I recently attended Inbound, the HubSpot annual conference for customers and partners. The focus was on the retirement of the “funnel”, which we all have grown to love, and the emergence of what they are calling the “flywheel”. It’s always hard to leave something that you have known and used for many years to try something new. But as I was listening to the new approach, I realized it made perfect sense and at the same time, felt very familiar.
The HubSpot “flywheel” is a continuous circle with marketing, sales and service all playing an important role in attracting, engaging and retaining customers, which translates into growing your business. What is also significant is that they put the customer in the center of the wheel with the goal being to leverage happy customers as references and referrals for future new business.
HubSpot “flywheel”
It makes sense.
What was familiar was the fact that VOGSY has built its professional services automation platform with a very similar concept. Professional services is a people business. So, naturally, we put the professional at the center of the technology and provide them tools, insights and transparency to have more accountability and make better decisions.
Important information and functionality, which people in all departments within a professional services organization need, are available and integrated so no matter what your role you have the insights and data to make better decisions, faster. This translates into happy customers, productive employees and a growing business.
VOGSY “flywheel”
Two important aspects of the flywheel:
- Flywheels represent a circular process where customers feed growth.
HubSpot’s change to the flywheel included investing more in customer marketing, customer advocacy, and in creating delightful onboarding experiences for new customers. They also invested in an integrations ecosystem that helps their customers do more with HubSpot and creates real value for people who adopt their suite of software.With VOGSY, our flywheel is the entire quote-to-cash lifecycle and acts as the single source of engagement, with the professional at the center of technology. It’s the real-time insights and access to data that results in more engaged employees, with better outcomes. - Friction kills flywheels.
HubSpot made investments that systematically target their biggest points of friction. They reduced the friction with great free software as an entry point, channels that help people connect now instead of later, a sales process that solves for prospects, and a broad range of customer education.With VOGSY we also have eliminated areas of friction for our professional services customers, such as removing the admin burden, eliminating over-delivery and “tooling and data spaghetti” that comes from many different point products which don’t integrate with each other, and the lack of real-time data. The result is better business outcomes, 360-degree business control, increased return business, shorter DSO, and more customer focus.This is a new way of thinking, by putting the customer in the center of technology that facilitates engagement, provides real-time information to make better decisions faster, and clears the way for accelerated growth.
