Getting Started with HubSpot Series: What Does Onboarding Look Like?
*Our Getting Started with HubSpot Series is written to help you understand what to expect when you sign on with a HubSpot Partner Agency. Over the next few months, we'll work to cover everything from HubSpot onboarding to sales enablement and marketing and sales alignment. If you like these posts, and there's a certain topic you'd like us to talk about, just let us know!
These days, it seems like everyone is talking about HubSpot. If your business is interested in making the switch to inbound marketing, and is looking for new ways to streamline marketing and sales efforts to promote overall growth, you might be looking at the HubSpot platform to help you do it.
But how to get started?
At this point, you already know what HubSpot is, and what — for the most part — it does. (If not, check out our Plain English Guide to HubSpot's Software. That should help you understand the platform's basics.)
The harder question is: how can you get your entire team set up on this software, and how can you get them to buy into actually using it every day?
We call that process onboarding, and we've helped walk plenty of clients through exactly those challenges. As a HubSpot Diamond Solutions Partner and a HubSpot Certified Trainer, those are questions we're qualified to answer.
In fact, we've talked to our HubSpot Project Manager, Hunter, who does the actual work of onboarding our clients onto the HubSpot platform, to tell us all about the HubSpot onboarding process.
Here's what you can expect:
What Does the HubSpot Onboarding Process Look Like?
Before we get too far into this, it's good to know that every agency works a little differently. We're going to tell you how we onboard our clients, and what that process typically looks like for them. It should be similar to most other HubSpot Partner Agencies' onboarding process, but it might not be exactly the same.
With that in mind, let's go.
No matter which HubSpot service you're looking for (their CRM, their Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, or Customer Service Hub), the onboarding process is much the same.
HubSpot Project Manager, Hunter, mentions, "the toughest part of onboarding is that people tend to get nervous about the change."
And that makes sense. If your company's been working one way for years, it's tough to imagine doing business another way. But, if you're committed to switching over to HubSpot, it's worth it to put the work in now.
Plus, if you're working with a HubSpot Certified Trainer, you're going to have all the help you and your team need to make the move.
Here at Evenbound, the HubSpot onboarding process starts with a kickoff call.
Kickoff Call
Once you've decided that HubSpot is right for you, and you'd like to use some or all of their tools, we arrange a kickoff call. Here at Evenbound, you'll talk to Hunter during your kickoff call. He'll ask you questions about what your goals are for the platform, what your sales process looks like, and more.
During this call or face-to-face meeting, we're looking to get an idea of what HubSpot tools will be most helpful to your team. We're also going to help you set up your portal, and import in all of your existing contacts, so we want to know:
- What are your goals?
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- This includes your sales goals
- Marketing goals
- Overall goals for the HubSpot platform — what do you hope it will help you do
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- What is your process?
- Take us through your sales process. What happens after you identify a lead? Do you send them information, visit their site, just send a quote, or more?
- Do you have a marketing process? If so, what does it look like?
- If you don't have a marketing process, that's okay too. We're always happy to work with you to develop one, or we can work as your own bolt-on marketing team.
- Do your marketing and sales teams work together at any part of this process? Where are some touchpoints that might be beneficial to have your sales and marketing teams communicate?
While this might seem like a lot of questions, your answers give us the information we need to more effectively set up your HubSpot account in a way that will actually be useful to your company. We take all of the information gathered in this meeting, and we move onto the next step of the onboarding process.
Technical Setup (We Handle This Part)
After your initial kickoff call, Hunter, or one of our other HubSpot specialists, will get you all set up in the HubSpot platform. This part of the process can take about two weeks.
During this phase, Hunter handles all of the technical aspects of onboarding your company onto the HubSpot Platform. He'll do everything from making sure your website pages are tracking in HubSpot to linking your social media accounts, blogs, and entire teams' email accounts with your new HubSpot portal. Most importantly, Hunter will import all of your contacts into the platform. He'll organize each of those contacts based on what he's learned in your kickoff call.
HubSpot allows for custom contact fields. That means, if your sales team addresses leads in one industry differently than leads in another industry, Hunter will make sure each contact in HubSpot says what industry they work in. He can also include additional custom fields like:
- Quote number
- Job title
- Project scope
- And more
This information helps him categorize all of your contacts into segmented lists based on their industry, their potential value to your company, and more. This way, you can easily and efficiently provide relevant marketing and sales content to every potential lead that comes in. It's also the first step to automating some of your more repetitive marketing and sales tasks.
Integrate Your Existing CRM
Many of our clients who sign up for HubSpot marketing or sales tools are already using another CRM. That's totally cool.
The HubSpot platform is compatible with almost every major CRM out there, including Salesforce. If your team is used to working one way, we don't want to take that away from you. Instead, we integrate your existing CRM with the HubSpot tools, so the only thing that's changing is the number of tools you have access to.
Your team will still be able to enter in and track leads as they have with their previous CRM, they'll just have the added benefit of these new HubSpot Marketing and Sales tools.
What If I Don't Have a CRM?
That's totally fine, too. If you don't have an existing CRM, we'll still upload all of your existing contacts into the HubSpot platform, and we'll organize them for you using HubSpot's CRM (which is free). Still not sure about all of that?
Here's what Hunter says to clients who don't have a CRM:
"Think about if you were going to a conference. You meet tons of people and collect their business cards, but then what? Your CRM is a way to organize those people. You can make sure you have their names, their job titles, contact information, and you can put in notes to remind yourself about what you talked about at the conference, what they're interested in, and more."
The HubSpot CRM, as a whole, offers a simple way to organize all of your customers and contacts. From there, it's easy to build and sustain the best possible relationship with each of them using tools offered by the HubSpot Marketing and Sales Hubs.
Once your contacts are imported and organized in the CRM, Hunter will also help you to define a sales process that makes sense for your team, too. We're always looking to help our clients do business better. If there's a tool or process your team is missing that we think you might be able to benefit from, we'll let you know.
How Much Work Will This Be for My Team?
One of the most common questions we get about the HubSpot onboarding process is "how much work will my team need to do to make this happen?"
The truth is, your team is going to have to do some work. That said, they won't be alone, and to be honest, our team will help do most of the heavy lifting as your team figures out how the platform works.
Hunter typically handles the lion's share of moving your information over to HubSpot. He will:
- Input your contacts
- Customize lists of contacts
- Help create reports until your team knows how to do it themselves
- Teach every team member, step-by-step, how to use all of HubSpot's relevant tools
- Continue meeting with your team on a monthly basis to analyze your current efforts, and optimize them for future goals
- Complete any necessary ongoing training as new tools and features are released to HubSpot
As for your team? Hunter reminds us of a commonly understood learning statistic:
Any time you learn something new, you have to use it to solidify that new tool in your brain. On average, if you don't use the information you learned in 30 days, you'll lose about 80% of it.
Hunter's suggestion?
"I usually recommend that team members just start using HubSpot for 5 minutes a day. Even just inputting contacts, and making sure you're assigning the right qualities to each contact helps you remember everything that you've learned."
5 minutes a day doesn't sound too bad! On the whole, it's a pretty small time investment, and once your team gets the hang of HubSpot, they'll be so glad they used those 5 minutes.
The Benefits of Partnering With A HubSpot Partner Agency
When you partner with Evenbound to onboard your team onto the HubSpot platform, you really don't have to worry that your team won't understand the tool, or won't end up using it.
We approach onboarding with a "walk/run" perspective.
First, we'll teach you what you need to know, and we encourage your team to learn at their own pace (walking).
Once they start to get the hang of the tools, though, all of our clients pick HubSpot up pretty quickly (running).
The bottom line is, the tools that HubSpot provides are seriously useful, and they really do work to support the great work that your sales team is already doing. With HubSpot's tools and metrics, and your sales team's excellent effort, you'll start to see some serious growth success in no time.
And best of all, if you're working with a HubSpot Agency Partner, you'll have a Certified Trainer like Hunter to help walk you through the entire process.
Interested in taking the HubSpot plunge? Evenbound is a HubSpotDiamond Agency Partner, and we're also a HubSpot Certified Trainer. That means we've helped tons of clients just like you learn everything there is to know about the sales and marketing tools HubSpot offers, and we've helped them use those tools to legitimately grow their company.
If you'd like to know more, just get in touch. Hunter, or our president, John, would be happy to talk to you more about your specific goals for HubSpot.
