Unbound Unlocked: BabelQuest
Welcome to Unbound Unlocked, the Sound of Inbound summer series where we dive into HubSpot topics before the new and exciting Unbound Conference.
George shares a lot of his instincts and insights on the “un-conference”, speaking as a true HubSpot evangelist. How is community being centered around the show, and how is community being centered around the platform at large? We had a lot of fun with George and cannot wait to see him in Boston in September!
Check out this episode on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts.
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Aaron
Unbound Unlocked is back, and we are doing something super special today with our first-ever panel discussion on the Sound of Inbound. Yes, joining us from across the pond is the team from BabelQuest. Hello, everybody, and it's Aaron here with Sound of Inbound, and this year we are going to do something really special this summer called Unbound Unlocked. What we're doing is talking to all sorts of experts from across the industry—folks that are going to be joining us at this year's HubSpot conference to share their perspective of what they're going to be doing at this year's show. Sometimes they're speakers, sometimes they're just attendees, sometimes they're experts from all sorts of areas from RevOps to marketing to sales operations, you name it.
Today, I have some really cool, special guests from across the pond. They are from BabelQuest: Amy, Chris, and Hannah, and I'm so excited that they're going to be joining me here on the Unbound Unlocked special summer series. Thank you for joining us, Amy, Chris, and Hannah. Absolutely excited to have you guys here. You all have a different role at this year's show, which I think is really exciting, and your backgrounds are very complementary, so I want to get into that in a minute. Just to introduce everybody: Chris, you're going to be joining this year's conference as a speaker, which I think is fantastic. Please remind us of the name of your class that you're going to be teaching.
Chris
I was pronouncing it incorrectly, but they do actually correct me on this call, so very talented team out there. And at this year's show, they have a couple of things they're going to be doing: they're going to be teaching a session, and they're going to also join me as an Unbound Insider.
So we are going to be talking about turning your CRM into a decision engine.
Aaron
Decision engine, that's right. That's a key component of working with HubSpot, so we'll get into that a little bit. Then we also have Hannah, and Hannah is a double threat, as I told everybody as we were about to join the podcast today. She is both a speaker and she's going to be joining me as a correspondent in a program we're calling Unbound Insiders. You're also going to be speaking with Chris on that same topic this year, is that right?
Hannah
Yeah, that's right.
Aaron
Cool. And then we also have Amy, and Amy, you're going to be an Insider this year as well, right?
Amy
I am, yes, for the first time.
Aaron
Maybe starting with you, Amy, could you give us a little bit of background of yourself and what you do at BabelQuest?
Amy
Well, my journey with HubSpot started a while ago, 2018, when I implemented it at my previous organization to drive growth and scalability. Since then, I've been deeply passionate about its potential to transform businesses, so much so that I had the privilege of serving on the HubSpot Customer Advisory Board in '22 and '23. Before joining BabelQuest, I built my expertise in senior roles in marketing, sales, and data within the B2B events industry, actually. So it might be an interesting perspective I can add later on as we talk. But here at BabelQuest, I'm the Sales and Marketing Director.
Aaron
I've already done a very American thing, and I'm so sorry. I've been mispronouncing the name of your company. Everyone on your side calls it BabelQuest, and everybody here calls it BabelQuest. So Hannah, how about you next? Why don't you give us your background at BabelQuest?
Amy & Chris
Oh, don't worry. It happens all the time. It's okay, not at all.
Hannah
So before I joined BabelQuest, I worked in-house in the education sector—marketing, admissions—using HubSpot. And then I jumped to the dark side, agency, and now work day-to-day helping people across all industries implement HubSpot, and then just that continuous improvement piece as their product and platform evolves.
Aaron
Yeah, it's an absolutely moving target all the time. We also find ourselves, in order to be an expert in something, you have to be able to teach. I recently got to teach a class at a local university, and it's so much harder than just talking and working in a system to then actually turn around and have some things people can learn from it.
Hannah
Good segue into Chris, then.
Aaron
Okay, here we go, Chris. Last but not least, yes, please.
Chris
Twenty years in sales. Ended up coming here trying to sell something to the owners, and six months later I started working in the sales role here and I discovered HubSpot. I got excited, I got nerdy, and I spent the last 10 years implementing, gradually moving up. I also now teach the HubSpot Super Admin Bootcamp for the Academy, which really does keep you on your toes because HubSpot evolves so fast that you just have to be consistently learning. I'm in a couple of the Academy certifications, and we're doing an AI readiness accelerator soon.
Aaron
That's something that maybe people don't realize. For those that are listening to this podcast for the first time and hearing from other agencies, when you're in the partner community, you have opportunities to also teach on behalf of HubSpot. So in the case with Chris, he's actually teaching an Academy course that's part of the free academy that HubSpot offers everybody. I wanted to say there was a statistic recently that it is the largest marketing academy online; there's nothing else really out there where you can earn certifications in marketing from an organization like this and not pay for anything. It's great, Chris, that you're contributing to that. Have the rest of you taught on the Academy as well, or is it just Chris?
Chris & Amy
Just Chris. We have another one of our employees who is also involved as well, Gem Ragan. She runs another bootcamp. Between the four of us, because I've also run a PUG (that's a Partner User Group) and I'm also on a PAC, we should get paid for these things!
Aaron
#HubSpotNotASponsor, okay? That's true. Full transparency, because of the Insider program, you do get free passes to go to this year's show. They don't put you up in hotels and fly you out, but they do give you a ticket to the show, which is excellent.
Anyway, I'd like to do something fun with you guys that I call "hot takes," and of course, because of your background in music, there's music for this too. So here's what I would like to do with you guys: I have a number of questions I'm going to ask all my guests on marketing hot takes. Does that sound good? The first one here is: Nothing is better than email marketing.
Chris
Nothing is better to delete than email marketing. That's my hot take.
Aaron
Okay, that's a good first position, I like that, Chris. Do we all agree on this, or what do you guys think?
Amy
No! But do you know what? I'm very excited—this is quite timely. Last week, we got onto the alpha for the new one-to-one personalization for marketing emails. So I would say I'd change your hot take: I think the batch-blast email is dead, but I wouldn't say the whole of email marketing is dead, no.
Aaron
Okay, Hannah, how about you?
Hannah
I thought I was with Chris, and then I heard Amy, and now I think I'm with Amy! I think if we can do true personalization specific to the sender, then there's still a place for email.
Aaron
I like that. Let me go to the next one: The future of search is asking, not searching.
Chris
I'll jump in and say I still like to search. I'm finding myself getting in arguments with some of the AIs at the moment because it just... I like to have that agency and control. So I think I still like to search.
Aaron
When you use search, Chris, do you switch over to the AI answer element, or do you just use search the traditional way?
Chris
I might have a look at it, and then I'll probably scroll down the results and have a look because usually I know what I'm trying to find.
Aaron
Okay, good enough. Amy, Hannah, how about you guys?
Amy & Hannah
AI all the way! Asking it, and very rarely opening up Google anymore.
Aaron
I'm going to go with you guys too, sorry Chris. I feel like these days I'm not out there searching for "give me the top 10 ways to do X, Y, and Z"—I'm actually having a conversation with the search engine, which to me is more of an answer.
Amy
I don't know if you've been using the Claude connector with HubSpot, Aaron? If you have a certain license type with Claude, you can connect it with HubSpot. So I have started to use it a lot for analysis. For example, when HubSpot recently redid the whole AI context element in your settings where you have to redo all the ICPs, I used it to verify all our stuff. A lot of reporting analytics are so quick with specific prompting—I love it.
Aaron
Yeah, just for everybody to know, HubSpot's CRM was one of the first platforms to connect with all the major AI systems, including Claude, Gemini, and OpenAI. So there is full integration, and what you're referencing there, Amy, is the Claude integration, which is really powerful.
Okay, next question: PDFs are forever.
Chris
PDFs should be put to bed forever.
Amy & Hannah
Agreed! I think we have consensus on this one. I think it's going to be slightly the way we talk about floppy disks now. So yeah, PDFs are going that way. I don't think they'll ever die, but I think they'll stay for reference.
Aaron
I want to make sure I'm correcting myself when I say this, because for the purposes of marketing versus legal situations, you have to have a secured snapshot. But regarding content offers on your website that people have to download as a PDF—do you believe that part is really not going to happen anymore?
Amy
I think there are many more ways to make content much more appealing these days, through interactive versions, for example. But yes, I have to say, we at BabelQuest are doing some PDF content. But overall, I think it's on its way out.
Chris
I wonder if we need two versions: the interactive version for humans, and then the purely text-based version for the LLMs that you can send straight there.
Amy & Hannah
Ooh, that's a good point! Come on, that's a great idea. I agree with Chris, actually. We always approach things from the human perspective, but maybe we do have to think about marketing for the AI.
Aaron
I believe in that as well. Okay, the next one here: Forms are dead.
Hannah
Lots of people probably wish forms were dead and that we could move into more of a chatbot-type way of capturing relevant data. I don't know if we're quite there yet, but from a marketing perspective, we can use chatbots or other ways to capture information.
Amy
We've talked about how we interact with LLMs already, right? With forms, we're going to get to a point where buyers can ask an LLM and get the answer without actually filling out the form. So I do think that is going to drive change.
Aaron
Platforms like HubSpot are now able to look at more anonymous inbound traffic on websites than ever before. It is interesting to leverage buyer intent functionality where you can see companies visiting your site and bring them into your CRM without necessarily having anybody fill out forms.
Amy
Maybe lead capture isn't dead—it's just going to change towards intent.
Aaron
Exactly. One or two more questions here: Nobody wants another newsletter.
Chris
True. True! Same as with email marketing, unless they're really good once a month, a lot of the time people just go, "Oh, what are we going to put in the newsletter? Stuff some old rubbish in," and we'll be done with it.
Amy
This is really horrible timing... we're going to relaunch our own newsletter this month!
Aaron & Hannah
Send it to Chris, make sure you sign him up!
Chris
Send it to me! Great content.
Aaron
Part of the reason might be that in social media, if you don't hit your audience at the exact right place and time, they miss the news. Newsletters are a point in time where we can send an email that they can always go back and find.
Chris
It's that whole thing where you kind of have to do something for everyone, don't you? Because people are looking at things in different places.
Hannah
Maybe the newsletter invites conversation. I like those LinkedIn ones where someone shares a thought and you can get in the comments to agree or disagree to build community.
Amy
What LinkedIn is now working towards in terms of interest clusters is going to drive change. To be useful, a newsletter has to add value, and I'd say relevant newsletters are actually going to become more important.
Aaron
All right, one more question here on engagement: Do you think community engagement will now outperform content engagement over time?
Amy
I do. I really do. There is so much information out there that if you know and trust a brand or person, you're going to take their recommendation much more seriously than any other content.
Hannah & Chris
I agree with Amy. Content engagement is useful, but it's more valuable to build a community that someone wants to come back to where they feel involved in a two-way conversation.
Aaron
The frustration for me has been that with podcasts or content, sometimes we feel like we're shouting into the abyss. Do you guys agree on that?
Chris, Hannah, & Amy
Especially with recent changes to LinkedIn where a helpful video gets 30 views instead of 30,000, and you feel like you're having to play a game to get a reaction! Community engagement feels a lot more authentic than shoving out content and expecting people to download an infographic or listicle.
Aaron
It's important to share opinions and not just feel like we have to stay down the middle. For you, Hannah and Chris, you're bringing a topic to Unbound about building HubSpot to be a better decision engine. Let's dig into that: Do you feel like there are things people aren't taking advantage of on the platform?
Hannah
From my perspective as a consultant, businesses often say, "This is the process: we do this, then this, then this." I've come to the realization that the endpoint of putting a process in HubSpot is trying to answer a question that drives growth, and maybe we should start there and work backwards rather than having that be the endpoint.
Amy
Was there a specific moment or client where that clicked for you, Hannah?
Hannah
It's a common scenario where clients spend so much time giving you the process. In the past, I would just build whatever property or button they asked for, only for them to say it didn't do what they needed. I realized I should have asked what they wanted to achieve first and worked backwards.
Also, a design principle I use is: adopt HubSpot, don't adapt it to your way of working. The product is designed by research teams who know what they're doing—lean into that rather than adapting it with 1,000 custom objects.
Chris & Aaron
I feel like I've made that mistake 1,000 times! But you're right. When people fight the system, it's tough, but if you adopt it, it simplifies internal processes.
I've always been objective-based. If clients trust you to help them get to their report or goal, adoption becomes simple and everybody hits their goals.
Aaron
Let's dive into this decision engine element. So many folks get obsessed with numbers like "we got 35 MQLs this week," but they don't do anything with it. Talk to us more about this decision engine element.
Chris
MQLs come somewhere in the process, but you want to work backwards. We want more sales from profitable sectors while spending less time. If we have that data, we can create that pipeline view, work backwards, and stop worrying about minor numbers like six versus seven.
Hannah
In an education use case, a client asked to track leads, applications, and enrollments for a course intake. I kept asking "Why?", and ultimately, they just needed "bums on seats" to fill the courses. The decision engine piece is using data to realize a course isn't filling up and using actionable insights to divert advertising budget to that course.
Aaron
Amy, you're the money person here as Head of Revenue, right? Do you have the patience for these things to happen organically, or do you put pressure on marketing?
Amy
Adoption as an outcome has become much more prominent—it was the biggest factor in winning a deal for us last week. As HubSpot moves enterprise, larger companies face huge financial consequences if CRM adoption fails. We also run the global Adoption HUG for HubSpot, so this is something we speak about a lot.
Aaron
Have you guys all used Salesforce before? Is there an identifiable philosophy in HubSpot that is different from Salesforce when adopting a platform?
Chris
With Salesforce, you hear "nobody ever got fired for buying Salesforce," but the average tenure of Salesforce in a company is about three years while a sales director lasts two, so they're never aligned.
Aaron
In Salesforce, we sell to organizations and focus on the sales pipeline, whereas in HubSpot, we look at what individuals need and nurture them. Also, in HubSpot, you don't have to run a report just to see basic information like contact counts.
Amy & Hannah
Over the last 18–24 months, we are winning full HubSpot adoption or Sales Hub deals directly against Salesforce. End-users are pleasantly surprised when they get into HubSpot because it feels user-focused and gamified, which drives adoption.
Chris
HubSpot is a nicer platform that evolves constantly.
Aaron & Chris
They probably have rolled out four updates while we've been talking! When you're running a training session and a button moved from yesterday, you have to use magician's patter until you find where it went.
Aaron
The Unbound conference is supposed to be an "unconference" that is community-led by agencies rather than just HubSpot staff. Amy, what do you think makes Unbound different from a normal conference?
Amy
HubSpot introduced smaller "exchanges" of 10–12 people around a topic, making it much easier to network than on an open expo floor. Also, Unbound reflects that inbound marketing is no longer a simple linear process.
Aaron & Amy
Last year, I attended an AI workshop where we had 30 minutes to build an app using Breeze and present an AI pitch. Hands-on learning felt completely different than being talked at.
At BabelQuest, our quarterly AI workshops are also practically led—everyone gets their laptops out to set up tools like prospecting agents.
Aaron
So the takeaways for unlocking the conference: take advantage of meetups, networking, and hands-on workshops!
Amy, Hannah, & Chris
It's about the people you meet and discussing how others solve problems. Unbound is so inclusive of different learning styles—the Academy labs let you collaborate instead of sitting still. Plus, people at Unbound genuinely want to help you solve problems.
Aaron
You can stop anybody at the show and learn something. Two years ago, I interviewed Karen Ng and Jonathan Dick on Partner Day and set the pace for my week. Have you guys had memories of an inspirational main stage talk over the years?
Hannah
The Disney executive, Josh D'Amaro, brought jumping robots on stage and spoke about the narrative and experience of making someone feel inspired.
Amy
Zach Kass, former head at OpenAI, gave an amazing talk on how AI will expand human potential rather than replace it.
Chris
Going back to my first time in 2016, smaller tactical sessions gave me practical things to take away and implement immediately.
Aaron
For me, being in the same room as Jane Goodall was amazing, but Dharmesh Shah is the most entertaining. He's like Steve Wozniak to Brian Halligan's Steve Jobs—humble, hilarious, and visionary about AI and headless CRMs.
Chris & Hannah
Dharmesh recently set the cat among the pigeons with "HubGrader," which rates your 10-year HubSpot usage history. Hannah scored a 99.4 in the top bracket globally! Now everyone is digging into shadowy recesses of the system to boost their scores.
Aaron
Disney and HubSpot both focus on every small detail to craft a great experience. Before we wrap up, do you have any pro tips for our audience heading to Boston this fall?
Amy, Hannah, & Chris
Bring a backpack and wear flat shoes or sneakers!
Define your KPIs or blockers beforehand so you can filter the massive amount of information thrown at you.
Talk to people, visit the Academy stand, be curious, and ask why!
Aaron
Thank you so much to Chris, Hannah, and Amy from BabelQuest (.co.uk)! Be sure to follow along online with the hashtag #Unbound26Insider to see our experience this year. Thank you for joining us on Sound of Inbound!
