[00:00] Hi, and welcome to Broker Tools, where we unpack the tools, systems, and strategies that help brokers optimize the way they work. I'm Katie, your host, and today we are joined by Daniel from HubSpot. HubSpot is probably one of the most uh used CRM, um, especially what we call a non-agregator and non-broker specific CRM in the industry. And as a platform, uh, I know it can be overwhelming. So, if you've ever been curious about how to optimize the way you work using HubSpot, this conversation is for you. Um, because Daniel and I are today going to break down your pipeline stages, common design mistakes, and why getting lead capture right first matters because without the right data structure, everything else that comes from AI really won't deliver value. So, um, I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Welcome, Daniel. Thanks, Katie. Thanks for having me. >> You're most welcome. Um, we were just having a pre-hat about all the different things that HubSpot's doing, and I was
[01:03] even looking at some of these automations you had going. Um, but before we get into the weeds, um, and looking at any of the demos, are you happy to, uh, I guess explain to us a bit more about HubSpot and what makes it great or maybe not so great for brokers? >> Yeah, definitely. Um, so HubSpot is a CRM, so a customer relationship management platform. One of the great things about it is that it enables you to have all of your data in one place. Um, so that you can easily uh run your marketing automations, so sending emails, running socials, paid campaigns, um tracking a sales pipeline um through to completion and a whole lot of other things as well. And there's AI built into the whole platform. So really about having all of your data in one place and then using that data for reporting and automations uh throughout your business. So quite quite good for um for brokers particularly as um obviously admin and compliance is a big part of um what what
[02:06] brokers deal with day-to-day. So, if you can try and utilize some technology to stop things from slipping between the cracks and maybe automate some follow-ups, it's a really a really big helper compared to relying on someone else remembering to do that. >> Yeah. So, what you're saying is that um HubSpot is really great for the the lead capturing because there's so many opportunities coming through. It's that it we cuz I guess and I'm repeating this but some people don't know what CRM actually means and how it differentiates between a project management service >> and yeah I think being kind of clear to help people who don't really understand CRM >> could be helpful. >> Yeah. Well, a CRM is really just a place to store all of your um individual contacts data. So all of the different leads and prospects and and your existing clients that you've got storing them in one system. Um so obviously typically in the broker industry um there's usually a CRM that's provided or
[03:11] aligned with the aggregator. Um but and so that the idea of that is obviously somewhere to put those those um clients and prospects into and you know maybe track them through a process through to submitting the loan with that aggregator. um that's okay, but what we often find is that it doesn't do many of the things at the front end very well. So, for example, um maybe a lead comes to your website or they might find you on social media and it's about how do you efficiently capture that person or that lead that comes in. So rather than them dropping to a say an inbox at the business or or calling up someone's got to then manually enter that somewhere or you starting to gather information. Um what we find is that often that's done in a different place and then over time typically brokers are like ah I don't want to deal with my um aggregator CRM. It's clunky. It's messy. I'm really just going to use that right when I need to submit the loan at the end and and then
[04:14] type in all of the information there. I suppose the way HubSpot typically fits in in that situation is using HubSpot as your main your CRM to capture the lead right through from that initial inquiry whether it be an email or a phone call creating them in the system um and really having detailed properties about those people. So, the type of person they are or maybe the type of loan that they they've got now, whether it's a um a net new like a mortgage or a refinance or whatever it might be, all of those different segments and having that captured in the CRM so that you can easily see who you know who you're dealing with and then you can use that to report and automate. So maybe um as different different uh things get updated or changed, maybe you want to make something else happen at the end of that, maybe a task or a communication with the client. And then you can always then still enter that into the other CRM obviously for the the loan submission.
[05:18] Um but typically what we're what we're doing is having a more detailed um data capture and then using that automation to nurture people throughout that process which often those other CRM are not capable of doing or don't do very well. >> Yeah, I get it. Um I as you were talking it reminded me of you know back in the day when people had pen and paper and they had like the little cards and they would have to write out the name the company name on those. What was it? Those 5 in cards. We've just digitalized that in a way and made it much more searchable and much better than spreadsheets because if you get a contact name and then a business name um and you like you're saying we're trying to store all of this information. Spreadsheets don't do it well. Maybe aggregator software doesn't do it well. Um, and the solution that HubSpot is providing is making it easy for you to search something that might come to top of mind. So you might remember a person's business name but not their
[06:21] first name and so you can just search it and that's their contact details come up. >> Yeah, for sure. Um, I guess probably the the main thing to remember is that HubSpot is a it's a big technology company and so this is what they do. Whereas typically aggregators, they're not technology companies. So look, to their credit, they've tried to, you know, adopt technology over the years and um add these these CRM and these these, you know, application um systems into their into their suite of tools. But um what we find is that the brokers, the businesses that are really wanting to go to the next level and leverage leverage technology um so that they don't need to constantly you know write something here, enter it over here and then manually enter it over here. Um or have someone physically physically remember to do that next step. is that as we as we're moving that loan through the process or that deal through through the process that we're able to have tasks and certain actions
[07:25] automatically taken in the background and even just things like capturing data as well like capturing you know information on a factf find um doing that digitally rather than oh I want to know when in in my experience in in financial planning and and and previous life in broking >> you know a lot of businesses would do that um that have a like a paper fact find >> I mean someone in the office has got to transfer that in. It's really about trying to do that in a more efficient way. Um, and as you said, once you've got that information straight in, then you can search and filter and and do all of that. So, at some point down the track, you might be like, let's pull up a list of all of our um existing clients that we refinanced with the CBA in the last two years. Something's coming up. We should be reaching out to them, you know, sending an email or something specific. you know, it's easy to do that um when you've got all of the data in the right place and segmented correctly. >> Perfect. One of the things I think I've enjoyed about co-working with HubSpot um in putting different CRM together is is
[08:29] that ease of flow. So, when a lead comes in, whether you're using the landing page in HubSpot or your own website, the APIs can connect it into the system. It can segregate the data. It can even tag up a type of contact um to what they are and then it can do that follow-up sequence whether you're moving them along your pipeline stages or through automations and emails. It it just really streams that process. What have you found are some of the other core components that make that whole process better for clients? I think the the undersold features of it well features or or abilities of it are is just constantly notify keeping people in the loop. I think when you're using the tools and a deal is going through a process or you're you're you're taking a client or a prospect through through a loan process. You know what you're doing and your office know and the team around you knows what happens next. But quite
[09:32] often these people don't know where they're up to. they're waiting for that next call to be like, "Hey, okay, what what's happening next? Where are we up to?" And so I just think one of the big benefits of um a tool like this is that you can actually have people nurtured. So maybe you you can explain to them, hey, I've just taken your information. We're going to, you know, submit this for pre-approval or whatever it might be. But as you're doing that and as as that happens in the background, we can trigger off an automated email, for example, to the to that prospect. So that just so they or or it might be an SMS um just so that they know where they're up to in that process and they go, "Okay, cool." Cuz the worst thing is that you get someone who's like, "Hey, I haven't heard from them in in a week. What's going on?" And then you've got that's another phone call or an email you've got to deal with. Whereas I just think keeping people in the loop with some automation, >> it just goes a long way. And it's just what people expect these days. you know, we live in this digital world where everything's personalized towards us. It's so easy um with the right
[10:37] technology to actually um to do that to a to a degree and just keep those people informed. They go, great, I'm dealing with a modern broker. Look, this I'm getting this nice email giving me an explanation of that next next stage that we're up to, what I can expect next. Maybe there's documents that I haven't completed that I need to send in. It's just doing that in the background and just means that you know they they're going to be kept happy and kept in the loop and it's just one other step that you or your, you know, admin don't need to do. And then you can focus on focus your time and attention on actually the revenue generating activities or those those times when you do need to have those personal conversations or write a personalized email. Obviously, you can still do that and you should be doing that, but we're just trying to take that heavy lift away so that people feel feel empowered and and informed. Perfect. And I guess the other component of that email side of things is that HubSpot actually connects directly in with your email. So, if you do get a communication, it's logged in and categorized alongside that. So, if
[11:39] someone does ring and say, "Hey, I didn't get that thing." and you you happen to be another away, your other teammate can actually look into HubSpot and see that communication directly in there and say, "Oh, this is what's happening." >> Yeah, that's right. And because I think actually that's another good point. Um having having everyone um connected into the CRM now, now those conversations are not lost in individuals inboxes. So if you're the primary broker and a lot of the communications are dealt through you as the broker, you know, unless those conversations or those emails are somehow copied and pasted or CCD somewhere else, the other team members don't have visibility over that. So even if you're a team of two or three, will you go from a team of one where everything's in your head and in your inbox, once you want to start scaling to that second team member, that third team member right up to whatever how many people in the team, whether they're working in the same office or you're working remotely or you've got people working um in different like overseas for example, it's really important that
[12:44] everyone's on the same page. And so when those communications like the example you gave come through via email that we don't have to we don't have to then log those into the CRM. They're just done automatically. So when we look at you know Joe Blogs as a prospect, we can see on a timeline all of the communications from all of the people in our team and it just maybe saves that awkward phone call or email. Hey, I'm chasing this document. No, no, I spoke to Barry, you know, two hours ago. Oh, whoops. I didn't know. We're in a different office. It just it just cuts all of that out. Um and it just makes it a lot more professional so everyone's on the same page. >> Yeah. I guess as we talk like I mean we're talking through a whole lot of things but you've actually built a demo so maybe we should go through and and have a look at it in real timeish. >> Yeah. >> Um so that people can I guess get a visualization of what this would look like for them. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, look what I what I'll show you here is is an example of how we would track deals through a pipeline and
[13:49] then um which is might be similar to um your broking software at the moment, but the difference is is that we can build these automations into the background. So, for example, I've built out a pipeline here with say lots of different all your different deal stages, right? All the way through. You'll see these keep going um across. So all the way through to you know settled. And so these obviously can be customized and um and named to whatever your process is. But at a high level we can see you know obviously all of the amounts across the top here. You know how long it's taking um to to settle these loans. Um it gives you a whole lot of information and obviously you can you can filter and you can save these filters across with tabs across the top here. But what we're looking at here, say a new lead comes in um and we're moving it through to the contacted stage. We can even put in u required fields here. So one of the things that um you know you find with uh with in financial services is this big heavy lift on getting all the
[14:52] information in a factf find. But you don't necessarily want to do that in the first call that that initial call or those first few interactions. You're just getting a few details down. So maybe as we want to move this through the pipeline, we want to gra gradually get more information. So maybe in that first stage that we before we can move it to the next stage, maybe we just want to know maybe what sort of an amount are we looking at, you know, description could be a new loan, maybe it's a where it came from and the next step could be, I don't know, follow up. I'm just going to put this in. But then this allows us to move that deal to the next stage. And then we can keep moving this through the pipeline and keep gradually grabbing those different data points that we think are important and and just think of that as a way also of making sure from a compliance perspective that we're not missing anything. So if there are some red lines that we need to be falling between that compliance or our aggregator is um our LE is absolutely wanting from us and we cannot miss this. This is probably a good way of making sure that we're that we're getting those before we move to the next stage. So,
[15:54] this is just summarizing, I guess, where all these different deals are at, you know, and these little deal cards can be customized with what what you want to see here, but, you know, might have an amount, um, maybe a proposed close date. You can see this is a demo portal, so some of these dates are a bit old. And we also have like a deal score on here as well. So based on some parameters that you think are important depending on how how what sort of quality of a of a deal or um opportunity we're looking at here. These all these little tags can be customized to your business. So this is this might be familiar to a lot of people, you know, a dealboard using a CRM potentially in the past, but one of the things I really like particularly for broking businesses um and even just like the smaller broking businesses is how we can use um some automations in the back end to try and make your business more efficient. So this is just this is the same deal pipeline I've got here. This is in the settings. So, we've got the same deal pipeline all the way through to, you know, to settled, but at each step here, I' I've just built some basic automations to give you an idea of
[16:59] how we can um make your team more efficient, whether you're a one-man band or whether you've got, you know, five or 10 people working for you. So, say as this as those as that deal moves through those different stages, it's automatically going to trigger off whatever's whatever the the little workflow is here. So, it could be triggering a task for someone in the team or for yourself. Or it could be just literally sending out a like a templated email to say, "Hey, the fact find, hey, we've just sent you a fact find. Here's the link. Can you click on this and complete this as we discussed?" You know, very very professional looking. Um, and it's something that they're expecting. And then maybe there's another task that's going to be triggered after that for someone in the team. Um, and then again, similarly, as we might move through the pipeline, we're going to trigger different tasks, different emails, um, right through to that loan being settled. And then even things like maybe that loan didn't proceed for whatever reason, you might say, okay, I'm going
[18:02] to set a delay on this. And then maybe have a a call task. So maybe six months down the track, a call task to give this prospect a call and say, "Hey, did you end up, you know, resolving that issue with your accountant? Maybe there was a financial reason or maybe they're they needed to sell their house first before they could do something. There could be a range of things, but maybe it's just that trigger to um to give them a call. So these are really easy to um to set up and build. You don't need a developer to do this. So you can do things, you know, like create tasks or send um external or internal email notifications or change records in the CRM. Um they're really easy to set up and it just can be can go a long way to making your business really professional but saving the people in the back office from, you know, maybe sending that manual email, hey, we've just submitted your your loan. Like we'll be in touch. >> You know, you can have a nice email go out on your behalf. Yeah, I I couldn't agree more. As you
[19:04] were going through, I'm like I'm like putting it in. So, like in the beginning, I mean, a credit card always has to go out. So, having that as like a check mark as confirmation um that it's already done. It's almost like you're marking off compliance without having to do compliance along the way. And if you have to um do a reminder, this is what we call the mental load management system. So you're not thinking I have to go follow this person up. >> You've got a task here that helps support >> you so that when you open up your HubSpot of a morning, you can go, oh, these are the jobs I need to do or this is something I need to check on because it's a task to be done. >> Yeah. And and like you could have, for example gave about the credit guy needing to go out, whether that goes out as soon as the lead comes through the inquiry. Um, you could have an email that has all of that information in it. Thanks for your inquiry. Here is our credit guide. Um, in fact, I'll show you an example of some automations when a
[20:08] lead would maybe come through. >> This is using our like our workflow tool. Um, so let's just say and this is based these workflows can be built and customized uh based off a trigger. And a very simple example is someone filling out a form on your website. So they might have found you some somehow. Um and let's just say they fill in a form. This is I haven't customized this uh this workflow, but say someone the trigger is someone has submitted the form. In this case, it's got a delay of 3 days, but like maybe we don't want that because we think no, we want this to go out straight away. And we can have an email sent to them straight away. And that could be here's your credit guide done. That way no one had to remember to do that. It was automatically done. we know that if if they fill in a form, they're going to get that. And then we can do all sorts of interesting things like for example some branch logic here. Maybe if they've opened the email, we want to send them down a specific um specific journey >> or maybe they've but they haven't clicked on the credit guide. Maybe we want to, you know, set for someone to give them a call or maybe want something
[21:11] completely different again. And we can even go as far as, you know, enrolling them into um to to to see certain ads online. Maybe they've they've inquired. We haven't we've tried to reach out to them. They haven't responded or we haven't been able to get get in touch with them. Maybe we want to now expose them to some ads on Meta about our, you know, our business to try and warm them up again so they're like, "Oh, actually, yeah, I do want to do want to follow up with that." Because people people just get busy. they get distracted, you know, at night they're feeling informed, they're inquiring about different things and then maybe they're curious, maybe they're not, but um it doesn't mean that it's lost. But we can then use automation in the background as we're building this database of this list of people that um who are active clients, those who are in a process with us and those who've inquired over time because it's just too hard to have a to say, "All right, I'm just going to spend Friday afternoons calling all these leads that came through on the website that inquired 6 months ago." We can build automations to nurture and warm
[22:14] these people up for us so that hopefully when they are ready to make a decision or to take action that you're front of mind and that there it's an easy process for them to re-engage with you. >> Perfect. And um as as you go through because you're collecting valid data on people, this is where AI can really back you up and support you with all the new features that you have in there. Would you say this is the starting point of where AI really does shine? >> Yeah, definitely. So, one of the cool things about HubSpot is that the AI is like it's integral. It's built into the product. It's not sort of like, oh, yes, there's the product without AI and then you've got to pay for like an enterprise license to get AI, it's actually built in. So depending on wherever you're at in that journey from like hey I'm just starting to use chat GPT for for different things right through to um using you know agents to to perform tasks for you. But one of I think one of the key areas that um in answer to that question is as you're gathering this
[23:17] data. So if it's filling in filling in properties like things that they actually complete on a factf find information about their situation loan amount you know um whether it's a refinance or a new mortgage or whatever it might be married couple whatever all of that information we call that structured data that you'd fill in as properties. But what HubSpot's also able to do is take in all the unstructured data. So things like call transcripts, >> um, meeting transcripts. So like having a Zoom meeting or a Teams meeting, having that transcribed and then having that data actually lives in the CRM and then being able to interact and have a summary of where each contact or each deal is up to and being able to interact with that like chat GPT. >> So you might have spoken a couple six months ago. You might have had a few meetings and it fell over for some reason or they didn't proceed and then maybe that inquiry has come through again. And to get yourself up to speed without having to scroll down and go
[24:20] through and read all the previous threads of emails and the transcript of what happened in those uh those maybe those meetings, you can just ask the AI what were the what were the key things that we discussed last time? What were the what things held this deal up? where are they, you know, what what would what things do we what things should we be looking at now? And it's going to summarize that all for you because it's all in there. So, it's just a productivity tool at the end of the day. >> Perfect. So, is the Ask AI inside a deal card or is that like just on the like more like a tap to the side? >> It's on it's in every um every record. So, I'll see I haven't prepared I'll just see what one of these example Well, like because let's be fair, this is a demo site, so you don't have all the kinds of details in it, but um >> yeah, so this this example of this uh this deal that I've just pulled up here. So, this brief summary record is where it would summarize it. It summarizes and then we can interact with it here, but
[25:24] you can see there's no there's no information in this uh in this deal. Let's see if there's any information on the on the individual um Adams. Here we go. is maybe a bit more. Okay. No, there's no there's no specific information really in this besides, you know, web pages that that Eda has viewed. So, there's not that's probably not the best example. I would have prepared one with a bit more information, but it's really easy just to click ask a question and then you can start interacting with that that contact card or that deal record. And you can see connected to things like um Gmail, you know, G Drive, uh Outlook, whatever it might be. So, it's got more context as well um broader than just what's in the CRM, >> which is I guess the value because um I call it a deal card, but inside of HubSpot, you're calling it a record and and these are like the components inside of it. Others might just call it an opportunity. Um >> yeah,
[26:24] >> but the I guess at the end of the day the value is that first you have to capture this lead and have it in a a a holding place that is you know I guess the most valuable place and then as you're gathering data um and you'll have video conferences or you have done a proposal or you've done some sort of document collection at least you can all bring it into that one um record, deal, opportunity, spot. >> Yeah. >> And then >> and that's where the AI is is great because it can summarize all of that information and give you an overview of what's really happening for that person. >> Yeah. Yeah. I would say for a broker, that's probably the most valuable AI tool. There's a whole lot of other other AI components within HubSpot. But I would say, you know, broking business or a financial services practice. It's really just there's so many interactions with a client and a whether they're a
[27:27] prospect or a client and just trying to get your head around that. And particularly when you have these big gaps of time where people dealing with you and then they disappear for a while and they come back. It's fine when you've got a couple of clients, you're starting out, you're like, "Yes, I know exactly. I remember where everything's up to." But as you go over time and the team grows and the volume of clients grow and the number of deals grow is just too hard to try and remember all of that detail. Um, and you got to try and remember, you know, businesses businesses once they scale from one person, they're going to multiple people. You can't just have all of that information in your head. It's no no not helpful. Um, it needs to be recorded in a system. And and I guess the long and short of it is the idea is that this makes it as easy as possible to do that. It's not a data exercise. We're trying to where we can make the um the prospect or the customer to fill in forms where they can to try and at least get them into the system automatically. And then as we're building that um that factf find or that profile, we're gradually getting more information from them.
[28:30] >> Yes. And then I guess over time, especially if they're the investor type personality, they'll have multiple properties. And so, you know, you can at least get like one contact associated to multiple deal opportunities and make those that like each deal opportunity is a property. And if they're talking about one particular property, you can bring it up, get a summary on that because once they have like a portfolio of three properties, you're like or more, you're like, I I can't I can't track. >> Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. It just makes it really easy to see the associations between people and and companies or you know the different deals that you've had had operating um as opposed to having to search for those or remember that this person had this particular deal and what was the name of that. It's all just there in front of you >> and it all pulls it through. Um if someone wanted to have a further conversation about what HubSpot can or can't do, what should they do? where
[29:33] should they go? >> Um well you can obviously jump on the website um if you go to the HubSpot website and and you know make an inquiry through there someone will reach out or you can um reach out to me directly or or find me on LinkedIn you know and happy to put you in in touch with the right person. U but look this is an area that I have uh have previous experience in. So it's sort of a bit of a soft spot for me. Um, so I like working on these deals and helping brokers because it's sort of a, as I said, an area that I've worked in, um, and that I enjoy working in. So enjoy having these conversations. But yeah, if you're happy to reach out to me, um, um, or go to the HubSpot website, someone will someone will be able to help you. >> Perfect. Um, if you do have questions for Daniel um, or myself or you'd like us to host another session, um, just let us know in the comments below. I will put, um, Daniel's links there. Um, I will also link to this conversation um on our website, but again, feel free to reach out. Thank you so much for joining me on this conversation, Daniel. I have
[30:37] really appreciated it. >> No worries. It's been good. Thanks for having me, Katie. >> You're welcome. Catches. Bye. Bye. Bye.
