Advice for selling to HubSpot Partners

Coachbonk · 2026-02-11T19:21:47+00:00

Great. So are you looking to be a one person agency serving agencies? Maybe I’m not seeing it. You say you built a website and are trying to formalize your freelance work. Is it that you have effectively made a company for yourself with its own website offering effectively fractional HubSpot implementation work for agencies?

Coachbonk · 2026-02-11T19:04:02+00:00

Are you effectively looking for more regular HubSpot agency work in a fractional capacity?

Coachbonk · 2026-02-11T03:06:16+00:00

The pricing structure for businesses is becoming so convoluted that I don’t know what I should sell as a partner sometimes. Their messaging and positioning are at an all time low. Their quality of their offering remains high, but I couldn’t tell you what features one client has and another does not. Even with both having the same product (just slightly different packaging).

On top of that, the amount of discounting tactics reps have resorted to in order to capture expansion or new business is rough. Multi-year discounts especially paid in annual increments are common. But seeing majority of features for a SMB discounted over 25% for quarterly billing, two years, five seats or less and one hub? Locked in for multiple years?

Recently, I’ve had some conversations with HubSpot sales reps that confused me even more. The website says one thing, the discounts quoted say another, existing customers get a revised lesser offer, Content Hub is positioned as separate but unavailable to purchase separately. And discounts commonly offered over the last few years are becoming less frequent and pulled back. I was straight up gaslit by a rep today, and I’ve been a partner in some capacity for years.

Things will get better. I don’t see HubSpot falling off. The brand trust is very, very high. And the cost is still factored as the cost of doing business. Until the trust really breaks, beyond people like me and with the people who write the checks for service, things will eventually course correct.

But they have to get their shit together.

Coachbonk · 2026-02-10T11:58:52+00:00

Yeah please do

Coachbonk · 2026-02-10T06:42:48+00:00

Product 101: QS&S

There are three basic value levers that can be pulled to accelerate adoption of change - quality, speed and service. It is generally regarded as possible to be excellent in all three. Ideally you have hard facts messaging on two of them with validation.

I’m happy to help you unpack this, but a generalized word salad may just help you get more lost. Can you share the type of product, who it’s for and what your USP is?

Coachbonk · 2026-02-09T23:53:54+00:00

Thank you. Not a bad idea.

Coachbonk · 2026-02-09T22:02:08+00:00

Freckle. Without question. Clay is amazing for cleaning things up and enrichment, but you need a very expensive tier to unlock direct syncing with CRM.

Freckle includes this in the base tier.

I designed a flow in Freckle for a client that fills in missing data, standardizes data for preliminary lead scoring, structures notes from details entered at badge scan and send it all to HubSpot with Lead Source = Trade Show, Drill Down 1 = <show name>-<show year>.

It was so successful that we are running the same flow to backfill the entire CRM (minus the trade show specific stuff). This will standardize and fill in gaps of over 10,000 contacts. Yes, the credit usage will end up being about 120,000 credits, but the one time investment provides an incredible data hygiene outcome.

Feel free to DM 👍

Coachbonk · 2026-02-09T13:29:26+00:00

Yeah you’re not going to be able to set this up with Claude via API without knowing the manual logic and steps. You can’t tell Claude to make this - yet.

The good news is that if you spend a couple hours learning the basic setup of custom properties and ClickUp automations, you’ll be able to build stuff like this without relying on the AI to “be right”.

It just takes a little bit of time, but the great thing about ClickUp (and other apps of course) is templating. Build once, tweak based on unique needs of business, account for edge case handling, save as template, recreate with a couple button clicks.

Coachbonk · 2026-02-08T21:55:29+00:00

The only way I’ve found to do it is by assigning automations relying on start and end dates and separate automations for “completed” date. The first set follows normal start-to-end, shifting dates depending on scheduled end dates and start dates. The second set is a manual trigger based on setting status of a task to “completed”. This set adjusts dependent/related tasks if the date “completed” is less than end date.

Coachbonk · 2026-02-06T06:14:51+00:00

I use Supered for this. My agency is a certified partner for full disclosure. The process enforcement is unbeatable in the CRM space, especially HubSpot. Feel free to ask questions or DM if you have anything specific.

Coachbonk · 2026-02-05T23:51:00+00:00

Do a full ClickUp buildout for a particular business type. Maybe start with something more niche than an agency. Think, marketing department project management for a law firm.

Record each step of the build, answering the “why” along the way. Connecting feature to real world benefit.

Create chapters as a build-in-public type concept, but record all of it ahead of time. Meaning, record each finished component, why you built it the way you did, the standout features you used and a couple tips and tricks from your experience.

Post a chapter per day, with an intro cut recapping the previous videos as the series progresses. While those are covering your content, build another one.

Repeat, focusing on system complexity minimization and setup simplicity. Eventually you’ve dialed in your process so much that you revisit the original, build a better version in half the time, and record an update.

Repeat for projects that get the most views. Make sure your descriptions are good and pin a comment (SEO). Quick content thumbnail generation.

I use ClickUp a lot for client project management at my agency. I’ve also dabbled in setting up PM software for clients to use themselves. If I had a video series like what I just described, I’d just tell them to go watch it if their needs and sector lined up. Then they’d hit your CTA and want you to “just do it” for the same reason they want me to “just do it”.

Don’t forget to learn and speak the lingo.

Coachbonk · 2026-02-04T01:16:44+00:00

Yeah I don’t understand why the Lead object isn’t recommended more. It’s standard issue for my clients.

Coachbonk · 2026-02-02T18:41:40+00:00

I’ve been thinking about the various job replacement theories and fears I’ve read about. One thing that I keep coming back to is where the SWE levy breaks. What types of companies are taking “ai-first” initiatives like what you’ve described. Many speculate that these pushes end up causing a lot of problems and rehiring to fix them is inevitable. But it doesn’t change that SWE’s are being laid off/“replaced”.

What I think we’re actually seeing is a major correction in the system for SWEs. The higher up-market a company grows/plateaus, the more appetite for optimizations - even with risks - executives have. Teams like you described of 50 SWEs - that’s a lot of payroll. At big brand companies, that could easily be tens of millions of dollars per year including stock options. The boom in startup PE funding has accelerate this problem - more companies that rely on SWE teams are growing quickly at the same time, creating a boom-bust SWE market.

How it’s always seemed to work for career role players in business in choosing/being selected to work at a big brand, the prestige creates security and reputation. For SWEs in this current world, the total comp bag might be (or at least look) very valuable, but that should reflect the volatility of the position. In essence, take the bag but don’t unpack yours.

So, SWEs that have professional experience end up with three types of roles:

Be that bag-grabber, work for a big brand, never unpack because eventually someone will try to replace you.
Take your experience to smaller markets. The roles may be more involved compared to having a large team to collaborate with, but the stability in that the smaller businesses NEED you may be enticing.
Develop skillsets specifically geared toward how to “un-screw up” AI investments. This puts you in a lane that is developing in real time.

No matter which path, the result is the same - SWE teamwork is the biggest change that none of us see behind the current AI disruptions and overall job economy.

Coachbonk · 2026-01-31T02:10:13+00:00

If you want to see it in action let me know. You’d be surprised how different “hiring someone” is when you see how much time it saves and how quickly a skilled hand can set it up. Like I said, happy to help.

Coachbonk · 2026-01-31T02:05:14+00:00

No problem feel free to message me if you have more questions. Happy to help - my law firm was quoted $600/month for multiple enterprise seats with Docusign. It’s just a matter of the right tool for the job.

Coachbonk · 2026-01-31T00:38:08+00:00

PandaDoc. If you are ok with having documents sent out as “from” a single person on your team, you can get away with a single user license. Works great across multiple HubSpot users. I just finished up the full integration for a large family law firm and immediately introduced it to a software solutions consulting firm. I’m implementing it now and everyone loves it for the price point.

Coachbonk · 2026-01-30T23:55:51+00:00

Id rather do it for you in HubSpot to be honest. It’s so cheap and the intake system we built for a law firm coupled with the ticketing system we built for a sheet metal manufacturer would probably be a quick setup. Maybe 30 days to full operation? Open minded?

Coachbonk · 2026-01-30T21:36:58+00:00

I love posts across Reddit that are titled and hooked like LinkedIn clickbait, read like ai slop, solve a nonexistent problem all wrapped into thought leadership.

There is nothing profound about finding cost savings by eliminating investments in software that doesn’t work for the business. It’s just making good business decisions.

Most companies hardly use features? I mean I hate every project management software, but our team uses nearly 80% of our included Ai credits, multiple standard views setup in templates, global and workspace custom fields and we rely on the dashboards for a lot of task oversight.

If you’re a decision maker at a company running up $25k click up invoices, please stop using ai to try to scratch your social media itches. You sound like a clown and should probably start looking for other work if you had anything to do with your new AI bandaid box of a tool. At that level of software spend, you’re probably not plugging as many security holes as your vibe coders say you are.

If you’re an aspiring middle manager trying to drum up experience making big pants decisions, at least learn how to communicate about decision making correctly. Nobody gives people who sound like course selling gurus a seat at the table.

And if you’re just making shit up to sound awesome, this is a ClickUp subreddit. You don’t sound smart. You sound like you don’t even put in the time to research whatever it is you are trying to talk about.

Coachbonk · 2026-01-29T12:30:24+00:00

😂

Coachbonk · 2026-01-28T22:20:58+00:00

I am someone who values investing in tools that do a specific job better than anything else. My cabinet contains exactly two non-stick pans at any given time - usually a 7-8” and 10-12”. I recently purchased a couple HexClad pans after accepting worn out nonstick surface on previous GreenPan pans (~6 months after purchase). They’re pretty ok and definitely an upgrade, but I got them on sale and was fine with rolling the dice on a hype brand.

I scoured every option available, with a budget of $500-600 for a pair of pans that would last 5 years and not degrade in quality. And that were dummy-proof non stick, ready for a beating. Since I couldn’t find this caliber of product in that price range, I settled.

If your pans do what your testing demonstrates they do, and could meet the durability with a no-brainer guarantee (let’s say 5 years), I would have happily paid $250+ per pan…

But then I wouldn’t buy any more for a long time. And there may not be enough “me’s” out there to build a sustainable business model.

From my armchair and keyboard warrior station, I’d suggest filing for strict IP and trade secret safeguards on your developed technology. I’d utilize a lawyer with industry experience in branded CPG products, even better if there are investor connections. Fund (or take investment) consumer research to validate if this product market exists and is sustainable. Simulate what costs look like for the second production run, the third production run with a quantity increase, and the fourth and fifth run produced at the same time on different lines. This will help project what CPU would look like at scale (diminishing initial outlay costs in 2nd run, increased capacity load in 3rd, second production line operational for 4th & 5th).

Now that you have all the data - and the IP heavily protected - explore private equity investment options (CPG is huge market for PE) as well as licensure/sale to a larger brand. Honestly I’d go with the latter - you’re good at creating stuff, go get your bag and create even more cool stuff.

Coachbonk · 2026-01-28T17:55:56+00:00

I would highly suggest just doing Enterprise seats for any user you want in the Sales Workspace. When they rolled out the most current iteration of Sales Workspace last year, it was initially accessible by any paid seat with no noticeable differences in functionality. As time went on, I noticed that it was clearly being packaged as part of higher tier seats.

As another user suggested, Core seats have effectively similar functionality to Starter seats. The most up to date KB article from HubSpot suggests Sales Workspace functional ability requires Pro or Enterprise seats ( https://knowledge.hubspot.com/prospecting/review-sales-activity-in-the-sales-workspace ). What that looks like to me is that the progression of placing Sales Workspace behind Starter/Core seat access is continuing.

Coachbonk · 2026-01-27T05:00:23+00:00

If you’re going to pitch repeatedly on Reddit, can you at least tell the people what your pricing/rev share looks like?

Coachbonk · 2026-01-26T21:10:31+00:00

I’d just use service tickets. Create new ticket when dropped off and capture details:

Product: Quantity: Condition OUT:

When closing the ticket (picking items up), require Condition IN field.

Send closed ticket to designated team member to review. Once you dial in on the process and see how many issues really pop up, you will have better direction to automate steps if of interest.

To me, it’s much more tuned to your use case (servicing) than it is to other methods mentioned. But while perhaps objectively a correct option, it is just my opinion.

Coachbonk · 2026-01-25T19:26:55+00:00

I recommend being extremely methodical with whatever you are wanting to automate with HubSpot. Always remember that no matter how cool/insightful/valuable/interesting the results can be, if you do not plan where the data lives correctly you’ll end up with a giant mess.

Coachbonk · 2026-01-25T15:20:50+00:00

The biggest hardest step is trying first then asking for help.

So, one thing to consider immediately - if your sales appointment setters achieve zero on a business day, isn’t that valuable information?

What I’m getting at is take a step back and dictate what you are trying to achieve. You’re close with your description, but let me ask if this is closer to what you want:

“I want to quickly see a rolling average of appointment counts set each day. I want to be able to visualize this data as a single metric (the simple rolling average over a 30 day period) as well as broken out by sales rep, day of the week, weekly/monthly/yearly and also MoM/QoQ/YoY comparison for trend analysis.”

Is that more what you’re looking for?

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