The SMART Spark
Open Doesn’t Mean Active
A deal sits in the pipeline for four months. Close date came and went back in June. No calls logged, no notes, no tasks. Ask the rep about it and you get the same answer every time: “Oh, that one’s still open — just waiting to hear back.” That’s the problem. “Open” is...
Why Your Team Keeps Rebuilding HubSpot Fields That Already Exist
One Thing that Works A client asked me last week why two people on her sales team had built nearly identical custom properties three months apart — "Lead Source" and "Lead Source (New)." Neither of them knew the other one existed. I pulled up her portal. Fifty-some...
Deal Split vs. Deal Collaborator: You’re Probably Using the Wrong One
You're Probably Using the Wrong One A client called me last month convinced her CRM was broken. Two reps had worked a deal together, closed it together, and split the work right down the middle. But her forecast report showed one rep getting credit for the entire...
Your Team Inbox Isn’t Supposed to Belong to Anyone
What Connect Your Inbox Really Means I had the same conversation twice in one week. Two different clients, two different industries, same exact confusion. Both were setting up a shared inbox in HubSpot — a general hello@ or info@ address that the whole team needs to...
Protecting Your HubSpot Sending Domain: Authentication, Deliverability & the Traps In Between
"Protect your sending domain" gets used like it means one thing. In practice, I watch clients — and a lot of the content marketed at them — collapse three or four separate settings into a single mental bucket, which means when something breaks, they fix the wrong one....
The Business Card Trick that Fixes Trade Show Follow-Up
The Problem: Badges Only Tell You a Name You know the routine. Three days on a trade show floor, a stack of scanned badges, a sore back from standing on concrete — and then...
You Don’t Have to Be Original to Be Creative: Then and Now
Almost 20 years ago . . . Then (April 4, 2007): You don't have to be original to be creative. Is anyone truly original? It is said that Mozart never wrote an original melody — instead he made recombinations of other melodies of the time. Did that make him less...
The Date That Lies to You: What “Last Activity Date” Actually Measures
Last Activity Date . . . A sales manager pulls a list of "stale" contacts last quarter — anyone with no Last Activity Date in 30 days gets flagged for a re-engagement push. The list comes back with forty names on it. Half the reps look at it and say some version of...
Chem Trails in Your CRM: Why HubSpot Needs a Naming Convention
Every HubSpot portal I open has its own ghost story. Workflows named "Send a follow up email after form submission." Forms called "New Form (3)." A form, a list, an email, and a workflow all lingering under some version of "Unnamed." And then there's my personal...
