Partnerships have always been important to Six & Flow. It’s how we’ve grown to where we are at the speed we have.
It’s how we’ve brought accelerated growth to our clients. It’s how we’ve developed our team and it’s often how we’ve differentiated ourselves in the market.
We’ve developed a lot of partnerships, each playing an important part in our story, but there’s one that’s always been core to our DNA.
HubSpot.
Our partnership with HubSpot not only allowed us to bring best-in-breed tools to our customers, but it also helped us define who we are as a business and how we go to market.
It goes deeper than re-selling.
We became a HubSpot partner in late 2015 and over the past 6 years, we’ve watched their meteoric growth - and at times, playing our own small (very small) part in it too.
But with that growth comes a changing landscape with new challenges (and always being a glass half full kind of guy, new opportunities too).
The shift to CRM platform and the matured enterprise-grade toolsets coupled with SMB ease, has ignited the market. More people want HubSpot now and the market apathy or love for the status quo that the market incumbents have leant on for so long, it’s not working anymore.
The market is changing. It has changed.
HubSpot is attracting (and delivering for) bigger customers with bigger needs.
Global needs.
The market is ready for HubSpot and its homogenous approach to CRM as a platform. Not a Frankenstein’s monster. Power and flexibility without the metaphorical punch in the face of a user experience.
But HubSpot’s fast growth is a potential problem for HubSpot solutions providers. It’s a billion-dollar company growing at over 40% per year. That is rapid growth and as much as I’d love to tell you Six & Flow is growing THAT fast… it’s not.
So how do we continue to keep pace with HubSpot? How do we deliver for customers with increasing global needs? How do we make sure our team are developing to stay the best in the ecosystem? And how do we open up even more opportunities for our clients to grow?
Partnership.
Agencies growing to support businesses in new regions is not new. But it’s often driven by acquisition or a meeting on ‘unequals’. A bigger swallowing a smaller. It’s not partnership.
Acquisition doesn’t take long. Integration does. Culture, alignment, process all needs a huge amount of focus - and that’s before you get to delivering.
Not to mention a loss of autonomy and the inevitable fear of uncertainty that comes with change. It all takes focus and importantly, it takes time.
And for the end customer, acquisition is not a mark of quality. You work with companies within the group because you have to - not because they’re the best.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s worked countless times. But time is of the essence. Global clients have global HubSpot needs now.
And, so, that brings me back to partnerships.
We know that as an agency, we are very, very good at what we do. In 2021, we were HubSpot’s best performing independent agency, globally. But outside of the UK, Ireland and Canada - how we help our clients was limited. If you wanted to grow outside of our regions, we’d wish you well and help where we could. But that was about the extent of it.
There are markets we don’t have insight into. Colloquialisms we don’t understand. Languages we don’t speak. There are areas of growth we can’t help our clients with.
But today sees the start of something different.
Today we’re incredibly proud to announce an alliance of the worlds best independent HubSpot Elite partners. Webs, InboundCycle, Media Junction, Hype & Dexter and Six & Flow.
The Global Hub Alliance.
‘Growth’ should be built in a way that works for everyone. It should work for your clients, work for your team and work for your business too. Partnership driven growth delivers on that.
Through the alliance, we’re able to quickly expand to the needs of our clients wanting to grow anywhere in the world. We’re able to bring in skillsets and insights that we don’t have. Co-sell, co-deliver, co-train.
If you’re a UK based business and you want to expand into mainland Europe, Australia, New Zealand, North or South America - we can do that now.
And we’re able to do it with the best in the business. Those at the top of their game and we’re able to lead and manage that growth for our clients - a one-agency feel, with multi-agency impact.
This is the next step-change in growth. Not just for us, but for our clients and team members too.
And that’s exciting for a lot of reasons.
The Global Hub Alliance. Local hands, global reach.