“The biggest mistake I see companies making is to jump right in and set up as they go, with no clear plan for implementation or adoption,” says Shannon Howard of You Need a Shannon.
“Any software transition is difficult. But, it’s especially difficult when you’re moving to a software as robust as HubSpot. Make sure you think through how you want to use the software and, more importantly, WHO is going to use the software.”
Define Your Life Cycle Stages
“Team alignment on how you’re going to use the CRM is the most crucial element of success,” says Verblio’s Kali Greff. “One of the typical biggest barriers to entry for a CRM is the alignment around terminology and architecture with respect to the buying funnel—what do MQLs, SQLs, and different form conversions really mean to your company?”
“Luckily, HubSpot CRM has this architecture ready out-of-the-box. Getting buy-in from both sales and marketing folks on these definitions has proven critical to our success. By having different lifecycle stages defined upfront, we can quickly determine ways to improve our lead nurturing effectiveness.”
Set up Deal Stages and Deal Properties
Howard continued, “How are they currently working Deals? What deal stages need to be set up? What deal properties need to be created? At what point will the sales team start using HubSpot to track sales deals? What will the training include for your salespeople?”.
Set up Custom Fields For Reps To Store Important Information
“A CRM is only as good as the data that goes into it,” says Niklas Sluijter of Zero Keyboard. “So make sure that you have thought out your data models well beforehand!”
“Speak with the teams about which data is instrumental for their success, and find out how data correlates across departments. Once you’ve figured out what data to collect, make it as easy and painless to actually enter it into the CRM.”
“So minimize your forms, rely on automation as much as possible, and only ask for the information you really need, at the time you need it. If you stick to your guns on this, the value of the CRM will start showing itself to the users in no time. And they’ll love it!”
Organize Your Prospecting with Custom Fields
“I am a District Sales Manager with a territory that covers 25 counties, which are a mixture of rural and urban settings,” says ENECON’s Andrew Nichols. “I call on many types of industries, including: manufacturing, power plants, water treatment facilities, schools, hotels, and others.”
“During my prospecting, I identify businesses that I can cold call by phone or on foot in a targeted area. If I can’t identify the specific person with a company from the internet, I will create a company/contact in HubSpot under the name ‘John Doe’ and title ‘TBD’ so that the record exists and will serve as a reminder the next time I am in the area or going to be in the area.”
“Since some of my territory is 3+ hours away, I don’t want to drive that distance for a single meeting. It was important for me to find a way to group my contacts by territory so that I could easily access all of the contacts in a specific area to schedule multiple meetings or make cold calls.”
“I created a property in my contacts database called “county” and whenever I create a contact, I enter the county in which they are located. I have also set up saved filters for each county name so that I can quickly access those in a particular county from the HubSpot webpage or mobile app. I frequently use the phone app and saved filters while I am in the field and have free time to make cold calls. This aspect of HubSpot has greatly improved my efficiency so that I can spend more time meeting with clients.”
Joe Delbridge shares how GeekSmash uses custom fields to organize their outreach too: “One thing that I’ve done on Hubspot that’s helped me navigate different types of clients or social media influencers is creating a custom property entitled, ‘Tag.’”
“As an influencer marketing agency who works with a variety of different types of influencers, finding the right fit for a brand had us frequently combing through thousands of Instagrammers or YouTubers manually. After adding the Tag property, my team can now search within Hubspot CRM more efficiently and find great influencers for our clients in a shorter time.”
Use Filters to Organize Your Prospecting Time
Stephanie Riel of RielDeal marketing says “Filters can set you up for success. All the data HubSpot CRM collects is amazing for your sales process—but organization of this data can help you (and your team) work smarter. Filters allow you [to] do just that.”
“I typically work with my clients to survey their current client data to scan for patterns or themes within their client database that would be helpful for searching later on. It could be by industry, by source of lead—or by many other criteria. It really depends what makes sense for their business.”
Use Custom Fields to Track Your Meetings
Fairmarkit uses custom fields for setting up initial meetings and demos, says Tarek Alaruri: “To track that field you have to set up a meeting field type under settings. This allows us to see daily who sets the most meetings from our sales development/account executive team, it also allows you to determine how long you’ve been engaged w/ a company from the start of the deal to close.”
Use Tasks to Remind Yourself of Next Steps with Prospects
Digital marketing consultant Mike Khorev recommends using the Tasks feature: “it lets me be able to never forget a prospect for our company. It helps set up what I need to do to interact with a potential customer and what I’ll do to convert them to our next client. This also uses automation to save me time.”
HubSpot CRM is probably the most popular CRM right now. It’s straightforward to set up and use, with plans to fit every budget. It offers outstanding email and calendar integration and removes a lot of the tedious data entry and management that some CRMs require to get up and running. By following these simple steps, you can expect a potential growth in sales and good ROI.
