F*ck ups to avoid to succeed with your tech stack (🇬🇧) Fredrik Landström, CTO, Invise ELITE HubSpot partner

Wilma Eriksson: [00:00:00] Hi, and a warmly welcome to Season five of Phil and Grow with Wilma. I'm one of the co-founders to Biq CPQ, perfectly and very smooth, integrated to the rest of your ecosystem, creating quality quotes Quickly, Phil and grow. Is, um, off the Work podcast niched into operational excellence. And what is that?

That is everything that ens your sales and your operations to ensure that your revenue increases and of course the profits and your margins. And today, I'm thrilled to say that I am. Someone that I quite recently got to know a bit better, fre Landstrom at Vice. And what I admire most about this person is that he's so technical, skilled, uh, and in this case about HubSpot, but I'm sure Fredic you are a technical skill about whatever.

But, and, and also very helpful. So Fre, it's uh, great pleasure having you as a guest in today's episode of Failing Grow.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Pleasure being [00:01:00] here.

Wilma Eriksson: Lovely. Would you mind, uh. Talk a little bit about yourself and invite, because I know that invite you have the, the interesting niche of being a marketing, sales and tech agency, a top tier partner globally for HubSpot.

That was the bragging part. Now you can tell me what you actually do. That's the bragging part. Yeah. Yeah.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: I, I can brag for a while as well. So let, let's see where it goes. Wonderful.

Wilma Eriksson: Let's go. So

insive-fredrik Landstrom: first of all, uh, I'm Frederick, just as you uh mentioned, I work as a CTO, uh, for invite. We're a Stockholm based company with around 60 employees at the moment, and I've been here for five and a half years, something like that.

Mm-hmm. Uh, my background is actually, uh, art director back in the days, uh, and I. You know, got a lot of orders from higher up the hierarchy, uh, saying like, you need to do this, you need to do that. And I felt like, no, I want to be in charge of telling you this is not good or not. So I studied to be, uh, communications kind of rhetorics, uh.

[00:02:00] Not specialists. I don't guess there, there's any education on that, but I was interested in that. And when I started at, at Invite, actually we were an, a classic inbound marketing agency, uh, because that was something new and fresh, uh, back in the days. It's, it's not today, it's more like common sense today.

But, uh, got here, um, when we were, uh, uh, marketing company and I left my role as a CMO for, for another Swedish company. So yeah, now I'm here. Uh, and that's kind of, you know, my. Cv, uh, nothing more. But, uh, you know, the more you dig into to HubSpot and the more you dig into CRM, uh, et cetera, you kind of understand that everything is relying on data.

Uh, so data and my technical interest just guided me towards this position.

Wilma Eriksson: Yeah. Exciting. And today we are gonna talk about, uh, trends within the Nordic, uh, regarding digitization. We will see exactly what the topic will be, uh, of the episode. But before we jumping into the real stuff, I am very curious about if [00:03:00] we're having a face-to-face, not zoom meeting as we have at the moment.

If we were having a face-to-face and we were enough to work, what would you prefer to drink in your class?

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Uh, I am not a fine tasting gentleman. I would just prefer, prefer, uh, a really like. Blend lager. Uh, nothing else? Nothing, uh, nothing special at all? Well, I kind of like to drink other stuff as well, but for an after work, a hundred percent.

It's just a regular bear. The cheapest one and the, the coldest one. That's, I'm happy with that.

Wilma Eriksson: My fiance says he's trying to, to teach me, uh, after four years together what kind of beer he likes. And he was like, uh, he brought one yesterday with a, he was like, wi, do you see? It's a fat guy on it? Just look after the cheapest beer.

But I mean, it doesn't have to be expensive to be good or

insive-fredrik Landstrom: No, no, no. It's all good. It's all good.

Wilma Eriksson: [00:04:00] Great. Well, thank you so much for sharing and moving on to your funniest work related. Fuck up. Do you have something funny you wanna share with us today?

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Um, oh shit. Um, what kind of fuckups haven't I've done? I mean, that, isn't that the work we do to fuck up all the time and we realize that we're wrong and then try to adjust it to the next time and just fuck up a bit less?

Um, so I would say it's, it's about, it's all about fuckups because usually when people come to us, it's not like I. Um, you know, open my files and say, well, this is the solution for your problem. Let's just apply that to your, uh, to whatever you want. It's more like, well, I never heard of this before. Let me determine if we can do something and let's do some trial and error.

And I mean, that's, that's how it works. Um. But anything in particular? Well, of course, I mean with integrations, just that when you work with this, you can absolutely delete the whole CRM and, you know, be really shaky that evening and trying to [00:05:00] get everything back with backups and stuff. So, yeah, of course we have done some, some crazy stuff.

Me as well. Yeah.

Wilma Eriksson: You do have deleted a full serum.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Absolutely. Uh, it's not the best sales pitch for me, but usually, you know. Um, it's, we trying to mitigate that risk. Uh, I would say this from my early days when, you know, you wouldn't even connect your CRM to marketing, so you're just like, oh, there's, there's a connect button.

Let's click it and see what happens. And then that happens usually. So yeah,

Wilma Eriksson: that's good. Okay. We live when we learn right.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Absolutely.

Wilma Eriksson: So, uh, jumping, uh, straight into today's subject, uh, we had, um, very short and sweet. Uh. A talk before about this episode, what we are going to niche it into and talk about.

Yeah. And I'm, uh, very curious from your, your point of view being the CTO at one of the biggest, uh, [00:06:00] HubSpot agencies globally, uh, and seeing the trends within digitization. So when, when I asked you about this, uh, what was the instant thought you had? Uh, if we look at trends and digitization on the Nordic market.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: I mean, it's a really good question and I know that we spoke beforehand, like, and as always, I just improvise everything. But at the same time, I have probably have it in my head. Um, I would say like the general trend, and that has kind of been going on for a while, but now we can see the effect of it is that.

I mean, the DI digitalization has been going on for a while and people has been, have been talking about it since, you know, early, you know, 20,001 something. Uh, what I can see is that a lot of companies has really, you know, tried to move into a digital area where they just have acquired multiple SaaS services and they are using one tool for a certain thing and another tool for another thing, whatever.

[00:07:00] So they are kind of digital, but they don't have anything connected. They don't have any scalable solution at all. And I mean, this problem occurs today as well. That, that I, I would say that's one of the biggest hurdles that we work with is that mm-hmm. You want to be, as a customer, you want to quick and easy, you know, get everything up and running, uh, and you kind of forget to build that foundation.

And I think, um. We, we see the result of, um, an unconnected SaaS environment today that we need to, you know, sort out, and I'm ha ha, happy to do it. Of course, that's what drives business for us. But at the same time, it's still struggle of getting that across because it's, it's a boring cost when you, when you try to, you know, acquire and do this digitalization journey mm-hmm.

It's, it's almost like, oh, I want this feature. I want to do this thing. Maybe tomorrow I can start sending automated emails. And I'm like, yeah, that's the end goal. But in order to do that in a good way, we need to invest money and time in something as boring as a foundation. I actually thought [00:08:00] about this yesterday.

You know, uh, 'cause I'm renovating my home for some reason. Uh, I don't have time, but I do it and I just figured, you know, it's kind of similar, uh, because you just want it to be finished. You just want to see that top layer of that coating and that nice color and all the furniture in its place. But if I were to, you know.

You start painting the walls, I would see cracks coming out and it's like, okay, damn, I forgot to make this a smooth surface. And maybe, you know, when, when you start to outgrow that room, you realize that, okay, shit, I have five more rooms and I haven't even thought about how to connect them to, they look like crap from here.

It's, it's not, of course a one-to-one comparison, but still feels, but similar. Yeah. And this also, one thing that is similar is that it's expensive as shit. So you need, I mean, and time assuming,

Wilma Eriksson: don't forget time, assuming. Yeah. It's

insive-fredrik Landstrom: time consuming. Yeah, exactly. So I would say that is, I don't know if that's a trend or not, but that is the major, that's the major fuckup [00:09:00] of the, you know, all the companies in the world, uh, I would say.

Mm-hmm. Um, but yeah, if we

Wilma Eriksson: stay there a little bit, uh, I thought from, because, uh, as a, uh, SaaS. Provide a supplier as, as we are at Vox. Uh, I find that that the months from the customers has be, have been much more clear in that they ask is, is this integrable to this? Uh, who are responsible, who is responsible for the integration?

Will do, will you do it? Will you ensure that it works together? I mean, the demands, it's much more, uh, I don't really know how to say it, but like knowledgeable. It's like they know more today than just five or 10 years ago, but. The sense that you are talking about is that the, the customers has bought all these SaaS solutions, uh, and it's tricky for them to get them together.

So my question is, uh, who is responsible? Is the US the SaaS providers and suppliers, or is it the customers that has to ensure that the system actually do work together? [00:10:00] 

insive-fredrik Landstrom: It's, uh, once again a good question. I, I would say that, I mean, uh, it, it's, it's both our problems, both us, I mean us and, and the clients.

Because I, I also see that there's an increase in knowledge in kind of. What, what do you want to attain? Doing certain stuff. I think that, I mean, as a SaaS service, I am, I'm not working for HubSpot. I'm not obliged to say that they're, you know, glorious and perfect, but I am specialized in that. Uh, and of course there we talk about this 360 view, but at the same time, I mean, HubSpot is selling a system.

And if you want say like, I just want this part of the system as a sales rep on HubSpot, you, you're going to say. Well, that's good for me because my budget needs that. And the same thing probably goes to other SaaS companies. You want to sell your service, but you know, you leave it to the customer, uh, to have that, you know, integration thoughts.

And I mean, that is also, we, we talked about this and connected to that as well. I would say like the big problem, you mentioned something that. [00:11:00] It's not a hundred percent my, I, I'm not a hundred percent, you know, following you there. Uh, I see that there are a lot of companies say like, we need to integrate because that word is like in my marketing was, uh, five years ago, which is just like integrate.

It's more like why and how, what do you want to achieve? Because usually they come to us, say like, we have this ERP. We want to connect it to HubSpot. How much does it cost? It's just like we, do you want us to rebuild an ERP platform or do you just want the first name to be synchronized? Because that is gonna be from five hours to 2000 hours especially, so, yeah.

What is the name? I'm gonna say this in, in, uh, in Swedish Spear. Uh, that is kind of something that we need to educate people in marketing and sales about it. People know it, but it people usually get involved too late. Hmm.

Wilma Eriksson: Maybe I to translate to, to, to have a clear blueprint of what do we want to do, what do we [00:12:00] want to achieve?

Because that I feel is spot on. They often ask the question, the, the trending question, is it integrated or how do we integrate? Uh, and, and our question is always, what do you want to achieve? Or I guess you won't to achieve this, or, yeah, so maybe if we should. Try to educate poor listeners to this episode, maybe feel that we are talking about saying something too simple that is to, uh, ensure that you look, uh, into your system what you want to achieve with them.

And after that, with your blueprint of how it should be connected to one another, maybe.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Yeah, exactly. And I think also there's, I mean, if you're working, uh, as a sales manager or a CMO, whatever, it might feel, you know, a little bit scary to talk about technical requirements because if I tell, ask you the question, what do you want it to do?

They immediately start thinking, well, I don't know the API endpoints, I don't know how to, to put these kind of requirements. But I would say. If you can just tell me from like a human [00:13:00] perspective, what you wanted to achieve. It's like if you can write me a story, well, I work as a sales rep and when I do this, I want this to happen in the other system and I also want to see this, whatever.

I mean, that helps us tremendously. You don't need to map data because that's something, I mean, that's a next step, but you say like, what do I want to achieve as a human, not as it person? I mean, that question just kind of don't make it too dramatic. That helps us tremendously. Yeah,

Wilma Eriksson: I agree. Okay. If I were to call that trend number one, do we have other trends that you see within the Nordic landscape and digitalization that has come on to you?

I mean, lately or the late the years, uh.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: No, no, no, but absolutely, uh, I have, I would say I have two more trends in my pocket, so let's, you know, start with one of them. Mm-hmm. Uh, and that would be, I mean, connected to HubSpot, because I mean, usually when you work with marketing, sales, whatever, [00:14:00] or tech, uh, that is, you know, one part of this is more like a mythology, like how do we work, how do our organization work?

On the other end, and that's where we kind of rely on HubSpot. It's like, what kind of platform do I have to help me do those things? And the reason I'm talking about HubSpot today is because I know it, you can probably achieve same things with, I don't know, choose Salesforce or whatever software you you prefer.

Um, but that is that we can see a lot more. B2C companies are moving into, uh, HubSpot as more of a. Triggering engine rather than what we call usually as lead nurturing, lead scoring, you know, these long sales cycles. We start seeing e-commerce, we start seeing, I mean, you as a SaaS provider, you might want to have like, okay, when when people purchase our SaaS product, we want to have a guided onboarding.

And based on how they actually, you know, behave on that guided onboarding, we want to trigger certain notifications in app notifications or, you know, text messages, [00:15:00] whatever, and just, you know, help them where they are. Not saying, wait two days and then send this email. If they click wait, find more days.

Not that more like immediate. Okay. You haven't been using the Uber app? For 10 days, but we know that you usually take this journey. Well, let's give you a notification that you have 20% off. And that kind of stuff never happened five years ago, at least with, with HubSpot. But today we see it like that's the engine.

Uh, and yeah, a lot more B2C companies are coming into to this, uh, journey and it's fun. Interesting. I like it. Yeah.

Wilma Eriksson: Do you see, or just, just, just yesterday I got up an SMS because I'm working remote. Uh, so I'm not in Sweden and we are recording this. And I had an SMS from a typical food store in Sweden says, uh, hi high, uh, here you have 20% discount for a next, uh, big buy or something like that.

And I was like, yes, this is because they see a pattern in my. Behavior. That is not what I usually see. So that's [00:16:00] why they probably trigger something that you exactly what you just described. Yeah. Very, very funny that they just got it. And do you see this applicable also for the B2B selling companies or the same mindset applicable, uh, within B2B?

Or is that something for the future maybe.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: No, but I would say B2B when I said B2C, I would say B2C, more like E-commerce. And for B2B, maybe SaaS solutions. If you're, you know, selling a tractor or whatever, we might not see that kind of need to have that instant feedback. We don't have an app that we need to fetch that to.

I think that you can probably use some of that functionality. Um, is it the best fit? Well, maybe not. Maybe it's more of a nurturing strategy that you should use your system for, for a classic B2B long sales cycles. Uh, thing, but I mean, yeah. Um, is a good example, but that's, I mean, another part to send a text message to Swedish person that is a big no-no, in general.

I mean, we, in, in the Nordic [00:17:00] overall. You don't send text messages unless the person has really said like, I want to receive text messages. Because for us, that's very private. In the US for example, work with a lot of US companies, it's just like bread and butter to send text messages. But if I receive one, I would just like, well, you are in my pocket and I don't like that.

So that's true. That's true. That is interesting

Wilma Eriksson: how, how, how it's, uh, that it's that different in the US because I also feel, every time I feel, uh, where I receive an SMS, it's like, then you're personal with me. But on the other hand, uh, to text me is the definite, easiest way to get incontinent with me. So anyone want to ask me, like, when, how do I reach, like send them text?

So

insive-fredrik Landstrom: yeah. Yeah, hundred percent. But that's probably with a human, uh, that you're talking and that's, that's totally fine. From a, a cultural perspective. Mm-hmm. Uh, I would say, yeah. So yeah, we see a huge, I mean, change there. And I also think, I mean, related to both our trends and actually [00:18:00] the industry or your company, um, I would also see, like if we're looking at HubSpot, people came to us, you know, let's say it's two years ago and said, we want.

360 solution. And I said, well, we got a good start using HubSpot. But then they start, you know, saying like, okay, but we have this really complex quotation situation. And I was just, and I feel like you also, as much as I tell you that you shouldn't have a scattered kind of tech stack, you also need to show respect of, you know.

Thinking like, how can I use this system in the best way? And HubSpot won't be able to give you the best quotation tool. It, you simply won't. And that's why you, you know, maybe connected to your platform. And that's also why, you know, we got in contact in the first place. Yeah, because my feeling was that you acknowledge this, like you have your own system, but you also understand that it needs to talk to another system.

And you were very open to discussing how should a, you know, a general. Integration work. What kind of things are important for a HubSpot user? You know, from your [00:19:00] end? I know from a HubSpot point of view. Mm-hmm. Correct. And just to have that mindset to, you know, we sell this service as a, a layer in your tech stack, but we are very open to connecting it to make it seamless.

Uh, and I think that's also how I, I choose my partners because I'm very restrict of people reaching out and say, you want to partner with us? You want to do whatever. Um, if I see that kind of, you know. Uh, we want to do it. Can you help us connect that what is important here? That, of course, makes me much more positive, and I think that's why we're als also gonna continue to working with each other, uh, based on that.

So it's, it is small things, but that means a lot when you're connecting your tech stack.

Wilma Eriksson: Makes of course, us, me and us. Very happy to hear

insive-fredrik Landstrom: your service as well here. So congratulations. Boom.

Wilma Eriksson: Thanks for that. But yeah, I agree. And actually we had, um, uh, we had a fortunate, we had, we're lucky to, uh, bring our oh, oh uh, on our journey last summer.

And he has worked in much bigger companies than [00:20:00] anyone other of the founders has before. I mean, we are still a small company. And he said, I was like, I was like, from my point of view, we are not really a SaaS provider. I was like, yeah, we are. We are building a SaaS company. Very important to me. No consultancy for me are not.

And he was like, yeah, but the thing you are doing is that you're advising them on which CRM to choose. You're advising them on how the integration should work. You're and, and on and on. And I was like, and you know that really, uh. That really caught me. I was like, something that had been popping up in my mind is like, yes, the value we bring might be quality quotes quickly, and the the end customer receive a nice looking, very clear, correct quote quickly, but the value we bring to our customers isn't really that, and now it's, I mean, now it's so much bragging.

So everyone listening to this can just mute or listen to the birds or your children, whatever is. Scrolling on email, but, but it's funny to hear that comes from a partner perspective too. And uh, that's another. [00:21:00] Episode maybe about to find your niche, how important that is, especially when the times are a bit tough.

Uh uh, I recorded another, uh, episode this morning, and then we talked about sales psychology, and then we were talking about the importance. So I mean, to connect humans. Humans, and that is something we're talking to here as well, talking about trends to do the little extra and to find your niche. And I mean, if, if there's something.

Trends is about, is to be relevant, I would say.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Yeah. I totally, no, no, no. No worries. No worries. But yeah, I think that is, uh, yeah, very spot on. Um, I lost track here, so this, you need to cut this out. No worries. Um, we had talked about

Wilma Eriksson: two trends, uh, and, uh, I'm curious a little bit about. Maybe if you could, I mean you said you had another trend, but also, uh, what you ought the [00:22:00] customer, what they should ask about how they should, uh, put on demands on suppliers or consultancy firms.

Maybe that goes hand in hand or they're totally different. One trend and, and the customer point of view.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Oh, but it's, it's once again a good question. Um, I would say in general, like. Because we, we team up with a lot of partners. Uh, we just happen to be like a full service agency that handles pretty much everything.

Uh, but except pr. But at the same time, we know that companies might have a lot of other partners when they come to us, which is totally fine. And I think, uh, there's a, that, that's more of a problem. Or maybe it's both the problem of the requirements set by the company, but also the other partners to actually collaborate.

Mm-hmm. Um. I mean, we don't get an at traction. If you have an SEO agency doing one thing and you have like a, a content agency doing another thing and we don't talk and we don't have these joint meetings, uh, that's not gonna work [00:23:00] out good. So I would say like, we're not here to steal everybody's job. Well, maybe a little bit, but not all of the jobs.

Uh, I think like collaboration, uh, is key when you're looking at different suppliers and really get everybody in the same room because I, I, it almost never happens. It's like five. Maybe five customers of ours are actually inviting us to the same room to discuss kind of all the strategies, whether it's, you know, support agents or if it's CRM or, or marketing.

Mm. Uh, but just get everybody in the same room and get aligned. Mm. Um, don't know if that was the answer to your question, but I would say from a partner and relationship point of view, that is very important. Hmm.

Wilma Eriksson: I would say that that is a very relevant trend, if you will, to succeed with your tech stack, uh, to invite all the partners or suppliers, whatever you call them, to one room.

And would you say that those five clients of yours, are they, I mean, in a [00:24:00] specific company size, or do they just have, um, I dunno, more resources or do they have. Understood the possibility of a digitization more. Is this something they have in common, you would say?

insive-fredrik Landstrom: No, I wouldn't say that they have anything in common actually.

It, it's more like the legacy that we come into. If you have a legacy of working with and you become, you know, the best partner is of course the one that you feel are your colleagues that you feel you can call and, and you know, you just feel like an an extra part of your own team. And I totally respect that.

When we come to a company and they say like, well, I knew know these people since year before, they know our business and industry inside out. Uh, so no, I wouldn't say it's more related to a personal matter, you know, what kind of preference they, they have or what kind of legacy they have. Mm. Uh, I don't see any, any common things around these companies.

No. Mm Uh, in general, maybe a little bit bigger companies, but we're also targeting kind of mid-size enterprise [00:25:00] companies. And it's not super often that you come to a company that had no partners at all. Uh, that would be. But yeah,

Wilma Eriksson: it'd be rare. Yes. Uh, okay. And if you were to say this is where companies typically go wrong, where do they go wrong in the journey of digitization?

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Uh, I think that I need to, you know, go back to the first one. That, that is the major, major issue and that is not, you know, um. Understanding kind of the, the, of doing things correctly and doing things that you can actually stand even five years from now to feel like, okay, we can only, you know, put on new stuff and make it better.

Um, but that means, you know, the kind of initial investment. I would say that it's, it's a matter of budget. It's a matter of, you know, hours spend from their end. From our end, it is a boring number, but I mean, I can see. Every company that really understands this and really [00:26:00] invests in the beginning, they become successful.

I mean, e every time it never, you know, we, they never screw up, which means that they also can be more self-reliant. They don't need to call us for everything that they need to do. It's just like, you know, can you update this button? No, we don't wanna do that kind of stuff. You should be able to manage your own stuff, but that also means that we need to put out the structure and we, I mean, I'm happy to help with that.

Um. So, yeah, that is, that is the biggest, biggest issue because if you don't do that, that's also as clear. People who try to stress this and feel like, no, we just wanna have the bare minimum just to get us started. They always come back. One or two years later, they come back and say, our systems are a shit show.

Can you help us? And I will say, yes, I can help you, but it's gonna be even more expensive now because we need to also clean up the mess. Mm-hmm. So that is, uh, you know, the kind of. You think that you're doing a wise decision, but you're not, and we are. I mean, I have respect for, you know, [00:27:00] people don't have all the budget.

Um, but at the same time, you, it will be cost efficient in the end. Um, absolutely. That, to, to get a, you know, a good implementation of whatever tool you choose. If it's your sas, if it's, you know, HubSpot, if it's whatever tool. Get that recorded correctly, uh, with an holistic view. And not only that tool, try to look at it as a landscape and as a, you know, everything connected.

Wilma Eriksson: Maybe this is a bit of topic, but uh, is there anything else you would like to share of your experience to succeed with an implementation of whatever kind of tech stack?

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Uh, to involve the right people. Um, that's also something that I can see changing. I mean, previously we kind of, the only point of contact that we had in regards to sale was the cmo because they were usually one most, you know, on their toes to say like, okay, we need a new marketing system.

Whatever. Uh, now we see a huge increase. I [00:28:00] mean, the last years in sales managers rather taking the initiative, uh, which is good. I mean, if we're looking today, I see more it people being involved early, which is also super good because everybody's got the, gotta have their fingers in this. So I would just say get the right people initially.

Don't, you know, leave them out of these discussion because it'll impact whole business, uh, and not just a specific area. So, absolutely. And I mean, people are just more keen to using the, the SY systems and software if they feel like they're, they're a part of it and have been able to, you know, actually changing the outcome and saying like, this is important for us, whatever.

So,

Wilma Eriksson: yeah. Mm-hmm. Nice. Um, did we have a third trend or did I miss it because I was talking about something irrelevant in between.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: No, but that's, I don't know if that's a trend or if it's just me, you know, I'm not gonna talk shit. But it is, [00:29:00] I would say the thing that has shocked me most since all my year working with this is like the bigger company you are, the less. I mean, control you have over your business. Uh, I meet people on really big enterprise companies and I get shocked that, you know, the way they handle stuff, they can still use spreadsheets.

They're a company of like 2000 employees and it can be spreadsheets, but I. Once again, I kind tell me about it. Yeah, yeah. But, but at the same time, I kind of understand this, it's easy for me to say like, just fix it. Just do it. But that's a bigger journey because to get 2000 people to get, you know, accustomed to a new system or new systems, uh, that is harder than getting five people doing it.

But I would still say like. More people should start now to do that, to actually investigate how do we create this, once again scalable, uh, scalable software tech stack. Um, so that, that's not a, I mean, is it a trend? No. [00:30:00] It's more like something that I think about all the time that like the bigger company that I, the more stuff I'm going be like how they handle it, a

Wilma Eriksson: frustration might be a frustration.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Uh, might be frustration, but probably also frustration for the people. I mean, on the customer side or the client side. Mm. So, as I said, respect, but I, I would really see, you know, let's change that. Uh mm. Absolutely.

Wilma Eriksson: Definitely. Okay. Um, uh, I feel that we have talked a bit about trends and also giving them extra advice at, for example, how to successfully implement a good tech stack.

Uh, is there something, uh, going on at HubSpot that you feel is very interesting or something new or something that you wanna share with us that could be relevant? Mm-hmm.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Yeah, absolutely. Um, I would say, I mean like at first the people who haven't used HubSpot before can just give you some sort of, you know, brief overview.

What are we even talking [00:31:00] about? I mean, that's, a lot of people think that HubSpot is used, the marketing engine, you use it for marketing automation. That's an old legacy and that's actually how they started. So it, it makes sense, but a lot has happened of course over the years and, uh, today HubSpot is, you know, consists of five different hubs and they have a really, you know, unique.

Uh, purpose of course. And just quickly, we have the marketing hub that is features for A CMO or for people working in marketing. That can be everything from ads to connecting your social, uh, you know, social accounts or handling your email send outs. Yeah. We have the sales hub, which is more, you know, you use this for.

I mean, of course forecasting and looking at your numbers and, and as a managers to follow up, like on activities and also to automate your processes. And that would be the sales hub. Then we have the service hub, and that is, you know, kind of, it's not super new, uh, but it, it's absolutely contesting the regular, you know, you're used to maybe using Intercom, you're using Zendesk, you're using other ticketing system.

Uh, but you know. We're talking about [00:32:00] the 360 view. People want to move that into ticketing system, HubSpot. So yeah, so these kind of hubs, they are very niche at a certain role in a company. But then you have two wildcard, and I mean, one wild card, it's not even a wild card, but that's a CMS hub and that's, you know, where you build your website.

So if you're on. WordPress or Drupal or whatever, uh, and you're, you're using HubSpot, that is kind of a brain fart. You should probably use, build your website inside HubSpot because you will have the same functionality. But, you know, let's say that we get somebody from econ that you mentioned, like the big retail or food store, uh.

Know that they come from Ika, which means that our customer cases on our website should reflect shopping, you know, malls or whatever, rather than the airline industry. So we can just just have a smart website powered by the CRM. Mm-hmm. Then the final hub that is called Operations Hub, and that is, you know, my go-to place.

Uh, when we use these previous hubs, you're always limited to kind of what the UI tells you to use. So let's say that we [00:33:00] create a marketing automation flow. We say, if you're a part of the list, high intent customer, send this email. After that, update this property to marketing qualified lead. You can set, you know, all these kind of different things in the, in the workflow.

And of course sometimes you feel like, but shouldn't I be able to trigger something in another system? Or shouldn't I be able to trigger A or B or C, you know, whatever an operations hub actually provides you with the same kind of branching logic, like if they're a part of this list or if they click that whatever, instead of saying updated property or send an email, you can say, trigger this JavaScript.

And for people who aren't, you know, maybe that technical, it just means that you can do whatever you want. So the limitations that we had before was just like, you know, connected to the ui. But if I want to, you know, ping like the local post office to send, uh, a greeting card to somebody, it's an external system.

I don't know why. Mm-hmm. Then I can trigger that script to when something happened, do that call and [00:34:00] it'll just be handled inside the logic of, of HubSpot, which means of course you need a developer to write a script, but how it should be triggered and that kind of stuff can be managed by a non-technical person.

Mm-hmm. And that, of course, you know, that's the most fun. We have other features in Operations Hub as well, but I would say that's the most. Uh, life changing for me because now I can say everything is possible, uh, because it's just a matter of what we do. We can trigger it. So, mm. Yeah, maybe a long talk about that, but I would say like that is gold and that's also absolutely how we communicate with these B2C and maybe e-commerce trigger SaaS companies.

We often use the operation sub. Connecting the dots. Yeah.

Wilma Eriksson: Yeah. Really. And also coming back to the importance of, uh, integration, uh, building integrations, uh,

insive-fredrik Landstrom: yeah.

Wilma Eriksson: Er building integrations between systems and, uh, how you could do it in an easy way, it sounds like.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: [00:35:00] Absolutely. Mm-hmm. And I would just like to recap because I mean, we've been, we've been talking a lot of, uh, you know, not Mabo, Jambo maybe, but, but a lot of stuff, but, you know, to actually help the listeners to do something, you know.

Good. So, I mean, I will represent the CTO role here. Of course, you can listen to another podcast with you, uh, around other topics. But when you're looking into connecting your tech stack, I mean, just as we said, get, get out of all the drama. Just, you know, tell me what do you want to achieve? How do you wanna do it?

Just make it out in story or words. That, that's kind of step one. Step number two is that it's always good to have some sort of RFI or RFP, you know, to actually have a spreadsheet to determine and talk internally and say, like, these features, we need to have those features. Because to have that document, it's good for you as a, as a customer because then you know what you want and you know how to, you know.

Um, compare different systems, but it also helps us very much to see like, okay, we see that you want this, this is a must have and this is a nice to have. And then we can [00:36:00] start using our, you know, professional skills to say like, then we need to connect A to B, then we need that. And maybe you haven't even thought about, but maybe we should connect this as well.

So I think that a lot of smaller companies just feel like, they usually send me an email and say like, can you send an example of how an AR RFI looked like? How do we create that? So I, I see that there's. Not super much maturity in that area. It's not that complex. Just create a spreadsheet, write down, want to report on amount of first meetings with customers.

Very important. Check do the next one. And if we have that list, I mean, the best ever that, uh, plus the, you know, use case and just describe that. I mean, we're in a golden scenario, uh, that just happened like 10% of the times when I talk to customers. So that's my recommendations for the listeners.

Absolutely.

Wilma Eriksson: Since this is a yeah. Podcast show. Uh, the, uh, the audience can see me smiling and nodding, but yes, it doesn't have [00:37:00] to be more complex than that. No one, uh, expects anyone to, to, to write it more detailed. It's like you said, from a human perspective, what do we want to achieve? So I think that is great advice and hopefully.

Uh, it's usable for a lot of people out there, especially maybe CTOs similar roads, trying to get some kind of, uh, uh, RFP from the rest of organization. Just start with that. Yeah.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Yeah, great. And I think will help in the boardroom as well, because if you have, you know, like this is what we want to achieve, and you start to investigate different solutions to actually do that, instead of getting lost in super cool features.

Like I come from HubSpot and I say, we have this cool feature, you haven't even thought about it. Mm-hmm. Another company says, we have this feature, and you start comparing, you know. Not apples to apples anymore. If you have that, you can say like, okay, these systems are actually providing what we want to do, which makes it, of course, easier to argue internally to say like, we, we actually thought [00:38:00] this through.

We're just not jumping on a silly trend. Uh, this is what we want for our company to grow. Um, yeah, and just the final thing there connected to that, I don't think that people understand that the, um. What you choose for solution, as you know, as your tech stack will a hundred percent impact your whole business and your company.

Sometimes, you know, a board might say like, no, but this is for marketing people. This is for salespeople. It's just like, no, this is going to be like, make it or break it in your company because if you don't do it, you will probably be out of business in two years. Uh, so I also think like we need to understand that this is how we, this is how we do it, uh, and it's important for the business, not just specific role.

Wilma Eriksson: I have a, a question actually regarding boards, uh, and system because, uh, ha she is a professional board member and also investor in sum equity, uh, her. Episode was released just before [00:39:00] Christmas, and she gave the advice with one ears around it to CRM system to have board ready reporting because she said that she wants to see the, the reporting in the board meetings live from the CRM because then you know that they are used, that you fill in it with relevant data, and that it's not the spreadsheet somewhere else, that it's actually driven by processes and the system.

So she asked for, she asked for, uh, board ready reports. Uh, what's your take on that?

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Uh, it feels super relevant and something that everybody should have. Uh, we do it all the time. There are, you know, multiple ways of doing that. Uh, I usually say like, the reports are the end goal of a whole implementation.

You usually say like, we want to measure this, we want to measure that, but if you don't, you know, have the right data, you still want to be able to trust it. So it's like the end goal is to have good [00:40:00] reports, and of course, just as a sales manager. A content producer want to understand what content is really driving business.

Uh, you probably have KPIs that are really important for the board, so. Either you get, because everybody can, if we're talking about HubSpot, can get free access to, you know, looking at, you don't need to pay for a board member to, to access HubSpot. But there's also, you know, you can create recurring send outs of a specific report on a specific dates, which means that it's up to.

Up to date. Um, so I mean, I totally agree. We do it in our board meetings as well. We have these KPIs that we're following. It's not the same as anybody else, but we have a locked report that is only visible for the team in the board, uh, that we look at. So, I mean, that is just, yeah, everybody should do it.

And. I mean, speaking of reports, that's an also good homework. I think that you usually want to report on stuff, and I think the one thing that you can really benefit from is understanding how the reporting tools works. No matter what system you have. We usually get a [00:41:00] lot of questions like, oh, but can we report on this?

Just like, yeah, if you just look into how the logic works of the reporting system and you get accustomed to that, you can create whatever you want. And I think that people. Doesn't matter what role you have, you should spend more time and, and understand how a y an X axis work and you know, just really trying to connect the dots because you know, the reports are what you will take actions on.

That's where you will take your business decisions based on. So, uh, understand how they work. Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Wilma Eriksson: Wonderful. So many good things here and when you. Would like to get inspired yourself about trends or technical trends maybe. Uh, what, where do you look at, do you follow someone special? They read a book.

I guess not, but how do you get inspired?

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Uh, no. I really just get inspired by our customers. I mean, a hundred percent. I don't consume anything that isn't, how can I say, like, relevant to my job. I would [00:42:00] say the questions that we get there sometimes are so crazy or maybe stupid or super good. Um, as I mentioned in the beginning of this call, maybe that, you know, I.

It's not that I have my file that I can open and say, this is the solution that we're gonna give to you. So usually it just comes up the question that's just like, well, I never thought about that. I never tested that before. And then I, you know, start talking with my developers, my HubSpot specialists, everybody who's involved, and everybody is.

Start thinking. I think that's how we grow. Uh, we just take these crazy questions and I mean, based on that single question, we can look into so much documentation and so much, you know, trial and error and fuck up of course, but in a sandbox environment mm-hmm. We just try that out. So I always say like the inspiration and the, I mean, the urge to be better all the time.

That comes a hundred percent from, from the questions that my customers ask me.

Wilma Eriksson: Well,

insive-fredrik Landstrom: great.

Wilma Eriksson: Yeah. Uh, now we are gonna wrap this podcast, uh, up and I will, [00:43:00] uh, I will, would like you to prepare to a random business related question. An earlier podcast has recorded for you. So if you gimme a second, I will try to at least share the, the audio with you,

insive-fredrik Landstrom: okay?

Wilma Eriksson: Mm-hmm. Just try to find the share button.

Hmm. Okay, so gimme a thumbs up if you can hear it from now and maybe we are talking a little bit beforehand. Relevant, but from now.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Hey, Alex. Okay. Okay. My name is Mika Rubano, which I'm from Finland, and my company is Imperial Sales. I'm doing sales coaching, and my question is to you, how do you prepare yourself [00:44:00] to a meeting that you have agreed and you will have it in one week time?

What do you do before you meet the client?

Wilma Eriksson: And just to give you a little bit of help, we were talking about sales psychology, so there you go. Yeah.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: And this, this is so fun because I'm gonna burn all my bridges here. I'm very well known in this, uh, office that I do not prepare for anything because I feel I should not even attend the meeting if I don't have the answers to the questions.

So I rather, you know, if I don't have the answers to the questions. I wouldn't be in my role. That's at least how I look at myself. Like I should know this beforehand. So I'm not working in, you know, sales processes in that way. So if you were to ask my colleagues, they are very good and drilled and have a really good structure on that, but if you're asking me and you're doing that, I would say like the preparation is of course.

Understand the [00:45:00] expectations. That's like the, that's the best part of everything, and that doesn't need to be a week in advance. That can be in the actual meeting, like what are you hoping to achieve with this thing? When we leave this, what do you want to understand or what do you want to know? I think that question is missing a lot of times and you start talking and you have kind of no end goal or like what's the next step?

So. From my perspective, of course, read about, you know, the company that I'm meeting, read about all the questions that they have. Probably an RFI, you know, that we talked about this, that I have some documentation to prepare. Uh, but other than that, just, you know, try to understand in the situation depending on who's, who's there, and, and ask like, what do you in your role expect from this?

Maybe not the best answer, but that's how I roll. Uh, so take it or leave it.

Wilma Eriksson: I love the CTO perspective and that's why I chose you to have this question. Maybe I will give it to someone else too. But, um, I think it says a lot that you wouldn't attend the meeting if you couldn't answer the question. I mean, I.

We only see there a lot of [00:46:00] preparation going on, so. Well, thank you so much for answering and I will connect you to Mic Aruba and you can follow up the dialogue if you want and he or he can of course. Absolutely.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Yeah, he can probably teach me what, one thing or another. Absolutely. Yeah,

Wilma Eriksson: he's a very interesting character.

I recommend everyone to follow him that works within sales. Yeah. And uh, maybe the last tricky question would be, uh, what are your main challenges in your business at the moment?

insive-fredrik Landstrom: I mean, at the moment, we're impacted like the rest of the world by the, the economy. Of course, I wouldn't say we have very good.

Financials here, which is good. We know that we can, we can grow without, you know, actually growing. So we don't need to lay people off. And I'm super happy about that to keep my colleagues. Uh, but of course that impacts the, the whole business and people are a little bit more reluctant to, to, you know, committing to, uh, to things.

Uh, they want to do it more like, let's test this one and let's, let's evaluate, uh, over time. So, [00:47:00] but I mean, we're not the only ones in this position. So I would say like that is of course, something that's happening right now. Um, but you mentioned that it was something, a struggle or what should I mm-hmm.

And you repeat business challenge,

Wilma Eriksson: uh, your main business challenge at the moment

insive-fredrik Landstrom: that you're facing. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, another, uh, challenge that I think that all consultants are also battling is, uh, I mean what we do is that we, we, our salaries are paid because we do work for our customers, which means that we have so much.

To, to talk about, you know, ourself and to actually say like, we're providing this service, but we don't, you know, prioritize to do our own homework. I mean, from, from Anise perspective, I think that is also something for all consultants. Like you do a really great job with all the customers, they get so much result.

Uh, but you know, if somebody were to come to me and say like, should I prioritize our customers or the specific, you know, customer [00:48:00] case with this integration that you want me to do, I'm gonna say. Screw that integration. Let's do something good for the customer. And I mean, short term, it's, it, it works. But it's also, you know, that's a struggle as a business kind of owner, or at least a partner of this company, to get people, you know, to use that spare time that everybody has, because we have a lot of specialists.

They're not sitting from, you know, seven to four every day. Uh, so how can we use that knowledge, uh, in a smart way, even though it's fragmented into little, you know, bits. Um, so yeah, it's more like selling, selling ourselves. That's one issue. Uh, and the other one is the economy. Uh, yeah, but I wouldn't, we don't have any issues.

Like, I mean, we just hang out and have this, you know, blend logger at a weekend and we just code something and hack something and it's just for fun at seven

Wilma Eriksson: in the morning. I thought that was a little bit early, but, okay.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Well,

I.

Wilma Eriksson: Oh, [00:49:00] that's great. Uh, well thank you so much. And I guess that, uh, LinkedIn is the way to get in contact to you or do one send an email or text. Maybe that's too personal.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. Everybody who listens to this can send me text. Absolutely. Uh, but also of course LinkedIn and it's Frederick Landstrom, uh, I mean c Advice, you should probably find it there.

So, uh, happy to talk to you and help sort out your business. Absolutely.

Wilma Eriksson: Wonderful. Well, I am, uh, more than thrilled. I'm very happy with this episode. Uh, it was great having you here and I'm sure that you have someone else you want me to invite to fail and grow talking to something opex related. Maybe someone you wanna listen to yourself, uh, preferably outside of Sweden.

Maybe someone you think that I don't know about yet would be awesome.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: You want me to say that right now?

Wilma Eriksson: [00:50:00] Yeah, or you can send me a text. Okay. I have to stop this now. Yeah,

insive-fredrik Landstrom: I, I need to send you a text about that, but it's a, it is a, I think it will be interesting. So let me think about that. I think that we might find Absolutely.

I, but do you only want naughty people to talk

Wilma Eriksson: about? No, it could be anyone. Uh, hopefully happy to, to be in a podcast show.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: So I would say one of the people, or the, actually the team that I look up to, it's also HubSpot related in some way, but there's a company called Aptitude Eight in the us. Mm-hmm. And they have two people, their CTO, and I don't know what the title of the other person is.

They really like eight bit, you know, old Super Nintendo games. And everything about them is just like. Crazy stuff. They brand everything like that, but they, they must be one of the smartest people out there. Um, I mean, to be creative when it comes to technical solutions. So not just, you know, we're gonna integrate this, but just, you know, finding [00:51:00] something that the common sales rep wants and just creating a solution and just, you know, selling it as a volume thing.

Um, really fun people. So, I mean, I would listen to that a hundred percent because I like them, uh, so much. Absolute inspiration. Great.

Wilma Eriksson: Uh, if you know them well enough, please connect us. That would be really helpful.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: I can do that. I can do that. Yeah.

Wilma Eriksson: Thank you so much. And now, uh, when you have that, uh, did you call it brand logger?

Brand logger in your hand? No, it

insive-fredrik Landstrom: like a blend, logger, I would say. It's like, sorry. No, just the worst logger there are after the wrist, so. Okay. Just a bad logger, that's all. Yeah.

Wilma Eriksson: A bad sheep logger in your hand and this song comes up and you feel like, yes, this wick is so good. Uh, what are we listening to?

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Um, oh shit. The, I thought about this this week and I just realized like the, the, the best I, I, I'm a singer myself actually. I, I sing [00:52:00] soul music for some reason, which is a kind of a thing that I don't talk about too much. I. Cool. Uh, my go-to guy is of course Sam Cook, but Sam Cook, I've been listening to, I mean, thousands of songs over and over for years.

So I just, you know, really looked into the Swedish singers and I would say like the female singers are really taking over. And I mean, I am, I would say like Daniela Ratana. Uh, her album is the craziest thing ever. I think it's called Ratana Club. It doesn't matter what song I choose, it's just like she's golden.

So yeah, I would just listen to that, uh, album over and over again.

Wilma Eriksson: Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining and sharing your expertise and always great to meet you, Fred. I get so energized and happy afterwards. Thank you.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: That's good. Thank you so much. A pleasure being here.[00:53:00] 

Um, okay.

Who in the, and all of that side? Who,[00:54:00] 

Wilma Eriksson: yeah.

insive-fredrik Landstrom: Okay. Uh, yeah. Um, so my question is. If you're looking to make a bigger purchase of some sort for your company, how do you get your board committed to that? How do you get them interested and how do you actually get a buy-in?

Wilma Eriksson: Where I came from.

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