RevPartners on Agency Unfiltered: Actionable Insights from the Fastest Ever to Elite Tier

Elite Status Achieved:  RevPartners Shifts It Into High Gear 

Do it big.  For RevPartners, this is not just a catchy tagline, but a mindset.  Move fast, break stuff, fail along the way, and always DO IT BIG.  It is not posed as a question.  It’s not a suggestion.  It’s not even a declaration.  It is a command.  The HubSpot fanboys and fangirls know that when it comes to doing it big, RevPartners doesn't just talk the talk, we walk the walk.  Fastest-tiering HubSpot Solutions Partner in history to hit platinum?  Check.  Fastest-tiering HubSpot Solutions Partner in history to hit diamond?  Double check.  Fastest-tiering HubSpot Solutions Partner in history to hit ELITE?  You already know.

In assessing the landscape of HubSpot, RevPartners saw a gap and seized the opportunity to operate as a systems integrator focusing on CRM.  We haven’t looked back since.  In this episode of Agency Unfiltered, RevPartners CEO Brendan Tolleson and CRO Matt Bolian sit down once again to talk about the growing pains and the success stories behind RevPartners’ incredible run.  This is one you don’t want to miss!  

If You Scale, You Don’t Fail

Scaling Operations

When you’re the fastest to platinum, diamond, and elite, you're not just doing something right, you're doing something different.  At RevPartners, it starts with the basics.  Matt maintains, “to scale, you must be able to train people extraordinarily quickly and be able to retain your best talent.”  The retention aspect comes from creating a culture where people want to stay.  Although Brendan notes that RevPartners has trained some people so well that we have lost them to customers and competitors, he feels that it is actually a reflection of the RevPartners vision statement:  to unlock the latent potential for human flourishing.

Early on, RevPartners learned the importance of changing gears and the power of saying ‘no’ sometimes. 

According to Brendan, "the more you say 'yes' to different things, you're ultimately saying 'no' to certain things.  We honed in on that message and found it to be another lever for us for growth.” 

This resulted in a decision to standardize what we sold and to be selective in order to scale properly.  RevPartners is now laser focused on offering revops as a service to companies with a HubSpot tech stack.

Two unique approaches that have served RevPartners well are the graduation program and the playbook team.  The graduation program is a 90 day immersion experience where new hires are trained to  “become lethal” in their skills as they must interact with a fictitious client who is very difficult.  According to Matt, the training is so good that 90 days at RevPartners is like a year somewhere else.  During this time, there is no interaction with the first client without a manager.  At the end of the three month block, there is a graduation celebration.  The new hires are no longer becoming lethal, they ARE lethal and must now practice “staying sharp”.  

Another patented approach is the playbook team.  Like an NFL coach whose data analytics crew has already run the numbers on what play to call in a given situation, at RevPartners there is a playbook team who thinks about nothing but standardizing products.  The result?  When a strategist encounters a problem, there is a predetermined, well-thought out solution that solves the problem in a fraction of the time.  According to Matt, “standardization allows us to teach and hire from more diverse backgrounds.”

At RevPartners, everything we implement and think about is tied to our vision of unlocking the latent potential for human flourishing and our mission of democratizing revops by making it accessible, consumable, and actionable. 

It’s no wonder RevPartners has been tearing up the track in the first year and a half.

Scaling People Ops

In a period of 15 months, RevPartners went from 2 employees to 34.  Initially, we had to pay recruiters just to bring people in, but now there’s banging on the door just for a chance to join the fun.  With plans to double in size over the next year, a commitment to culture is more important than ever.  It is common for a company to lose sight of their values and beliefs when they grow.  In a profit over people culture,  it is perhaps expected.  But RevPartners is committed to our lane. 

To help preserve and protect our culture, RevPartners recently brought in a Head of People Ops to streamline the onboarding process as the company continues to bring on new employees.  A belief and desire of RevPartners is to hire from diverse working backgrounds.  To find out in detail how they make this work, check out Matt's chat with the HubSpot Community.  While RevPartners has become adept at finding great talent and nurturing it, we have lapped the field in the area of retention practices.

RevPartners DOES IT BIG when it comes to valuing their employees.  We believe in human beings, not human doers, and back it up big time.  How does the last Friday off of every month sound?  RevPartners calls it a “day of rest” and along with unlimited PTO it is a testament to our commitment to the well-being of our employees beyond the work setting.  While many companies demand you give them your all or find another job,  RevPartners simply asks for your best (not your all). 

Brendan states, “we’re focused on executing our mission and loving our people well”.  Matt adds, “you are seen, you are known, you are loved, you are awesome”. 

When the top two people in a company talk like this, RUN to it.  

As the company has grown, so has RevPartners’ desire to create a sense of belonging.  The work may be remote, but the connections between employees are anything but.  There are several different mechanisms for this such as a “feedback is a gift” channel in Slack.  Here, employees constantly exchange ideas for improvement and celebrate teamwork and wins.  (hilarious GIFs encouraged!)  Bonusly is another team building-type tool whereby employees can give points (converted to real money!) to one another for embodying any of their six cultural ideals.  Revpartners puts on a clinic in scaling with the belief that the creation of space to foster community should be employee run, not something that comes from the top.

Scaling Demand

RevPartners has grown, but not because of outbound or prospecting. 

Matt minces precisely zero words in his belief as to why, “one of our key KPI's of the last year is this:  create a metric butt ton of content…we are going to be everywhere.” 

At RevPartners, there is a strong commitment to the repurposing of content across multiple mediums.  To ensure this occurs, Brendan comments on RevPartners approach to sales and marketing, “we have more marketing people than we do in our sales team because we believe in it so much.”  The content at RevPartners is not just limited to long form blogs and social media posts.  If you like silly parody videos and want to catch a glimpse of the Revpartners work culture, check out this shot across the bow at Salesforce.  As explained by Matt, all of this cover creates easy, warm intros to people.  Who are these people?  According to Brendan, RevPartners serves scaling B2B SaaS companies seeking predictable revenue.

Sometimes, success can breed complacency.  Not at RevPartners.  “We feel like we’re just getting started”.  Brendan notes that the sentiment comes from a place of humility, but is also candid in his follow up line:  “we want to be the most influential and strategic partner that HubSpot has.  Period.” 

To achieve this, RevPartners has a strong belief that you scale faster when you hire based on commitment to vision and mission, not expertise.  To create a broader base, RevPartners also has a desire to create their sense of community at HubSpot and their playbook team is looking to democratize by creating apps.

For RevPartners, the sky's the limit as it is evident they are just beginning to kick it into gear.  Any notion that they may begin to temper their aspirations is quieted by Matt, “We're going to change the world through revops.”