Letter From The CEO: The Road Ahead for RevBlack in 2025

Letter From The CEO: The Road Ahead for RevBlack in 2025

Running RevBlack, I’ve seen how the right decisions can change everything. This year, we made a big move: acquiring Coastal Consulting. That sets us up to lead today and positions us for where revenue operations and CRMs are headed tomorrow. Here’s why we did it and what I see coming.

Why We Acquired Coastal Consulting

We bought Coastal Consulting because we’re dead set on being the best in the world at both Salesforce and HubSpot. Period. Back in January this year, we saw the chance to make our first acquisition, and I couldn’t have been more excited. I’ve respected Lauren Ryan and her team for years—they were obsessed with doing integrations the right way, focusing on long-term value over quick fixes. That’s how we think too. Despite being competitors, we always had a collaborative spirit and mutual respect for each other. Acquiring Coastal wasn’t about getting bigger; it was a bold move to cement RevBlack as the top firm globally for Salesforce and HubSpot integrations. 

Most other RevOps or CRM consultants pick one—HubSpot or Salesforce. They’re technical shops, good at implementations but not so much at the “why” behind the tools. There are some of our competitors who claim to know what they’re doing with both HubSpot and Salesforce, but most really are just HubSpot experts with one intern in the back who’s touched Salesforce, or Salesforce pros who barely know HubSpot. We’ve been ambidextrous from the start—certified partners in both, with real expertise across the board. Coastal Consulting was truly the only other player truly doing both HubSpot and Salesforce at our level. When we saw the chance to join forces, it was a no-brainer.

Clients come to us with all kinds of setups. Some lean on Salesforce because it’s still the best CRM out there for big, complex operations. Others swear by HubSpot for marketing automation, website hosting, all that. Plenty use both—and that’s where things get messy. The native integration between them isn’t great, as most of you know. Left alone, you end up with the worst of both worlds: siloed data, clunky processes, teams that can’t sync up. We turn that into the best of both worlds. We make Salesforce and HubSpot talk to each other so your marketing, sales, and customer success teams can operate as one unit. Accurate data, dependable systems, real results. That’s what we’re here to build.

That leads us to the future. Many of our clients feel anxious about where things are headed with AI. No one knows for sure, but let me tell you what I think about CRMs and software.

The Future of CRMs: Where Software’s Headed

Some people say AI will end CRMs in five years. They think this because AI might let anyone build their own tools super easily, so companies won’t need to buy CRMs anymore, they’ll just build their own internally. I don’t think that’s true—but I do think AI will change software a lot.

Here’s what I mean. AI is getting better fast. Soon, you’ll be able to tell it, “Make me a chat app called RevBlack Chat,” and it’ll build it without any coding on your part. It’ll be quick and cheap. If you’re a small company like us, you could make your own version of Slack for almost nothing. Even big companies that spend millions on tools like Slack might say, “Let’s just build our own for less.” This means more companies can make their own tools instead of buying them.

Does that mean CRMs will disappear? Maybe the old, slow ones will. But Salesforce and HubSpot will stick around—they’ll just change. CRMs are where your company’s data lives, like a big library for your business info. That makes them special. Instead of starting from scratch, you’ll use Salesforce or HubSpot as a base and add new things with AI. For example, you could say, “Add a tool to book meetings right on our website,” like a custom version of Calendly, but built inside your CRM. AI will do the work, and CRMs will be the starting point.

There’s a catch: AI needs good data to work well. If your data is messy—like a sloppy list—or you don’t tell AI clearly what you want, it won’t help you. That’s where RevBlack comes in. We’ll make sure your CRM data is clean and ready for AI. We’re not just making reports anymore—we’re setting up your systems so you can use AI to grow your business. This change means we’ll be helping clients even more, making their CRMs work better for the future.

What’s Next

RevBlack is now unbeatable at integrations, and we’re prepared to deliver excellence for what’s next. As a fractional agency that automates your operations with Salesforce and HubSpot, we will keep making RevOps simple so your business can thrive. That’s our vision, and it guides everything we do. To our clients and team: thanks for pushing us to get this right. Let’s make 2025 count.

Tate Stone

CEO & Founder, RevBlack 

Meet with Tate Stone