HubSpot is the customer platform that offers software and support to help businesses grow better. The company’s platform includes marketing, sales, service, and website management products that start free and scale to meet customers’ needs at any stage of growth.
Towards the end of 2023, HubSpot published an EOY Sales Survey that showed a real-time snapshot of challenges and pain points in the sales ecosystem and AI’s impact on the role of B2B sales professionals, buyer behavior, and emerging trends for this year. For example, the survey revealed that 61% of sales professionals believe working closely with the marketing team is essential, leading to a 107% increase in goal achievement compared to last year.
To address the challenges in 2023 (54% of salespeople said selling was harder last year), businesses must integrate sales and marketing efforts. But AI is proving helpful here, with 81% of salespeople using it to save time and improve efficiency in their daily tasks.
To learn more, Pulse 2.0 interviewed Michael Walton, VP of Product and GM of Sales Hub at HubSpot.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit Chowdhry): Could you tell me more about your background?
HubSpot (Michael Walton): I’m the VP of Product of HubSpot and GM of Sales Hub. I’ve been working in the sales and marketing technology space for the better part of 20 years. Both as a product leader, building great solutions for sales and marketing teams, and as a practitioner leading helping marketing, sales, and services organizations collaborate.
I lead the team at HubSpot that’s responsible for building out our sales product, Sales Hub. We’ve built Sales Hub to enhance sales team productivity and strengthen customer relationships, focusing on modern solutions for prospecting, selling, and forecasting—completely integrated with the rest of the HubSpot customer platform.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit Chowdhry): Can you share any specific customer success stories?
HubSpot (Michael Walton): WeightWatchers transformed its B2B sales strategy using HubSpot’s marketing and sales solutions, achieving 100% adoption across six teams, seamlessly tracked data through the sales cycle, replaced and amalgamated four solutions, and significantly improved its close-to-win ratio from 1 in 50 to 1 in 7. Using HubSpot’s Sales Hub empowered WeightWatchers to automate low-value tasks, optimize sales workflows, and enhance collaboration between sales, client success, operations, marketing, and finance teams.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit Chowdhry): 96% of sales professionals see B2B buyers start researching before the initial sales conversation as B2B buyers are moving away from traditional sales interactions and leaning more towards automated independent research. Could you elaborate more on this point?
HubSpot (Michael Walton): Overall, we see B2B buyers becoming more and more savvy. They’re increasingly leaning on independent research, often powered by AI, because it allows them to analyze information at their own pace to make more informed decisions. It’s a shift that we see as being pivotal to the way teams sell going forward.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit Chowdhry): The study revealed that sales professionals are taking a more consulting approach, leading to shorter sales cycles that prioritize higher-quality conversations and personalized experiences, as 82% of sales pros say building relationships is the most important (and most rewarding) part of selling. What are your thoughts about this?
HubSpot (Michael Walton): In the current landscape, B2B buyers are looking for solutions from sales teams that specifically meet their needs, which requires a tailored sales approach. It’s all about getting to value faster. This approach creates more efficiency as sales teams who customize their interactions and offerings stand a better chance of resonating and developing relationships with buyers. HubSpot’s Sales Hub allows sales teams to take exactly this approach by natively integrating the entire front office, so brands have a unified view of the customer journey; plus we embed AI across the entire platform, unlocking productivity for sales teams so they can get back to doing what they do best—selling.
Pulse 2.0 (Amit Chowdhry): AI has significantly influenced how B2B buyers feel about products, with 67% of salespeople predicting buyers will make decisions without directly engaging with sales reps. And the most effective sales teams will depend more on AI skills to adapt to shifts in buyer behavior and drive success. What are your thoughts about this?
HubSpot (Michael Walton): B2B buyers are becoming more self-reliant and proactive with access to AI capabilities to aid their decision-making process. This doesn’t signal that the sales role is going away but rather that it’s shifting. With B2B buyers utilizing more of AI—and likewise with AI at the disposal of sales teams—reps will increasingly play the role of consultant and product expert.
The most effective sales teams will leverage AI to demonstrate value to prospects and customers faster. They’ll free up time to proactively anticipate buyers’ needs, focus their offerings specifically to them, and provide B2B buyers with timely, relevant, and curated solutions to their problems, all while still maintaining the human connection.
