How Founder-led sales can be done right? • Founder at Sellestial • 3rd-time Founder • Don't be a stranger, follow me and reach out

Is one of your main projects for 2026 cleaning up your HubSpot data?  Want to run AI in production?

If you answered yes to anything, keep on; otherwise, stop reading this.

👉 How we are different to tackle data hygiene with your internal team only:

1. Deep Data Cleaning & Enrichment Expertise
We're data cleaning and enrichment specialists who know this problem space and its traps inside out. By cleaning and enriching 100+ HubSpot portals, we've developed a deep understanding of edge cases that first-timers don't anticipate. This is not general HubSpot admin work; it's pattern recognition from seeing hundreds of messy databases.

2. Dedicated Bandwidth + Project Discipline
Data cleaning is important but rarely urgent, which means it gets perpetually deprioritized by internal teams. We provide dedicated focus with clear project boundaries that prevent the "cleaning to infinity" trap or arbitrary abandonment that internal teams tend to fall into.

3. Production-Grade AI Expertise for Data Maturity
We've built specialized AI infrastructure designed for accuracy and reliability. We are regularly deploying 7+ different AI models for different parts of the process. We tested and evaluated over 50 LLM models over the course of the last few years, and have a comprehensive understanding of their capabilities and caveats. 

The ROI for you: Your internal teams and HubSpot admins can focus on what they do best while we handle the extremely complex, time-intensive data cleanup and/or enrichment with the AI resources your team doesn't have access to.


👉 Want to talk about Sellestial?
Shoot me a DM, and we can schedule an introductory call to discuss data.

Klemen Hrovat

Want better HubSpot marketing email open rate?

Fix this.

Regularly review your marketing contacts:
- remove non-personal contacts
- remove disposable domains
- check for mx records of domains
- remove fake contacts
- check contact's employment status

Clean recipient lists  --> higher open rates

#EmailMarketing #HubSpot #marketinghub

Talks about HubSpot data + AI daily | HubSpot Community Champion

A customer asked us to help them with lead scoring in their HubSpot

saying "We have data in a separate system."

They're paying for a subscription to an industry-specific database. 
The data is supposed to help them score leads.

But the HubSpot integration?
Broken.
And the vendor has zero intention to fix it.

So they asked: "Can you help us get this information into HubSpot somehow?"

We built an AI agent instead.

It takes basic contact and company info from their HubSpot, searches for the specific information they need, and writes it back to the CRM automatically.

Here's where it gets interesting:
The agent finds more accurate information than their paid database.
It's more up-to-date.
And it has a higher success rate at finding what they need.

They're now questioning why they're paying for that subscription at all.

This isn't magic.
It's just what happens when you design data flows around what you actually need, not around what vendors decided to give you.

The real unlock?

When the right signals live in your HubSpot, lead scoring works.
Relevant lead prioritization becomes possible. 
Marketing is handing over good leads.
Sales stops wasting time.


Curious to hear from other RevOps and HubSpot admins.

What's a data source you're paying for that you suspect could be replaced or improved by something smarter?

Your reps are wasting 5+ hours per week chasing wrong accounts that:

- Are duplicates of accounts that they already reached out to
- Closed down companies
- Moved to another job 8 months ago
- Aren't actually a good fit

This isn't a process problem.

It's a data problem.

I saw that in a portal recently ... 9 duplicates of Coca Cola, missing subsidiaries, wrongly enriched company records ...  the list goes on up to 43 companies with something like Coca Cola as a company name.

Multiply that by every corporation in your HubSpot 🤯 

Before you hire more people or buy another shiny AI tool, audit your CRM. 

You will be surprised by the value hidden in the data you already have. 

What was the strangest duplicate situation you found in your HubSpot?

I got an idea to help HubSpot users understand their data AI readiness.

What could be improved in how I set it up in HubSpot?

I developed a form with 10 questions in HubSpot.

Each question is a new property with 3 possible answers.

Each of the possible answers has a different score (0, 1, or 3)

I didn't know how to weight specific values in properties to build the logic for how many points you get for each question natively in HubSpot. So I built a simple script in Sellestial that calculates the AI readiness score and writes it to a property in HubSpot.

I set up a workflow that, based on the calculated score, customizes the email with the score and some thoughts about their AI readiness and sends it via a HubSpot sequence.

HubSpot experts, what could I do better?

p.s. Want to get your AI readiness score? Linki in the comment

RevOps teams are accountable for outcomes they can't control.


- You own forecast accuracy but don't control pipeline creation.
- You own the tech stack but can't enforce process adoption.
- You're measured on conversion rates but have no authority over how leads get handed off.

That's not tools problem.
That's not a headcount problem.
That's a mandate problem.

What does RevOps actually own?

Have you set up the cap on marketing email frequency?

If you have already or plan to, be cautious.

This lets you cap the number of marketing emails each contact receives within a set period to prevent over-communication.

I keep seeing that challenge with HubSpot users I talk to.
Marketing sets up several/numerous/countless workflows. 
They automate marketing emails and lead nurturing.
But they don’t think about customer’s experience. 

A human got 2 emails right away, in the first 10 minutes after form submission.
Who knows what they’ll get today 🙂

By setting this up, you define a cap for regular marketing emails, workflow automated emails, and blog notifications. It does not apply to transactional emails, one-to-one emails, feedback surveys, or conversations inbox emails.

The cap is calculated per contact on a rolling time basis. If someone receives an email on Friday with a weekly cap of 1, they won't get another until the following Friday.


Think about these things before you turn this on.

1. You can’t guarantee that emails will be really sent to a contact. If you have some emails that you want to make sure you send, you can exempt specific emails (like critical announcements or promotions) from the cap by unchecking "Apply send frequency cap" in the email's send settings.

2. With that turned on, each email you send should stand on its own; it should not assume the person has received the previous email in the workflow.

When was the last time you reviewed your HubSpot contacts?

The 90-day data decay problem
Why your HubSpot Data Cleanup won't stick
and what to build instead


You just finished a cleanup project.
Reports finally make sense.
Properties standardized.
Duplicates merged.

Give it 90 days. 

It'll be broken again.

Why cleanups fail

We've audited over 100 HubSpot portals. The pattern is always the same: a team spends weeks (or months) cleaning their CRM. Three months later, they're back where they started, or worse.

The problem isn't the cleanup. It's the cleanup model.

One-off fixes are a lie.
They feel productive but decay within months. 
Nobody owns ongoing accuracy.

The only real solution is a system that run themselves.

We call this Perpetual DataOps. 

It's a framework for building HubSpot data infrastructure that stays clean, not for a quarter, but forever.

The goal of the Perpetual Data Framework: Stop fixing data. Configure a system that prevents data decay.

Three pillars

1) CLEAN DATA - Duplicates merged. Gaps filled. Properties standardized.
- <2% duplicate rate on contacts and companies (continuously maintained, not one-time)
- 95%+ fill rate on "must-have" properties
- Standardized formats (not enforced at entry, but standardized right afterwards)

2) RICH DATA - ICP scores. Buying signals. Lead prioritization.
- Contact + company enrichment running on every new record
- Waterfall enrichment from reliable sources
- ICP fit score configured and maintained
- Relevant signals captured and associated to the right records

3) UNIFIED DATA - Systems synced and unified.
- Field mappings explicit (no "sync everything and hope")
- Potential data overwrites defined with guardrails

The build plan

Days 0–10 | Audit & scope
Document your current data model
Identify your "must-have" fields per object (the 10–15 that actually matter)
Map where data enters: forms, imports, integrations, manual entry
Quantify the problem

Days 11–30 | Build the foundation
Deploy automated deduplication
Implement waterfall enrichment on contacts and companies
Configure processes to standardize field formats

Days 31–45 | Add intelligence
Build lead scoring based on firmographics + engagement signals
Configure lead prioritization logic
Set up routing rules based on clean, scored data

Days 46–60 | Activate & monitor
Turn on 24/7 operation
Document: how it works, when to intervene, how to extend


Stop cleaning your HubSpot. Start building infrastructure that keeps it clean.

The companies winning with AI, with ABM, with outbound at scale - they're not the ones with 100% perfect data. They're the ones with systems that keep data good enough, perpetually.

Ship the system. Let it run. Move on to strategy.

p.s. Want to know where your HubSpot data actually stands? We can audit your HubSpot to show you what's broken, what it's costing you, and what it takes to fix it permanently. No obligation to continue after the audit. DM or comment below.

Stop adding to the mess (before you start cleaning it up)
Everyone wants to clean their historical CRM data.
That's the wrong place to start.

The first quick win in data hygiene
STOP ADDING TO THE PROBLEM

Perform a thorough HubSpot data audit to understand what's broken, with a focus on understanding root causes, not just symptoms.

Start cleaning up your CRM after you understand:
- the current state of data
- what's causing the mess
- where data is coming into HubSpot
- what data is relevant and important

By knowing where you currently stand, you can design an implementation plan toward clean data. 

Do you plan to clean up your HubSpot in 2026? Where do you plan to start?

Unified Customer View: Pipedream or Realistic Goal?
Join me, Casey, and Klemen Hrovat for a live workshop moving through the Unified Customer View Playbook.

🎙️ New to streaming or looking to level up? Check out StreamYard and get $10 discount! 😍 https://lnkd.in/dAaAJzce

Had a great conversation with Karen Ng at INBOUND about what it actually takes to run AI in production.

The insight that stuck with me: "Evals has become a core skill that product managers need to understand."

AI is non-deterministic. 

Same prompt, different results. 

So how do you trust it?

You build guardrails:
→ Human in the loop
→ Evaluations at every level (prompts, outputs, actions)
→ Citations that trace back to source data

Watch the clip for Karen's full breakdown on how HubSpot approaches this.

"How many customers do you have?"

Asked a few of our customers when we started working together. 

None of them could answer it from their HubSpot.

Here are the reasons
Enrichment tools were overwriting properties. 
Duplicate companies were created. 
Churned customers were not marked accordingly.

Everyone and every system creates data. Nobody owns the mess.

So many CRM can't answer basic questions:

- Who are our active customers? Unclear. 
- Where's our biggest opportunity? Depends who you ask. 
- Which segment is growing? Check the spreadsheet backup.
- What do we report at BoD? Give me a week to prepare the slides.

You can't segment. Can't forecast. Can't prioritize.

I've watched RevOps spend hours manually building lists because they couldn't trust data. 

Seen execs commit to decisions based on numbers that were flat wrong.

All because nobody defined, implemented, and maintained data standards.

Want better insights? Fix data first.

And here's the part most teams skip: it can't be a one-time project.

Data decays.
People leave.
Processes drift.

Whatever you build needs to run itself, or you're back here in six months.

If you don't protect the foundation, nothing built on top will hold.

🎙️ New to streaming or looking to level up? Check out StreamYard and get $10 discount! 😍 https://lnkd.in/dAaAJzce

Andrej Persolja

Experiencing stagnant growth? DM me to help reposition your tech startup to attract best-fit customers 🚀 Lowered CAC by 52% for my last startup 🏹 Founder, Positioning @ Tangible Growth

You've built a good product. You're growing. But does it feel harder than it should?

Hi. I'm Andrej. I help CEOs in complex industries fix three things that kill growth: unclear positioning, misaligned teams, and spending money on developing products & features users don't buy.

- If you are stuck in alignment calls
- not 100% happy with what your website says
- If your board or co-founders are asking questions you don't know how to answer... I've probably seen (and solved) what you are experiencing.

Because the real cost of these challenges? Isn't just growth. 𝐈𝐭'𝐬 𝐘𝐨𝐮. You're spending mental energy keeping everyone happy. Second-guessing your decisions on a Sunday night. Spending time in meetings instead of enjoying it with family. (You sigh, as you message your group of friends saying you won't make it to your basketball game for the third week in a row).

This 𝐢𝐬𝐧'𝐭 how leading a company should feel like. As a co-founder, I spent 2 years trying every marketing hack in the book chasing growth. Templates, frameworks, books... Nothing changed until we realized the problem wasn't tactics, but positioning. I never wanted to feel that way again, so I got really good at fixing it.

Because here's the truth: This is a 𝐧𝐨𝐫𝐦𝐚𝐥 problem at your stage. Internally, positioning breaks because your company is evolving. Externally, you are competing against teams with bigger budgets that make clear, de-risked decision. Most founders hire consultants hoping for the answer, but their frameworks never get implemented. That's the gap.

I've been fortunate to learn from and work alongside the best in the industry, including Seth Godin, Brian Tracy, and Philip Kotler, which created the foundation of everything I do with founders:

Instead of consulting, I work with your team. We map your market, find your strengths, turn them into a competitive advantage. One that works across your product, marketing, and sales.

The result of that is confidence & clarity on what to build, who to target, and how to win.This approach has:

✔️ Helped a CEO scale their B2B SaaS from $1M to $3M in < 12 months.
✔️ Helped a management team build a defensible strategy for a B2C tech company scaling from $10M to $30M
✔️ Helped a B2B AI team deliver 10 impressive leads (Accenture, Bridgestone, ERM) proving traction before going for Series A. 

I work with max 3 companies per quarter. If you want that to be you, book a call. 

Let's see how we can turn the challenges you are facing into your competitive advantage: https://tidycal.com/tangible-growth/discovery-call

Founder

With Tangible Growth, I want to help you turn poor positioning symptoms:

➡️ You have some loyal customers, but new clients don’t know what you do
➡️ You have long sales processes, low conversion rates
➡️ Clients object your prices.
➡️ You don't get enough or get poor quality leads
➡️ People are leaving your product.

Into a strong positioning strategy, where you will be able to leverage your newly found position to:
💥 Get more high-quality leads at a lower cost
💥 Convert more leads into clients
💥 Charge more
💥 Increase your product's lifetime value
💥 Grow sustainably!

Send me an email to grow@apersolja.com and let's nail your positioning.

We sailed past $1M ARR in November. In December, we hit $1.5M. But we didn't get there by chasing hacks. Instead, we focused on 3 things that most SaaS companies at $1M+ ignore 👇

I joined Aimfox end of September as a CMO/CGO.
The growth has been explosive. We keep raising the goals and just... keep hitting them.

The results are mostly down to having an amazing product (becoming a top choice in the outreach space), mastering the foundations and the team's hard work.

Here are the 3 major moves we made immediately:

**1. We treated onboarding like it matters (because it does)**
This comes down to a long-standing belief: If users don't understand the value of product IMMEDIATELY, they drop off in the funnel. So...
- We simplified the UX.
- We set better context.
- We managed expectations.

The results? Double the website to paying user conversion rates. I'm surprised more companies don't make better care of how the users experience their products. 

The UX improvements translate nicely onto the bottom line. At each point in the buyer's journey think: What does the customer know? What's the next piece of information they need to make a decision? And then give them that.

PS. If you think your software might need UX work, feel free to send this post to your CEO / CPO or tag them in the comments below. 

**2. We got serious about analytics.**
Tracking what matters helps us segments clients so we can serve unique customer segments... uniquely. It's not (just) about maximizing the profits, but mostly about (again) giving the users the experience they are looking for. 

The analytics currently help us qualify users, but in the future, we have a HUGE plan to set up systems that will allow you to go down a completely unique path in the software.

The goal is providing as much value as possible to each individual user. That value translates into higher order value and higher retention rates. = more happiness for the client. More money for the company.

**3. We went where our customers are.**
The key to early growth is collaboration. Our clients already do outreach. So we partnered with Instantly.ai. They are using Clay, so we hosted a Clay event. You get the point. Early... Don't try to change your users' habits. Latch onto them instead. 

Shout out to Aleksandar Besarovic who is absolutely killing it in building these relationships. And if you are interested in partnering or integrating with Aimfox, don't hesitate to reach out to him. 

2026? Goals are even bigger.
I'm not going to spoil anything, but we have some massive announcements coming in the next weeks and months. So stay tuned and click that follow button.

Would you like to be a part of the discussion: Oyku and I are thinking of hosting a small get-together. A live (online) event, where we would be sharing insights and exhanging knowledge on things we are doing to grow our companies. Interested? Add your name below, tag someone else in, or DM either of us:)

Fractional Growth (CMO/CGO) | Growing Aimfox | 🏂 Fan of snowboarding, motorsports & rock concerts.

At the end of the month I am recording a podcast with the man who was pivotal in ClickUp's growth to 10M users. 

I'm not exagerating, says so right on their website. 

Gaurav Agarwal is the Chief Operation Officer at ClickUp and has played a crucial role in developing a hybrid go-to-market strategy that combines product-led and sales-assist approaches, effectively reducing customer acquisition costs and enhancing revenue generation. 

As a fan of PLG + Sales assisted growth working together, I'm sure we'll have a good conversation (I'll try not to get too nerdy around Clickup's positioning & GTM, but I'm making no promises 😅)

But I wanted to hear from YOU. If you had the chance... what would you ask Clickup's COO? (Think: what would help my company / client?)

Fair warning: I've already collected some questions by industry leaders (more on that in future posts), so I can't promise every question will get asked, but I'll consider every one of them and choose the ones that will suit the narrative I have in mind. 

PS. Make sure to give me a follow for future posts and click on that bell button to be the first one notified when the episode airs.

Zoom made my business.  
In‑person meetings made it scale.

I worked with SaaS teams all over the world on Zoom… California, NY, UK, Switzerland, Germany, Australia... and I still try to meet every client face-to-face at key moments.

Why?

Harvard’s Tsedal Neeley puts it bluntly:  
“Even in the age of digital communication, periodic face-to-face meetings are essential. They help global teams build trust more quickly, resolve miscommunication, and establish norms that make virtual collaboration far more effective.”

The problem I see in our industry for most fractionals / service providers?

They treat in-person as random.  
“I’ll visit when I’m in the area.”  
“We’ll see about meeting at the next conference.”

The last designer that I worked with wasn't thrilled to meet and we were in the same town!

I get that travel comes with its problems. But SaaS world moves to fast for you to wait for the next "excuse" to be in town. And with the simplicity of travel today, there is no excuse not to "go the extra mile" and meet your team in person.

In my mind, the key is to be there for your clients in key moments.
- When you are starting to work together and need to set up workflows
- For important strategy decisions
- To workshop things like positioning, website redesign
- When fundraising or closing a HUGE client.

Everything else? Status updates. Feature reviews. Async feedback... 

Keeping those remote. ruthlessly. Not just remote, but often off-Zoom as well. I found that too many Zoom calls lead to me being "zoomed out". Thank you Loom for often saving me from too many meetings.

Anyway, that’s how I try and get the best of both worlds:
- Efficiency from digital that allows me to work with any team.
- Depth from in-person that allows me to build relationship and make decisions faster.

I’ve literally wrote this from the Aimfox's office in Belgrade.

Zoom got us started. We first met remote.
Being in the room is what’s going to help them scale faster. We already have big plans in work for Q1.

If you’re a fractional or any type of a service provider, here’s your quick filter:

Before booking your next flight, ask:  
1️⃣ Is this about trust, ambiguity, or a high‑stakes decision?  
2️⃣ Will this materially change the size, length, or quality of this relationship?  
3️⃣ Will the insight from this meeting compound across multiple accounts?

If you get a yes, pack your bags.

And if you are a founder / CEO reading this. Invite your "outside" team members to your office. Get to meet them. You'll get more results that way. And some friends in the process.

I recently spoke to one of the highest valued GTM strategist in SaaS and asked him what he thought was the key to growing a SaaS.

I'll share a detailed answer later (click that follow button for notification), but a simple answer is: You need to focus on your customers and their experience .

Which is exactly what we found with Aimfox. Our growth is down to a combination of having a good product + giving the users the experience they need. 

And I'm not just talking about the easy-to-use software. But about our users value drivers. In short: You need to meet them where they are, raise the right expectations, the product needs to deliver. 

More in the article below. Save for later or share if you found it useful. Appreciate it.

Happy new year :) If you are like me, you are heavy into 12-hours working days since January 1st and have already forgotten we were on holidays less t

Open article: #18 - THE UX TRUTH: TIME TO VALUE MATTERS MORE THAN... by Andrej Persolja • 3 min read

#18 - THE UX TRUTH: TIME TO VALUE MATTERS MORE THAN...

In 2026, my goal is to "do more cool stuff". (I didn't say "stuff" 😉) But then my Miro notes hit against reality...

I've been reflecting on my own goals for 2026, and the reality is, I'm already pulling 10 hour days. Simply "doing more" isn't the answer.

It got me thinking about past projects and people I've worked with. Many SaaS founders I work with, are in a similar situation, feeling overwhelmed and drowning in meetings. But what's truly behind this constant busyness?

I found busyness often comes from a lack of team alignment.

During "positioning week" - a service I run to help companies figure out their positioning in a week - I have an excercise where you ask your departnment heads 3 questions:
- What's our most important customer segment?
- Why do they buy?
- What's the most important focus for our company for the next 12 months?

If you get 2-3 different answers, this misalignment in the vision typically means you are mostly stuck in endless debates. Decision become based on "who can convince who". It's office politics, counter-productive and utterly exhausting.

That's why I love operating with data. When the company's decisions are based on data, the discussions stop, or, better yet, become productive. 

For example, when you operate with opinions, you might like feature X. The head of marketing likes feature Y. The head of sales likes their own reflection in the mirror. Who wins?

If you have the data (63% of customers say they prefer X as the next feature instead of Y) it's much easier to do the decision to go with feature X. 

In a way, positioning is more of a people management problem than a technical problem. 

Positioning misalignment = days feel long, exhausting, and unproductive.
When people rally around a comon position = every challenge feels "easy".

I recently connected with Anita, who approaches this same problem from a different angle. She helps burnt-out founders rediscover their passion for their business amidst the chaos.

I focus on aligning positioning to improve company performance. She focuses on reclaiming a founder's time and energy... to improve company performance.

Together, we address the core issues that impact both the business and the leader.

**And that sparked an idea.**

We want to tackle this problem live and are offering a "hotseat" kind of an opportunity for a SaaS company dealing with a positioning challenge, led by a CEO who feels like they can't catch a break.

If your marketing efforts aren't resonating...
If sales growth has plateaued...
If you're simply tired of the relentless daily grind...

We want to dive deep into your situation and present a clear, actionable solution during a live event. (Obviously in a way that doesn't expose your data or show you in a bad way to the public)

You in? DM either of us or comment below. And if you know someone that might benefit, do tag them in the comments.

10+ years of experience in marketing taught me something: we’re better off when we stop pretending we have it all figured out and actually start talking about the messier parts of the job with people who get it.

Next week, Oyku and I are hosting a small session for CMOs and growth leaders. 

There are no stages, no slide decks, and definitely no vendor pitches. It’s just a few of us in a room talking about the challenges we are facing, and specifically about how to manage client expectations when your sales numbers are down.

If you’re a CMO or Head of Marketing in SaaS and you’re tired of only hearing about the wins, this is for you.

Intrigued? DM Oyku or me and I’ll send over the details. If you know someone who needs to be in this room, tag them or pass this along.

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