When Inbound Organization first launched, Todd and Dan headed to Massachusetts to celebrate the book launch with the folks at HubSpot. While they were there, they did a series of interviews about how Inbound Organization relates to, has impacted, and reflects the state of inbound for those who live and breathe inbound every day.
In this interview, Todd talked with Christopher LoDolce of the Hubspot Academy about how the principles of inbound impact and shape the HubSpot Academy’s mission and operation.
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Todd: Hi, I’m Todd Hockenberry co-author of Inbound Organization with Dan Tyre, and you are…
Chris: Chris LoDolce here at Hubspot Academy. I manage all of the professors and professor team that creates all of our educational content.
Todd: And where are we today?
Chris: We are at the HubSpot headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We're hanging out, Waffle Wednesday, chatting, learning about the book. Todd and Dan Tyre are here sharing a little bit about the new Inbound Organization book that launched this week.
Todd: And Chris had some interesting ideas we want to share with you. Tell us about what your conception of the inbound organization is.
Chris: Sure. So, being at HubSpot for over seven years now and having a chance to work with hundreds of different companies who are learning about this idea and want to figure out how to do inbound for their business, there's multiple levels or layers of how you can do inbound.
Inbound strategy could be something as simple as writing a blog post, right? Trying to create this helpful content. Another one would be if I slap a landing page up on my website, now all the sudden I’m doing inbound. But those are tactical things, right? And then there's this methodology, and that's what we teach a lot about. But there's even something more than that, more than just doing marketing or doing sales. That's really what I was chatting with Todd about and what I'm curious to know from you. From the Inbound Organization standpoint, how does this book fit into inbound as most people know it today?
Inbound Organization relates to the beliefs and the principles that have animated the inbound methodology for the last 10 years
Todd: Good question. Inbound Organization relates to the beliefs and the principles that have animated the inbound methodology for the last 10 years. It's taking those beliefs, things like being helpful and being human and putting people first and making decisions in the best interests of the customer and solving for the customer, these are core inbound beliefs, and it's applying those beliefs across the entire organization, all departments, and not just marketing or sales. But it's in your service department, in your accounting and your finance, and your legal because what the modern buyer wants is as a unique, special, personalized, customized experience for them. And the only way to deliver that is to have an inbound culture and an inbound team that's making decisions in that way with those beliefs so that they can deliver that experience that people want.
Chris: So that's kind of the high level. I'm curious; when we were chatting earlier, you mentioned a few examples of like, so theoretically being human and helpful and having that standard organization helps meet the buyer where they are today. Right? Could you share an example or two, what does that actually look like going from a typical or organization as we'd expect one to run and this transformation that needs to happen?
Todd: Well, think about finance. Think about the last time you had to spend money on something. Can you think of a time where they made it hard for you to give them money? Where it was a difficult process, there were a lot of forms; it was kind of a heavy, there were a lot of snags in the process? That's a lack of an inbound experience, a connection between the finance department and the actual customer experience. Most companies don't even think of those things being part of the customer experience.
How about terms and conditions? How many times have you just blindly just checked the box and you don't read them, and there's no context there? So, companies it's almost like they're trying to get one over on you, right? They just assume you'll check the box. Again, that's not very inbound.
Things like service departments being terminally reactive and just waiting for you to call when something goes wrong as opposed to being proactive and saying, “How do I make sure that you're successful with this product and that you're getting the value that we promised you when we sold it to you?”
Those are inbound ideas applied across the organization, but it certainly can be traditional things that we think about with inbound. Certainly, in marketing, one of the tests that we have for inbound thinking is the language we see on a website. It’s kind of a window into a company’s soul. If they are very product focused and all they talk about is themselves and not about their customers and their outcomes and the goals that they help their customers reach, we know that's usually a very strong reflection of the culture in the company and that that's the way the company's run; a product-centric, internal-centric, internal focus.
So those are just some quick ideas. Can you think of any other ones?
Chris: Certainly. Just the example you were giving around terms and conditions; we've been trying to purchase a product that we have the budget for since November of last year. The terms and conditions, the nondisclosure agreements, we keep going back and forth. We're ready to spend that money and the back and forth between our legal team and their legal team for things that quite frankly, as they've been ironed out now, are just moot points. But by the time we buy it, we’re going to have not paid them over a thousand dollars a month for six months. Cost of customer acquisition, they probably would have already made back that money and would now be profitable with us.
And the whole time we’ve been trying to buy this software, and we're being slowed down by all of these checks and balances. Which, again, the sales rep is not happy about, the managers are not happy about. They're trying to close these deals. They're trying to hit their numbers, but it's the finance and the legal teams that aren’t in sync with the rest of the organization and what they're trying to do.
Todd: Excellent, excellent. You’re part of the Academy, and, in my mind, the Academy represents the manifestation of the beliefs of HubSpot in inbound as not just a methodology but also as a way of thinking about the universe. Can you talk a little bit about the Academy and what it is and how you would see that applying to organizations as they want to become more inbound?
you can’t expect your customer experience to be a great customer experience if you don't first focus on your employees
Chris: Certainly, it goes back to something we were talking about earlier today, which is kind of this idea that you can’t expect your customer experience to be a great customer experience if you don't first focus on your employees and making sure their experience at work and their life is aligned with the experience that we want our customers to have.
The academy team, very similar to what you mentioned in the book around your why and Simon Sinek, we have a very strong why on our team or purpose, we call it a purpose. And our purpose is to educate and inspire people so that we together transform the way the world does business.
When we think about that we say, “Okay, so that's our purpose. If you're on this team, at the end of the day, you want to be focused on helping.” Again, the inbound principle of being human, helpful, and holistic and that's where we start and make sure we think about every day.
And then we have our principals. We have key principles, like executing with excellence, we define them. What does that mean? That means that you would be proud to put your name on someone else's work or someone else would be proud to put their names on your work.
So, we have principles that help guide us. And sure, another one is provide outstanding service. Whether it's a paid user or a free user, we do everything we can to focus on what are these principles that will help us aspire to our why.
So that's kind of like from a high level what we're thinking. We believe that if we all are in that mindset, we keep time every Friday to do what we call a delight. You sit down, and we look at people who have sent us feedback. How have their organizations transformed? So we're focused on impact, impact, impact, and managers and the leaders are responsible for making sure that the focus on the impact translates into results.
We're very focused on not having the team be like, we need to get x amount of people to watch our content because as soon as you start optimizing for getting views or getting people to go through the education, that defeats the whole purpose that we're creating this education to help people be more inbound, to help people be more helpful, to help people understand there's another way to build a business that both the internal employees can benefit from as well as customers.
Todd: Excellent. Excellent. Do you care who consumes the content at the Academy?
Chris: That’s a good question. We certainly have personas that we built. So for example, we're working on social media certification right now. So we're doing research to understand who is going to be the primary audience that's going to benefit from it. We have our primary audience, which is someone who's like a social media manager or someone who's at an SMB who social media is part of their larger responsibilities. So that will be our focus, but we do leave it open to anybody to consume that content all around the world.
companies that educate customers or users or the world the best tend to build that trust
And that's really where it ties back into education and where we see education and marketing meeting. And you look, and you see that really the companies that educate customers or users or the world the best tend to build that trust.
And again, if you're doing it in an altruistic way where it's like, here's how you can be successful with or without our product. We have other companies who are our competitors, and we'll have people, managers, who are using that other software saying, “We're sending our employees through your education even though we're using another tool.” And for us that's okay.
The primary thing that we're trying to do is transform the way the world exists to be more human, more helpful.
Todd: And to bring this full circle, that reaches back to the ultimate position of HubSpot, which is to transform the way people do business. To create marketing people loved was an early mission and now that’s evolved. So, the story about the Academy touches on all the key points and key principles of inbound. One being you want to be helpful and help everyone regardless of who they are.
So sharing this education, sharing this content with the universe is a core piece. It's a valuable piece because it's a manifestation and a reflection of the culture of HubSpot. The culture is built to enable and accomplish the mission. So, very impressive.
Any final thoughts?
Chris: No, I think that's it. I'm really excited for anyone who has a chance to read this book. I know anytime I read a book I'm going to highlight it, or if I'm reading on a Kindle I'm going to mark some things down, and then I have questions. And in my mind, I think about like reaching out to the author, and maybe they'll respond and what will they say, how can I learn? I know you and Dan Tyre, your co-author, are very open to having these conversations.
So, for those of you that are reading this book, and I'm thinking to myself, “Man, I wish I could ask Todd about this because it just seems like it's not right for my business” or “How can I actually make this work?” What's the best way to have a conversation with you? Social? Email?
Todd: Sure. Thanks for asking. If you're interested in having a conversation with Dan and me about the book, or anything else for that matter, go to inbound organization.com. All of our social accounts, emails, and LinkedIn connections they're all there. You can reach out to either of us or both of us, and we'd be happy to engage in a conversation and to help you the best way we can at any time.
So, thanks for bringing that up, Chris. The book is on sale now. You can find it in bookstores everywhere as well as on Amazon online. Thank you very much.