3 Ways Hubspot Changed How I Do Business
Researching and finding the right system sometimes feels like an overwhelming and daunting task. And rightly so, it’s an important decision and there’s a lot of options out there. I was craving a change in our tech stack – our systems had a few wow features but there were still things that I was missing. As our business and team has grown, those missing features were no longer something I was willing to compromise on.
Our search led us to Hubspot and it’s really changed how we do business from our marketing efforts to our retainer management.
Here’s a few ways we’re feeling the benefits:
Reevaluating Our Efficiency: I look at process efficiency all day with my clients and sometimes we forget to take our own medicine. Researching whether or not to switch our systems forced us to evaluate what pieces of our processes did or did not make sense. When evaluating processes, we always start with our voice of the customer (VOC). Your VOC defines what really matters by determining what your customers expect from your service. As your business changes and grows, you can slip away from your VOC, opting for things you think matter instead of what actually matters to the client. Our processes now are recentered on value-add for our clients and simplicity and flexibility for us internally. To be clear, you don’t need to switch systems to get in tune with your VOC but you should evaluate your VOC before deciding to switch.
Consolidating Our Data (And Expenses): One of the impressive features of HubSpot is its comprehensiveness. Even on the free and Starter plans, it offers a plethora of features that allowed us to eliminate several tech pieces such as ConvertKit and Calendly. Workflow automations are limited if you’re not on the Professional plan compared to ConvertKit which may be cause for hesitation if you’re considering Hubspot. The switch also allowed us to do away with Zapier – a long time favorite tool of mine. The need to automate between systems was significantly reduced, and when necessary, Hubspot’s built-in integrations with other systems makes automating easier.
Enhancing Team Collaboration: Before Hubspot, we were as efficient as we could be with puzzle-pieced systems. It all worked but it wasn’t fantastic. For instance, sales or leads notes might have been left in our previous CRM, which our operations manager rarely used. While our onboarding process was pretty solid, this still presented a risk of her missing those notes once the lead became a client. With HubSpot, everything is in one system. This has greatly improved collaboration between our marketing, sales, and service delivery/operations initiatives. Information is readily available to all stakeholders, eliminating the risk of missed notes and ensuring everybody is on the same page.
Switching systems isn’t a recommendation I make lightly to my clients as it can change a lot of things and the ROI of that change isn’t always worth it. In our case, it was actually quite rewarding. It’s a system that has met our needs and is likely to continue to meet our needs even as our business evolves.