Rethinking Service Delivery in the AI Era with Noah Berk | Episode 265

Episode Summary

AI is unlocking cost structures that were previously impossible in professional services. Noah Berk, Co-Founder of Aptitude 8 — the #2 HubSpot solution partner in North America — joins Greg Alexander to explore how AI is reshaping service delivery, pricing, and the SaaS landscape. From cutting HubSpot implementations from over $100K to as little as $10K, to navigating AI sprawl and the SaaSocalypse debate, Noah shares what’s actually changing on the ground — and what it means for boutique firm owners.

Key Takeaways

• How Aptitude 8 uses AI to cut HubSpot implementation costs from $100K+ to as little as $10K
• The “AI sprawl” challenge and why governance matters for your firm
• Whether the SaaSocalypse is real or media hype
• How to right-size your SaaS stack for your business needs
• A new HubSpot program built exclusively for Collective 54 members

About the Guest

Noah Berk

CO-FOUNDER · APTITUDE 8

Noah Berk is Co-Founder of Aptitude 8, the #2 HubSpot solution partner in North America and a top 10 global partner for two consecutive years. Formed through the merger of two HubSpot Elite Partners, Aptitude 8 specializes in helping professional services firms implement world-class CRM and marketing automation — now at a fraction of the traditional cost through AI-assisted deployment. Noah is a Collective 54 member.

Full Transcript

Greg Alexander: Hey everybody, welcome to the Pro Serv Podcast, brought to you by Collective 54. This is Greg Alexander, your host. If you’re new to this show, this show is dedicated to founders of boutique professional services firms. So if you market, sell, and deliver expertise for a living, this is for you. On this show, we aim to do three things. We want to help you make more money, make scaling easier, and make an exit achievable.

On this episode, we’re going to talk about rethinking service delivery in the AI era. And we have a long-standing, well-respected member with us, Noah Berk. And Noah, in my opinion, sees things a little bit sooner than some in professional services. That’s for a few reasons — one, he’s a very observant individual, but he’s also in a business that puts him at the forefront of things like AI transformation. So I wanted him to come on the show and share with us a little bit about what he’s seeing.

I also have something to share with you at the end of the show. Noah has built something for Collective 54 members, and I want to have him get a chance to share that with you. I’m excited about it. But before we jump into all of that, Noah, it’s been a while since you’ve been on the show, so if you wouldn’t mind, would you reintroduce yourself to the audience?

Noah Berk: Yeah, absolutely. Well, again, thank you for having me. It’s great to be back. So, I’m Noah Berk. I am the co-founder of Aptitude 8. Aptitude 8 is the number 2 HubSpot solution partner in North America, top 10 globally now for two consecutive years, and to date was actually the merger of two HubSpot Elite Partners into one. I was originally the co-founder of OBL, and we did the merger because we recognized the two of us together were better than apart, and so far it’s been one heck of a journey to where we are today and the leadership position we’re in the ecosystem, the marketplace.

Greg Alexander: Okay, fantastic. All right, so as I mentioned at the start, we’re going to talk about how AI has opened up a new way to design and deliver work. And I know that you have been experimenting with that, and some things are now doable that previously were cost-prohibitive to do. But because of this new technology, we can do it. So why don’t I just start with that softball and maybe have you explain that a little bit, and if you have an example or two, that would be great.

Noah Berk: Yeah, absolutely. So, I think one of the promises of AI — for the most part, people have been using it as a chatbot up until very recently, and that really has to do with, I would say, the evolution of Claude that a lot of us have seen. Whether that’s with Claude Cowork or Claude Code. And instead of just being a chatbot now, it can actively do things for you as a user. And so that was really the next evolution of AI — instead of just asking it questions and being able to surface knowledge for yourself, you’re able to actually say, hey, listen, I need you to build XYZ for me, and actually have it go build it.

Not just code, not just developing software, but actually working on the applications you use each and every day. And so we quickly recognized and understood the capabilities of this type of software, and we’ve been using it to drastically reduce our deployment costs and deployment times for clients, leveraging Claude itself to enable us to do things that, honestly, would have been way more expensive even 6 months ago.

Greg Alexander: Yep. You know, sometimes when I talk to professional services owners like yourself who’ve had that revelation, their first reaction is fear, because they say, well, shit, I bill by the hour. Claude is so fast now, it takes me fewer hours to deliver the work, so my bill to my client is gonna be less. This is a bad thing. I reframe that to a positive — I’ll share that in a second — but I would like to get your response to that concern.

Noah Berk: Oh, well, I actually look at it as a good thing, because we’re opening up a much larger total addressable market who normally could not afford to hire us for the type of services that we provide. There’s not enough talent in the HubSpot ecosystem to be able to deliver all the services that people want, simply put. And the only way to be able to do it is by essentially empowering your team members to use AI to be a force multiplier for themselves.

And I think the other thing you’ll probably mention there is you can update your pricing. You can start doing more outcome-based pricing and capture the margin, because you understand the work that needs to get done versus necessarily focusing as much on the hours. So we’ve actually moved our business to some outcome-based pricing for a particular type of projects where we’ve seen how much time it takes to deliver those projects, and recognized our clients actually prefer that model in some regard.

Greg Alexander: Great answer — I agree with you 100%. I would add this. There’s a concept in economics called elasticity of demand, and not to get too academic, but what it basically means is that for every one unit cost reduction, there’s approximately a four-fold increase in demand. So as things get less expensive, more people buy it.

So in your case, there might have been a whole market that wanted to implement HubSpot in a world-class way, but they couldn’t do it because to hire an implementation firm was just so expensive, so they never did it. And now, you can do this for them much more cost-effectively, so all those people that previously couldn’t afford your service now will lean in and buy it. So in the end, it’s a positive. Yes, some of your deals might get smaller, but you’ll be doing way more deals in the process and you’ll come out ahead. So that’s my two cents, and I’m seeing that across Collective 54, and I’m so excited about it, because sometimes that was the barrier — demand was constrained by price, so if price goes down, demand goes up.

Alright, my next question, Noah — this is one that I’m personally struggling with, because I’m one of those entrepreneurs who likes to chase the shiny object. Now, because of all these wonderful tools, it seems like everything’s possible. How do you determine — when everything’s possible — how do you choose what to do?

Noah Berk: Oh, that’s a really great question. In fact, everyone’s experiencing that. There are thousands of use cases that are 100% possible. Do you develop your own applications? Do you build on applications? Do you just enable team members? What’s happened, unfortunately or fortunately, is you now have AI sprawl. AI fragmentation. Every SaaS company has AI built into it. Then you have Gemini, you have Claude, you have Copilot, you have all sorts of different tools out there. And so what’s ended up happening in the ecosystem is people don’t know what to use, when to use it, why to use it. And it’s actually causing a lot of challenges with professional services.

How do I manage cost? Like, yes, you could use Claude to go ahead and update your calendar, and you’ll burn through tokens when you could have just easily clicked on your own calendar and made the updates yourself. And so what we’re seeing happening, at least in my particular case, is with AI sprawl you have technology sprawl — you don’t know what technology to use. Do I use Claude to do this? Do I use HubSpot to do this? Do I use Gong to do my call recordings and my follow-ups?

That’s also causing a lot of issues inside organizations, because you’re giving your employees these tools and they’re just using them for everything and anything without any governance, oversight, explanation, or even understanding. I bet if we did a survey of this group and said, how many of you understand the difference between chat, Cowork, and Code? And then to be able to say, what are the use cases? And then be able to say, do we build, do we develop, or do we just simply go to that HubSpot page and look at a report versus try to pull it via Claude? Companies are really struggling with this, because there are so many things you can do, but there’s no governance around it in most cases. And this is about to be a problem that explodes and also causes constraint in the marketplace, because people don’t know what to use or how to use AI.

Greg Alexander: Yeah, I agree. You know, the way that I’m dealing with it — self-admittedly, not perfectly — but as an entrepreneur, I have a vision for my firm. And some elements of that vision appear impossible at times, because there’s not enough dollars, not enough time, not enough people, whatever the constraint is. And then I say to myself, okay, so are those constraints real now? Have some of those constraints been removed? And in some cases the answer is yes, so that’s where I’m focusing my AI investment — now that those obstacles have gone away, there are things that I’ve always wanted to do that I now can do.

The other thing it’s caused me to do is rethink my vision, because when I came up with the vision for Collective 54 back at the end of 2019, the world was limited as to how big you could really dream — and that’s not the case anymore, so it’s really intriguing.

You know, you are one of the guys who I think understands the SaaS business better than most. You built one of the best implementation shops in SaaS there is. There’s a lot of talk out there about the SaaSpocalypse — that we can all vibe-code our way to riches and we don’t need these SaaS tools anymore. So from the inside, give me the real skinny. Is the SaaSpocalypse real, or is it a bunch of media bullshit?

Noah Berk: No, I’ll say it’s more of media bullshit, and I’ll give you the reason why. It’s not because you can’t vibe-code a simple CRM — you absolutely can. But what is real in this world of the SaaSocalypse is that the SaaS business models — where they get you in with a starter or entry-level product and then continue to upgrade you to professional and enterprise — those are being challenged. As you’re upgrading these solutions, there may be 80 different features in enterprise versus Pro, but you only need one of those. So companies, instead of saying we’re getting rid of the CRM, will keep the Pro but build something for that one feature they need — a point solution. So where the concern in SaaS is really coming down to is: do people need to upgrade?

The second constraint in SaaS isn’t that you don’t need a HubSpot or a Salesforce — you absolutely will. I don’t see these companies going anywhere. But their business model has to evolve and change. Because in the future, potentially a lot of your employees will be interacting with it via the API, where most of your work is happening directly in Claude and you’re interfacing with HubSpot through that. So take, for example, your company — you have a sales rep who, after a call, needs to update 50 property fields to send something over to the production team. Do you want them to physically go into HubSpot and update all 50 fields on their own? Or do you want to build a skill that would take all the information out of the call and then automatically update all those field properties? You’re not gonna vibe-code a CRM to do that. What you are gonna do is use Claude to interface with your CRM, because it’s much faster than having that sales rep spend their time doing it — so they can focus more on selling.

And so I think what you’re seeing right now is a reset of expectations around the growth of SaaS. They’re worried about whether you need the same number of user seats in the future and whether they’ll be able to easily upgrade you. And I think all the SaaS companies out there are trying to figure out the business model of the future — like, if everyone’s going to be interacting with the API instead of on a per-user basis, do we charge for API access? Which right now is free in a lot of different SaaS environments. We’re selling as much HubSpot right now as we’ve ever sold — in fact, we’re selling more of it, and we’re going to continue to sell more of it, so I don’t see that changing.

But what I do see changing is the number of screens people are working on and how often they’re in their Claude instance versus logging into HubSpot directly. And Claude is now a platform — it’s not just a chatbot. It’s an actual platform, given what you can do with it. But there are a lot of times the other big piece you have to consider is that sometimes it’s way cheaper to literally leverage the software as-is versus trying to use AI to do something for you. So then you have cost management, cost restrictions — only use AI for something where it makes sense, because it is sometimes less expensive to have a user go in and make some button changes than to have Claude spend however many tokens to do that for you.

So I think what you’re gonna see is it’s actually gonna become much more of a cost issue and a challenge where it’s less expensive to have that CRM than to have Claude do everything for you. So yes and no on the SaaSocalypse — they’re not going anywhere, they’re going to continue to grow, but how they sell their products is going to evolve and change.

Greg Alexander: You know, so I’m gonna give you a real member’s story, and I’d like to get your answer. So, this is a Salesforce.com customer. He’s been on Salesforce for 7 years, spends $250,000 a year on it. His renewal’s coming up. And he called me and said, hey, should I switch? Because he had one of these new AI CRM startup types — I forget the name of it — and they pitched him: we’re better, faster, cheaper, switch and come to us. And he says, what do you think? Should I do it?

So my question to him was, okay, you’ve been on it 5 years, $250,000 a year, that’s $1.25 million. What has been the return? Did you sell more? Did you grow? How much of that could you attribute to the tool? And he said, no — it really didn’t improve my business at all. It’s almost a cost of doing business at this point, but it didn’t improve my standing in the marketplace one bit. So to me, it’s a commodity — I think I’m going to go to the lowest cost provider.

So my response was, well, before you make that decision, let’s just make sure you understand the switching costs and all the things that are going to break as part of that, because just because something’s the cost of doing business doesn’t mean it’s bad. You know, if you were to get that question from that member who was questioning the value of the tool upon renewal, what would you say to that person?

Noah Berk: Well, you’ve got to make sure you right-size the application for your business needs. So let’s take a step back. If they’re using Salesforce just for CRM, marketing, sales — like, traditional selling activities — yeah, that’s a big question mark, because there are so many other competitors and players in the marketplace that can, at a much lower total cost of ownership, provide the same level of capabilities that Salesforce would provide.

But if you’re using Salesforce and the best use case for it these days is for operations — in other words, instead of having a separate ERP like NetSuite or something else, you’re actually running your entire business on Salesforce — that’s a much different value proposition. It goes back to change management: what is the change management cost to the organization? If you go ahead and make this change and haven’t fully vetted whatever this new software is to do what you need to get done, you may be putting yourself in a very poor situation. If they’re spending $250,000 but they’re a $150 million company, you’ve got to think really hard about what am I jeopardizing here by switching? That being said, if their $250,000 spend on Salesforce is for a $10 million company, yes — heck, get off of that. That doesn’t make any sense.

So I think there is a cost to doing business. You do need a CRM, you do need marketing automation, you do need a customer service tool. But you have to right-size the software to the use case you’re trying to solve, and be very mindful about that.

Greg Alexander: He’s about a $25 million business, and he had one of his staff members do an analysis on what they were actually using, and it’s like 90% of the features they’re not using — so maybe it does make sense for him to switch, and the question is to switch to what, but that’s a whole other conversation.

All right, so at the top of the show, I promised the audience something, and that was something that you built for Collective 54 members, which we’re super happy with. I’ve been a HubSpot customer for 20 years. I advocate that our members use HubSpot just because I think it’s a great tool. Many of them have not, and they haven’t because it’s been cost-prohibitive, particularly on implementation services — because these are firms that don’t have IT staffs, so they have to hire an implementation partner, and they would get these crazy bills and say, yeah, I just can’t do it, and they’re still living on a spreadsheet. You have built something custom-built for the unique use of a boutique professional services firm, so I want to make our members aware of that. Can you tell us about that, please?

Noah Berk: Yeah, so this was an idea we’ve been working on for quite some time. Obviously working with you all at Collective 54 — we’ve been running HubSpot for years for ourselves, and we have a perfect setup for HubSpot for professional services firms, and incorporating your ideas into it has been great. Now, if we tried doing this, say, 6 months ago, it would have been too expensive for companies to hire us to fully implement a world-class CRM, marketing automation, everything they need set up out of the system. This goes back to the conversation around AI.

We were able to leverage a model and essentially an internal use of AI to quickly deploy the perfect professional services setup in HubSpot for clients. So instead of charging, call it, $50,000 for an implementation for this ideal setup, we’re starting with as little as $10,000. And then we give you 3 months of support on top of that, which comes out to another $5,000 a month for 3 months, to completely customize it for your use case. Now, this would have been a small fortune — the same level of service we’re providing now easily would have cost over $100,000 for implementation, ongoing support and services, given the amount of time it takes. We’re now able to do it in a fraction of the time, which is making something so affordable that it gives every single professional services company the ideal setup in HubSpot.

So coming back to your question earlier, this is one of those creative use cases — how can we use AI to build the perfect instance, set it up in such a way that we can deploy it for clients in an affordable way that honestly was not possible just 6 months ago.

Greg Alexander: Yeah, it’s a great example. For listeners — is this for somebody who’s using HubSpot right now and they’re unhappy with it and they want to fix it, or is this for somebody who hasn’t installed a CRM yet and this would be the way to get started, or both?

Noah Berk: So this particular program is for people who don’t have HubSpot yet, because we’re essentially starting from scratch with a blank portal. And sometimes it goes back to the concept of — is it easier to rehab your home or build a new one? In this particular case, it’s easier for us to build it from scratch than it is to go in and optimize and figure out what’s wrong with your existing instance, and then make it into what we need it to be.

That being said, we’re still happy to talk to customers who already have HubSpot. We will absolutely do a free audit of your HubSpot Portal instance if you have it — that’s a service we offer to any Collective 54 member who’s interested. We’re able to go in, audit your instance, and tell you everything you need to do to improve it. You’re welcome to hire us or not — it’s up to you. But this particular program is designed for net new HubSpot users.

Greg Alexander: Okay, so for members that are listening to this, reach out to your account manager and they’ll get you in contact with Noah or someone on Noah’s team who can walk you through the specifics. Noah, this is published publicly, so there are listeners outside of Collective 54 who might not have private access to you. For those people, how would they get in contact with you and learn about this offer?

Noah Berk: Yeah, please visit our website, aptitude8.com, to learn more information about us and the program. We will have a landing page set up. Obviously it’s designed for Collective 54 members, but if you’re planning on becoming a Collective 54 member, we’d be more than happy to bring you into the program too and give you the same special rate that we’re giving to Collective 54 members. And again, our services were never sold at this price point before, and it goes back to what you said earlier, Greg — it’s a larger total addressable market that we’re now able to provide essentially world-class CRM at a fraction of what something like this used to cost.

Greg Alexander: Yeah. Well, listen, on behalf of members, I’m really happy and grateful that you went ahead and built this for us, because it’s needed. And I really don’t care if it’s done by AI and humans — what I care is that it works when I go to use it. And that’s an approachable, affordable price point, so I appreciate it very much.

Noah Berk: Happy to be a participant, and thanks for letting us work with all of you.

Greg Alexander: Okay. All right, well, I’m gonna wrap it up here. Just a couple of quick calls to action — actually 3 of them now. So if you’re interested in this special Collective 54 offer, get in touch with your account manager and we’ll make the proper intros. If you’re not a member and you might want to become one — and this might be the catalyst — go to aptitude8.com. And if you just want to learn more information about this and other topics, I’ve got a new Substack channel going that I want to point you to. It’s at Greg Alexander C54 — C as in Charlie. And when I publish on that, there’s a newsletter every week on how AI is changing professional services, so check that out when you get a chance. I appreciate everybody’s attention. I wish you all the best of luck as you try to grow and scale your firm, and until next time, we’ll see you then. Thanks again.

Related Episodes