Eric Housh
Welcome to the Fast Slow Motion Podcast, where we discuss strategies, ideas, and insights on how to build a business you love while enjoying your life. I’m your host, Eric Housh. And if you’re a leader in a growing company, you’ve probably spent a significant amount of money on revenue tools. You got HubSpot, you got a CRM, you’ve got automated email sequences. You probably got a pile of data to go along with it. On paper, probably looks like you got a system, but for many leaders, it doesn’t feel like a system. It feels messy.

Marketing’s doing one thing, sales is doing another, and despite all of the technology, revenue can still feel like a result of heroic individual effort rather than a predictable machine. So today we’re gonna dig in there. We’re gonna challenge that idea that having the tools is the same thing as having a system. We’re gonna explore why most companies don’t actually have a revenue system and talk about what they have instead.

So special treat for you guys today to help us break this down. I’ve invited Max Bevan. Max is a principal account executive on my team here at Fast Slow Motion. Spends all day, every day talking to leaders who are trying to bridge the gap between their growth goals and their operational reality. Max, absolutely awesome to have you on the show, man.

Max Bevan
Thanks, Eric. Excited to be here. Excited to dive in today and chat through revenue systems.

Eric Housh
Max, we talk to a lot of companies who come to us, say, hey, Max, we got HubSpot, but things still feel a little bit broken. So I wanna start a little bit contrarian here at the beginning. Most leaders look at their tech stack and their dashboards and they feel like they’ve checked that system box. But you’ve said it before that just because you have a CRM and just because you have maybe a sales process written on a whiteboard or whatever, it doesn’t mean you actually have a system. Why is it such a dangerous misconception to equate tools to a revenue engine?

Max Bevan
Yeah, throwing technology at a problem fixes nothing. So at the end of the day, if it doesn’t come back to the process, basically the foundation of how that technology is going to be implemented in a methodical way, that’s going to take advantage of that system. You’re really just kind of throwing technology at a problem and hoping that it fixes it. So ideally the revenue system, the process is just the tools as a means to an end. So let’s step back, let’s be thoughtful. What are we trying to accomplish? What are we trying to build out? What are the goals?

Let’s get that ironed out, that process developed, and then we can be methodical about plugging in tools that are best in breed to actually solve for those problems. And again, the architecture of turning on a HubSpot or turning on a CRM is not going to fix anything. It’s the process, infrastructure, strategy, and then the methodical deployment to actually get the return on investment.

Eric Housh
Yeah, I mean the tools, if you’re not setting them up properly and not thinking through those processes and the systems thinking, the tool can end up magnifying bad things as well as good things. Why is it, Max, that so many companies tend to start with the tool before they’ve looked at the blueprint or the system strategy?

Max Bevan
Well, I think it’s easier to say if we had this tool, right? If the grass was only greener, then we had everything organized and we have everything set up. But in reality, what that ends up looking like is you’re in a position where you’ve built out a revenue system and you’re saying, well, if I have this tool, I’ll be able to scale and magnify it. Well, actually what happens is the tooling is really the only thought that’s gone into it. The value proposition of the platform is by turning on this platform, you’re going to increase pipeline, increase revenue, increase growth.

And those things are true as long as the tool is being implemented and utilized in a way that’s really taking advantage of a system that’s behind that. So it’s easy to say, well, if only I had this tool, we’d be able to drive more pipeline, drive more revenue, increase the functionality of the business. But the truth of the matter is by just buying the tool, you don’t end up in a place where you’re actually getting those results. It’s the strategy and the methodical nature of the plan that once the tool is laid in with that plan in place,

that’s where you’re gonna really see that return and growth. So the tool is the easy strategy, right? It’s kind of the whole idea, right, is we want that instant gratification. And so there’s two options, right? Do we just wanna throw a tool at it and be in a position where it’s fixed? Or do we wanna go through this methodical lifestyle change, this methodical business change, really take a step back, make sure we have a plan in place, and then make sure to implement a tool that’s really gonna support those growth goals.

Eric Housh
So getting that plan in place, thinking through the system, obviously step one, that’s what most people miss and get wrong. When you encounter organizations that have that fallacy, what symptoms do you see, what indicators, what are those primary points of failure that tend to surface?

Max Bevan
So almost always, right, they’re coming off another CRM, they’re coming off another platform, they have a historical tech stack. And a lot of the language and discussion is, well, it’s because this technology isn’t good, or it’s because this tool is lacking features. And that’s actually not a good evaluation process, because then that becomes a focus on a feature dump, or who has the best AI capabilities, or who’s basically virtue signaling what a tool can do, which is not the important piece, right? What it is is,

if the discussion is around growth, utilization of the tool, what we’re trying to accomplish, our processes, where we’re seeing leaky revenue, where we’re seeing gaps in marketing to sales handoff, where we’re seeing gaps in sales to service handoff, where we feel like we don’t have visibility or automation, that’s a lot more interesting of a conversation because it’s a process focus and it’s not a focus on mudslinging against other tools. You can have every tool in the tool belt, right? And have

the features and functionality of these tools. But if you don’t implement them in a way to leverage what is a smart, methodical rev ops process or an architecture that is really going to take advantage, then you’re just going to be exactly where you were, except you’re also going to get to pay for the tool. So evaluations, typically the effective ones, the ones that are exciting, is when they aren’t blaming the tool. Yes, they may say we didn’t implement it correctly or we’re not taking advantage of the features, but it’s not the discussion. The discussion is around things like

adoption, the discussion is around scaling processes, the KPIs are things like growing revenue, increasing marketing outreach. These are indicators of a smart evaluation where the tool can contribute to that goal. But if it’s really just, hey, our team doesn’t like this tool, the buttons aren’t in the right place, we don’t like these features, the tool’s so bad, and if we only had another tool, we would fix all our problems — that’s where you know there’s not a level of maturity and a level of depth there. Because almost always, right,

there are many good CRMs in the world and there are many great platforms and you can take advantage of all of these CRMs, but it does come back to how are we implementing them in a way to actually get the effective value out of them and really starting with that value and then using the tool as a means to an end. So I think if the focus is just on feature-feature matrix comparison, that’s not a strategic evaluation to grow the business. That’s just a tool matrix comparison of

how do I save a little bit of money to get into something different rather than how do I reevaluate and reimagine how I’m driving my go-to-market strategy? Where does the CRM play into that? And how does the tool support and build out those processes?

Eric Housh
And you mentioned, Max, when we don’t really have this in place, we see things falling through the cracks, right? That lack of consistent ownership end to end means that we just miss things and things may not show up or we may not capitalize on opportunities that we had based on the fact that we haven’t really thought through systematically how that should operate. One of the other things that we bump into is inconsistency in process. How is that damaging to an organization?

Max Bevan
Yeah, so nobody cares about the habits, right? If they’re getting the result, but all of a sudden, once we’re not getting the result, we care about the habits. So if we’re in a place where we don’t have a process, we’re not built on that firm foundation, then we’re just going to be in a place where we’re basically throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks. And that can work for an amount of time in a growth trajectory with tailwinds that are potentially external market factors that can work, but it definitely doesn’t scale. So from a process perspective, if we haven’t

ensured that the CRM is working for us rather than us working for it, where there is process, there are backstops, there’s infrastructure, there is tooling in place that’s going to support what we know are the right habits while we’re still paying attention to the KPIs, the scoreboard, the actual points that we’re going to ensure that we’re hitting to make sure that we’re accomplishing success. The concern is at a high level, visibility looks good, revenue looks good, leads look good. These are kind of specific metrics.

Well, but what about things like deal velocity? What’s happening through the deal pipeline? How are we converting methodical leads that are actually going to lead to business? What’s our attribution model? And if you don’t have process in place, you’re not tracking those habits that create the result. And then you don’t have the input and you’re being focused on basically an output, but you don’t know how to get there. So the goal, right, is we’re tracking things across that customer journey, across whatever is that revenue journey. And we’re being thoughtful about, great, well, if we tweak this process here, we tweak this piece here,

we’re going to be able to make this increase rather than, well, we need more output, but we don’t really know what goes into the input. So therefore, we don’t know what habits are going to create the output.

Eric Housh
Yeah, that inconsistency creates unpredictability. You don’t know why you’re winning. You don’t know why you’re losing. You don’t know how to repeat it next month. We hear that a lot from CEOs, just that kind of frustration. One of the things we also hear is teams don’t fully embrace the CRM, when they’re not running or using the systems that they have to kind of run their revenue engine, revenue system, they can’t trust the data that’s coming out of those platforms either. What happens to a leadership team’s decision making when they have incomplete, inconsistent, or sometimes misleading data?

Max Bevan
Well, I mean, they’re flying blind at that point, right? You’re making decisions to basically grow and scale the business without access to data to really drive those decisions. We all want to end up in this ideal place where it is completely objective. We look at a dashboard, we understand what’s happening. We’re able to have our morning cup of coffee, understand what’s going on in the cockpit of the business, be able to dial things in, make adjustments. But ultimately, if we have inconsistent data, if we don’t have full adoption, if we can’t trust what’s in our CRM,

we have no ability to do that, right? Maybe we’re taking one-off spreadsheets, maybe we’re looking downstream in financial systems, maybe we’re looking upstream in marketing automation platforms, but we don’t really have this consistent revenue life cycle, this revenue journey to be able to say, objectively, this is what’s happening in the business. These are the things that are working, here are the things that we would adjust. And that’s where we wanna end up, right? With tools that are helping tell the story

on how we can continue to grow the business and what are those effective inputs that we need to make sure that we’re doing so we can be methodical across departments. Maybe marketing needs to dial in content, maybe sales needs to dial in touch bases and outreach and outbound, maybe service from a key stat perspective needs to look for opportunities to delight the customer. It goes back to if we don’t have some objective source of truth or one shared data warehouse that we can house all of this information, we

don’t understand what the left arm is doing and what the right arm is doing. So the goal is we’ve got a system, we’ve got a brain, we’ve got one idea from end to end on how they interact with the brand. And now we can be thoughtful about those adjustments and those inputs that are not massive course corrections, but little dial-ins as we continue to grow and scale a business.

Eric Housh
That’s awesome. I want to stay there just for a minute because I’m imagining there’s some leader out there listening to us right now that’s going, man, that sounds familiar. I’ve got a bunch of tools, but I do not have a system. How does that leader need to chop this up? What are those foundational pillars that they need to be thinking about in terms of building a real revenue system?

Max Bevan
Yeah, so it always kind of comes back to the data, right? The data ends up being the structure. It ends up being the model. So if you take kind of a 50,000-foot view and you said, okay, let me walk through the customer journey from very initial input, engagement, lead all the way through sales, all the way through close, support, customer service, success, delivery, whatever it may be. So we’re talking tip of the spear, email deliverability tools, right?

and very back-end accounting, finance, revenue reconciliation tools. I’ve got to understand what data lives where. And I have to be able to consistently be able to view that across my business from the very tip of the spear to the very end. And so the goal is to just say, well, what is my current tech stack? Where does everything live today? What are my goals and what am I trying to accomplish? And can I objectively look into these disparate hubs, these disparate tools,

these individual areas and say, well, I know that this is not broken. This tool is working and this data is tight. And that may not be a replacement, right? That could be an opportunity for an integration. You may have a separate tool that really just houses some data, but it’s kind of a point solution. Well, that may be an opportunity for consolidation. And then you may have certain processes that are just not connected. And though it’s consistent in terms of where one tool leaves off and another tool picks up, there’s no integration.

So those tools aren’t speaking to each other. They’re not passing data back and forth. And it’s really one of those things, like I said earlier, where the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand’s doing. So when you think of things like implementation, can we leverage a tool better? You think of things like migration, can we take data from one tool to another to consolidate? And then you think of things like integration — we have two best-in-breed tools, maybe an upstream CRM and a downstream ERP or an upstream marketing automation system and a strong sales CRM process. And you just need to integrate those.

So really at the end of the day, if you don’t know where the data lives, you can’t even really take an evaluation and understanding of what to do next because that process is really only defined by the data being able to really tell the story. This is the customer, here’s how they’ve interacted, here’s what it’s contributed to in terms of revenue, and here’s what we need to do more of in order to grow and scale the business.

Eric Housh
It’s having the right data at the right time and having absolute clarity on what you need to do at each point in the process so that that process and that system is predictable. Tell me what that opens up. Like we’ve talked a lot about leaders, but for the salespeople on the front line, what does having a good system and a clear process, what does that do for their psyche?

Max Bevan
Absolutely. So as an end user, none of this should be accountability metrics. They just want a CRM tool or another tool to track what they’re doing for micromanagement purposes. The goal of systems like this is the end user is excited about it, actually wakes up and sees it as an enablement platform and needs the tooling to be able to do their job. So in our case, right, what we’re seeing time and time again

from a HubSpot perspective is we aren’t viewing a CRM for a sales team as a tool that they need to use. We are having the conversation and framing it as an enablement platform to help them do their job better. It should be a CRM that works for you rather than you working for it. And if that’s going to be true, then the end users need to see the value of the features and functionality,

how it actually translates into their everyday — how does this increase pipeline, increase deal velocity, help me close more deals, and at the end of the day, how does this make me more money, right? So from that standpoint, we’ve got to understand where does this tool fit within that individual, and then make sure we’ve built out process, infrastructure, automation, and visibility in a way where the end user sees the value in leveraging the tool, not because they have to from an executive stakeholder perspective, but because they need it

to be able to do their job better, leverage the tooling, and really drive, right, from an adoption perspective, some culture that actually shows how our business is performing from end to end.

Eric Housh
So thinking about the CRM and the tool as way more carrot than stick. And I think if you can build it out so that it’s providing that value and that clarity to your sales team, you’re absolutely on the right track. Given your role here at Fast Slow Motion and the number of leaders you meet, you talk to on a daily basis, you’re often the first person a prospect really is talking to when they realize they have a systems problem. How should their mindset shift when they stop looking for tools and start looking for better systems?

Max Bevan
Yeah, so that kind of comes back to where we sit sort of in the partner ecosystem, right? Us at FSM is we want to be consultants, right? We want to tell you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear. We need to be in a place where we’re able to challenge and really add value, right? And so in that conversation, those conversations coming back to the tool, again, is sort of a point solution. It’s a specific pain point, and it’s not really comprehensive to evaluating how they want to scale

and really build out their business. And so almost always in those conversations, they know we have a revenue problem, we have a lead problem, we have a service infrastructure problem. We have a problem and it’s not because we don’t have enough tools, it’s because we haven’t thought through how those are ingrained in our business, how our culture is in terms of the customer experience that we want to provide and how we’ve methodically built out the processes and automation and infrastructure in a way that it really supports the experience that we want to drive in the market.

So when they’re having conversations really with us about how they want to grow and scale and do more of what they’re doing, that’s a much different conversation than, hey, I need a better tool to solve for this specific problem because I had this downstream feature set that’s not accomplishing it. Really the goal of these evaluations is for us to question — let’s assume you bought HubSpot in this example. Let’s assume you work with us. What is the definition of success?

How do we actually know objectively that this was a good investment, that the software licensing makes sense, and that the implementation dollars are really returning where you want to go? Well, if we don’t define what is the objective source of truth, the definition of success, the definition of done for an engagement, we can’t end up in a place where it was truly successful. So those conversations become much less about the tooling and the features and the functionality of the platform,

and much more about the methodical revenue system or operation or infrastructure that they’ve built and then how the CRM or the tooling really supports that and where it fits in, right, within that kind of adoption, implementation, training and rollout phase.

Eric Housh
Excellent. Max, this has been fun today. Before we wrap up, we always ask our guests one final question. What’s one quote, one piece of advice that has made a meaningful impact on you and your career?

Max Bevan
Yeah, Patrick Lencioni wrote a book and one of his books is called Getting Naked, of all the names. And really the idea is you’re going to give away as much value as you possibly can in every conversation to where you could objectively and confidently send an invoice coming out of that meeting. So really that’s been kind of my biggest thing from a consulting, from a sales perspective, from a service and servant mentality,

is how do I come into every engagement, every interaction, every basically opportunity to add value to others in a way that if I sent an invoice after that interaction, they would confidently and happily pay that. So the idea really is not what can we get out of these situations, but how much can we give in a way that we know that we can bless someone else knowing that they’re gonna get the value out of it themselves.

Eric Housh
Yeah, Zane Tarrant on one of the previous episodes said, it’s not about the harvest we reap, it’s about the seeds we sow, always seeking to give upfront. That’s wonderful, Max. Thanks so much again for the conversation today. I think the biggest takeaway for the listeners is that predictable revenue is not something you buy off the shelf in a software subscription. We’re HubSpot fans, but HubSpot’s not gonna clear up all your problems. It’s something that you have to intentionally architect through clarity,

ownership and consistency. So if you’re listening out there today and you’re thinking you might need a little help here — if your tools feel disconnected, your growth feels like it’s a struggle — it’s probably not software that’s your problem. It’s probably your systems that you need to have a conversation about. The great news there is once you diagnose that, you can actually start building that foundation that supports the growth you’re looking for. Max, any final words?

Max Bevan
No, thank you for having me, Eric. I appreciate being here and it was a fun conversation.

Eric Housh
Always fun to hang out with you, my friend. We appreciate your perspective. Thanks to everyone for listening. That’s a wrap for today. If you want to dive deeper into this about revenue architecture, if you’re wondering if your HubSpot setup is supporting your system in the right way, that’s what we do. We’re here to help. Hit us at fastslowmotion.com and we’ll see you next time.