Why Artificial Intelligence Matters for Partners

As HubSpot Solutions Partners, you are at the forefront of delivering remarkable solutions and services to our shared customers. Whether you're a marketing agency, a sales consultant, a systems integrator, an implementation specialist, or anything in between, the rise of AI has the potential to significantly impact your business.

By staying up-to-date on the latest AI trends and tools, you can ensure that you are well-positioned to meet the evolving needs of your clients and continue delivering exceptional results. As a HubSpot Solutions Partner, you have access to the latest AI technologies and resources, enabling you to stay ahead of the curve and provide ongoing value to your clients.

Top Considerations, Opportunities and Use Cases of AI for Professional Services Businesses:

Leveling the Playing Field for SMBs

In the epic David vs Goliath battle of SMBs taking on large incumbents, AI is the slingshot that levels the playing field.

Just as inbound marketing previously helped small and medium-sized businesses compete with much larger companies, AI is now providing these businesses with powerful tools to streamline operations, improve customer experiences, and drive business results.

With AI, even teams of one or small organizations can go to market with nearly the same sophistication as companies with tens of thousands of employees, and at a fraction of the cost. This technological shift is enabling many more businesses across numerous sectors to succeed and grow.

Efficiency Gains, Increase Effectiveness and Focus Time on Higher Value Tasks

It's clear that AI presents a significant opportunity for massive efficiency gains. In our conversations with HubSpot Solutions Partners, we've heard about some unique efficiency gains that are already helping them succeed. From streamlining onboarding to accelerating research gathering and improving work effectiveness, AI is helping partners achieve more with less time and resources.

For example, consider the onboarding process. Partners are beginning to leverage generative AI to increase efficiency. By collecting key information from new clients, they can feed that data into prompts and accelerate the onboarding process, getting clients up to speed in record time. First sales sequence? Check. First marketing email? Check. First three blog articles ready? Check.

Efficiency gains can also lead to better effectiveness. By boosting productivity by as much as 2.5 hours per day, your team can re-allocate that time to driving greater effectiveness in their outputs. As a HubSpot Solutions Partner, you have the opportunity to harness the power of AI to unlock these efficiency gains and achieve even more impressive results for your clients.

The impact of AI on marketing and sales is already significant. In fact, 89% of marketers say AI improves the quality of their content, and 86% of sales professionals report AI makes prospecting efforts more effective. This technology is transforming numerous aspects of business operations, from gathering customer research to responding to support requests. With the power of AI, businesses can redefine productivity, achieving even better results with less effort. As a HubSpot Solutions Partner, you can leverage AI tools to enhance your own productivity while providing exceptional value to your clients.

With AI tools handling menial tasks and streamlining operations, your employees can better focus on what matters most. Partners we have spoken with share that their employees are freeing up time previously spent on repetitive, time-consuming tasks, and are now able to focus on activities that bring them joy and meaning in their roles. This improved focus can lead to higher levels of productivity, increased job satisfaction, and better overall outcomes for clients. At HubSpot, we are committed to helping our partners harness the power of AI to unlock these kinds of benefits and drive significant value for their clients.

Competitive Advantage for Early Adopters

Adopting new technology early can be a key differentiator for businesses, separating those that thrive from those that struggle to keep up. While many technologies have failed to live up to their hype, generative AI is proving to be one of the most promising advancements in tech. With its ability to streamline operations, improve outcomes, and drive growth, businesses that adopt generative AI are more likely to be winners than losers in the current landscape.

As a HubSpot Solutions Partner, you have the opportunity to stay ahead of the curve and help your clients achieve success in the age of AI.

If there is a single piece of advice we have here, it’s that you and your team should be getting hands on with generative AI, brainstorming ways you can build it into your processes and thinking of new innovative ways it can add value.

By doing this, you have the opportunity to create a competitive advantage within the ecosystem. Whether it’s with the services you provide, the efficiencies you gain and/or the products you build -- being late to the party is not an option.

Innovation with New Product Development

Innovation is a major opportunity for HubSpot Solutions Partners, particularly when it comes to developing and building new apps, products, or internal tools. By leveraging the power of AI, partners can create innovative solutions that streamline operations and drive better outcomes for clients.

For example, one HubSpot Solutions Partner we spoke to is developing an internal app that uses a client intake form with specific fields of key information. When submitted, the app automatically pushes the inputs into a pre-set prompt in a ChatGPT-like model, generating a remarkable client proposal as the output.

This solution helps the partner human-edit and kick off the client engagement faster than ever before, creating a more streamlined and efficient process. As a HubSpot Solutions Partner, you have the opportunity to leverage AI to develop innovative solutions that drive efficiency and better outcomes for your clients.

Client Objections You Might Hear

A major consideration to be aware of is the potential objections you might face now or in the coming months from clients about generative AI. 

Some of these objections you may have already heard, but if you haven’t, be on the watch:

• Objection: “With ChatGPT, I can create blogs just as quickly myself now, why do I need to pay you to do this?”
• Objection: “I’m paying you X, but I know you can use AI now, so can I see a reduction in pricing next week?”
• Objection: “I don’t trust AI and I'm worried you are using or will use it.”

These are just a few examples, but we will cover more objections and how to handle them in a later section.

Transparency with Clients, Leads to Better Outcomes

Client objections lead us to another consideration (and opportunity). In moments of distrust around new technology and unknown implications, it’s critical that you as a solutions partner consider being transparent with your clients about your use and knowledge of generative AI.

And while at first glance, this might seem like a concern, you can actually use this to your advantage. Many of the partners we spoke with while developing this guide shared that they’re already using generative AI tools to produce work for their clients, but they’re not doing it behind the client's back.

Instead, they share this information up front before proceeding with the work. They explain to the client how generative AI is part of their process, how it adds value to the client faster, and how they have a strict process around human-led reviewing and editing. All of this assures the client that they're in good hands and that generative AI, when used properly, can be a competitive differentiator for them as a result.

"At Ascend, our goal is to be a trusted advisor for our clients. As such, we've taken a proactive approach to AI. We've implemented pilot programs and encourage our team to research and use AI tools (with guardrails in place to protect client data). We're open about all of our initiatives with clients. 

Your clients know about AI. They are already using ChatGPT on their own. As an agency, you can't ignore this elephant in the room. If you do, your clients will either think you are behind the times or that you're hiding something. Neither is desirable. Instead, use this opportunity to be transparent with clients and position your agency as a leader in this space."

- Anne Shenton, Ascend Inbound Marketing

Upselling Your Services with AI

Another consideration and opportunity is leveraging generative AI to upsell your services without a lot of added effort. With the efficiency gains you can get from generative AI tools, you can quickly create 'prototype' or 'sample' work, such as blog topic lists, articles, landing pages, marketing emails, sequences, and more that you might not have had the time to create before at no cost. 

And we all know the saying ‘seeing is believing'.

So, by quickly creating some no-cost sample work to show your clients, you can demonstrate the value upfront of what they might expect from you when expanding into other services you offer.

AI's Impact on Services

As solutions partners, you need to be mindful of the impact generative AI might have on your existing services, as well as the opportunities it creates for adding new services. By becoming an early adopter, you can safeguard your services while creating new opportunities for growth.

Impact on Existing Services:

• For partners who offer content-related services, consider embedding AI into your process. Whether you use it to generate ideas, outlines, or first drafts, you can quickly adapt your content services in an AI world.
• For partners who focus on onboarding, consider what we mentioned earlier about increasing efficiency in getting clients onboarded and started with HubSpot faster.
• Partners we spoke with also noted that they're increasing the velocity of their project deliverables and reducing the time spent on research, which oftentimes is an unpaid service activity that can boost your profits.
• Or as we mentioned earlier with upselling your services, you can now quickly prototype creative projects, debug code, deliver development projects faster, and refocus your delivery team's time onto higher-impact activities.

Impact on Service Expansion:

Generative AI introduces plenty of opportunities to expand into new service offerings. For example, some partners are beginning to offer:

• Consulting on AI strategies, technology, and best practices
• Implementation of AI technology, processes, privacy guardrails, and strategies
• Training on AI technology, best practices, prompt creation, and privacy
• Building, implementing, and optimizing chatbots that leverage AI
• Debugging or troubleshooting code issues
• AI audits and strategy

Adapting Pricing Models

Another consideration related to services is your pricing models. Do you use a fixed-price model, retainer model, points-based model, or project-based model? Whatever model you use, make sure you consider the potential impact generative AI could have on it.

From the partners we spoke to, many were concerned about certain pricing models that could be questioned by clients when you're able to produce work in less time. Many of them have already adopted and/or are considering points-based, value-based, and retainer models. Make sure you think through the objections you might receive and how you might need to adapt your pricing model.