Nate Medina

Now that I’ve completed the program, I can say that it was the right decision. I’ve learned so much in the past two years working with some of the smartest people and completing on interesting projects. Below, I breakdown my three rotations and distill the lessons that I’m taking with me as I start on the Product Marketing team in July.

First Rotation: Customer Support (July 2018 – Feb 2019)

I’m not going to lie, I was worried about my first rotation in customer support. Not only was I shy when it came to talking to strangers over the phone, but I also didn’t know how I—with little product knowledge—could be helpful to HubSpot customers. Thankfully, customer support is equipped with talented coaches and mentors who train you to be better at delivering great customer experiences. It was eye-opening to see that I could make a direct impact on the businesses that operate using HubSpot.

Lesson 1: Understand the problem—Ask questions until you’re 100% sure you’re solving the right problem. 

In customer support, you constantly see unfamiliar technical issues. “What’s an API? You’ve reached a limit?” “Your Outlook is disconnected from HubSpot?” As a HubSpot newbie, a customer’s guess at solving the issue was as good as mine. But my manager and the Support Team Leads helped me understand how to troubleshoot issues on my own. The trick in support is to diagnose the correct issue as fast as possible. For example, a customer may suggest that the problem is in their HubSpot properties not syncing correctly. But it may actually be that they forgot to tag the correct personalization token in their marketing emails. The key here is to ask questions to pinpoint why the customer has an issue. Helpful questions include: “Can you tell me how you experienced the problem?” Or “What steps did you take for this to happen.”

Three months into my rotation, I learned the most important question to ask if I was really confused. The question is: “What’s your end goal?” This question gets the customer to talk about what they want to achieve. Without it, you can go down a rabbit hole of fixes that don’t actually help the customer achieve what they want.

Lesson 2: Troubleshooting is a skill. Once you’ve diagnosed the problem, try solving it using the resources at your disposal.

I wasn’t going to know everything about HubSpot’s products. I had to accept that my lack of product knowledge shouldn’t affect the way I navigate conversations with customers. I ran into cases that I couldn’t figure out over the phone. I had to let the customer know that I’d follow up with them with a solution. The Support Team Leads deliberately avoided giving us answers to customer cases. Instead, they asked us questions that make us think of ways to probe for a solution. Before asking for help, you want to get as far as you can with the resources you have. This builds resiliency to go through the documentation, slack messages, past cases, and JIRAs to find a solution for the customer.

Lesson 3: Be careful about making assumptions

I always thought that only angry people called into customer support. We had to make our first call during our ramp period (the first couple months that you get comfortable in your role). Matthew, my coach, looked over my shoulder and noted how I was performing on the phone with the customer. I assumed that the customer was angry. Oddly enough, the customer was actually a cool person who needed help in understanding his marketing emails. He wasn’t demanding. He wasn’t frustrated with me. Although I couldn’t solve his problem over the phone, I followed up with the correct solution. The best part—he gave me a 10/10 NPS score (a “job-well-done rating). While I thought I had delivered a terrible experience, the customer thought that I was doing the right thing since he considered me a HubSpot expert. Assumptions are crucial. Don’t make assumptions about what others may think about you. For example, I shouldn’t have assumed that the customer knew that he was my first case.

Lesson 4: How to prioritize decisions

One of my favorite parts about the Leadership Rotational Program was the opportunity to have lunches with HubSpot executives, like Brian Halligan (CEO), Dharmesh Shah (CTO), and Allison Elworthy (VP of Customer Service). We asked them questions about HubSpot’s business and their own careers. One constant theme that I found was the executives’ commitment to making only a few important decisions. Most of the executives drew the same 2×2 decision chart that showed how they allocate their time to the most important decisions for the business. These are typically decisions that are impactful and can’t easily be undone. For all other decisions, they lean on their team. So this got me to focus on impactful decisions that were in my control. I usually prioritize decisions based on impact, time, and outcome (those decisions that are most impactful, current, and allow teammates to move forward).

While in Customer Support, I worked 3 marketing projects

1) Acquisition, HubSpot Academy: Ideated HubSpot Academy’s first YouTube Mini-series, called “Pushing Boundaries.”

2) Product Marketing: I met with 14 HubSpotters in the Sales organization to understand how HubSpot can improve the resources provided to Sales Reps who sell Enterprise products.

3) Email Messaging: Organized internal Sales Rep notifications based on prospect triggers (like filling out forms or taking specific actions on hubspot.com).

Living in Dublin for One Month

• Our trip to Dublin was an incredible opportunity to meet HubSpotters overseas, learn about their stories, and experience a completely different work-life.
• The common theme was that everyone in Dublin was solving for the customer. Though the customers may be different, DubSpotters solved for their unique customers in their regions.
• The trio (Lucy, Sammi, and I)  identified and ranked media outlets in the EMEA region like Benelux and the Nordics. Just like the US, every region has its star media outlets and niche websites that prospects turn to. We only scratched the surface in consolidating a list of marketing publications in the EMEA region.
• While in Dublin, we made trips around the area, from hiking in Howth and the Cliffs of Moher, to checking out the Guinness Factory and Kilmainham gaol. Dublin had a friendly, artsy vibe that I enjoyed. My favorite pub was “The Quays” in Temple Bar. It featured an excellent duo playing classics like “Castle on a Hill” and “I Will Wait”.

Temple Bar, Dublin, Ireland. This whole street is filled with pubs!

Second Rotation: Product Marketing (March 2019 – November 2019)

While in Support, I reached out to people from the Product Marketing (PMM) team to learn more about their role at HubSpot. They gave me a few book recommendations and highlighted the cool projects that their team was working on. Luckily, there was an opportunity to join the PMM team for my first marketing rotation in March 2019. While on the PMM team, I worked on three main projects.

HubSpot’s Product Marketing team at an annual planning event (a fantastic crew of people!)

1) Upgrade more customers

My first project on the team was to increase the number of customers who upgrade from Marketing Hub Starter (up-sell). This meant knowing how customers typically upgrade, then running a campaign to get more customers to upgrade to a higher priced product. I worked with Product, UX, and Marketing Research teams to understand the Marketing Hub Starter persona—which describes the type of person using Marketing Hub Starter. I conducted an upgrade and usage analysis to inform teams about upgrade path opportunities. I learned that Marketing Hub Starter customers who use HubSpot’s email marketing tool are likely to upgrade their account for workflow automation functionality. Oddly enough, 60% of Starter customers didn’t use the email marketing tool in Q1 2019. Although activating Starter customers doesn’t directly upgrade them, our usage data showed that customers activated on the email tool are more likely to upgrade than any other tool. So it provided us with a good place to start.

We executed an email activation campaign targeting Starter customers with low email marketing tool usage. I used upgrade lessons from the book “Hooked” to create a loop for customers: Learn > activate on tool > get a reward email > see results. With one email, we activated 15% of contacts who interacted with our email campaign.

2) Launch HubSpot Services Update

I led the global re-launch of HubSpot Services website updates across six regions. This was my first positioning project. It was a cross-functional collaboration with Services, Marketing, and Growth to communicate pricing changes, new positioning/messaging, and update website designs externally and internally. Within 90-days, we saw a 97% increase in page views and 349% increase in submissions without a promotional campaign.

Lesson 5: Understand customers’ perceptions

How do you start a positioning project? For me, it helped to interview customers to know what they thought about HubSpot and the services that we provide. Using the stories that customers shared, I felt more confident in communicating HubSpot’s differentiated viewpoint for our new offerings. Going forward, I’ll be sure to get first-hand and unbiased customer feedback to inform product positioning viewpoints from customers.

Check out this blog post that I wrote: Why HubSpot is Changing the Onboarding Experience for Customers

3) Getting our company excited about the Free Email Marketing Launch

I supported the team in launching HubSpot’s free email tool (similar to Mailchimp). I led the internal enablement campaign to educate HubSpotters about the launch. We exceeded our social sharing goal by 300% within one week, and had over 900 HubSpotters participate by sharing or influencing over 3,500 total social media posts.

A sample collage of social posts from HubSpotters.