EP 14: Unlocking Startup Success, Eoin McGuinness

In a candid conversation with our very own Bart Kowalczyk, Eoin McGuinness, an entrepreneur, coach, mentor, and investor from HubSpot's Startup Program, shared his invaluable wisdom on mastering the art of human-to-human (H2H) sales, optimising business processes with AI, and fostering sustainability.

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Transcript

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This is episode 14 of the H2H Sales Automation Podcast on Mastering Business Process in HubSpot. Hello everyone and welcome to our show. My name is Bart and I invite guests for a short 20 minutes interview to inspire you and improve your sales and marketing the human way. Today, I'd like to welcome Ion McGuinness from HubSpot Startup Program, entrepreneur, coach, mentor, investor. Welcome to the show, Ion. Thanks Brad, thanks for having me. So today's topic is all about humans. So how to H2H sales can transform startups. But I would like to start with a human touch a little bit. And I did have a little bit of digging in on to you've LinkedIn profile. And I found that you're actually exercising triathlon. My goodness. Tell us a little bit more about that, Ian. Yeah, so I'm one of those type A personality types. I feel like I need to be doing a million things at once. So I do half distance races predominantly in triathlon. So that's one point. It's two K of a swim, 90 K on the bike and then a half marathon run typically. Yeah. So I love it. I absolutely love it. I'm representing Ireland. In three weeks time, yeah, yeah, in the age group European Championships, which I'm super excited about. So, yeah, all all guns blazing for that one. I bet this is one of the times that you can actually take your time off the screen and just actually do something for you, isn't it? it is. And you can hop on a bike or you can go for a run or go on the swim. And I don't I don't exercise with headphones on. So I just let my brain go wild. It's typically when I come up with the best ideas. My wife is not particularly fond of it because I come back and I'm like, I had this idea when I was on bike today. She's like, no, what is it? But look, it's it's a bit of time for me and I really enjoy it. Brilliant. So listen, today's topic is all about it. So you work with startups very heavily within startup ecosystem, but also you've been involved with your own businesses, entrepreneurship and everything else. And one of the questions, so we as a HubSpot partner agency, we have that kind of question many times asked, you know, why not many startups are getting to the top? What is, where these strategies are failing? Yeah, I think I think the word scale is is a poison chalice, in my opinion. And everyone talks about scale, scale, scale. And you get funding or you go through an incubator and accelerator and everyone's talking about scale. And then the way that people think about scale is wrong. They think about mass outreach. They think about they think about. plaguing everyone on LinkedIn and emails and whatever else and not really taking a breath and kind of taking their head above water and thinking about the way that they like to be sold it or the way they like to be marketed to. And I love the concept of your show, H2H. And I say that in when I'm a coach in accelerator programs or incubation programs and everyone laughs at me and they laugh at me because... That's not what they want to hear. And it's the more human you are, the higher likelihood for success there is. And I think in the startup eco space, there's this overarching pressure to scale fast and make money and bring wealth to your investors and yourselves. Whereas if you just take a second and take a breath and think about the right way to build a sustainable, scalable business. that is being as human as you can with the outreach and being, you know, I suppose, targeted with your outreach. And 99 times out of 100, when I see companies, they're doing it wrong. And it's a worrying trend that I hope by putting the message out there more and more people start listening and actually be more human in their approach. I completely agree with you. I think most of the businesses want to just get to the top of the Facebooks, Googles, whatever, because they see all of these tech companies that are doing really well, doing millions, billions of dollars, and then they want to actually follow them and, yeah, let's do it and sell it quickly and just exit strategy before even the business name we have chosen for our domain. But do you think there's a lack of... knowledge between the founders or a skill or both or maybe education what where is that kind of vibe? find a lot of the time it's actually probably education and pressure. I think the more you kind of talk to startups and scale ups, the more you kind of realize that typically product knowledge is exceptional. They know their product inside and out. And they just want to scream it from the rooftops to as many people as they possibly can. And I say, the very first thing I say to every startup I've ever met has been nobody cares about your product and your service. Nobody, right? Apart from you, you care. But outside of that, no one else cares. They care about the solution to the pain point you're trying to solve. So if you can articulate that in the right way, that's what people get really excited about that. And I'll give a real world example, right? So someone prospected into me about six, eight months ago, right? They sent me a video. I watched it, 30 seconds. I had no idea what the product did, but he knew exactly what I was looking for. I never replied. I just wanted to see what they do, if I'm being honest. I'm a bit of a sales nerd. I love being sold to. I waited and then three days later he sent me a voice note on LinkedIn. I was like, whatever you're selling, I'm buying. Because that's the way I like to be sold to. To me personally, he understood me. He understood what I was looking for based on what my requirements were. And that's real, that was a real clever sales process. And I think sometimes that's what kind of happens in the kind of founders, eco space sometimes as a startup is like, we're wearing a lot of hats, but we don't actually think about it in the way of what does my persona. or what does the type of buyer persona I'm looking for? What do they actually care about? If you're selling to someone between the ages of 20 and 35, they're never gonna answer their phone. Ever. I haven't answered my phone since probably 2019. Yeah. And I'm a founder. So if I don't answer my phone, why are you ringing me? So the approach needs to be based on who you're trying to target, not just based on targeting everyone. And I think that's the point that frustrates me a lot of the time is, you know, when you're consulting companies and you're working with startups, you're like, guys, you need to actually think about this from the way that people like to buy. And if you don't, you're essentially shooting yourself in the foot. Eon, spot on. I think I've got another story in regards of this. I always look at the sales perspective, not only from the founder startup perspective on anyone really that would like to sell. Recognizing where that person, you, the guy who potentially is looking for a solution, where are you in your buyer journey? Is it like you're looking for something like now or you're just maybe you won't buy but maybe later? And I'll give you an example of someone who'd like to find a perfect wedding partner during the disco. What was the chances like? But when you start looking at what are your friends, what are the groups of your friends, and who can recommend you for that conversation, then you're basically segmenting the people that you want to maybe actually find that perfect date for you. Yeah, 100%. Because if you go out into a nightclub and you tell someone, I'm looking to get married tomorrow, like everyone's going to look at you like you're crazy. And like, and that's where people, I think, get so focused on it. I think that's also like one of the things I always say to founders is like when we when we're looking at building like their their brand awareness a little bit is your website is the very first thing that people are going to look at. And if you're selling, selling, selling the whole time on your website, people aren't going to come back. And you've got 15 seconds and we're in the tick tock generation. Arguably, that's going to get lower. It's going to be five seconds in in about 10 years time. So we need to we need to have that as a gateway. So we need to kind of broadcast. Look, this is the problem that we solve. Learn how to solve it rather than do you want to buy? And if you can focus on the problem. The cell comes. Eventually, it might happen as quickly as you want it to, but it will come eventually. You just have to predict trends. And I suppose you have to be have enough of a pipeline that sustains you on a long term rather than worrying about the need to sell today or, you know, the business is going to close. It is a gradual journey. And I think a lot of people forget that, and especially for anyone that hasn't been in sales before. It's it's a really tough place to. learn, but it's also arguably one of the most fun. You learn more about people working in sales and as a founder working in sales than you do and doing anything else. You learn human psychology more than you arguably would from a psychology degree. This is like a game, you know, I always love talking to people who they try to sell me if I have a time obviously because this is like not kind of like good great exercise for all these people who calling you try to try to view from the other part and see how you feel the people that you're trying to reach the same way they feel the same as you so it's it's it's nothing so Moving forward, so 2025, we're recording this in middle of 2024. I know you're going on holiday soon. So and then obviously, but then let's plan it. Let's look at what the future so back in the pandemic's time, quite easy to find the startup really easy in terms of how technology can help us to work remotely. Now we pass this time, we passed all of this and now. New time is coming. What I call this optimization, I think I would probably myself call it. So we now know how the world is looking after all of these changes. Probably we don't see any massive changes in terms of like the same as in pandemics. But now startup, where the startup could retrieve? What industry, what ideas, where you can see that changes in the ecosystem. Yeah, I think I think I like I think, you know, it's the the big shine and bright light that's out there at the minute. And again, I I joke all the time that like if you think of a I in the simplest format is like that Alexa that people have a home, you ask it a question and answer something back. I think we haven't been particularly good at integrating that type of software into, you know, like advanced. software for business until last year, really. So like, if you take even just a HubSpot example here, we have a tool called ChatSpot, which is built on top of OpenAPI and a few other systems. I don't build sales reports anymore. That's right. like I literally type in, give me a sales report for all of the startup deals that have closed in Poland or in the UK in the last two weeks. Boom, it's done. Takes me five seconds. I think that change is the part and people get really scared about that. And when someone says AI in the workplace, I get really excited about it because it means that as a human, I can do more things that are actually going to be more beneficial. rather than spending two hours building reports. For me, I think that's where the big changes is. Where are the parts of my job that I hate and I really don't like doing and how can I automate them in the best possible way? I think there's also opportunities in that. There's also negativity in that, but I think the overall greater kind of part of it is going to be a big positive. I think you're right in terms of... Optimization is exactly the key word I would use there. I think AI is the easiest way to optimize things because it gives you at times, caveat, I'll use the word at times, give you an unbiased answer. And again, I joke with startups and scale ups all the time. If you use the word, I think, in any decision that you make, you're already wrong. You have to be, I know. So you have to link things to data. So for me, I love the AI concept of, you know, ask getting it to do the stuff that essentially can cause typically human errors in the process and removing the, I think, from a business decision or a decision within optimizing something. Because some of them might think this landing page is better than the other. But data is the real proof. Tell me which landing page gives us the best return on investment. Boom, done. And we don't have to have a big debate. Decisions are made quite quickly and we can actually move on to the things that are going to be more beneficial for the business in the long term. Fantastic answer. Thank you for all of this. I think everyone can benefit out of AI is big one, but then being in a niche and using that in a niche to basically to have productivity teams to do more and unlock that excitement, because when you build a product service, it doesn't matter. That is the big example. Every founder needs to have that kind of excitement, in my opinion. And that excitement is all about optimizing the product system. the way we sell it, but doesn't necessarily means that we are actually looking for another spreadsheet or another information that nobody knows where is it. So this is the massive thing. I think one of the challenge and I think that that's just my opinion really is obviously the enablement bit. I think what we are talking with lots of clients and everyone is happy with everything, but then nobody knows exactly how to use it or if they know how to use it, don't know how this can actually affect their sales and marketing. So that enablement bit. might be a game changer in 2025. I think taking baby steps, like I think everyone thinks about doing a million things with AI, like taking that example I gave there, sales reports, or which landing pages are outperforming the others. Like they're really simple things that can make such a big, they can make a huge change to the bottom line of a business. They can also make huge changes to general productivity. And it's just taking those like little baby steps to figuring, okay, cool, I've done this with it before. Now, Maybe I can try doing this if I really put my brain to it. So for me, it's always about, I'm a big believer in simplicity. How can I make things as simple as possible? And I use the granny rule, is can I explain it to my grandmother? So if I'm doing something in AI and I explain to my granny, granny, this is how I'm gonna... build a sales report by just asking a chat bot. I should be able to explain that in 30 seconds or less. And if I can't, that's my problem, because I obviously haven't done a good enough job explaining it. So typically CEOs or founders or someone in certain businesses, the likelihood is they will be completely technology illiterate. So we need to be able to explain it to them as simply as possible. And that's why I'm such a big believer in simplicity. Because simplicity makes productivity, in my opinion. spot on, granny rule, love it. It's, yeah, it's a perfect tip for everyone. Ask the older generation, let's call it, about the product service, whatever you're doing, whether they understand and then just start rolling it out. Moving on, a little bit of startup program about HubSpot, obviously, both you come from entrepreneur background, but also from the HubSpot background. You work with lots of different businesses. Tell us a little bit more about that startup program. Why should we, should the founder actually look for a solution such as startup offer? good question. I think the thing for us is we have a kind of a goal on our team, which is to be the number one CRM for scaling businesses globally. And I think the way we look at that is when you look at a scaling business, right, and again, I go back to my phrase around simplicity. When you think about it is a lot of time you don't need a huge amount of technology at the beginning. in a CRM or customer relationship or even sales and marketing. A lot of time you need to do basic fundamentals. So our logic on it is you shouldn't actually pay full price for something that you only actually need the basic fundamentals for. So typically I recommend people to start with the free tools to build a really, really simple sales pipeline. Do your first set of email newsletters, like make things really simple and scalable. and then kind of build on that as time goes on. And then with the startup program, anyone that comes through it, we can get a 75%, up to a 75 % discount off HubSpot. So again, going back to my earlier statement, you might not have cashflow at the beginning. So if we can give you a bigger discount at the beginning, then you can kind of scale into and grow into the solution. Now caveat about is you have to, you would have to receive less than 2 million in funding and come through it. an approved accelerator and incubator or VC. But we also have other parts of the program. So we've got a 75%, a 50 % discount level, and then we also have a 30 % discount level for those that are bootstrapped. So there is options for everyone. And the idea is really that we want to make it simple for everyone to use a CRM that we know that they'll get return on investment from. And that's kind of our goal. Wonderful. Ian, can you share some stats? What hub is the most popular among startups? Yeah, marketing and sales hubs. Yeah, the two of them combined typically. Predominantly, you know, roughly speaking, around 70 % of all the HSFS or Hubswap for startups customers will use those two hubs extensively. And then... you will find that there will be some that will just use Sales Hub, some that will just use the Marketing Hub, and then we have others that are maybe later on in their journey that will be using the likes of Service Hub for onboarding or ticketing systems. They're typically a lot of time like more service -based businesses, if I'm being bluntly honest. I think a lot of the time, or e -commerce sometimes, whereas with a lot of the tech style companies, they're building an onboarding and a service engine. So they'll usually look at that hub later down the road, usually somewhere between three, six, 12 months down the road. But they'll usually start with the sales and marketing. Brilliant, fantastic. We'll definitely leave any links under this episode. For anyone interested to really look at the options, I definitely suggest to start and use all hubs available within 75 % discount if that is granted for you. That is my advice, and you can choose then which one is actually the most powerful combining all hubs. works for us, for our agency, for my other businesses. So my 100 % kudos for HubSpot to support that growth enablement really within the business and ecosystem. Sustainability, final topic of this episode. And you did mention about, even in your profile, sustainability. What's like, how to be sustainable now? And so a little bit of story for that. I was attending one of the events locally here in Edinburgh. And they were talking about something like whether email or website, everything what we do online are actually sustainable. Because then one of the popular episode in Spotify, I think they have millions or tons of CO2 was consumed. Now we are getting to the stage that we are kind of using everywhere the data, but nobody is talking about the sustainability of the, I don't know, mobile phones or the time or the cloud systems. how we can be a little bit more sustainable in that environment. Yeah, good question. So there is a website which I'll share with you, Byrne, I can't remember off the top of my head, which actually tells you which companies are kind of using certain levels of CO2 per email send or per data center and all that sort of stuff. So I can share that with you and anyone can check that up. I think it's actually a really cool resource. We have a sustainable group in HubSpot in a snack channel and they keep monitoring our own. CO2 modules, which I think is super cool to get a kind of a monthly report on it. Simply put, I think the way I think about sustainability is how can we consume less? Like it's as simple as that. So like for me, I recently just sold a company that we used to make recycled materials from, or we used to take waste and turn it into... turning into fashion products. So we used to make sunglasses, watches, cufflinks, all that sort of stuff out of 100 % recycled materials. And I recently just had an exit with that one. But for me, it was always about not getting people to repurchase, right? Because I would give them a lifetime warranty. So the likelihood is when they broke something, they'd send it back for a small fee, we'd give them a new one. So there's lots of like, I think companies out there that kind of do similar things like that. Or for instance, you know, again, buying something once and not buying it consistently. So clothes is a great example of that. You can go into Primark or you can go into, you know, again, I'm not calling it Primark. I think they do some really good stuff for sustainability, but you buy a T -shirt for five pound or five euro. Like, how long is that really going to last? So I think like it's things like that that I would be a big advocate on keeping an eye on. It's not over consuming. And I think it's probably the biggest problem that's out there at the minute. And it's fueled by ads and marketing. I think in a workplace environment, it goes back to what I said at the very start of the call. It's if you if you really want to be sustainable about things, don't be pissing people off by sending them. 800 emails every month. Because one is that does have an environmental impact, but two is it's just pissing people off. So like I would say just just that sort of stuff. Again, being human in the process is is the key to this. And I think for me, I always look at with a business, is it something that's built for the long term or is it something that's there as a splash in the pan? I think Patagonia is a very good example of that. They're built on sustainable ethos. If I, I've sent back my jacket twice, I've had it for five years. I've sent it back twice because there's been rips in it and there's never been an issue getting it fixed and sent back to me completely for free. That's the sort of stuff that I was like, and yes, the jacket was 250 euro, but it's a brand new jacket every time there's been a rip or a tear in it. And I'll have that jacket for arguably another 25 years at least until I probably get a little bit too fat to wear it. But. I'll have it for the long term and I think it's just it's it's being clever with what you're buying and what you're consuming. Ion, thank you very much. I think I raised this subject of sustainability because I think I believe everyone who would like to touch what is called growing markets such as US, UK, that sustainability issue will be a key to basically distinguish your startup out of many different people and especially for startups as you are heading a startup program from CE region, Africa and Middle East. That is the big shout out and I would like your, just let me rephrase, it's something that you can reuse. so that you can definitely use a little bit longer. As a summary, massive, massive number of tips. Everyone, please do follow Eon's LinkedIn, whatever means of connections, connect with him, talk, let's exchange. Do not spam, obviously. Let's build the human connections. Final bit. So if you want to sell and you want to sell like a human, what is your one top tip? Use video. Brilliant. Yeah, use video. Be human. It's very hard to say no to someone's face. And also, it's very... I say it's very hard to say no to someone's face. It's also very easy to say no to someone's face because you'll get an answer. You have done something what no one else is doing. And like that example I gave earlier about the guy who was selling to me, he sent me a video and then sent me a voice note. And I was like, that was cool. I was like, I didn't find it intrusive. I didn't find it frustrating. I got everything I needed to know within 15, 20 seconds. Instead of having... reading an email that could take me 30 minutes because I'm like, what is this person talking about? Like, what are they talking about? And then I get frustrated. And then whereas I think sometimes it's easier to articulate it from a voice and it's easier to articulate it when you can see that person that's reaching out to you. I personally like that. I get a really good buzz from it if I'm being honest, because I'm like, they're thinking outside the box. I really like that. Ion, wonderful. Thank you very much. I think we reached our 20 minutes easily. Thank you very much, Ion, for your time. I know you're a busy man. So thank you again, and let's catch up soon. Appreciate it, thanks Bart.