642 - Stop Being a Platform Expert - Why Business Growth Advisors Win in the AI Era with Sarah McDevitt

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8d ago 38:37

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Why you should listen

Sarah McDevitt shares insider insights from HubSpot's Partner Experience team, revealing what separates successful partners from those stuck in license-selling mode
Learn why data quality is the hidden bottleneck preventing partners from delivering on AI promises—and how to fix it before it destroys client trust
Discover HubSpot's innovative use of AI tools to democratize partner feedback and accelerate decision-making across their ecosystem

You're stuck selling licenses when you should be solving business problems—but every time you pitch "transformation," clients just want to know the price per user.

In this episode, I sit down with Sarah McDevitt, who leads the Partner Experience team at HubSpot, and we cut through the AI hype to talk about what actually matters. Sarah spent 16 years in agency land before joining the "dark side" (her words) at HubSpot seven years ago, so she knows both sides of the partner equation intimately.

We explore why the best partners stop being platform experts and start being business growth experts. Sarah reveals how HubSpot uses AI internally to democratize partner feedback, the real reason behind their partner program changes, and why selling AI without fixing data structure first will be your downfall.

If you're a consultant partnering with any SaaS platform—or considering it—this conversation will change how you think about your role. Stop reading the toaster manual to clients. Start asking better questions about their actual business problems.

About Sarah McDevitt

Sarah Stone McDevitt is a Radio broadcasting graduate who spent the early part of her career in local radio before moving into agency life. She spent 16 years working across creative, media, content and web development agencies before joining HubSpot almost 7 years ago. She initially joined to manage the CC team in EMEA, and shortly after that, she added the EMEA Onboarding team and Pro Services teams to her management portfolio. In 2020 at the height of the pandemic, she took over the Pro Services NAM and EMEA businesses. Today, Sarah leads HubSpot's Partner Experience team, where she focuses on creating exceptional experiences for HubSpot's global partner ecosystem.

In this role, she has emerged as a thought leader in the field of Relational Intelligence (RI), pioneering approaches that demonstrate how human relationship-building and emotional intelligence work alongside artificial intelligence to drive business success. Sarah advocates for the irreplaceable value of authentic human connections in an increasingly AI-driven world, showing how RI and AI complement each other to create more meaningful customer and partner relationships.

In her personal life, Sarah is married with four children and lives in Dublin, Ireland. She proudly served 13 years in the reserve army in Ireland as a corporal in a communications unit. She is the founder and chairperson of a charity called Help Us Give Smiles which has seen her travel to Kenya for almost 20 years working with vulnerable children and communities. And finally, she is an LGBTQ+ activist focused in particular on the rights of LGBTQ+ parents.

Resources and Links

Hubspot.com
Sarah's LinkedIn profile
Watch “Why the Future of Work is More Human Than You Think“
Speechify
Notebook LM
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