Choosing a CRM: adoption and go-to-motion

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Brendan Tolleson is the Co-Founder and CEO of RevPartners, and Diana Marcela Gonzalez is a Senior GTM Strategist at RevPartners who leads the company’s Allbound product line. RevPartners started during Covid and has since grown to over $10 million in revenue and 75+ people, becoming the only Elite HubSpot and Clay partner in the world. The company was built on fractional RevOps, helping B2B companies get a plug-and-play operations team instead of hiring a single generalist, and has since expanded into HubSpot implementations, RevOps training through their RPX program, and Allbound, their fastest growing product line. Allbound is built on three pillars: data intelligence, which is done in Clay and covers enrichment, signals, and list building; brand gravity, which includes SEO, GEO, paid media, and social; and assisted prospecting, where data and brand interactions come together to drive multi-channel outreach at the right time.

In this podcast, we discuss:

* How RevPartners combines data intelligence and brand gravity to run assisted prospecting campaigns where the right message reaches the right person at the right time

* How website visitor de-anonymization can still be a huge lever for early pipeline generation and the best copy to use (and not use)

* How lifecycle stages and lead scoring create the foundation that makes signal-based outbound work

* The ways RevPartners use LinkedIn profile context, buyer persona pain points, and intent data to create contextual outreach

* What RevPartners’ Southbound conference is, why it’s becoming a must-attend event for revenue leaders, and the creative ways RevPartners drives registrations for their conference

* Using automated enrichment cadences and job change triggers to keep your CRM from going stale

* Hubspot vs. Salesforce for your CRM

Episode highlights:

* The key to RevPartners’ Allbound approach is that no channel operates in a silo. Diana explains that they track brand interactions across LinkedIn, website, webinars, and other channels, then weave all of that engagement history into how and when they reach out. A contact who registered for a webinar gets a LinkedIn message asking what topics they’d like covered. A contact who’s been engaging with social posts from a specific thought leader gets invited to hear them speak at Southbound. The result is outreach that feels contextual because it actually is, built on real signals rather than a cold list and a generic sequence.

* Diana walks through how RevPartners uses a tool called Vector for contact-level website visitor de-anonymization. The workflow captures visitors who never fill out a form, enriches them in Clay, categorizes them by ICP and buyer persona, and then generates personalized outreach using their LinkedIn profile and job description. But even with good data, the timing of messaging matters. Brendan shares an early lesson where RevPartners tested automated videos that pitched visitors for a demo as soon as they were identified on the site, and because they were just checking it out and not ready to buy, the response was poor. Afterward, RevPartners shifted toward contextual outreach that matches the page the visitor was on with relevant assets or questions designed to start a conversation rather than deliver a hard sell. From then on, they’ve seen efficacy rates soar.

* Lifecycle stages and lead scoring are how RevPartners determines who to reach out to and when. Diana emphasizes that stages must be fully automated rather than left to manual rep updates, and that contacts should only move forward so conversion reporting between stages stays reliable. Once a contact’s stage is established, it pairs with their buyer persona and ICP categorization, identified via Clay enrichment. The combination of the lifecycle stage and persona categorization helps RevPartners determine what pain to mention and what CTA to use in their messaging.

* On top of using a contact’s lifecycle stage and persona for messaging, RevPartners will use additional context whenever possible to personalize outreach. For instance, for their Southbound conference, they targeted people who engaged with posts from speakers like Yamini Rangan, the CEO of HubSpot, and Varun Anand, Co-Founder of Clay, and invited them to hear those speakers live.

* Diana recommends automated enrichment cadences every three to six months depending on how fast the target audience moves in order to keep your data fresh. What’s more, one of the most important triggers to keep data fresh is job changes, where a contact leaves a company and the system automatically creates the new contact and company records while preserving the historical context of the relationship. Without this, databases go stale and outreach hits people who no longer match the ICP or have moved on entirely.

* Brendan says that Hubspot has now reached feature parity with Salesforce as a CRM and there’s just a feature knowledge gap

Where to find RevPartners:

* LinkedIn

* Diana Marcela Gonzalez

* Brendan Tolleson

* Southbound conference (code RIPPLING for 20% off)

Transcript details:

(00:00) Intro

(03:20) Backgrounds: Brendan’s sales-side journey and Diana’s path from growth marketing to RevOps to leading Allbound

(05:05) RevPartners used to resist the agency label and how they bridge strategy and execution

(08:26) What RevPartners works on with clients

(10:46) The three pillars of Allbound

(12:33) Favorite plays for their own outbounding and with clients

(17:22) Website de-anonymization nuances: validation, accuracy, and what to watch out for

(19:57) How to send contextual messaging that works across different signals

(23:55) Why lifecycle stages, data hygiene, and lead status are foundational to outbound

(28:11) Diana’s screenshare of how RevPartners sets up + thinks about lifecycle stages (YouTube video here)

(29:44) Lead scoring and reporting: how lifecycle stages feed into propensity and intent models

(31:00) Lifecycle messaging examples

(35:49) Choosing the right CRM and why adoption matters more than features for early stage companies

(39:43) The HubSpot versus Salesforce shift and why the barrier to switching has dropped

(41:30) Keeping CRM data fresh with automated enrichment cadences and job change triggers

(43:44) Why Southbound exists and how RevPartners is building a conference that balances timeless strategy with timely tactics

(49:14) How RevPartners is driving Southbound registration with their own creative, segmented campaigns

(51:33) Favorite tools, growth plays, and wrap-up

For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast and to recommend any guests, email noah@thegtmengineer.ai

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