Aligning Sales, Marketing And Customer Service To Grow Your Business

By Lauren Kennedy

Tell us about who you are and what you do.

When I started my business, I didn't realize that was my story was something kind of below the conscience. And through this process, doing interviews and learning more about myself, I realized that really is my story in some way. I'm a 27 year old founder of a marketing automation agency specializing in HubSpot and Salesforce. I focus a lot on people first leadership based off of the story of my grandfather and the legacy that he left. I have really enjoyed growing my business over the last year. It's constantly shocking to me that it's only been 11 months. I feel at the same time that it's month one and year two all at once. Right. It's been a fun journey, and I'm excited to talk to you about it today.

Can you tell us more about your grandfather's story?

My grandfather was an executive at the World Bank. He grew up in a small town called Lark's Scotland, and he traveled around the world, lived in all different countries. That's  mostly what I knew about him growing up. He took me out to eat twice a week and if you're familiar with Lisa Frank journals, which were really popular when I was younger, he got me one of those every week. And then he passed away when I was 13, which was very challenging for me because he was very much a father figure in my life. We flew to Scotland for his funeral because he wanted to be buried in this beautiful place where he grew up. And whenever we arrived at the funeral, we hadn't told anybody about it. It hadn't been put in a paper. We didn't send out invitations. It was just family. But hundreds of people showed up in this very small town in Scotland to pay their respects. And while he was in a large position, a high powered position, that wasn't the reason they came. They all had stories to tell about how he had had a large impact on their lives throughout his journey by helping them with the promotion or helping them out with something that was going on in their personal life. And there were all of these small things that he had done throughout his life to make a strong impact to the point where people traveled from across the world to be there for his people. And that was my first big example of what a leader looks like and a type of legacy that you want to build 

How do you work with clients to automate business technology?

We're all ex-marketers, we've all been on the in-house side of agencies. What we look to do is partner with your team from a teacher or coach perspective. Coming in and seeing what's wrong with your systems, why they're not thinking and how your organizational alignment looks around your data, specifically Salesforce, and HubSpot. We work on aligning sales, marketing and customer service around the customer’s journey, which if you work in any of those departments, you know that there's a lot of disjoint between those departments. We don't just look at the group or the actual issue that's happening and solve it from there, which is where a lot of firms start. We start with talking to your people, figuring out where their pain points are, where the communication gaps are to build alignment and before fixing your systems. We match your needs to not just fix the bugs that you've identified, but re-architect the systems to make sure that they're working for your team rather than against them. We have found that it's such a great thing for internal teams to have a people first approach to marketing automation because you're actually building systems that work for you.

How does your company work with clients to make them successful?

HubSpot is a CRM for scaling organizations and what makes HubSpot different from the other CRMs and email marketing tools in the platform is that HubSpot grows with you and also has a suite of products that are all accessible in the same portal. If you think you can do your email marketing automation, you can do your sales enablement by looking at the CRM, sending sales emails, having different sales documentation in quotes, as well as your website, your customer service portal where people will submit tickets for support from account management or from your product team. All of that lives in one login. As marketers, we often have 40 tabs open at any given time and on average HubSpot cuts that in half. Being able to consolidate your social media schedule, email marketing, your design platform, all of that in one. My team helps us, with HubSpot, from the system architecture, usability, revenue operations perspective of how HubSpot connects into your organization overall, whereas a lot of firms will focus on helping you with content designing your website. All those are very valid in their own respect. Our focus really is just making your system work well because while HubSpot is very user friendly, there's so much in there that you need to distill, like what you’re actually using and what you’re not using enough of but could be using.

Can you tell us more about your approach to with working with your teams?

When I first started this business, I didn't plan to be starting a business, I planned to be a freelancer that worked on their own and had their independent thing but I quickly outgrew my own bandwidth and so I started hiring. And whenever I made the decision to hire my first employee, I said, OK, what does the benefits package look like? What does hiring look like? All of the decisions I had to make about health care for what came match all of that and made it through the lens of what's the environment that I wish I had worked for? Why did that environment not work for me? Through that, I made the decision from day one of hiring to offer a four percent for one match, unlimited PTO, fully employer paid health care, medical, dental vision and flexible work schedule of being able to say you can work whatever hours as long as you're hitting your targets for the week. From the start, I have had a very people first culture and that all of the decisions we make, they're considered before profit I've had a really great response from the market. Our last job that we posted had over 300 applications in under a week of being posted, which is a really powerful metric. And I am really proud of the fact that my team often says that so many companies are saying that they're people first right now, but we actually mean it. There's a little bit of skepticism when you join our team as well. Are they actually saying that or is it just a platform? And it's incredibly ingrained in our culture and everything we do, and that's always a priority. One for me is that our culture internally is people first and that we're delivering people for solutions and solution design. And I've really enjoyed building that.

What do you like the most about what you do?

So I thought that I would like getting to work in HubSpot and Salesforce as much as I do the most. And that was always my expectation because I've always been a solution or an excavator, but I love really managing people. Now that I have the opportunity to have a team and help nurture, grow, develop, promote members of my team, there's nothing that I look forward to more than team meetings or one on one sessions or coaching or development opportunities, or seeing someone achieve something that a few months ago they thought was impossible. And I really enjoy seeing them all grow as people, as part of the team, because then growing it to be a better person while they work here is just as important to me as the tangible results that they're delivering from a build perspective or marketing performance or whatever. And so seeing how working here and the things that I choose to discuss with them and open their minds more like we watched Bernie Brown as a team two weeks ago when we heard Ted talks and reflected on that. And so to me, it's really just seeing people grow and change and feel better about who they are and what they do by working here.

We have a weekly meeting every Friday where we have some sort of topic, at the end of it, we go over what's up for next week, but we start off with some sort of conversation. We talked about productivity and how the concept of productivity has become kind of toxic, so we discussed what that looks like to us? How do we struggle with feeling productive? What do we do next? We talked about vulnerability when we watch Courtney Brown. We've talked about the concept of unlimited PTO and how that's perceived negatively at some organizations where it's bad. If you take your PTO and how our perceptions are changing and how we still struggle with taking PTO because of preconceived notions. Having these conversations are so important for feeling worthy and building trust for the people around you as well as bonding in a remote culture.

What is one tip you can leave with us about how you find and live your joy? 

I found my joy by starting this company, and I live my joy by allowing myself to continue to grow. I have found that I have really improved my vulnerability and my ability to put myself out there and be honest and transparent through this journey. Continuing to show up for myself and my team every day and being the one that admits their mistakes first is how I continue to make myself really proud of me.

About Lauren Kennedy

Lauren Kennedy is the founder of Coastal Consulting, a people-first marketing automation agency focused on HubSpot and Salesforce.

Lauren is an innovative leader, not only in the service her team provides but also in the delivery and ecosystem surrounding it. She embodies the people-first approach and takes every opportunity to grow, nurture, and develop those around her.

Lauren is a mission-driven woman on a trajectory to change the way business is done, both for employees and customers. Underneath all of that, a leader worth following.

Lauren has created an agency environment that focuses on the person behind the solution, both for the team and the client.