From side gig to booming business
In just over a decade, CEO Louis Garcia has successfully scaled his business—Media Garcia—from a freelance side gig into a booming growth-focused agency.
The business tripled its team in recent years and experienced double-digit sales growth in 2023.
One of the big milestones in Media Garcia’s growth was becoming a solutions partner for HubSpot. Since then, Louis and his team have leveraged the platform to help clients implement CRM, marketing, and sales solutions that enable them to thrive.
Louis spends much of his day discovering customers’ pain points and optimizing and automating to solve them. Naturally, he takes the same approach to his own business’ development.
Managing subscriptions manually
Media Garcia’s commerce process was the friction point Louis was most keen to solve.
Historically, the business used a patchwork of disjointed software to bill customers and get paid.
They used PandaDoc to create quotes and QuickBooks to invoice with no automated methods to receive and reconcile payments.
Their busy team was constantly bouncing between different systems. Coordinating even straightforward e-commerce tasks was laborious and time-consuming. Staff spent hours creating quotes from scratch, reconciling customer payments, and trying to make sense of siloed data to analyze performance.
“We were hopping between different software, trying to find the best way to transact,” says Louis. “I knew there was a better way to do it. It just wasn’t clear right away for me.”
Delays in getting paid
Without a fast and reliable payment method, Media Garcia was still receiving checks from some customers. This caused delays in getting paid and created more work for the team who had to follow up and chase late payments.
Louis says: “A customer would say, ‘I'm gonna send you a check in the mail.’ So I'd have to wait around for it to show up. Then when it's still not there, there’s all that extra follow-up and lots of waiting and wondering involved.”
Managing recurring payments was another pain point. “I wasn't an expert at QuickBooks at the time,” says Louis. “So I might send out invoices too early or too late. The little details were just off and that would rub my customers the wrong way and lead to more confusion.”
Wowed by Commerce Hub
When Media Garcia saw the positive impact HubSpot’s solutions were having on its customers, they wanted the same results for themselves. So they implemented HubSpot CRM and its array of connected Hubs to ensure they grew their own business as effectively as their customers’.
At the same time, Louis integrated elements of his existing technology stack into HubSpot. The company integrated Slack, ClickUp, and QuickBooks to bring all their tools, tactics, and data together—and drive even more efficiency.
When Louis heard that HubSpot was adding Commerce Hub to its customer platform, he was intrigued. Commerce Hub provided the flexibility to run their entire commerce process through their CRM. Quoting, payments, reporting, and customer data were all under one roof. With the power of their commerce data and CRM combined, they’d have insights to optimize business performance.
Louis said: “I was already familiar with the HubSpot tool set and I liked how all these hubs worked together and sent data back and forth. I thought, if they’re going to include commerce in the customer platform, it’s probably going to add simplicity and value to how we function.”
Switching with ease
Media Garcia decided to implement HubSpot Commerce and found the switch simple.
The first tool they used was Quotes, which instantly accelerated the quote creation process. HubSpot Quotes automatically pulls relevant information from customers’ deal records into beautifully branded quote templates. Media Garcia customizes them further, using reusable text blocks (snippets) to add purchase terms or buyer comments depending on the specific engagement.
The benefit? The team now creates and sends professional quotes in minutes.
Louis said: “After I have a meeting with a client who’s requested a proposal, it's not uncommon to turn around their quote within the hour. That speed is impressive to our prospects because it demonstrates the work we can do using HubSpot products.”
Turning quotes into cash
Media Garcia uses Commerce Hub’s Invoices tool to get paid faster. The smart tool pulls data directly from existing quotes and deals to minimize manual input, so invoices are quickly created and sent. Next, Media Garcia uses Payment Links to eliminate the pain from collecting payments.
With Payment Links, staff easily create shareable links to collect payments instantly from customers. Links can be pasted into any sales channel, including invoices, quotes, emails, and web pages in a couple of clicks. Customers love how easy it is to pay via Payment Links. Even better, Media Garcia eliminated up to 90% of the admin work that used to be required to get paid.
Media Garcia also uses Subscriptions to manage recurring payments easily. It’s yet another low-touch, time-saving process. They just set a billing schedule for the customer, then Commerce Hub automatically bills the buyer to collect regular payments.
Louis says: “Commerce Hub is easy to set up and it plays nice with all your other HubSpot tools, enabling your business to build a central source of truth.”
Connected hubs working together
Having commerce data connected with their other Hubs—including Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, and Content Hub—is a powerful boost for the business.
Combining commerce and sales data gives them a deeper understanding of their revenue performance. They set up dashboards for everything from total gross revenue across all payments, to revenue by product, conversion rates, average ticket size, and more. For the first time, they have insights into customers’ preferences and other trends so they can make informed decisions about how to engage customers more effectively.
On the service side, they link payment details with service tickets to prompt outreach when a customer is nearing the end of a deal.
Closing 3x more deals
Since streamlining invoices and payments with Commerce Hub, Media Garcia has cut its sales cycle in half. The average time to close a deal has fallen from 68 days to 34, giving the team valuable time back to reach more prospects and earn more revenue.
The company’s conversion rate has almost tripled, with 42% of deals closed now—up from 15%. Media Garcia’s average deal size, meanwhile, has soared by almost 150%. So they’re enjoying significant revenue growth with less effort.
Louis says: “We’re closing more and we’re closing faster, which I’m stoked about.”
65 days saved each year
Media Garcia is more efficient and productive using Commerce Hub. Louis estimates they save at least 10 hours a week by automating commerce-related admin and no longer having to wrestle siloed tools.
Across the year, this adds up to 65 days of saved resources, which they invest back into developing their services and growing the business.
“Before Commerce Hub, we spent a lot of time logging into multiple tools, setting up proposals, and handling payments. Now, a lot of things are automated and so much slack that used to be part of the whole experience is gone.”
Happy customers
As a business that puts customers first, Louis appreciates Commerce Hub’s positive impact on them. Customers save time because they pay more conveniently. Plus, their subscriptions are hassle-free, and proposals are delivered to them with a faster turnaround. All of this enhances their experience with Louis’ brand.
Overall, Louis says he feels better prepared for the future with Commerce Hub.
“Commerce Hub has removed the friction from money making its way to the business,” he says. “It allows me to streamline the way that I sell, standardize it, and just make it simpler to sell and collect money at the end of the day.”
He adds: “As we double, triple in growth over this next year, I don’t have to worry about our proposals and quoting and payment schedules. I know that’s all handled by Commerce Hub.”
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