Why the HubSpot CRM?

Like I mentioned above, HubSpot’s CRM is the total package. It houses all the information and data you need to keep track of contacts, nurture leads, and drive positive results. But it doesn’t stop there. 

The HubSpot CRM is about more than just customer management. It offers tools to help various people on your team — from sales leaders, to marketing strategists, to operations managers — by automatically integrating with your HubSpot sales, marketing, service, and operations hubs. This enables incredible opportunities for optimizing and streamlining processes, selling smarter, and maintaining relationships.

HubSpot CRM Benefits

In a more specific sense, the HubSpot CRM can offer these primary benefits: 

• It’s FREE. Yes, seriously.
• It automatically integrates with your sales, marketing, service, and operations hubs.
• Its interface is user-friendly and intuitive.
• It helps align sales and marketing efforts.
• It offers ample automation opportunities. 
• It’s conversation-focused and conversion-oriented. 
• It’s the perfect foundation for inbound marketing success.

7  HubSpot CRM Best Practices

Think all the benefits listed above sound amazing? I knew you would. 

But in order to actualize them, you need to know how to use the HubSpot CRM correctly — and so does the rest of your team. Here are seven best practices to set you on the right path. 

01. Know Your Goals

If you don’t have any goals established for using the HubSpot CRM, there’s no way to qualify success while using it. Think back to why you chose to implement the CRM in the first place. How did you expect it to change your organization? What pain point were you trying to solve? 

Some common goals businesses have while investing in the HubSpot CRM include: 

• Aligning sales and marketing teams
• Creating a more consistent and predictable pipeline
• Streamlining sales and marketing operations with automation
• Consolidating a tech stack by keeping a CRM, CMS, and other tools in one centralized location

By establishing your goals related to CRM use, you’ll be able to create a more defined roadmap toward results. Immediate results matter, but you’ll also want to keep the future 2-3 years (at least) in mind as well. Not only will these goals help guide your CRM strategy, but they’ll also help you get more buy-in from your team.

02. Set Your HubSpot CRM Up for You, Not for Anyone Else

HubSpot CRMs are like snowflakes; no two are the same. Your CRM will look and function differently than anyone else’s, even businesses within the same industry, and that’s okay.

If you think about it, it makes sense. Your company’s products, services, capabilities, size, revenue, team, audience and goals are unique, so why wouldn’t the tool that houses all of that information be unique as well? 

So once you’ve defined your goals, make sure you set your HubSpot CRM up in the way that helps you and your team accomplish them. Choose, organize, and utilize tools strategically, so you can get the most out of the time and energy you’re putting in.

03. Make the Most of HubSpot Lists

HubSpot lists are the best way to identify and organize who exactly is in your CRM. While many marketers use lists to segment for marketing emails, they’re beneficial for other team members to use as well. 

For instance, lists can help your sales team organize and prioritize leads. They may even help your account managers maintain relationships and find upsell opportunities. 

Bottom line? If you want to maintain good data hygiene within your CRM, lists are a great way to do so. Here are some ideas for lists that you may find helpful:

• Leads that fit certain criteria to qualify for nurturing
• Leads that hit an 100+ lead score and are ripe for conversion
• Contacts that aren’t a good fit for your company and need to be cleared from your CRM
• Customers who met a certain threshold and are ready for an upsell
• Customers who have a low net promoter score (NPS) and need some love

04. Take It Tool by Tool

When most HubSpot CRM newcomers take their first look into the CRM, they’re faced with a mixture of two thoughts: “Wow! This is so exciting,” and “Wow! I am overwhelmed.” 

Yes, it is exciting, and yes, it can be overwhelming. With reports and dashboards, custom properties, deal stages, lead scoring, workflows, and more to keep track of, it can be difficult to know where to start.

But it doesn’t need to be. Nobody expects you to become a HubSpot CRM expert overnight, so it’s okay to take the process tool by tool. It’s one of those things where it’s important to do it right than fast, so take your time to get a good understanding of each feature as you work through them. 

And don’t be afraid to ask for help when you need it! More on that later…

05. Use the HubSpot CRM Every Day

They say it takes 10,000 hours of practice to master a skill. But there’s nothing more daunting than a 1 with that many zeros behind it, so I’ll propose a different solution: 

Have each of your team members commit to using the HubSpot CRM just five minutes each day. 

We call this a walk/run approach to CRM implementation. First, your team gets familiar with the CRM by completing simple, but productive tasks for five minutes each day (walking). Soon enough, they’ll become more comfortable doing more complex tasks and learning new tools that make them more efficient users (running). 

The methodology is simple, but it works! We’ve tried it ourselves at Evenbound, and we’ve watched our clients have success with it too. 

06. Don't Overcomplicate Your Sales Process

Our next HubSpot CRM best practice is inspired by our friends in the U.S. Navy: the KISS principle. Keep it simple, stupid. 

Just because the HubSpot CRM gives you access to a ton of amazing tools doesn’t mean you’re given free rein to overcomplicate your sales process. Remember: you should configure your CRM in a way that works for you and your team — not for some team of technical wizards. Use the tools that will promote growth and that make sense based on your goals; stay away from the ones that you’re not ready for quite yet.

07. Work with a HubSpot Solutions Partner

Final tip? You don’t have to walk alone.

If you need help implementing, configuring, and organizing your HubSpot CRM in a way that works for you, it’s a good idea to get in touch with a HubSpot Solutions Partner. A HubSpot Solutions Partner is a marketing agency that lives and breathes the HubSpot platform and is dedicated to the inbound marketing methodology. They apply to be a partner, and once HubSpot accepts them, they’re given additional training on each of the hubs and its various tools. 

Long story short, a HubSpot Solutions Partner is your fastest, most frictionless path to CRM success. They’ll guide you through your entire implementation, train your team on necessary tools, and help organize your data. If you’d like, you can continue services with them after to maintain all of the hard work you put into the beginning stages.

Need Help Making Your HubSpot CRM Work for You? Let's Talk!

If your HubSpot CRM could use some TLC, reach out to our team at Evenbound. As a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner, we know all the ins and outs of HubSpot, and we understand just how important it is to have a well-organized and high-performing CRM. 

We can audit your HubSpot CRM (or your entire HubSpot portal!) and identify opportunities for improvement and growth — then lead you on the right path toward implementing them. For a free HubSpot audit or for more information, fill out our contact form or schedule a meeting with us.