everyone knows how we got here, but I will include a little kind of bonus section for bison users in particular, um, because I think that this, this users of this platform are different than most of the market.
02:51 Um, and even different than Most of the early adopters within the opt-out market. Um, so we’ll talk about some things that are special for Bison there.
02:58 Um, because I do think it’s different and I think we got to acknowledge that, um, in a good way. Uh, I think, you know, my experience working with Bison myself and then with our partners is that Bison users are our power users.
03:09 Um. Okay, um, and then we got, we’ll talk about how to spot and Salesforce and then a bunch of Q&A.
03:16 All right. So first, I just want to ask a. Start with like a thought exercise, a prompt. If you will.
03:26 Which is, I want to just think to yourself how much of glass of water is worth. And the answer is that it depends on where you are, right?
03:40 3.50, Adam says. Well, maybe. Um, I’m going to talk about, um, the, Fuenfria spring, Daniel knows this is his stomping grounds in the Sierra to Guadarrama, Daniel knows this is his stomping grounds, but it’s in Spain.
03:55 There’s a mountain range in Spain, and there’s fresh water there, right? So the fresh water spring in the mountains and it’s pure, it’s clean, it’s wonderful water, but the problem is, not a lot of people live there because it’s in the middle of the mountains.
04:06 And so even though it’s great, where we really want that water, is we want that water in the city, where the people live.
04:13 And so in particular, this mountain spring, Could be feeding or delivering water to the city of Segovia, which is in Spain.
04:22 And so what I want you to think about in terms of this thought exercise is that, you know, the outbound platform that you’re using email by sin in this case is going to be like your sales engagement platform.
04:30 So it’s pure. It’s wonderful doing great things, but the problem is it’s only part of where we want it. We really want that data to be inside of a larger system of record.
04:39 So that we can do things like cross object reporting. We can do things like revenue attribution. We can do things like, um, Reconciling identity of leads in bison to contacts and even up to the company or account level inside of a CRM.
04:52 Because once we have that, that same thing, that same data, I sent an email to this contact, we have that same data in a different place, it’s worth much, much more, because there are many more things that we can do with it.
05:04 And so, at OutboundSync , we consider that we’re building like an aqueduct. Basically, aqueduct of psychobia, it’s a real thing, it was in use for like 2,000 years, the Romans built it, so someone asks the last time you thought about the Roman Empire.
05:16 That would be just now. Uh, it’s actually really beautiful and it’s a really cool, um, historic site and, uh, just amazing engineering marvel and they, um, I’ve done some restoration work over the years and you can still see it.
05:26 It’s really cool thing. Um, but the idea is that different things are worth different amounts to depending on where they are.
05:32 And so fundamentally our belief at OutboundSync is that we believe in these point solutions. We believe in the role of a sales engagement platform like Email Bison.
05:40 And we believe that for teams in a certain size at a certain scale, That data is going to be even more valuable if it can be in context of the rest of the go-to-market and even ongoing customer engagement activities, customer success and retention, you know, you can eventually, if you have this data 
05:56 on the right place, you can track the not only the average deal size, but even the lifetime value of deals that are sourced from outbound, versus from, uh, inbound and other channels.
06:06 So fundamentally, how about data’s worth more in your CRM? Now, not every company. Is using a CRM, not every company is using HubSpot or Salesforce.
06:14 Obviously there are a lot of different sales, uh, uh, teams running lots of different sales tools. Our focus is on HubSpot and Salesforce because, particularly in US and European markets, they have a lot of traction.
06:25 Um, and there’s a certain point where companies just switch over to them because it just makes sense. Not only do they have salespeople that have experience using those tools or marketers, but there are also just administrators that have a familiarity with those tools and then all the like myriad of 
06:39 integrations. That drive into those CRMs that companies need. Um, and so while you may say, well, my, my clients, whether you’re an agency, um, or even an in-house team, you say, well, we’re not using that right now.
06:51 Um, you know, fair enough. I still think that I hope that there’s going to be value in this conversation today that you’ll be able to apply regardless of the CRM that you’re using.
06:58 But if you’re using an, if you’re running an agency, yeah, I’d really consider. Could you be moving up market? And finding teams that are using these more expensive platforms that will have the budget to pay for extra integration and extra revops help extra maybe data, uh, data hygiene enrichment and
07:18 other projects, especially if you’re using a tool like clay. What we’re finding, and I’ve been building this, I’m going to talk about my background a little bit, but what we’re finding is that there’s a lot of room up market.
07:28 And if you’re on this call, especially, um, you are probably doing things that are incredibly useful, incredibly valuable. And you probably have companies that have thousands of employees that wish they were doing the types of things that you’re doing, the types of campaigns that you’re running if you’re
07:43 using a tool like Bison. So we’ll talk about that in a little bit. So just in terms of whether or not this is relevant to you, I hope that’s a little bit helpful context.
07:51 Um, if you’ve got any thoughts on that, drop in the chat if you’re running an agency, or if you’re working in-house to the team, and you want me to think about ending in particular as we go, feel free to drop some comments in the chat.
08:00 I see we’ve got some Canadians here, welcome Canadians. We’ve got more Canadians weighing in. If anybody’s not in Canada, let me know.
08:07 Not this anything wrong with Canada’s agreat place. But if we’re all Canadians, that’d be helpful to know because I can speak to more Canadian issues.
08:13 Alright, so let’s review how we got here. Um, my name is Harris Kenny. More Canadians, hey Aaron. Um, my name is Harris Kenny.
08:22 I started a fractional sales consulting business in 2019. Um, we were originally a smart lead agency and we were one of the first clay experts.
08:29 I ran an outbound agency for about three and a half years and I was also running a hotspot partner agency.
08:34 So is that time that I developed OutboundSync ? And I went through a journey that I think probably a lot of people here have gone through, um, where I used a number of different tools over the years.
08:44 I started using, uh, close for sequencing, for a cold email, then Lemlist, then smart lead, and now we’re using a number of tools, including, especially, bison, really proud to be have bison as part of our tech stack for the campaigns that we’ve run for ourselves, um, in addition to obviously our customers
09:00 and partners. Um, so I shut down my agency full time and now OutboundSync is all I do. So we’re an app integration tool that takes email by some campaign data and we can sync that into HubSpot and Salesforce.
09:12 And, you know, we’re all here because we know that the way the people were doing it before was sales off the not reach wasn’t working.
09:18 And further, you know, for the bison folks like we’re here because we also know that even some of the next generation tools that came out have their own issues, their own reliability issues, their own, um, Deliverability issues or whatever it may be, where we ended up finding email bison.
09:38 Um, and I don’t want to talk about any particulars about any of the vendors. I mean, the goal here is just to talk about why we use that tool, how we use that tool, and how it can help us grow our companies.
09:47 Um, so, you know, even within this, you’ve got people who are familiar with domain rotation, things that are familiar, people that are familiar with, uh, warm up and know all these concepts.
09:58 And then even within that know that there’s There’s a better way using isolated network infrastructure and some of the other things, um, that bison supports that are really, really powerful.
10:07 Um, but this creates coordination problems for teams. Because we’re seeking this delta. We want this deliverability. And so we separate out to point solutions, and then we, and then we silo our data.
10:19 I saw this because I had clients who wanted the data inside of their CRM. Right? And they were like, hey, these campaigns are great, but we want it inside.
10:26 And that’s what I was writing with HubSpot Agency. So that’s kind of how we got here. I started with low code, um, and I will say, Bison has incredible support for webhooks and the, uh, Bison API and documentation are also very good.
10:37 So there are probably a lot of things that OutboundSync does that you could build for yourself. Um, it’s just when you kind of get to a point where it’s like a very high-scale client or they want SOC 2 compliance or other things where, where, um, We find teams tend to pull us in, but there are some things
10:51 that you’ll be able to take away from this conversation that you’ll be able to apply whether or not you use our product.
10:56 And I think Bison makes that possible because of what they do for a developer experience perspective. We connect these systems to cover that.
11:04 All right, so let’s talk about how it works with OutboundSync really quick, and then we’ll jump into the data models.
11:10 So we’re running channel optimized app on fundamentally we believe in point solutions. Bison is going to be the best way to get your email out.
11:17 Now, you might be using some other tools. You might be using Heyreach or LinkedIn, or you may be using dialers and things like that.
11:23 Finally, I believe that there’s room for point solutions to run channel optimized app on for each of these channels. That an all-in-one is going to be pretty limiting, um, in terms of how much you can get out of it.
11:35 And if you look at dialers, you know, if you combine, for example, you know, a phone burner, a parallel dialer, with phone-ready leads, or some other data provider that is going to give you a propensity to respond.
11:48 I just think you’re going to get better results than if you’re doing from an all-in-one platform, like an Apollo. And this is no offense to Apollo, but if you’re doing one thing, I just think you tend to do it better.
11:58 And what this creates is this orchestration problem, but it allows you to be forward posture and proactive about generating pipeline.
12:06 And you can isolate issues and improve what you’re doing. We route that data to the CRM. That’s where we want it to live.
12:15 Generally, our customers or agencies, their clients, they want their sales reps living in the CRM, they want to be able to attribute data there, they want to be able to see activities there, and sometimes they have really specific security requirements.
12:26 The things that they want to do in those systems, again, are attributing revenue, sticking activities, and blocking outreach. Blocking outreach should be, you know, dynamic block lists, taking advantage of Bison’s API that allows you to add contacts or domains to the block list, uh, dynamically.
12:41 So I’m gonna take a quick break there. I think that’s a little bit of context about how we think about the problem where we came from, how we started building for this, how we found Bison, um, and and then we’re gonna jump into the HubSpot and Salesforce data models.
12:52 Now, this is a place where I want to give people a chance to jump in with questions as we go, because this is just like a single slide and we’re just gonna kind of talk through a lot here and how these are different.
13:01 Um, there’s one question that Adam asked, I’m just gonna get to it now, which is how do you even begin to get a client to switch from sales loft?
13:08 Or maybe one of these traditional sequencers like an outreach or something like that. It’s a really good question. And I would say you don’t necessarily have to get them to switch.
13:21 So consider what we’re doing here. We’re talking about scaled outbound. What we’re finding, especially in like mid-market organizations that have anywhere from 250 to 1500 employees, is that they’re running multiple sequencers.
13:37 I think the future is multiple sequencers and actually that’s kind of the present too, although I think people don’t necessarily think of it that way.
13:46 An end-to-end platform, like a sales loft or an outreach or an Apollo, they’re going to be really well developed for a single rep in a single seat and most of the tools that they’re using are also charging per seat.
14:02 They have a single sales loft license. They have a single Salesforce license. They have a single zoom info license, right?
14:07 And that rep is maybe responsible for an end end. You know, they’re doing a little bit of their own prospecting.
14:11 They’re doing a little bit of demos. They’re doing a little bit of closing or maybe it’s an AE and they’re getting a lot handed to them, but they’re expected to maybe work their target accounts or their book of business.
14:21 The way that we’re seeing a lot of people using tools like bison is kind of above that workflow in the funnel.
14:30 Uh, it’s, it’s more on almost undermarketing, um, but it’s essentially an SDR function. And so, what we have is like, we’ve got, we’re seeing people use both.
14:39 They’re using a tool like Bison to generate leads, and then in parallel, they may have some members of their team that are still using the road tool.
14:48 I mean, you have to remember that those, the traditional, or maybe, maybe like, let’s just say conventional SaaS model over the last five years.
14:54 It’s annual contracts, um, Everything is running through the primary domain. You, I have, I think, not always, but often a very low level of sophistication of understanding around deliverability and data quality.
15:05 You know, they’re probably having a lot of balances. They probably don’t even begin to understand the issues that they’re having.
15:10 And so what we’re finding is that people don’t, you don’t necessarily have to convince everyone within an org that they have to change everything right away.
15:19 We’re finding a land and expand motion attending to work really well. So there’s like a certain product. Um, where they have, they want to have a go-to-market motion for a new product or a new territory, and it’s a land and expand.
15:31 They pick a certain part within the org and an agency or, you know, maybe they build it internally and hire a go-to-market engineer, a GTM engineer, and they just add just a crazy amount of value.
15:42 And then what happens is that they’re giving more responsibility over time. And incrementally over time, companies see, huh? Now, maybe we don’t eliminate sales loft, but maybe we reduce the number of seats that we have there.
15:54 And we actually maybe we can use the term that people use for like a sales option like that is a system of action, right?
16:00 So it’s the tab that’s open for the rep that is helping orchestrate the reps actions for much of their day.
16:07 Who do I call next? Who do I email next? If you’re using a tool like bison, you don’t necessarily have to have that.
16:13 And you can also use automation more heavily to tell you what to do next. And you can even use HubSpot or Salesforce as your system of action and system of record.
16:25 So I would say like it depends on the organization, but it’s not always an either or. Um, and for the bigger organizations, it’s proof, prove value and then expand and then show, hey, we can handle this use case too.
16:36 So we have an agency who was working with, um, I don’t, I don’t want to say they’re client, but I’ll just tell you 1500 employee series D company, uh, really mature, go to market organization.
16:47 And they initially brought in app on sync because they wanted it. Be able to get activities available to their sales reps.
16:53 And so what this team was doing was they were working cold, cold leads. And they were performing so well that the internal team said, Hey, like, I think we might be able to start passing you some inbound leads that we’re getting to.
17:10 Would you be willing to work those? Would you take some of these white paper signups or inbound thought leadership or webinar signups or gated content signups and maybe run those through the same funnel?
17:20 Um, and they just said, yeah, sure. And they were able to expand, um, their level of, um, their scope of responsibility within the work.
17:31 Um, another one that’s really interesting was, um, this is a smaller company. They’ve got probably 150 employees, but they’ve got like 10s of thousands of contacts in HubSpot and their stale.
17:42 And they asked the agency to work some of those stale contacts. So, of course, the agency first has to validate the email addresses because some of them are really old, so that they flush out some of the old ones, but that’s helpful for the company.
17:56 And that’s a billable service, by the way. You could say, look, these emails are bouncing, you should take them out of HubSpot, and they could potentially even reduce their number of marketing contacts inside of HubSpot, in this case, this company’s using HubSpot.
18:06 Um, but then they converted quite a few of them because they switched to signal-based prospecting. So they looked at, hey, there’s a job change here, or this company level event occurred, I’m gonna go reach out to the contacts within that org.
18:19 And there were contacts, we looked at them individually, there were contacts that sales rep had been trying to get in touch with for months and months that had given up, it had been six to nine months since there was a touch, and all of a sudden that up on agency was able to get a conversion.
18:32 Um, because they had the right message at the right time. And so, Anyway, there’s a lot of different ways to think about it.
18:39 I think it’s a really, really good question, um, a little bit of a meandering response, but hopefully helpful as we think about going from this, like, contemporary model that most companies are into this new model that we’re talking about today, that people like us that we’re having conversations like
18:51 this today are on, um, which is really different. Um, and frankly, like if you’re on this call, you are ahead of most of the market.
18:59 The modal sales leader right now is asking themselves, like, hmm, are we lining it spam? I wonder if we’re having deliverability issues.
19:10 I keep seeing that on LinkedIn, you know, whereas the typical person in this org knew that years ago has iterated through multiple tools and is now running like a pretty optimized stack.
19:21 We have a concept that I mentioned at the end called the outbound maturity curve, um, it’s on our site as well, but I think that like the people here are in like a level four, level five of that app on maturity curve, whereas I think a lot of orgs are at like a level two or three, um, just by just by
19:35 nature being here, it says enough about you. Um, all right. There’s some really good stuff in the chat here and really, really good advice around how you go from billing up more and getting your logo.
19:47 So jump into the chat. If you’re not seeing that and really recommend, um, really recommend looking at some of that conversation in there.
19:54 It’s really, really useful. Um, thanks for folks that are weighing in there. Um, and I can tell you that I recognize a few of these names like this is good advice there.
20:01 It’s not just random chat. All right. So. Let’s, let’s go into HubSpot and Salesforce specifically. We’ll talk about this for maybe five, five minutes or so, and then we’ll just jump into a bunch of Q and A.
20:16 So what I want to encourage you to think about is a lot of times when we think about Outbound, we’re focused on individual contacts.
20:25 And those contacts are often described as leads. Um, but leads mean something very specific. And so we’re gonna just kind of get particular, and we’re gonna work through the types of objects in its typical CRM, the types of activities, and then ways to potentially automate within those CRMs.
20:43 We’re just gonna set this as scaffolding for the conversation, and then I think we’re gonna have time for like, you know, at least 20 minutes, if not close to 30 minutes of Q&A.
20:53 So I’m gonna start on the CRM side. So we have the company, object in HubSpot, or the account, Object in Salesforce.
21:02 Now in it, in a, in a very vanilla straight forward situation, you’ve got a single company that has contacts working for it.
21:08 But of course, it’s not always that simple. You can have nested companies where you have parent company and then you have, uh, child companies beneath that beneath that.
21:17 So like, they could be franchises or something like that or divisions that are operating underneath a holding company or something like that.
21:23 So keep in mind that even as something as simple as like, who do you work for? It’s not so always so straightforward.
21:33 Um, those contacts, in HubSpot, the relationship between a contact and a company is called an association. But in Salesforce, the term is like it’s related to, so the contact is related to a certain account.
21:48 The lead object is a very specific thing. In Salesforce, um, a lead is basically something that comes in and needs to be evaluated as Is this gonna- is this gonna- is this- is there gonna be a conversion event where this lead becomes a contact associated with an account?
22:07 Or not? And Jenn Iguarta to go nimbly, she had a really good, kind of funny video about this on LinkedIn the other day.
22:16 Um, if you don’t follow her, she talks about Clay and- it’s a- it’s a funny, like, kind of office space inspired, um, series if you’re- if you’re familiar with the movie office space.
22:27 Um. But HubSpot does it very differently. For HubSpot, I lead, it’s like, it’s like a pre-deal. It’s like a mini-deal before something becomes a deal.
22:38 So, a lead can be associated with a contact or a company. And it’s event-based, and then there’s a conversion event, and when that lead converts into a deal, it becomes qualified, it becomes a deal.
22:50 But a contact is like a static thing. So, I’m a person, I work for a company, um, maybe I get a promotion.
22:56 A new lead could be created when I get my promotion, and then I, and then you attempt to contact them and then eventually you attempt to have a conversion event.
23:03 So I think that when you look at like, excuse me, how do you model the email bison data over to a HubSpot or Salesforce, I think you’re going to potentially think about creating some automation to create new leads, or to convert right to a lead when a reply comes in and it’s marked as interested or positive
23:23 . Right. So bison has a dedicated webhook for positive replies. That’s what we use at OutboundSync to indicate that disposition that it became a positive event.
23:31 And then you’re going to have just like general replies that come in across the board, where they could be like out of office or, or just neutral or negative or whatever.
23:39 Um, and so that positive event that occurs is when I think you look at potentially creating a lead specifically, and this is something it needs to be followed.
23:47 Now I think in, in smaller, Uh, less mature organizations, people tend to just create deals automatically for these things. Um, and, and your customer may want that and, and that’s fine.
23:58 It’s their data model. It’s their organization. You can only support them however they think about it. Uh, but what I would really encourage you to think about is, can you help your customer be more sophisticated about how they do it?
24:10 And can you help them run a better motion? Because the better they’re handling and managing these, Let’s just I don’t want to use word lead because you know, it’s like it’s like a kind of a loaded it’s a specific thing but These new opportunities is the same way all of these words now have meaning so
24:24 it’s difficult to talk about without getting caught in the weeds But anyway, let’s just say the better way the you know, you’re generating you’re generating new logos forthem and the better they handle them and respond to them and follow up with them and the better systems they can build to manage that
24:34 pipeline the more successful you’re gonna be Just throwing a lead over the wall. Hey got a positive reply here it is You can do it, but I can just tell you I’ve seen it happen.
24:45 I’ve seen clients get frustrated and it happened to me when I was running agency and projects early, even though the campaigns are working.
24:56 And I want to really stress why companies and accounts are important because you can track conversion that’s outbound influence but not directly straight line from outbound and you can totally change the nature of the conversation with your customer.
25:12 We have a case study with a company called OpenSend. They had generated, or they thought they generated through their agency, OutboundBuddy, 17 meetings in a single month.
25:25 But when they went through and they looked at the associated companies and they looked at the conversion events, they discovered that actually they had booked 52 meetings in one month, which exceeded their goal of 50 by two.
25:34 When they looked at a multi-touch, like full funnel approach, understory has talked about this as well. Alex fine has posted some great videos about because they run a paid ads practice.
25:46 They are also, they want to be able to attribute conversion across other channels direct. They work with a lot of SaaS companies, so they have a lot of direct signups.
25:52 They also have paid ads running. And they found, and in general, we’re finding like two to three X pipeline lift that outbound teams are not getting credit for.
26:01 So if you generate, like in the case of OpenSend, 17 meetings, but it was actually 52 that the outbound effort can be that there was a touch associated with outbound.
26:10 And when we drill down specifically, and we ask, the understory has a video, he asked Porsche, who was, So, understory’s an agency, they were running campaigns for one of their clients, one of their clients got an inbound lead from Porsche, and they looked at the company record, and they could see, oh
26:26 , understory emailed them yesterday, they converted today, asked the people at Porsche, how’d you find us? I said, oh, you know, you emailed somebody from our team internally.
26:35 They passed it to me on, you know, internal chat, and then I just came in. I just went to your site directly and signed up and ever applied.
26:41 And like, those are the kind of wins that people are missing, and they’re not getting credit for. And that’s causing churned.
26:47 And it’s also lowering retainers for agencies, or for in-house teams. It’s resulting in people getting fired because they’re saying, look, this is a cool idea.
26:55 We wanted to give it a shot, but it’s not working. And so sales works, in my opinion, you know, they don’t have The ability to show, to tell stories with data as effectively as marketing teams quite yet.
27:06 And so our goal with OutboundSync is not to try to create something in the middle, a new tool. No, we just want to get it into the existing tools.
27:13 We don’t have a reporting infrastructure in our product. If you want to know how your sending is going, check Bison.
27:18 If you want to know how the conversion happened out of the effect, check the CRM. That, that’s our sort of core philosophy.
27:24 It’s not trying to rebuild all these things that have already been built. And by getting it in that same system, getting it in HubSpot or Salesforce on par.
27:33 You can be in those same dashboards that the other channels are in. And you can show leads that came from outbound, and you can put it on a chart next to leads that came from paid ads.
27:45 Alright, let’s let’s throw down a little bit more specifically talk about activities and the types of activities. So I want to first, I’m going to go a little bit out of order here.
27:52 I just want to talk about email activities because that’s really easy. Emails are emails, right? You can log them as emails using API, which we do.
28:00 And then you can roll up activity level reporting on that. Where it gets a little tricky with Salesforce is that the email object can be used and we support that.
28:09 But actually a lot of companies like to use the task object and they’ll log emails as tasks. Um, and the reason why is that the task object in Salesforce is built out more so it’s easier to do reporting and automation.
28:20 Often tasks. HubSpot has something different called timeline events and timeline events. I’ll allow you to trigger workflows and they can be used for lists and reports as well inside of HubSpot.
28:32 Pretty powerful. And so if you want to be able to trigger real-time routing, uh, creating call tasks, passing things off, you know, to other tools, generating enrichment, for example, going back to clay and getting phone numbers or things like that, that would be where timeline events can come in handy
28:49 . Um, you can also just use the built in automation tools specifically in HubSpot. It’s called workflows in Salesforce called flows.
28:57 But make Zapier and n8n a really powerful automation tools as well to get some of this stuff going. Um, and so I think that once you get it into HubSpot or Salesforce, there’s a lot of other things that you can pull and push from that.
29:09 You maybe create your own connected account, a connected app, excuse me, to have your own dedicated access to data and things like that.
29:14 We could talk about that more as we go. So we’re just wrapping up here. Um, I just want to touch on this concept called the Outbound Maturity Curve.
29:21 I’ve got a link to it here on our site. But if you just Google Uh, or whatever search engine you use, Outbound maturity curve, it should come up.
29:30 Um, it’s basically levels of app on maturity. And so we talk about how can we convince an organization to move from a current process that’s not working to a more mature one.
29:42 We developed this, I developed this after basically almost four years of doing this work and seeing that there’s levels of, of, of execution that organizations are capable of.
29:54 Depending on where they are in this chart, and, and you can have a conversation with them, and feel free to use this, um, take a screenshot, copy it, you know, feel free to give us credit, it’d be great if you gave us a little credit, but whatever.
30:05 And just ask them, like, look, how important is it for you for outbound to be proactive? Using personalization, using automation, having something that’s continuously improving.
30:15 I’m not going to talk through all the details on this because it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a larger thing, it’s a larger topic.
30:20 And, and, and you know, we all, I want to have time for questions. But we can come back to it if anyone’s interested in talking about this a little bit more.
30:26 Um, but I’ve found it to be a really, really useful, um, kind of heuristic or, or mental model that has been, um, it’s improved our quality of conversations with customers.
30:36 Um, and it gets us, uh, it gets us out of the weeds of Like, what they’re doing day-to-day now, and it just asks us bigger picture, like, where do you want your org to be when it comes to go to market?
30:46 Um, so yeah, let’s just, let’s just stop there. Um, open this up to Q&A. There’s been some more in the chat, so I’m just going to hop in here and see if there’s anything else I want to start off with.
30:55 Um, and if anybody else has anything in the meantime, I don’t know, um, Hassan, if you’re like, um, if you want to share the screen, To pull people up or if we just want to have people drop in the chat, all good.
31:08 Um, but yeah, we’d love to take some questions and just see what people think and see what I got wrong, see what we’re missing.
31:14 All right, I’ve not seen any moops. I’ve jumped around here by accident. Um, I’ve not seen anybody on muting or talking it, so I’m just gonna jump right into the chat.
31:31 Um, oh yeah, totally. Show how the hotspot and Salesforce dashboards look like and how the data can look in the CRM.
31:35 Absolutely. Let me pull up my tab here. Let me pull up a tab that shows this. Great question. All right.
31:43 I’m going to pull up HubSpot because we have some prebuilt dashboards for HubSpot specifically. And so this will help me maybe help make it a little bit.
31:50 I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to do this because I didn’t want it to feel like a product demo.
31:53 Um, but I mean, I’m happy to show it. Um, but, but I just, I definitely just didn’t want this to feel like a, like a pitch demo thing at all.
32:00 Um, so let’s just talk about the data model really quick. I’ll zoom in. This is just a test account. Um, so here we have an individual contact.
32:11 Within individual activities linked to it and something that we’re finding that’s pretty cool is that because we’re doing this getting this data logged in the way that HubSpot and Salesforce wanted to be what we’re finding is that it’s forward compatible so HubSpot is rolling out more and more of this
32:25 AI inside of the platform and so now what’s happening is um Breeze is starting to summarize some notes from these contact objects, which is pretty cool Um, so we have the activities logged here and then we have these timeline events logged here.
32:43 This is those timeline events that I mentioned before that can trigger event that can trigger workflows. And then once you do that, once you get that data, it can start to stack up and you can have roll up reporting.
32:54 And so what we’re doing is we’re recreating that activity from bison. So we’re not doing like a high level poll of asking bison, like how many emails were sent last month, 10?
33:03 Okay, in this dashboard, we’re going to show the number 10. Instead, We’re taking like 10 emails, you know, and then we’re logging literally 10 emails or in this case, um, to show you like to use the exact numbers on the screen.
33:16 So there’s not like this cognitive dissonance. So it’s like, how many emails were sent in October? Seven. So we have seven individual email activities that are logged here, right?
33:25 And then one in December. Um, and you can break out the reporting by campaign. And this is how you can start to get that, um, attribution.
33:35 Of revenue by campaign. And number of lead generated average, average deal size, things like that. Um, in a separate, I’m going to pull up Salesforce in a separate tab here.
33:46 Um, excuse me one sec to do that. And I’ll show you what the contact object looks on Salesforce. We don’t have prebuilt reporting for Salesforce yet.
33:54 We’re working on it. Um, this prebuilt reporting is pretty unusual for, uh, First up for like integration products, they don’t typically provide this.
34:04 We’re doing this through a Chrome extension, um, so that you can actually have pre-built native reports in HubSpot that are editable inside of HubSpot.
34:12 Like these are not iframes, embedded iframes. These are actually HubSpot reports, so they can be modified based on the requirements.
34:18 And so we’re working on building something similar to this for Salesforce. Um, but for now, I’m going to show you like, for example, the tasks.
34:28 Um, and just know that we’re a cross-platform product, so we support several tools. Um, our focus today, of course, is on email bison.
34:36 And there’s one email bison feature in particular, I want to emphasize, we talked earlier about, um, the, the positive reply.
34:46 Well, okay, that’s like a specific event. Um, there’s another one in bison that we support that I think is really, really powerful, uh, that is, that is uncommon for the market.
34:56 Which is that manual email, webbook. So any reply or send email that you do from the bison inbox, we are able to capture that and adjust that and then log that in the CRM.
35:09 So this allows you to have much better reporting around things like, um, reply time. A lot of, it sounds like digital platforms don’t support this.
35:20 And so it much harder to figure out your, um, your time to, um, Uh, your speed to lead. Excuse me.
35:30 Um, okay, let’s see. Fall question. Looking at Salesforce is like looking at dwarf fortress for me. I don’t totally, totally wreck, uh, understand the metaphor.
35:43 Hopefully it’s nothing inappropriate. I do like dwarves. I do like Lord of the Rings. Um, we just got to, I do the, I tell.
35:50 My four year old Lord of the Rings at night. We call it ring story and we just got through a pretty big part of The Helm’s deep battle All right, so let’s see good question Gabriel is pricing so Generally up on sink we charge per connected account.
36:09 That’s the value metric for if you know if you have a CRM We charge to connect that if you’re an agency contact me.
36:14 We have different pricing for agencies And we basically offer more features for less because agencies take on a lot of work.
36:23 And, uh, and I’ve been there like I’ve run it myself. I know I know how much work agencies are doing and typically agencies clients are also making a significant investment in their services.
36:32 Um, and so, you know, so let me know if you’re doing that. Um, oh, okay. Oh my gosh. Yes. Okay.
36:39 So Adam’s okay. What Adam was talking about was the UI. So the funny thing is that what you’re looking at here, this is actually Salesforce Lightning.
36:44 So this is actually the new Uh, I think they have, I think they have like an even, uh, shinier version of this that I’ve seen some of our users are using that like cleans it up even more.
36:54 But yeah, um, Salesforce is a really powerful system, but the UI, uh, it leaves, uh, leaves some wanting. Um, so that makes that explains the dwarves for reference.
37:07 I totally agree. Um, Yeah, so, so contact me on the pricing side. We’re also working on some, uh, a different tier, like a, uh, a new starter level level tier that’s like a much lower volume tier for teams that are getting started.
37:18 That would be a lower price point. So, um, yeah, just give me a holler. If you’re interested in that, we can talk through that.
37:24 Um, and it looks like, uh, let’s see. I’m gonna, I’m just answering, uh, Gabriel’s questions here. Yeah. And so. There are definitely so wait now basically the question is like hey, we’re using another like an iPaaS solution that has prebuilt integration right for CRM’s and I think it’s possible that
37:50 if you’re using an I pass it may work it may work well enough for you You may not need to use something like an outbound sync So I would say like, you know, let’s get on a call and we can talk about it.
38:01 Um, generally we just go deeper when we have a custom app inside of how to spot that’s able to trigger a lot of different things, um, but it’s not for everybody, right?
38:08 Um, so, so let me know, um, let me know and we can talk about that some more. Um, it’s a good question.
38:15 Okay, so if I’m an agency, my potential client is using HubSpotor Salesforce, what’s the process to get this set up?
38:20 Um, okay, so because we’re using webhooks really heavily, we can have data syncing from email bison, um, in under an hour.
38:27 And in real time. And then we have those prebuilt in HubSpot. We have prebuilt workflows and prebuilt reports ahead of time.
38:34 And that you can install these from a single package. So for example, um, you know, this is a reply routing workflow.
38:41 And there’s another question about this in a second. So I’ll tie it in. If every time I get a reply, I log that reply in HubSpot.
38:47 I have the sent email logged in HubSpot. And then I get that positive Uh, disposition status update in bison. So now what do I want to do now that I know that it’s positive or interested?
38:57 Um, well, what I want to do because we’re filtering for that. What I want to do is potentially like move the lifecycle stage to mql or sql.
39:03 I can potentially create a new lead. Um, so we, we, we save you a lot of time getting this setup with these prebuilt packages.
39:09 Um, and I appreciate the, appreciate the comment that our dashboard seems more robust. Yeah, I mean, so Gabriel just to answer that, I mean, This is all we do.
39:21 Um, we just try to get this data in HubSpot and Salesforce, right? I mean, that, that’s our focus. Um, I think that Bison’s a really good partnership for us because Bison team is just obsessed with landing in the inbox and our job is then getting it into the CRM.
39:33 So it, it makes for, um, multiple pieces in the stack, but I think if each one is really built for each job, it can work together really, really well.
39:41 Um, once I passed off a lead, how can I avoid the issue that I, my buddy ran into where leads weren’t being attributed?
39:47 How did they do that for open-send? e.g., how can I avoid client-charm because I think it’s not working, but it actually is.
39:53 Um, so, you know, I mean, I think that- I think the most important thing is that when you talk about an internal team, so in the case of, you know, this- this client, they have a revops- excuse me- they have a revops admin, right?
40:05 They have a HubSpot admin, and they have internal teams. So the most important thing is that you have to get your data where your clients are looking.
40:16 So if you’re bison dashboard is just lights out just perfect and nobody’s And in the internal VP of sales isn’t logging into bison because that’s like not part of their workflow.
40:28 It’s not how they do their day Then they are gonna have no idea how bison is doing, right? So the key with this report Excuse me.
40:36 I apologize. I’m just getting over a cough and I’ve been I’m talking a lot some getting a little tired I’m gonna take a quick sip of water and I’m gonna answer this question So the cool thing about this dashboard is that it is a single unified dashboard, but you can break out one of these reports, and
40:53 you can move it, you can make a clone of it, and you can put it into the like GTM dashboard.
40:58 Or like the overall sales dashboard. And they may have a single unified dashboard like I have for our organization that shows like our onboarding on one page.
41:06 And so there’s our site traffic on one page. And so there’s how many new leads we’ve created, pipeline, um, deal value, everything in one place.
41:12 And so that might that home dashboard is what I check. So I would say the best thing you can do to avoid that churn where you’re creating value and it’s being missed is getting that data in the place where they’re going to check.
41:22 Now you can supplement that with additional things. Um, Potentially, you may even request a seat to your HubSpot account. Um, even a view only so they’re not getting billed for it so that you can go in yourself and check that.
41:33 Um, we’re working on potentially building that out even more. We’ve gotten some really good feedback from Taylor Haren at sales automation systems about some ways that we can support that and make that even easier to attribute, um, and get credit.
41:46 Um, but, but I guess like the number one, the first thing you have to, um, Decide is whether or not you want to own that problem or not.
41:55 Do you consider that as part of your- within your scope or not? Um, an area where we have not found success is, uh, payper lead.
42:04 Because for paper lead agencies, they’ve developed a sufficient process, their clients, they just want to be able to know right away, this is the lead I got, and if it’s not this, I don’t want to pay you for it.
42:13 Now, I’ve tried making the argument that like, well, you should get like some sort of lesser credit for something that converts through some other channel, but You know, I think for the paper leave folks, they figure it out, and it’s very transactional, and I don’t mean that in a bad way, or in like 
42:27 a derisive way, or anything negative at all, but it just is a little more transactional, and so it works. But I do find on the retainer model, um, this conversation is more important to have.
42:36 It gives you an opportunity to move into a potentially different workstreams too, where you’re owning data, you’re owning automation, um, and you’re helping them be a little more strategic about how they do go to market, but you’re also opening yourself up to having some more problems.
42:52 And now, there’s some really, really good conversation on this. Um, I’m gonna jump into the chat. Give me one second just to read here while I take a sip of water.
43:02 We’ll be using clay as a sort of truth for clients. Um, yeah, so clay is a great solution for this.
43:11 Um, and if you, and if you need to own it internally, like, that’s a really good way to do it.
43:14 And I don’t think there’s any problem with that at all. Um, I use clay. We love clay. Um, I would say the, the Venn diagram of OutboundSync users and clay users is probably close to a circle, which is to say that like almost every single one of our users also uses clay.
43:30 And I suspect it probably similar for bison as well, although I don’t want to speak out of turn there. Um, that there are definitely models you can use to build for that.
43:39 There are some limitations in clay. Um, that I just want to call out just so you know, um, like, of course, your customer is not going to be in that clay table by default.
43:47 It’s not going to be part of their workflow necessarily. And there’s limits to the number of columns, the number of rows.
43:53 So just, you know, there are some, some drawbacks, um, but in general, super powerful. And if you, if you, um, there are definitely some versions of what we’re talking about today that you can build with clay and I would 100% encourage you to do that.
44:05 Um, definitely. Um, I think in a lot of ways, if you look at how we’re thinking about this problem, you know, it’s not, it’s not rocket surgery, right?
44:13 What we’re doing, we’re just trying to be consistent, reliable. And I think that there’s a lot of ways to do it that don’t require like our level of solution, right?
44:20 Um, we’re taking like that whole haystack, and we’re pushing it into the CRM and allowing you to like pull the needles out.
44:26 Now, we do have a category based filter feature that allows you to only sink interested leads. That makes a lot of the stuff we talked about today a little bit harder, but It’s definitely an option.
44:35 Um, and I think that I think that with with clay, you can do a lot. And if it’s working for you, keep doing it.
44:40 If you’re, I mean, my core point in this whole talk, like we talked about, like we started at the beginning with the water idea is that data is more valuable, depending on more or less valuable, depending on where it is.
44:50 And if, if flowing that data into clay allows you to create more value for your clients, you should totally do that.
44:56 Um, and you’re doing more than most people by doing that, right? So I would say like, yeah. Um, I’ve got a crazy story here.
45:05 Several clients have manually gone in and audited their opportunities in a CRM. They saw that the AE wasn’t properly marking, um, this agency has a lead source.
45:15 By doing this, turn the engagement around and was able to go from charging $4,000 a month to $40,000 a month.
45:21 When utilized correctly, this tool can be powerful. It’s also a lot easier than auditing and starting clients here. Yeah, I mean, so, you know, let’s not let’s not be naive here, right?
45:33 We want to assume that our clients always, if we’re running agency that our clients always have our best interests in mind.
45:38 Or let’s just say if we’re a salesperson, we want to assume that our org has our best interests in mind, that they want to give us a commission.
45:44 Um, but of course, we know that there’s not always the case. Um, and so sometimes having an external third party system storing and logging that, whether it’s OutboundSync or clay or something else, there can be a lot of utility.
45:56 In something like that, uh, because those things happen. These stories are real. I mean, Gabriel just shared a real example of something that experience he’s had that looks like.
46:03 I mean, you talk about that change in that retainer. I mean, that changes your life and changes your company, um, being able to capture that kind of value.
46:10 But if you’re a salesperson, you know, uh, if you’re running this process internally and you’re seeing that, you know, another department like marketing or whatever is taking credit and maybe you’re getting paid differently.
46:20 Um, you know, that’s a thing. It’s a real thing. Um, You know, he’s talking about an example of a $750,000 deal.
46:28 They didn’t get attributed back to them. Um, so yeah, this is real stuff. And it may mean it can be, um, you know, it can be serious.
46:37 The consequences can be serious. Um, okay. One additional question I have is about data-driven attribution. First touch, last touch, AI-driven, it goes deep in the campaign level.
46:45 For example, words use CTA. Yeah. So, I mean, this is a good one and this is, I think, you know, the broad question is like, how do we think about attribution for outbound?
46:53 I would say we’re early here, from our perspective. I think we’re beginning to really scratch the surface. First touch is easy, right?
47:01 This was a contact that was found, through outbound, contact through outbound, converted through outbound, that’s that top level, that’s the one where you get the most credit, outbound gets the most credit.
47:10 Um, last touch, like what’s the last touch point before a conversion happened? That’s also relatively easier. But this in the middle, that multi-touch, or, um, Where are you about, like, multiple touch points and how do you allocate it?
47:24 It can get a little complicated. Um, and there’s not really necessarily straightforward answer on that. Um, our goal is to push as much over.
47:33 Um, and I think, frankly, like, most organizations, the fact that, I mean, the way, I mean, you could just tell from the questions and the way that, that the work that Gabriel’s been doing, like, it’s, um, It’s ahead of most of the market.
47:47 And so if you’re asking about this, if you’re on this webinar, you’re wondering why these things just know that you’re ahead of most people, interesting general, um, and this is kind of an evolving art and science.
47:55 And I don’t have a really straightforward answer. I do think that AI presents an interesting way to potentially answer that.
48:01 I mean, at a basic level, you could just look at an activity blend of like, what are all the activities?
48:06 Excuse me. On the contact or on the company or on the account prior to a conversion event. Um, this is where we start to get out of my area of expertise just to be Just to be totally honest with you.
48:17 Um, but yeah. Um, yeah. In another comment here, yeah, it sells people consume our leads, but they love to blame me because I could have to pay the bills so we need these dashboards to demonstrate value.
48:29 Yeah, I think that’s like the most important thing, right? Is that for, for, for technical reasons, you can have an incredible stack and you can be using email by using clay, you’d be landing in the inbox, you can do all these things right.
48:39 But you have to have the people in the organization. First of all, see the results. And second of all, they need to see the results.
48:45 And the question is like compared to what, right? Like, what’s my next best alternative? So our job is not to be always universally the best ever, right?
48:58 It’s just like we need to be better than the next thing, right? What was happening before we implemented this app motion?
49:05 How are they doing? How are the sequences doing before? How did that, uh, you know, half a million dollars that we just spent on a trade show?
49:13 How’d that go? Is that one performing better or worse than that on a, on a, on a, um, program ROI perspective, right?
49:23 So I think that that’s, that’s important to think about. Um, can you share some stories about your best clients are doing the ones with six figure retainers?
49:33 Yeah, definitely. And Gabriel, happy to follow up after I’ll make a note to do that. Thanks for stopping by. Really appreciate your time.
49:38 Um, and yeah, folks, we do have a couple minutes left here. So, um, if you have any questions, um, please make sure to drop them in so we can cover it.
49:43 Okay, um, I’m going to talk about this, uh, growing the agency perspective because I think it’s a really important question.
49:48 Um, so I think the biggest thing is systems. So the, the, the first area where I’ve seen agencies are able to answer the established credibility is that they can get infrastructure set up quickly.
50:02 So like, for example, we’re a happy customer of cheap inboxes and, and we work with Ben and his team to get that synced up with Bison.
50:09 That’s a great way to get inboxes spun up quickly. You can leverage Bison’s warm-up to get that going too. And then because you’re using isolated infrastructure, um, I think that also changes a little bit of the math in terms of how quickly you can be sending, um, versus some of the tools out there.
50:25 So can I get infrastructure up quickly? Um, I think the next thing is how quickly can I ingest feedback from the customer into an onboarding process so I can develop a copy that’s good for them?
50:34 And I think that’s a combination of bringing offers to the table and ideas for offers to the table and then, and then Adapting it for the client, and I think there’s a lot of room to use AI there for sure.
50:44 Um, and I think, I think a third one where people tend to fall short is just like inconsistency. Campaigns not getting out on time or campaigns getting stuck.
50:52 And that’s a process question. Um, the people who I find are able to scale agencies to the six figures in monthly revenue, um, they are able to build a level within the organization and execution level within the organization below the founder.
51:04 That is the universally consistent variable. Or factor. Is the founder isn’t doing everything. You just, you can’t get, I mean, maybe, but I think it’s very hard.
51:16 I have not seen any agency get to six figures in monthly retainers without having at least one layer below the founder who’s able to execute really get stuff done.
51:31 Uh, and handle some of those things we were talking about. I was talking about earlier about onboarding and everything. Um, ultimately results, right?
51:37 I mean, retention is key. So if you can get results, you’re going to retain those clients. And I think that’s where some of the conversation we had earlier, um, around attribution helps.
51:46 Um, so I think for yourself, you have to build the system, run the system, and then hire people to execute on parts of that system.
51:53 Slowly and pull yourself up out of that so you could focus on delivery and then, and then, and then results across across the team.
52:01 How can we charge more? Great question. Um, I mean, It’s a complicated question. I think if you’re in the services industry, which, you know, if you’re running an agency, you are the legend that I would just encourage you to look at.
52:18 It’s a guy named Alan Weiss. This makes me feel, like, very old. But in 2019, when I decided to go out of my own, I had had just enough of various bosses with Barnes and Noble, which is a bookstore.
52:33 And I purchased a book, which is like an ebook, but it’s actually on paper. And I bought an Alan Weiss book.
52:40 And he, I think, is the absolute king on this. I’m not gonna, Some of the things we talked about, like our specific to Outbound, but just in general, I would really, really encourage you to check out.
52:50 Um, thank you for stopping by. McCune, hopefully I’m saying that name correctly. Appreciate your time. Really encourage you to check out Alan Weiss.
52:57 He’s the absolute king on this stuff. Um, Yeah. He’s really, really good. But yeah, people have to be confident they’re going to get results.
53:04 And if they’re confident, you can charge more, you can increase the retainers, you can add other offerings, you can add CRM enrichment and hygiene and you can add sales enablement, you can add rev-up services, um, you can add other planks of services like paid ads, um, there’s a lot of tactical stuff
53:18 . But yeah, check out Alan Weiss for starters on building and scaling a services business and think about pricing, value-based pricing, um, yeah.
53:29 Great questions. Well, I just, this has been a total privilege. I really appreciate everyone’s time. Just a ton of respect for this community and, um, yeah.
53:38 Oh, appreciate the comment out of me. I’ll sit you paying after. Um, I really have a ton of respect for this community and what’s being built here.
53:43 So thanks so much for taking time to chat. Um, and, uh, yeah, happy to be in touch. Please don’t hesitate to reach out.
53:49 You can find me on LinkedIn. Um, just, uh, I’ll put my profile here. Um, let’s see. Uh, please feel free to send me a connection request.
54:00 We’d love to chat with anybody. And, uh, otherwise, I’ll see you. And I’m personally active in the email bison Slack and WhatsApp groups.
54:05 So I’ll see you there. Great, man. Thank you so much for your time. This was extremely useful. Lots of knowledge being dropped and, uh, yeah, thanks again.
54:16 Thank you, everybody. To chat the offline. Yeah, for sure.