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

Stop reading this.

Unless you want clean HubSpot data and get your portal ready for advanced AI and automations.

👉 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

I was named HubSpot Community Champion of the Month for December 2025!

This recognition came unexpectedly, and the first reaction was: "Huh, me? With what did I deserve it?"

I am thankful and honored to be among other experts in HubSpot community. 

I was so warmly welcomed into the community that I will be forever grateful. 

I know Thanksgiving was last week, but I want to take this opportunity to thank you, each and every one, for everything. 

I would not have been where I am today without all the support from the community. I appreciate every chat over Zoom, at INBOUND, in LinkedIn DMs, in the comments, in Slack channels ... 

It all keeps me motivated to keep sharing as much as I can and support others to give back what I'm receiving. #INBOUND24 was my first INBOUND, and I immediately felt this is the place where I belong 🧡 

I was honored to be #INBOUND25Correspondent and becoming a Champion of the Month for December 2025 is another confirmation to myself that everything I do is worth all the energy.

I will keep doing my best to add value where I feel I can. 

THANK YOU 🧡 

#HubSpot #RevOps #CRM #Data

Fixing data in 100+ HubSpot portals | HubSpot Community Champion of the Month for December 2025

Is HubSpot Enrichment a magic wand or a freight train?

I 🧡 HubSpot, but we need to talk about where its native enrichment shines, and where it might actually be destroying your data integrity.

In a recent data audit for a customer, we uncovered a critical distinction that every RevOps and Data leader needs to understand.

✅ Where it’s GOOD:
If you are selling into SMBs or single-entity companies, HubSpot enrichment is amazing. It flawlessly pulls in the correct domain, LinkedIn page, and location. It just works.

❌  Where it creates CHAOS:
The moment you step into the Enterprise world with complex corporate structures (think Nestle, Pfizer, Coca-Cola), native enrichment can turn into a “freight train.”

Here is what we saw:
The client had distinct records for regional subsidiaries (e.g., Nestle Spain, Nestle Canada). HubSpot’s enrichment saw “Nestle” and indiscriminately overwrote the specific local data with the Global HQ data.

The result?
- 10 different company records all overwritten with the exact same HQ phone number and LinkedIn URL.
- Leads in EMEA are routed to US reps.
- Zero visibility into the actual local entity you are trying to sell to.

The Takeaway:
If your strategy relies on navigating complex parent-child relationships and selling to specific subsidiaries, turn off automatic company enrichment.

Don’t let convenience overwrite context. Sometimes, “smart” tools are the reason your data is dumb.

Has anyone else experienced the “Enrichment Freight Train”?

An experienced MarketingOps Architect and a B2B veteran told me on a call on Friday: "You should be talking about your new approach to managing contacts and companies in HubSpot more often."

I will follow his advice. 

One of the new approaches we are implementing is how to manage contacts after they change jobs. 

OLD: Historically, when you realized a contact had changed their company, you created a new company association, but kept the existing contact record. 

NEW: After someone changes their job, create a new contact record with the new employment company association. Both contact records belonging to the same human being are associated through a contact-contact association. 
On both contact records, we fill out 4 custom properties:
- Employment Status ( "Working There" or "No Longer With Company")
- Employment Status Note ( "New Employment" OR "New Job Title" OR /)
- Employment Start Date (when they joined the company)
- Employment End Date (if "No Longer With Company" the end date of that employment)


This new approach enables you to:
- keep your reports accurate (i.e. lifecycle stage on contacts is accurate)
- remove contacts as marketing contacts after they are no longer with the company
- have a trustworthy contact record, where HubSpot user can trust the data they see
- notify the contact owner about a new employment so they can keep the relationship

I will follow 26 experts in the HubSpot community on LinkedIn in 2026. 

Of course, I will follow many more, and in the past, I prepared longer lists of experts to follow and learn from. 

But I wanted to challenge myself to list 26 to follow in 2026 to make a selection of the ones I believe I will learn the most in the following year. 

Whom did I miss that you will follow, and others should too?

Chris Carolan
Casey Hawkins
Tony Dowling
George B. Thomas
Garo Aroian 🐘
Cameron Collins
Dharmesh Shah
Trisha Merriam - Improving Marketing ROI
Jonas De Mets
Karen Ng
Bryan Byler
Max Cohen 🧔🏻
Kieran Flanagan
Wouter Dieleman
Kevin van Beers
Peter Caputa
Yamini Rangan
Omi ✈️ Diaz-Cooper
Nick Lafakis
D'Ana Guiloff 🫶🏻
Kyle Jepson
Matt Bolian ⚡
Ryan Ginsberg
Joshua Oakes
Danielle Urban
Ryan Gunn

26 hubspot experts to follow in 2026

Your HubSpot portal isn't ready for AI. Here is why.
Companies are turning on HubSpot’s AI features and connecting other AI tools to it, but most mid-sized companies are skipping the most critical step.

You are trying to run a Ferrari engine on a chassis held together by duct tape. 

We are obsessed with deploying AI copywriting, automated enrichment, fancy AI tools, yet we haven't solved the foundational problem:

Your HubSpot data is broken.

It’s littered with:
- hard-to-spot duplicates
- non-existent parent-child associations
- outdated contact records
- wrongly enriched records

If you throw AI on top of that garbage, you aren't innovating.

You are just automating your mess faster.

If your data is only 70% accurate (which is optimistic for a scaling HubSpot instance), every downstream decision compounds that error:

📉 Your scoring prioritizes the wrong accounts
📉 Your territory assignment falls apart
📉 Your reps miss hand raisers
📉 Your reps don't use first-party data because it's not connected

Data quality isn't negotiable anymore.

Stop burning cash on AI initiatives. 
Fix the foundational data.
Crawl. Walk. Run.

We recently helped a client clean up thousands of duplicate records and fix broken enrichment.
The result?
Their lead scoring finally made sense because it had clean inputs to process.

Stop throwing around more tools until you fix the data layer.

Be honest: On a scale of 1-10, how much do you trust the data inside your HubSpot right now?

I joined the #HubSpot Community EOY gathering yesterday, and I was asked if we already had the party at Sellestial

I answered

"Our AI agents don't want to party. And for sure, I don't want to give them any alcohol as they already hallucinate 🤣 "

Did you have a party already? Prove it in the comments

The biggest revenue potential
in 2026 aren't new leads.
It’s old friends.

Every year, about 20% of your best customers change jobs.

They move to new companies.
They get promoted to new decision-making roles.

But most sales teams simply let them go.
Stop chasing strangers.
Start following your champions.

Why?

They already know you.
They already trust you.
They already bought from you.

Your "past" champions are actually your "future" pipeline.

The problem is tracking them.

Doing it manually is a nightmare.
You miss updates. You lose touch. You lose money.

That’s why we fixed it for HubSpot users.

We built an employment updater process that tracks your contacts for you.

So when your champion lands a new role, you’re the first to know.
And the first to congratulate them.

Do you follow your customers?

P.S. I broke down how we manage this in HubSpot. Link to the full article in the comments

💡  HubSpot admins, RevOps pros, partners, consultants, customers, HubSpotterrs ...

Chris Carolan, Casey Hawkins and I spent 9 episodes of Value-First Data exploring the Value Path framework, Loop Marketing, and talking about how data in HubSpot can and should support each stage.

Next week we'll start building it. Live.

Join Chris, Casey, Danielle Urban, Joshua Oakes, Rylee Powell, and me for a hands-on workshop where we actually configure the Value Path in #HubSpot.

If you're not sure you can make it live, but want to see us building it in HubSpot, it will be recorded. 

👇 Join us 👇

Open article: Building Value-First Data in HubSpot: A Hands-On Workshop by watch.getcontrast.io

Building Value-First Data in HubSpot: A Hands-On Workshop

Why your employees should be more active on LinkedIn in 2026?

The traditional playbook is being rewritten. 

HubSpot introduced Loop Marketing at #INBOUND25 to address the changed landscape and offer a framework for marketing and sales teams in 2026. 

SEO is challenging, AEO is a growing, paid media isn’t cheap and CTRs are down, outbound motion changed a lot in the last few years. It’s more expensive than ever to generate fresh new “leads”. 

The solution isn't just "more ads" or “more content”. 
It's encouraging and empowering the people your audience actually trusts: your employees (experts in their field).

These are 11 reasons why empowering your team to be active on LinkedIn is no longer a "nice-to-have", but a critical revenue and brand engine.

1. Internal People: It fosters transparency and connectivity. When leaders post, employees feel seen. When employees post, they feel ownership.

2. Current Customers: A new channel for retention. It’s not just support tickets anymore; it’s education, connection, and deepening the relationship and trust.

3. Prospective Customers: When your team engages, their network sees it. It’s organic reach you literally cannot buy.

4. Brand Awareness: Thought leader ads are powerful, but organic employee content builds the "mental availability" needed before the ad is even served.

5. Nurturing at Scale: Your sales team can’t call everyone every day. Their content can nurture their entire network 24/7 without being intrusive.

6. Referral Engines: A consistent "drip campaign" of value-add content keeps your team top-of-mind, triggering referrals from the broader ecosystem.

7. Pipeline Acceleration: Multithreading is essential. Your team can connect with and influence key stakeholders in your hottest deals through content, not just cold emails.

8. Top Tier Talent: A strong employer brand isn't built on a careers page. It’s built by your actual employees showing their intellect, leadership, and culture.

9. Peer Ecosystems: By supporting and teaching their peers, your employees build an inbound community that feeds itself.

10. Podcast and Event Appearances: Podcast hosts want guests with a built-in audience. An active profile is the new media kit.

11. The Community: Inspiring the market—even those who will never buy—creates a "halo effect" of goodwill that elevates the brand above the commodity trap.


I’m curious to hear the reality from other leaders.

What is blocking you so that more employees are posting at least once a week on LinkedIn?

Is it a lack of time? Fear of "saying the wrong thing"? Or simply not knowing what to post? Let’s break down the barriers in the comments.

11 reasons why your team should be active on LinkedIn

AI practitioners at HubSpot Solution Partners

This one is for you 🧡 

Your AI workflows work. Sometimes.

Some hallucinate.
Some break silently.
Some produce results you can't explain.

The difference isn't the tools. It's the engineering rigor.

We spent 3 years building production AI at Sellestial. Thousands of CRM records daily. <1% error rates.

Now we're teaching how.

In 3 weeks, we'll have 6 hours of live sessions.

Techniques that work in HubSpot, n8n, Make, Clay, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Python, anything, and anywhere.

We have only 20 spots in our January cohort.

Do you want to build AI systems that can run without babysitting? See you in January

If your data stops at “Closed Won”, your revenue will too.

Most teams treat Closed Won as the finish line.

For the AE, maybe it is.
For the company, it’s the middle of the story.

This is where churn is born:
- discovery lives in random docs and inboxes
- call recordings are never revisited
- nothing structured about pains, outcomes, or stakeholders
- customer success joins and asks: “So… what do you need from us?”

The customer already told you.
You just didn’t keep the data in one place.

Chris Carolan and I discussed this in more detail during the live session on Tuesday. One of my takeaways was:

Closed Won is just a handshake.
The real work starts when you create the value you promised.

That’s where data hygiene becomes a revenue lever:
- every meeting transcript stored against the company/deal
- key pains and desired outcomes in structured fields
- decision-makers and influencers clearly mapped
- proposals and docs linked, not buried in someone’s desktop

Do this well and your “handoff” sounds like:
“We know exactly why you bought and what success looks like. Let’s execute.”

Do it badly and it sounds like:
“Remind us why you’re here again?”

AI makes this smooth and possible.
If your data is clean and centralized, AI can actually help you: spot risks, suggest next steps, surface expansion.
If it’s not, AI just automates your blind spots.

Be honest:
If I joined your CS team tomorrow and opened a new customer in your HubSpot…

Would I instantly understand what was promised, to whom, and why?

If not, you don’t have an AI problem. You have a data hygiene problem.

#RevOps #DataHygiene #HubSpot #ClosedWon

Why is Clean Data so attractive?

Because it unlocks Revenue.

Every CRO knows the struggle. You’re committed to empowering reps with HubSpot, but that vision of Clean HubSpot Data just keeps turning your head.

Why?
✅ Accurate forecasting and reporting
✅ Better segmentation and routing
✅ Happier sales team
✅ AI that actually works

Don't let "Messy CRM Data" be the partner you settle for.
It’s time to make the switch to reliability and unlock revenue potential for 2026.

#HubSpot #DataHygiene #CleanData

I am curious to hear about how you manage companies that are out of business in HubSpot. 

Like with contacts, who change jobs, companies become "obsolete". 

It can be due to
- acquisition
- business closed
- website and domain down

How do you manage such companies in HubSpot? Do you keep them in the portal and mark them as "Out of business" in a custom property, or do you manage them in some other way? 

We're arguing internally about the right approach for this. 

We want to keep metrics clean, flag "obsolete" companies for users, and have the system react differently depending on why the company is "obsolete".

I keep seeing how salespeople are drowning in data chaos:

- They search for Coca Cola and see 42 companies with Coca Cola in the name - which one is the one they are looking for?
- They can't be sure if a person has already been contacted recently
- They need to validate contact record information before they reach out
- They can't mine their existing relationships for warm leads because the data is too messy to trust

The shift that changes everything

Pre-AI era
Data was cheap.
Having extra contacts didn't cost much.
Better to keep everything than risk losing something.

AI era
Data is expensive.
Enrichment costs per contact.
AI processing costs per contact.
You literally can't afford to process dirty data anymore.

You're going to invest in AI at least two to three times what you should be doing, which means either your budget is going to be overspent by multiples, or you're going to spread that spend across so much that you don't actually get the value.

Why this matters

Email reply rates are collapsing - you need highly relevant and tailored outreach to break through.

But:
- You can't run effective nurture campaigns on dirty data
- You waste enrichment budget on duplicates and dead contacts
- You spread your AI compute too thin across garbage contacts instead of concentrating firepower on real opportunities

The math: If only 15% of your database is actually "investable" (relevant contacts worth doubling down on), but you're spreading your AI budget across 100% of contacts, you're getting 1/7th the impact you could be getting.

The bottom line

Clean data = lower CAC. Period.

AI is the future for good nurturing and outreach. But if you've got more dirt than food in your soup, you can't do it.

One choice you can make: Another salesperson OR clean data that lets your existing team actually execute a modern GTM that works.

TRUE or FALSE?


Data decay in HubSpot or any other CRM (or data degradation) is the natural, gradual loss of data quality, accuracy, and relevance over time, making it less useful for business decisions, marketing, or operations, often due to real-world changes like people moving, jobs changing, or market shifts, leading to wasted resources, lost revenue, and poor customer engagement if not managed through regular updates and cleansing.

Unpopular opinion: Manual data cleaning is a waste of salary.

If you are exporting to Excel to fix your data, you've already lost.

It’s not cleaning. It’s just rearranging the dirt until new dirt arrives tomorrow.

Real data hygiene is invisible.

It shouldn't require a project manager. It should be a background process running 24/7 in your HubSpot instance.

Lead enters with ALL CAPS? ➔ Fixed instantly.
Contact changes companies? ➔ Flagged automatically.
Duplicate created? ➔ Merged before a rep sees it.

Stop building processes that require human intervention to keep the lights on.

Build systems that work while you sleep.

The goal: Don't just clean the data. Build a self-cleaning machine.

Are you tired of the quarterly CSV battle?

The biggest revenue opportunity in 2026 lies in your data.

"We have the data… we just don’t use it because it’s a mess."

I hear this from Sales and Marketing leaders weekly, if not daily.

When you can't use and trust your HubSpot data, you get Operational Paralysis:

❌ Marketing blasts generic messages because segmentation is impossible.
❌ Reps waste 20% of their week hunting for relevant info and contact prioritization.
❌ Leadership forecasts on shaky data, which needs to be cleaned manually first.

Stop manual interventions, remove the friction, and uncover the value of data in your HubSpot.

Your revenue numbers will thank you in December 2026.

Use AI to monitor, fix, and enrich your HubSpot records 24/7.
No more phantom duplicates.
No more incomplete or wrongly enriched objects.
Just data you can execute a strategy on.

We’ve processed hundreds of thousands of records for HubSpot users who were tired of always questioning the quality and trustworthiness of data.

Move from "Messy" to "Useful" in weeks, not months.

Is your data ready for 2026?

"What is essential is invisible to the eye.”
and LinkedIn?
LinkedIn stats show only part of it.

What I feel I got from spending hours daily on LinkedIn this year

I built strong relationships with some beautiful minds I can happily call my friends. I hope you feel the same 😅 
Chris Carolan
Casey Hawkins
Tony Dowling

Learned so much from the entire HubSpot community hanging around. 

Had a chance to engage and chat with countless RevOps, HubSpot admins, Sales, and Marketing leaders

Got used to LinkedIn live sessions and video recording (which I would not even have dreamed of in January, and if you told me this, I would tell you, no way, I can't get to that level, but hey, here I am)
Chris Carolan and Uroš Rojc thank you 🙏 

Are you convinced you should spend more time with us?

Yes --> See you around in 2026

No ... ok, let me continue.

I was named HubSpot Community Champion of the Month for December 2025

People stopped me at #INBOUND25 saying "Hey, I've been seeing you in the alien on LinkedIn for a few days now."

Had a chance to speak in front of 150 B2B experts

In my humble opinion, I’ve built a brand that people recognize.

So, what was your year like on LinkedIn?

Last week, we talked about the Value Creator stage, which is usually the first phase after Closed Won. It was a truly eye-opening session, and a few days after it. So I'm super excited to dive deep into the stage after that, when your customers realize, understand, and use the value you bring.

See you in a few, join Chris Carolan, Casey Hawkins and me live, or wathc the reply later

A Profoundly Value-First HubSpot Coach for CX, AI, RevOps, Quote-to-Cash, Orders | Founding Pro @ Profoundly | Human Context Engineer

The elephant in the room: Everyone talks about adoption. Nobody labels the stage where it happens.

Executives: "Retention depends on adoption"
CS Leaders: "We need to drive adoption"
Revenue Teams: "Adoption drives renewal"

Yet we call this stage everything EXCEPT what it is:

"Retention phase" (outcome, not people)
"Impact stage" (abstract goal)
"Active customers" (usage metric)
Just "customers" (meaningless)

Today on Value-First Data: Why "Adopter" is the most important lifecycle stage label you're not using.

With Klemen Hrovat, we'll be exploring:
→ Why satisfaction ≠ just usage (IC/Manager/Exec experience it differently)
→ How Adopter stage unlocks retention AND expansion revenue
→ Where traditional "customer success" metrics miss the human progression

The shift from Value Creator to Adopter?

From obligation ("I must create value") to confidence ("I realize your value").

That transition is where recurring revenue lives.

Join us live or save this post to catch the recording!

#ValueFirst #Data #ValuePath #Adopter

Value-First Data Episode 7 - The Adopter Stage: The Most Important Stage?

Don't chase "perfect data", aim for just right. 

I recently discussed data quality expectations with a client, and we categorized accuracy into three distinct tiers:

Marketing-grade (70%): Too much noise. Reps lose trust in the tools.
Financial-grade (93%): The point of diminishing returns. The cost to achieve this often outweighs the benefit for GTM teams.
Engineering-grade (99%): Necessary for building bridges, not for building pipelines.

The "Sweet Spot" for Sales & Marketing is 90%.

At 90% accuracy, you have successfully separated the signal from the noise. 

There might be a small margin of error, but it's negligible compared to the speed and trust you gain.

The Pragmatic Approach:
Admitting that you aren't aiming for perfection isn't a weakness; it's a strategy. It prevents the "early adopter trap" of unrealistic expectations and focuses resources where they drive ROI.

The companies winning at data hygiene understand this nuance. The ones failing are the ones paralyzed by the pursuit of 100%.

What data maturity level do your teams currently operate at?

Customer onboarding + HubSpot | Growth @ Arrows

Hi 👋

1️⃣ Building AccountScout - a HubSpot native app to help companies enrich, research, and segment their accounts with the right data, not just more data.

2️⃣ I write a weekly email for 2,300+ RevOps & GTM leaders with tactical HubSpot playbooks to steal. 

For the last 2.5 years, I led growth at Arrows, a customer onboarding SaaS product for teams using HubSpot. I joined as the first marketer and helped Arrows grow to more than 7 figures in ARR.

I’m a dad to 2 boys - struggling competitive golfer - and lover of cooking (or grilling). 

Previously, I’ve run both product and growth at early-stage startups and started three of my own.

taplio

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Klemen Hrovat

Stuart Balcombe

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The Battle

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Stuart Balcombe

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Likes

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