The top 5 GTM challenges professional service firms solve with HubSpot

When I first met Michael Maximoff from Belkins six years ago, he was using Pipedrive at about 10% of its capacity, mainly as a place to store deals. No lead source tracking. No lifecycle management. No attribution.

When I asked how he was reporting on his go-to-market motion, he laughed and said, “We’re not really.” That response revealed a hard truth: despite ambitious goals, the system behind the go-to-market (GTM) operation wasn’t built to support them.

I’m confident the same is happening to you.

You want consistent pipeline. You want a GTM engine that feels repeatable, not reactive. But the systems underneath your motion aren’t strong enough to carry that vision.

Identifying the bottleneck is the first step. Acting on it is the second.

That’s exactly what Michael did. Mole Street rebuilt Belkins’ GTM foundation on HubSpot, moving the operation off shaky ground and onto a system designed for scale and monumental growth.

Since then, Belkins has become an industry-leading GTM consulting firm, supported by a system capable of handling complexity and momentum. That progress came from fixing structural issues in the revenue engine that most teams never address.

This was the core theme of our recent webinar with Belkins and Apollo. We unpacked the hidden GTM failures that stall progress long before pipeline slows and the system-level changes that unlock sustained performance. HubSpot, recognized as a Leader in Gartner’s 2025 Magic Quadrant for CRM, is the platform that makes this possible.

In this post, I’ll break down:

• Why most GTM engines fail silently
• How to spot early signs of system breakdown
• What it takes to align your CRM and outbound motion

If growth matters, but your data, handoffs, or attribution still feel like a black box, this is for you.

1. Broken lifecycle stages lead to reporting that no one trusts

When sales and marketing aren’t aligned, businesses collectively lose around £790 billion each year in productivity and inefficient marketing spend (HubSpot, 2023). This was the most common pain point raised during our webinar and one we see repeatedly in the field. 

Many professional service firms inherit lifecycle stages that:

• Mean different things to different teams
• Change depending on who last touched the record
• Aren’t tied to real buyer behavior

The problem is structural. When lifecycle stages lack clear ownership and logic, reporting breaks down. According to Forrester, more than 25% of organizations lose over $5 million annually due to poor data quality (Forrester, 2024). 

How can you build a scalable, predictable GTM motion when your entire system is built on shifting definitions and broken data? You can’t.

Michael reflected on this exact challenge from his time using Pipedrive during the webinar:

How HubSpot fixes this

In most CRMs, lifecycle stages are just labels that are manually updated, inconsistently used, and disconnected from actual buyer behavior. It’s no surprise, then, that 40% of B2B marketers say they don’t trust the quality of their data for analytics (Forrester, 2023). 

In HubSpot, you can build automated stage progression using contact properties and behavioral triggers. For example:

• A contact becomes an SQL the moment they book a meeting through your website.
• They’re moved to Opportunity once a deal is created in the pipeline.
• They advance to Customer automatically when the deal is marked closed-won.

At Belkins, we helped rebuild their lifecycle logic using these exact HubSpot workflows. It created consistency across sales and marketing, eliminated finger-pointing over lead status, and gave leadership a dashboard they could finally trust.

2. Disconnected outbound activity breaks the CRM handoff

Outbound is still the engine that drives growth for most professional service firms. Yet many teams undermine their own success by running outbound activity outside the CRM.

Research states that 38% of B2B leaders have too many unconnected data sources in their tech stack (Forrester, 2023). I believe this figure to be higher. When outbound operates in isolation, critical signals never make it into the system that drives reporting, attribution, and decision-making.

Gartner (2024) reinforces this point, noting that misalignment across systems creates commercial silos that introduce hidden costs and systemic risk. Those silos ripple through the entire GTM engine, slowing execution, increasing internal friction, and fracturing the customer experience.

Most critically, revenue opportunities outside of the sales function often go unrecognized and untapped.

This is why running outbound outside your CRM is a fundamental GTM failure. Without a single source of truth, teams lose:

• Visibility: No clear record of what happened before a lead hit the pipeline.
• Attribution: You can’t connect outbound efforts to revenue outcomes.
• Context: AEs are flying blind, with no idea how or why a lead was created.
• Accountability: No way to measure outbound performance or coach reps effectively.

How HubSpot fixes this

Many organizations are guilty of running their outbound campaigns on spreadsheets or siloed tools, which are completely disconnected from the CRM. Crucial insights become scattered across different platforms, making it impossible to track activity, attribute revenue accurately, or coordinate follow-up across teams.

This is not part of a winning formula. You want to have your finger on the pulse of all your GTM activity. HubSpot is the asset, the system of record, and the connective tissue that consolidates everything in one place.

In practice, this means:

• Every call, email, and sequence is logged automatically on the contact and company record, ensuring outbound activity contributes to reporting and attribution rather than disappearing upstream.
• Lifecycle stages advance based on real engagement, such as replied emails or booked meetings, keeping sales and marketing aligned on buyer intent.
• Deals are created automatically from qualified responses or intent signals, eliminating manual handoffs and missed opportunities.
• SDRs and AEs see the full activity history, so follow-ups are contextual, timely, and relevant rather than cold or repetitive.

Unifying all of your outbound activities with HubSpot rewards you with a vantage point that gives you full visibility into every touchpoint across the buyer journey. At Mole Street, this is exactly how we implement outbound for clients today. 

Whether teams are using Apollo, Reply.io, Nooks, Expandi, or other outbound tools, we connect them directly to HubSpot so all outreach lives in one place. Go one level deeper and you unlock an entirely new set of GTM capabilities, including:

• Attribution: Outbound activity is measured alongside marketing and sales touchpoints, so teams can see how outreach contributes to pipeline and revenue.
• Reengagement: Reps can follow up intelligently based on past interactions across channels, not guesswork.
• Insight-driven reporting: Leadership can identify which sequences, messages, and channels are actually driving results.
• Omnichannel personalization: Outbound can be personalized based on website behavior, content consumption, ad engagement, and prior conversations.
• Marketing alignment: Email nurtures, paid campaigns, and website activity work in concert with outbound instead of competing with it.

Belkins implemented this exact approach and the impact was profound, immediate, and measurable across every stage of their GTM motion. Leadership gained clear visibility into outbound performance. Handoffs between SDRs and AEs became seamless. And for the first time, the team could confidently measure what was driving results and what wasn’t.

3. Most firms only see a fraction of the buyer journey

Outbound isn’t solely responsible for client acquisition. Prospects will do their due diligence by visiting your website, digesting your content, and evaluating your brand before they ever reply.

Therefore, the entire process of signing clients is built on a connected ecosystem of touchpoints that facilitate the conversion. One of the most important moments in the webinar came when Michael explained how most companies misunderstand “touchpoints.” 

Most teams assume the buyer journey begins when an SDR sends an email. In reality, it starts long before that.

Outreach is only one crucial, isolated action that helps you sign clients. Not only do you need 30–60 touchpoints to happen, but you must have full visibility into them to understand what’s driving engagement, where prospects are dropping off, and how to replicate what actually works.

Without that visibility, even the most aggressive outbound strategy becomes rudderless, wasting time, energy, and capital that would be far better invested elsewhere.

How HubSpot fixes this

HubSpot brings the entire buyer journey into one connected system, from the first anonymous website visit to the moment a deal is closed.

In practice, it allows teams to:

• Track early intent signals such as website visits, ad interactions, and content engagement.
• Log marketing and sales activity in a single, unified contact timeline.
• Attribute pipeline to the full sequence of interactions that influenced a deal, not just the final outbound touch.

With this level of visibility, GTM teams can clearly see what is working, understand where influence truly begins, and optimize the buyer journey from start to finish.

4. Manual GTM processes quietly kill momentum

Speed of execution is one of the most important ingredients in a winning GTM formula. Anything manual introduces friction, delays, and inconsistency, costing time, momentum, and revenue, especially when it comes to go-to-market operations.

The shift is already underway. According to Gartner, by 2028, 60% of B2B seller work will be executed through conversational user interfaces via generative AI sales technologies, up from less than 5% in 2023 (Gartner, 2023). Teams that haven't started automating are already falling behind.

During the webinar, we spoke about the travails of teams still relying on outdated, manual GTM processes, such as:

• Manual lead assignment: New contacts sit idle while someone decides who should follow up, wasting precious time and increasing the risk of leads going cold.
• Manual lifecycle stage updates: Reps are expected to move deals through stages themselves, often based on subjective judgment, leading to inconsistent reporting and pipeline chaos.
• Manual follow-up tasks: Sales relies on sticky notes, calendar reminders, or gut instinct to remember when to reengage, causing valuable prospects to slip through the cracks.

This kind of inefficiency is exactly what modern GTM platforms are designed to eliminate. When outbound execution is paired with a connected CRM, teams can move faster without sacrificing structure, visibility, or accountability.

This is where Apollo, alongside HubSpot, becomes powerful. For context, Apollo is an all-in-one sales intelligence and engagement platform that enables teams to source prospects, manage outbound, and capture engagement signals in one place.

Apollo automates prospecting, sequencing, and follow-up, while HubSpot captures every outbound action in a centralized system of record. This is the exact model Belkins adopted to bring structure, visibility, and accountability to their outbound motion as they scaled.

During the webinar, Eric Quanstrom, VP of GTM Engineering at Apollo, explained how Apollo removes manual effort at the source:

How Apollo and HubSpot solve this problem

Apollo and HubSpot each play a distinct role in a modern GTM system. Apollo is built to drive outbound execution and prospecting at scale. HubSpot manages the CRM, lifecycle automation, and pipeline visibility.

The real challenge most teams face isn’t choosing the right outbound tool. It’s ensuring that outbound activity doesn’t stop at the top of the funnel. When execution tools and the CRM aren’t connected, engagement signals never translate into lifecycle progression, attribution, or revenue insight.

That’s the problem this architecture solves.

What a connected outbound system actually enables

In a connected setup, every component of the GTM system works as one connected unit. Engagement signals are captured as they happen and flow directly into the CRM, where they drive lifecycle progression, automation, and reporting.

What you’ll notice is just how easy, efficient, and repeatable your GTM becomes. To put it simply, HubSpot keeps everything moving by automating each step in sequence. 

How a connected GTM system responds to engagement

Stage 1: Outbound engagement (Apollo). A prospect replies to an outbound email, books a meeting, or shows intent by opening, clicking, or visiting key pages. That engagement signal syncs automatically into the CRM.

Stage 2: HubSpot coordinates the next steps. The lifecycle stage updates to Engaged, lead status changes to New, ownership is assigned to the right SDR or AE, a deal is created, and workflows trigger the appropriate follow-up. Manual work is removed and nothing slips through the cracks.

Stage 3: Outcome. Same-day follow-up, clean handoffs with full context, accurate attribution and reporting, and clear visibility into pipeline impact and revenue contribution.

As you can see from the visual above, HubSpot acts as a bridge between systems, where information moves from outbound engagement into clear next steps inside the CRM. When your systems are connected this way, automation replaces manual work, giving your GTM motion the consistency required to generate momentum.

5. Forecasting and attribution collapse without a single source of truth

You can’t forecast accurately with bad data. And you can’t optimize with incomplete attribution. As a co-founder myself, the most important questions are always the same: how close are we to our goals, and what’s actually moving the needle?

All leadership teams want this. And I’m sure you do too.

Business leaders rely on dashboards to make data-driven decisions that move them closer to their goals. But if you lift the hood and look at the underlying GTM building blocks, quite often what you’ll see is fragmented data, broken lifecycle logic, and disconnected outbound activity.

This is hugely consequential.

Go-to-market success depends on running controlled experiments to understand what actually works. But when data is fragmented, and lifecycle logic is broken, those experiments fall apart. Forecasting and attribution stop behaving like disciplines rooted in evidence and start feeling like educated guesses.

How HubSpot solves it

HubSpot brings order to the chaos by aligning your GTM data into one cohesive system, so reporting isn't just more visible, it's actually reliable.

• Real-time dashboards pull from live CRM activity, giving you an always-up-to-date view of pipeline health, rep performance, and conversion rates across the funnel.
• Accurate forecasting is driven by behavior-based lifecycle stages and deal stage probability, removing subjectivity and guesswork from projections
• Multi-touch revenue attribution models show which campaigns, channels, and touchpoints actually influenced closed-won deals, so you can double down on what’s working.
• One source of truth unifies data across sales, marketing, and service so every team is aligned, and leadership can make decisions with confidence.

HubSpot has become the GTM backbone for professional service firms

After implementing HubSpot across client tech stacks for years, one pattern is impossible to ignore: most professional services firms have ambitious growth goals, but their go-to-market systems were never designed to support them.

The issue is rarely effort. It’s architecture.

That’s why I invited Michael from Belkins into this conversation.

His story mirrors what we see every day, which is teams investing a lot of time and energy into a GTM system that cannot support their ambitions. Belkins’ evolution is what happens when that gap is finally closed.

When the right components are connected, every GTM motion starts working together like a Ferrari engine, where every part is engineered to move in sync and convert power into momentum.

Apollo plays a critical role at the top of the funnel, helping teams identify, engage, and activate prospects at scale. HubSpot then serves as the system of record, capturing every signal, automating progression, and giving leadership the visibility to steer with confidence.

Speed. Accuracy. Maximum velocity. 

How much faster would you reach your growth goals if your GTM system actually worked as one?

If you want to turn GTM outbound into predictable revenue in HubSpot, read our full breakdown here.