Is AI Recommending Your Business? Inside HubSpot's AEO Tool [Endless Customers Podcast Ep. 169]

This transcript has been generated by AI and not checked for accuracy. 

[00:00:00] Bob Ruffolo: Five minutes. That's how long it takes to switch on a tool that tells you whether AI is recommending your business or not. And if you're on HubSpot's Marketing Pro, it's been sitting in your account this entire time. You could buy a standalone AI visibility tool that's about 50 bucks a month, and it works fine, but it knows nothing about your business.

[00:00:16] Bob Ruffolo: When ran inside your customer platform like HubSpot, it knows who you sell to, what you sell, and how you've closed before. So instead of just handing you a score, it names the content you're missing and writes the first draft for you. Today, our lead HubSpot trainer, Jess Palmeri, walks through everything that just landed, including the recently released Agent Hub, the one setup step that's easy to miss, and what to feed these agents so that it actually comes back and sounds like your company.

[00:00:39] Bob Ruffolo: Let's get into it

[00:00:42] Stephanie Baiocchi: You're listening to the Endless Customers Podcast, brought to you by the team at Impact. Endless Customers is the proven system to become the most known and trusted brand in your market. If you want to learn the principles of Endless Customers and how you can implement them in your business, pick up a copy of Endless Customers, a national bestseller, [00:01:00] wherever books are sold.

[00:01:01] Stephanie Baiocchi: Ready to start implementing Endless Customers in your business? Talk to Impact about how our coaching program can help you implement Endless Customers to success. And if you want to experience Endless Customers in person, don't miss our upcoming event, Endless Customers Live, in Hartford, Connecticut, October 5th through the 7th, 2026.

[00:01:19] Stephanie Baiocchi: Registration is now open. And now, on to the show. Here's your host, Bob Ruffolo.

[00:01:25] Bob Ruffolo: And welcome back to the Endless Customers Podcast. We have a great episode today. I'm here with our lead HubSpot trainer, HubSpot expert specialist, spoken at INBOUND multiple times, Jess Palmeri. It's not even INBOUND anymore, it's

[00:01:37] Jess Palmeri: It is Unbound. I still mess it up almost every time that I'm talking to clients about it.

[00:01:41] Jess Palmeri: So, hey, Unbound's just a few weeks away. We are very excited to be in attendance again this year, so if you're someone who wants to meet up at Unbound, hit me up.

[00:01:50] Bob Ruffolo: Yeah, absolutely, and it'll always be INBOUND to me. I know. I- my best memory is at INBOUND, but we do have a great episode today. We're gonna talk about HubSpot, we're gonna talk about AI and [00:02:00] HubSpot.

[00:02:00] Bob Ruffolo: Um, we're gonna talk about the, the latest features and tools based on what we know. We- there's a big drop yesterday. We're still getting our heads around all this. Yeah. But there are AI tools in HubSpot that we do already have our heads around, we're using with our clients right now. AEO is one of the most important things right now, um, and HubSpot has an AEO tool, uh, they rel- r- it was released a few months ago.

[00:02:22] Bob Ruffolo: Yep. Uh, we've had a lot of opportunities to use it with clients now. Yes. And it's... What, what's your opinion of it? What, what are you, what are you seeing? So

[00:02:28] Jess Palmeri: So if we take an even farther step back, uh, when AEO first came on the scene, uh, you know, answer engine optimization, uh, we were all kind of scrambling to say, "Well, what does this mean for marketing?"

[00:02:40] Jess Palmeri: You know, "How are we going to, you know, p- harness this power of AEO and put it to our good use for our purposes?" So part of that is figur- figuring out the best way to track AEO and to figure out how often your brand or your business is showing up in AEO. Uh, so HubSpot has really been [00:03:00] working for years now to figure out exactly how we can best, you know, l- leverage AEO from a marketing perspective.

[00:03:06] Jess Palmeri: They started with their AEO Grader. I think that came out a year and a half ago at this point, and that was, uh, their callback. Do you remember the Website Grader

[00:03:14] Bob Ruffolo: I loved Website

[00:03:15] Jess Palmeri: Why did you love the Website Grader, Bob?

[00:03:18] Jess Palmeri: It was easy, and HubSpot's AEO Grader is just as easy to use, but its biggest drawback is that it's just a snapshot in time.

[00:03:26] Jess Palmeri: It's one moment to say, you know, how is Impact or Endless Customers showing up in AU- A- How is IMPACT or, uh, Endless Customers showing up in AEO search today? And that was great. It was a great first step, but the truth is that AEO results are highly, highly volatile. So just because you're on the top of the heap today doesn't mean that you're gonna be at the bottom tomorrow.

[00:03:48] Jess Palmeri: And so much of that is outside of our control. Uh, we can't necessarily, uh, apply the same SEO playbook that we've been using for years because SEO really relies on ranking and, [00:04:00] you know, leveraging a certain website's authority. So IMPACT benefited from SEO authority for years. We had, you know, thousands and thousands of page views, so much authority in everything that we published, but it wasn't necessarily bringing in the right traffic, the right results, the right leads.

[00:04:15] Jess Palmeri: And so as we continue to evolve our understanding of where A- AEO fits in, where SEO fits in, we have to really look at how are we trending over time, and that's where HubSpot's new AEO tool that's contained within their software comes into play.

[00:04:30] Bob Ruffolo: AEO tool that's contained within their software comes into play. Now, some of our audience may remember this, 'cause that... It's a really good, um, a comparison to the old Website Grader tool, and I remember, um, you had Website Grader. It was-- You're right, it was a snapshot of your website grade back then. And then they did roll it into the product- Yes

[00:04:45] Bob Ruffolo: at one point, and what you were-- It was exactly what you could see. Instead of getting a snapshot, you saw your performance go up and down over time. You're able to track it and make improvements and see, you know, how, how you did over time. You could track your competitors with it at the same time. You weren't able [00:05:00] to do that, um, on the website tool, so it added more value to it, and they just rolled it into the product.

[00:05:04] Bob Ruffolo: I remember all that. And you showed this at our expert exchange, and for those of you that know, we have our-- We get all of our SMEs together here at IMPACT, all of our experts on, on Mondays, and we, we showcase what, what we're doing with clients and what, what's coming down, you know, all the new stuff. And you showed this to everybody, uh, about a month ago, um, and that was what I first noticed.

[00:05:24] Bob Ruffolo: It was a very similar comparison to what the old tool they used to have to this new tool. Um, so, so keep building on that. So what's... So as somebody is saying, okay, like AEO, I know it's important. Um, shown-- And when we say AEO, we're basically talking about AI visibility. Are, are you the company that's being recommended?

[00:05:44] Bob Ruffolo: So how does this tool actually work?

[00:05:46] Jess Palmeri: work? So HubSpot's power is built on prompts. HubSpot can use the context of your CRM to write really intelligent prompts that's going to include, uh, your ideal customer profile, the products and services that you offer, and it's [00:06:00] gonna understand how have you sold, uh, this s- product or service to customers in the past.

[00:06:05] Jess Palmeri: It's going to then use that context information to generate prompts, and it's going to track your mentions and citations against those prompts on popular AEO engines.

[00:06:15] Bob Ruffolo: Okay, great. So, um, what does the setup look like for those who haven't seen it?

[00:06:19] Bob Ruffolo: So what do you-- When you go into that tool, what do you put in there? How do you set it up? Uh, how do you start using it? 

[00:06:24] Jess Palmeri: it? So

[00:06:24] Jess Palmeri: there are two ways to get started. Number one, if you are not a HubSpot customer today, you can purchase this tool outright for about 50 bucks a month. Oh, wow. So if you're just kind of dipping your toes and you're like, "I like my CRM," or, "I like my marketing tool, but I really have no way to track AEO visibility," this is something that you can just buy a la carte outright.

[00:06:43] Jess Palmeri: However, uh, the challenge there is that it's not gonna have that rich context. So if you are a HubSpot Marketing Pro or Plus, uh, customer, you're gonna have the ability to have access to this tool today. So if you haven't turned it on yet, if you haven't gone into that little marketing tab and gone over to AEO, get started right now.

[00:06:58] Jess Palmeri: Uh and you're going to be [00:07:00] able to go through a series of prompts and questions that Breeze is gonna ask you to say, "Hey, what do you consider to be your ICP? What are you gonna c- who do you consider to be your competitors?" And you're basically gonna give it, you know, light editing 'cause it's gonna generate all that information for you.

[00:07:14] Jess Palmeri: And in about five minutes, you'll have, you know, the makings of an AEO dashboard that you can track and monitor over time to see how are you comparing to your share of voice to your highest competitors. Uh, and then how are you potentially showing up in these AEO results. Are you getting mentioned? If so, what does it look like when you actually are mentioned?

[00:07:32] Bob Ruffolo: you're a HubSpot user, you have Marketing Pro, Enterprise, or any of these tools, make sure you're looking for that tool and go spend, like Jess is saying here, two minutes to set it up.

[00:07:40] Bob Ruffolo: Yes. And, and then it's gonna be off and working for you. Um, so, so now over time, I have to imagine this gets better, right?

[00:07:46] Jess Palmeri: Yes. So it should be something that you are, like, nurturing over time. You are definitely spending time in there on a weekly basis, not necessarily to see the results of your labor, but to tweak and modify. Yeah. Uh, the biggest mistake that I [00:08:00] made when I first started training on this was that I told people, "Go in, set it, forget it.

[00:08:04] Jess Palmeri: Just let it percolate in the background for a while." And that was actually not the best advice because you really need to be tweaking and, and mod- um, you really need to be tweaking and modifying these prompts to make sure that they are actually the best fit for your business. The biggest mistake that I see my customers making is that they have really jargon-heavy or, like, brand-specific language in their prompts, which can be valuable, but it's sort of like spending a lot of money on paid ads to make sure that when someone types in Endless Customers, you are the first thing that comes up.

[00:08:34] Jess Palmeri: You're probably already the first thing that comes up, hopefully, uh, when someone says on Google, "What is Endless Customers?" Uh, so if you have a very, very specific prompt, uh, that has, uh, like a very long tail question that is a- asking, you know, "Why should Endless Customers work for my business if I'm a home service industry in North, you know, North Dakota?"

[00:08:55] Jess Palmeri: It would be a good prompt to make sure that you're showing up for, but honestly, [00:09:00] if we're getting that specific, we should hope to dear God that we are actually already doing that. So that's not necessarily a good prompt to track. You wanna make sure that your prompts are broad, that you could see someone actually searching for those prompts, and then from there, uh, you can be, uh, tracking your results against those prompts.

[00:09:14] Bob Ruffolo: against those prompts.

[00:09:14] Bob Ruffolo: So Jess, let me ask you this now. So say a typical company that goes into HubSpot, sets up their AEO tool, and the average company sets it up as a 5 out of 10, right? They're at, at that level, 5 out of 10. And then you work with them, and you take it to a 10 out of 10. What are the things that you're doing with them that helps them get the most out of the tool?

[00:09:33] Bob Ruffolo: And really, not just the tool, but, but increase their AI visibility. How are you helping with that?

[00:09:37] Jess Palmeri: So the beauty of HubSpot's tool that I really think it gets right where so many other tools fail, is that it really applies AEO results to actions that you can take in the tool. Just yesterday, I was in our own AEO tool, and it was showing me all of the gaps in terms of content that I don't currently have on my website that highlights why HubSpot [00:10:00] training is a really great fit for most organizations.

[00:10:02] Jess Palmeri: So it can analyze where are we falling short in the AEO results, where are we not showing up, and what is that piece of content that we should be writing to actually fill that gap and show up next time? So because it's really driven to give you those next steps and close that loop in terms of reporting, it'll recommend, "Hey, here are the social posts that you should be putting out there.

[00:10:23] Jess Palmeri: Here are the, uh, blog posts that you should be writing." And hey, it takes it even a step further and says, "Hey, do you want us to just generate a first draft of that blog post for you?" Takes a couple minutes, but you can just click a button, get a first draft, edit it, and make it, you know, a, a part of your website all within, you know, maybe a half hour if you add in the editing and publishing time.

[00:10:41] Jess Palmeri: Amazing. So it really takes that action, that next step, and then it allows you to tie it back to say, "Hey, this was the recommen- recommendation you made. This is the pi- cu- piece of content that I published." Yeah. "Show me that this is actually helping to improve this prompt position that I'm trying to improve."

[00:10:57] Jess Palmeri: So it really gets very specific, but you have [00:11:00] to view it as a whole strategy. It's not just a monitoring tool, it's an action-driving tool, so you have to have a team that's gonna be willing to go in, generate those posts, add those posts, publish those posts- Yeah ... and promote those

[00:11:11] Bob Ruffolo: Another reason why we say you have to have a content manager- Yes ... even in the age of AI. Yes, AI can do a lot of content stuff for you, but somebody, a human, has to be owning this. And to Jess's point, yes, the, the job is changing a little bit, but having somebody whose job who-- is to own content, go into that tool, look at the things that we have to be creating in order to improve our AI visibility or optimizing, making better, scheduling, so that all these things happen because AI bots can't schedule on LinkedIn if you-- You know, there's, there's rules and there's things and we, you know, somebody's gotta own all this.

[00:11:49] Bob Ruffolo: There's gotta be a human in the loop owning all this. So you have to have a content manager. Yes. And they should be going to the AI, AI tool, pulling all that out, bring it to revenue team meetings, get the answers to these questions that people are asking [00:12:00] from your experts or from your vault, wherever you have this information on lockdown, and make sure that content gets produced, and is accountable for getting all this out the door and improving your AI visibility.

[00:12:08] Jess Palmeri: if I remember correctly, during the SME exchange, that was the moment where you, like, interrupted me and said, "This is the best thing ever, Jess. Why didn't you lead with the recommendations?"

[00:12:17] Jess Palmeri: So now- Yeah ... I'm leading with the recommendations. That is the secret sauce to this tool.

[00:12:20] Bob Ruffolo: Amazing. Amazing. Now, let's stick with other AI and HubSpot things going on because, uh, a- as we know, HubSpot has a massive initiative to be a very AI-first CRM customer platform.

[00:12:37] Bob Ruffolo: Um, and they just released Agent Hub yesterday, so we're gonna get into that in a little bit. Um, but let's just talk about generally the last year

[00:12:48] Bob Ruffolo: and where you think they're going next year. How you think the product is going to evolve and change to really help companies, um, beyond just AI visibility, but just be, um, [00:13:00] thriving in AI first world and giving them so much more AI enablement in their workflows.

[00:13:04] Bob Ruffolo: Where are you seeing their vision heading right now?

[00:13:07] Jess Palmeri: So if I'm looking in my HubSpot crystal ball, I would say

[00:13:11] Bob Ruffolo: I know you have a

[00:13:12] Jess Palmeri: ball ... I-- That's what I have on lockdown. Why do you think I'm such a good HubSpot trainer? I just have that little, like, insider knowledge. Um, but HubSpot really has always been the tool of choice that can drive adoption.

[00:13:23] Jess Palmeri: It is the reason that so many sales teams, you know, leave a tool like Salesforce and then feel this breath of fresh air when they come into a tool like HubSpot because it's easy to navigate. Yeah. It's easy to figure out. And they wanna apply that same ease of use to how we incorporate AI into our day-to-day life, and we actually can leverage agents to take certain tasks off our plate and use Breeze to kind of understand and boil down that intelligence, all of that context within the CRM.

[00:13:49] Bob Ruffolo: And, and we've seen Breeze get better.

[00:13:51] Jess Palmeri: Oh, God, yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that even internally, a few of our impactors might have been a little bit skeptical at times of, is this tool gonna make it? I mean, I [00:14:00] certainly had those thoughts. But if you were a Breeze skeptic in the past, definitely, like, peek under that a little bit.

[00:14:06] Jess Palmeri: You know, maybe give a couple of prompts to Breeze these days because it really is getting much better every single day. And the goal of HubSpot in general is to really invest in their AI agentic first platform. They are making every sign and signal that that is where they see the future of their company.

[00:14:24] Jess Palmeri: So traditionally, they've always had everything broken down into hubs, so a sales hub or a content hub or a marketing hub. And while that's still a big piece of their business, they want to unlock AI activities and AI agents and AI, you know, usage across the platform. So one great example might be a customer service agent.

[00:14:44] Jess Palmeri: Have you used that yet, Bob? Have you tried it out?

[00:14:46] Bob Ruffolo: I have not used it, no.

[00:14:47] Jess Palmeri: Okay, so we here at Endless Customers love to answer client questions, right? That's like the core of who we are. Customer Service Agent basically was first designed to say, "Hey, if you have a customer base and they're always asking the same question, [00:15:00] like, 'How do I log in?'

[00:15:01] Jess Palmeri: Or, 'How do I reset my password?'" The yet thought was, well, can't we just have an agent have that knowledge base article ready at the go to say, "Hey, yeah, Bob, here's how you reset your password, uh, so that you can log back into your portal." Um, so that was the first use case, and they kinda locked it down under Service Hub and said, "Hey, if you want access to Customer Service Agent, you have to be a Service Hub, uh, em- uh, you know, customer."

[00:15:22] Jess Palmeri: But the use case there could actually be much more expansive because, you know, here at Impact, we kinda like answering everybody's questions- Yeah ... not just our customer questions. So they got a lot of feedback at HubSpot that said, "Hey, we wanna use this for this use case or this scenario." So they said, "Well, why are we limiting who can have access to this super cool tool?

[00:15:41] Jess Palmeri: Let's actually just say anyone can use Customer Service Agent," and that's the model and the direction that they're going. Any of these agents that have been traditionally tied to one specific hub are now kind of being let loose in the wild and say, "Well, let's y- you know, take this technology and apply it to this use case."

[00:15:57] Jess Palmeri: So I know customers-

[00:15:59] Bob Ruffolo: is that the release [00:16:00] of Agent Hub?

[00:16:00] Bob Ruffolo: Is that to give more access to more agentic features inside HubSpot?

[00:16:05] Jess Palmeri: Yes. The Agent Hub is meant to be one centralized location, so you can see all of the agents that you currently have activated and how are they driving towards certain goals. So there's Prospecting Agent that's trying to prospect your existing database or, you know, identify new opportunities.

[00:16:20] Bob Ruffolo: And people are loving this prospecting

[00:16:22] Jess Palmeri: Oh, gosh, yeah. It's, it's a really interesting tool that basically says, "Let's look for signs and signals, and let's draft emails and either send them out automatically or let it keep a human in the loop- Yeah ... and actually have that human review it and see, would this be something that I would probably send out?"

[00:16:37] Jess Palmeri: Uh, and the truth is that I don't know many sales reps that love prospecting. It's kind of like deep-sea fishing. It's, it's a fun time on the water, but you really are just fishing and, you know, spending a lot of time trying to get that one big hit. Um, but if you have a prospecting agent, the workflow becomes, "Hey, I'm gonna spend a lot of time giving this agent context to how I speak, to how I write, the [00:17:00] type of approach that I wanna take."

[00:17:01] Jess Palmeri: Because as you know, at here at Impact, we have a very consultative approach to our sales process. We wanna help you. We wanna have an, you know, a, an intelligent conversation about your business, your goals, and we really wanna make sure that you don't just feel like you're being pitched to. I mean, how many times, Bob, have you told me, "Stop pitching"?

[00:17:16] Jess Palmeri: So...

[00:17:17] Bob Ruffolo: know, Jess, I think you bring up a really good point here, too, is, um, I've been spending a lot of time setting up my second brain here at Impact.

[00:17:24] Bob Ruffolo: I'm sure I'm nowhere near what some of the people in the audience are, are doing and, um, it's been really fascinating. But you're right, it's so much time goes into the fine-tuning, and fine-tuning, and fine-tuning, and So these emails that are drafted for me, um, and I look at every email I send, I look at every Slack message I send, I look at every LinkedIn message I send.

[00:17:46] Bob Ruffolo: They'll draft them for me, um, and I spend more time instead of revising the emails, going back and tweaking the instructions. Yes. And then I say, "Now process it again," and it's still not right. And I go back, I say, "Adjust the [00:18:00] instructions," and it gets better. But then every time the next one comes out, it's like, how do I tweak it even a little bit more, a little bit more?

[00:18:05] Bob Ruffolo: And it, it's getting to the point where when it drafts something for me, it sounds a lot more like me and I'm, I'm-- it's saving me a ton of time, and it's answering the questions connected to my vaults. It's got all my knowledge. It's got everything. Yeah. So it's, it's getting better, but that is time that has to be invested in this.

[00:18:22] Bob Ruffolo: Exactly. And I will-- I'll just add one other thing to this. That's time that many s- uh, clients' sales team are not putting into it.

[00:18:29] Jess Palmeri: That's exactly what I'm seeing.

[00:18:31] Bob Ruffolo: almost like they're like, "Oh, I don't wanna do it. Just, just let it go. It's fine." But that's gonna be garbage, and that's what we have to protect our companies against when we're starting to talk about this agentic stuff.

[00:18:42] Bob Ruffolo: And that's the time I think they have to spend with you is it's the accountability. Not, not only are we gonna set this up, we're gonna set it up right, we're gonna continue to work at it, we're gonna make it better, and we're gonna get this to work for the business to its fullest capability.

[00:18:55] Jess Palmeri: And I think that that is the biggest misconception when it comes to AI in general. It has a lot [00:19:00] of promise.

[00:19:00] Jess Palmeri: You can get to the point where at a snap of a finger, you can r- draft a response or send out a prospecting email. But the thing that no one realizes is that you have to view AI, at least the way that I view AI, as a very dumb intern. This is someone off the street that you are training from scratch on your business, on your, you know, approach to selling, your approach to answering customer questions.

[00:19:24] Jess Palmeri: They are starting from ground zero. They know nothing. They are brand new to this world. So the goal with any team is to kind of shift that understanding to say, "Yes, I do want this shiny new future where there's an AI agent that's able to do all these things for me." But you have to invest the time, energy, and effort to provide it that context, so it can do that job well.

[00:19:44] Jess Palmeri: Because most of what I see with my customers who are frustrated with their agents or frustrated with AI says, "Eh, it's just generic crap that I could probably write myself."

[00:19:54] Bob Ruffolo: new future where there's an AI agent that's able to do all these things for me." But you have to invest the time, energy, and effort to provide it that context so it can do that job well. Because most of what I see with my customers who are frustrated with their agents, who are frustrated with AI says, "Man, it's just generic crap that I could probably write myself."

[00:19:55] Bob Ruffolo: That's not true. It's not true. It's generic crap when you haven't trained it. [00:20:00] Exactly. And when you train it, oh my God, it's so powerful.

[00:20:03] Jess Palmeri: But most people stop at the generic crap and say, "I don't want to invest the time and energy"- And that's scary ... 'cause they don't even see

[00:20:09] Bob Ruffolo: And that's scary because when they're not investing in training it, somebody that they compete with is investing in training it, and they're getting a competitive advantage- Mm-hmm

[00:20:17] Bob Ruffolo: using this prospecting agent, using this other way- workflows in this other business, getting these more efficiencies, doing more than, than you're doing because they have this gigantic agentic competitive advantage. Yes. And, and that's a warning for everybody out here is that I know-- Listen, if you're, if you're, you could look at this two different ways.

[00:20:36] Bob Ruffolo: You could say, "Well, um, a lot of businesses are not doing this," and that's true. Mm-hmm. Um, and you might not be too behind the market. However, I can almost guarantee all of you have somebody in your market that's going to compete against you, that's building all this right now, and you won't see it coming if you don't start, like, building a moat and protecting yourself.

[00:20:58] Bob Ruffolo: And you're gonna get wiped out if [00:21:00] you don't start, like, putting effort and energy into this now, because agentic's not going anywhere. It's like the internet. It's not going anywhere. It's like if you're like, "Oh, we're all figured out this internet thing," you know, you know, whatever. Kicking the can down the road.

[00:21:12] Bob Ruffolo: You don't have a website, you don't have email, and you're, you know, you would be in a lot of trouble, right? And agentic is the same way, and there's a, such an opportunity to get ahead in your market right now. You gotta be investing in these things, guys, so...

[00:21:25] Jess Palmeri: And if you are a HubSpot customer, you have no excuse. You have access to all of these tools. They are building these tools with that mindset of we're going to bring along the folks that may or may not be the early adopters, but we're gonna make it so stinking easy to set these things up and to thrive in this environment that you have no excuse not to try them.

[00:21:43] Jess Palmeri: But the biggest investment is going to be the strategy and the context that you provide to these AI agents, and that's where you need outside help to make sure that you set it up the right way because otherwise you're just gonna get frustrated. You're just gonna see generic crap that you're-- can't stand, and you're gonna say, "Eh, I can deal with this later."[00:22:00] 

[00:22:00] Jess Palmeri: And guess what? Later's never gonna come.

[00:22:01] Bob Ruffolo: And, and you know, strategy, I think you would agree, is only 10% of it. Yeah. Execution is the other 90% of it. It's not only like rolling this out, but working at it, making it better, tweaking, adjusting, using it, getting feedback, and just going and going and going, all these feedback loops and making it better and better.

[00:22:18] Bob Ruffolo: That's gotta be happening. Now, Jess, you mentioned if you have a-- if you're a HubSpot user, you have no excuse, and it doesn't really matter if you have a healthy HubSpot portal or not, right? No.

[00:22:27] Jess Palmeri: I mean,

[00:22:28] Bob Ruffolo: I see-

[00:22:29] Jess Palmeri: so, uh, clean data in gets you really great results coming out. If you have messy data going in, you can use a tool like Data Agents to start to clean that up.

[00:22:37] Jess Palmeri: So they are providing these tools that you can start to pick away, uh, chip away rather, at, you know, that mountain of, you know, cleanup projects that you've been meaning to do for a while but maybe haven't gotten there. '

[00:22:48] Bob Ruffolo: Cause

[00:22:48] Bob Ruffolo: that's the promise of this, right? Is like, if you have HubSpot, all your data is in there, it knows your data, and now it can do these agentic things based on this information that it has. [00:23:00] But if you have bad data, then it-- you're gonna really get false information. It's gonna process all and do all this stuff and, and you're not gonna be able to use it.

[00:23:09] Bob Ruffolo: So Jess, how do you help... And you mentioned data agent. Um, somebody might be listening to this and be like, "Okay, great. I want all these great agentic features. I want to do the prospecting agent, I want the, the customer agent, I want, um, this AA- AEO tool. I want all this stuff, but my HubSpot portal, I've had it for 10 years.

[00:23:24] Bob Ruffolo: My people are hardly using it. It's a mess." How do you help people get to a state where they're able to start building agentic on top of it?

[00:23:32] Jess Palmeri: I think that it all starts with usage. So all of these AI tools run off of context and data. If you're not putting any data, energy, effort into your portal, it's gonna produce that generic crap that we keep talking about.

[00:23:45] Jess Palmeri: You have to be actually using the portal to give your AI agents the context that they need to be successful in their tasks and jobs to be done. So if your sales team hasn't logged an email in the last, you know, 12 months, hey, guess what? [00:24:00] You're gonna come up with generic prospecting emails because it's not gonna know to match the tone or voice of how Bob Ruffolo sounds.

[00:24:06] Jess Palmeri: So you need to first drive adoption of the CRM features and functionality with the ease and use of AI to make it, you know, valuable to an end user. So if you're a customer service agent or a, you know, sales rep, you want there to be easy tools that you can actually start leveraging today to make learning something new in your job and your role worth your time, energy, and effort because that's really what we're protecting here: time, energy, and effort.

[00:24:32] Jess Palmeri: You're either putting that into the grind that is your day-to-day right now, or you're starting to build better habits and become more disciplined in your approach to build towards a future where you can pass off the worst parts of your job to an AI agent so that you can focus on the things that you actually enjoy doing.

[00:24:50] Jess Palmeri: Or maybe take a gosh darn vacation, one of the two.

[00:24:53] Bob Ruffolo: two. So, um, we're gonna get ready to wrap up this episode. A couple questions. Um, one, how does the pricing [00:25:00] for this work? Um, so I've, I'm already paying for Content Hub, I'm paying for, uh, Sales Hub, I got Service Hub.

[00:25:07] Jess Palmeri: Okay. Um,

[00:25:09] Jess Palmeri: so no, it's not necessarily a new hub that you have to pay for. It is a usage-based model. So you'll have access to these agents that, you know, work in different areas of your HubSpot portal, and then you will use your preexisting credits that are built into your existing plan, draw down against those, uh, that would [00:25:25] be similar to any Claude credits that you're using or Chat credits to basically access these AI features.

[00:25:30] Bob Ruffolo: Got it. So it's not a new SKU, it's not a new product. I'm just gonna have access to this in my HubSpot portal.

[00:25:35] Bob Ruffolo: It's just gonna be there, and then I'll just use my, my, my, my Breeze credits. And the more of it I use- Mm-hmm ... then, you know, uh, I might get billed more if we use it more?

[00:25:45] Jess Palmeri: That's the idea. There are a lot of guardrails in place to basically control your spend. Uh, so no worries there. We're not gonna just run up a big credit bill. So the idea in HubSpot is that they're going towards a usage-based model so that you can actually only pay for what you use.

[00:25:59] Jess Palmeri: Right. So you'll have a monthly credit balance that will refresh every single month, and you can decide, "Do I wanna do a prospecting push this month? Do I really wanna focus on some, you know, AEO content generation maybe next month?" There's different ways that we can really use these credits to our advantage, and if you're a HubSpot customer, you already have some credits.

[00:26:16] Jess Palmeri: I wonder if you're actually using them.

[00:26:15] Bob Ruffolo: That connects a lot to Dharmesh's post I saw this morning about token usage, and if it-- you're getting ROI out of it, you're-- it's, it's making you money and it's making your life better, keep spending on the tokens and, and get more out of it. It's like if you put a dollar in, you get $4 out.

[00:26:31] Bob Ruffolo: That's the way you should be thinking about token usage- Exactly ... in the future. Yeah. Good. Excellent, Jess. Now, if somebody wants your help figuring out what HubSpot I should buy, which is a great thing you can help people with, or how do I clean up my messy portal, um, or, um, how do I start taking advantage of these new AI tools, train my team, get my team using these things, um, uh, uh, make sure we're getting the most of the HubSpot agentic world, how does somebody get in touch with you?

[00:27:00] Jess Palmeri: So, uh, you can always go to IMPACT's website and s- check out our HubSpot training services page, and if you fill out a form to [00:27:06] connect with a coach, I will likely be the person on the other end of that call.

[00:27:09] Bob Ruffolo: All right. Thank you so much, Jess. This has been another episode of the Endless Customers Podcast. Today we talked about all things HubSpot. Until next time, we'll see you at the next episode

[00:27:18] Stephanie Baiocchi: If you liked this episode, please take a minute to leave us a review. Thanks for checking out the Endless Customers Podcast.