What Most Companies Get Wrong About Growth, AI, and HubSpot
Most people see polished marketing dashboards, clean pipelines, and tidy automation diagrams on LinkedIn. But behind the scenes, many growing companies are struggling with something far more basic: getting their CRM, follow-up, and AI tools to actually work for them.
In the first episode of the HubSpot Hints Podcast, I sat down with Jessie Warner, CEO of AchieveCMO, to talk through his journey across Workfront, Lendio, Spingo, Actify, and now fractional CMO leadership. The conversation revealed a truth that anyone in RevOps, marketing, or HubSpot land needs to hear.
1. The big industry secret: most teams still aren’t using their CRM correctly
Jessie has worked hands-on with 50–60 companies. His verdict?
Teams want AI to solve everything, but many haven’t set up basic attribution, built a real follow-up process, or even ensured someone picks up the phone when leads call. Companies between 10 and 200 employees are still learning foundational CRM skills — even while the tooling around them gets more advanced.
2. Actify’s early breakthrough: revenue sitting in “garbage” leads
In 2016, Jessie’s team discovered a million-dollar opportunity hiding in plain sight: stalled leads. Before mainstream AI, they built their own models to chat with prospects, schedule calls, and deliver conversations back to Vivint’s call center.
The results were staggering — more than $1M generated in year one from leads previously written off.
It was an early signal of something powerful: follow-up quality matters more than lead quantity.
3. The AI adoption gap is wider than anyone thinks
Jessie highlights a painful reality.
AI is sprinting ahead — agents, automation, video creation, even tools that move your mouse for you — while most businesses are still opening ChatGPT once a week for content ideas. The technology curve is accelerating, but the adoption curve is barely moving.
For agencies, RevOps teams, and HubSpot partners, this gap is the opportunity. Companies don’t need more tools. They need help implementing them.
4. Why this matters for HubSpot partners and marketers
Whether you run a RevOps agency, manage HubSpot for clients, or lead a growth team inside a SaaS company, the takeaways are clear:
• Don’t assume teams are more advanced than they are.
• Build simple, durable systems first — attribution, follow-up, automation.
• Use AI as a multiplier, not a magic trick.
• Look for revenue hiding in existing data, not just net-new leads.
This is exactly where great partners stand out: diagnosing gaps, simplifying tech, and helping teams get real leverage from their CRM.