Banish the CRM Blues: Simplify Cost and Implementation

You’re sitting at your desk wondering what in the world your salespeople are doing on a daily basis.  

Some of them are flourishing, but others are disorganized and can’t seem to explain why they don’t have enough time in the day to close the deals your company needs to grow sales revenue.

Ah, the struggles of a sales manager!

If your salespeople are operating on spreadsheets and handshakes, it’s time to take a look at a CRM. Yeah, you’re worried about cost and how to actually make use of it within the organization – but consider this: if you take on a short sprint by implementing a tool that will banish all of those other daily worries, it’ll be worth it in the long run. 

Do yourself a favor and check out a tool that will help your salespeople manage their prospect and customer relationships AND give you insight into daily activities, which can also fuel training opportunities.  

Win. Win. Win. 

CRMs provide users with a unified platform that links prospect/customer information from various sources, making it easy to manage all of your customer touch points, analyze customer data, and even identify customer trends. (Sounds like a dream, I know.)

(Above: Example from HubSpot CRM of a contact activity view: all prospect activity in one place!) 

CRMs are an essential addition to any company’s marketing technology (martech) stack.  

But, if you run sales in a small to midsize business or are just getting your company up and running, you might be thinking: “I don’t have enough room in my budget to spend hundreds of dollars on a CRM subscription each month.”  

Don’t worry—HubSpot has you covered.

Start Here: A Free CRM With Something for Everyone 

During HubSpot’s 2014 Inbound conference, Dharmesh Shah, the company’s co-founder and CTO, announced the launch of HubSpot’s new customer relationship management system, HubSpot CRM. Over years, this robust CRM platform has continued to grow and evolve with marketing and sales trends and has easily become one of the best options on the market.

While this statement may sound a little biased considering we are a platinum HubSpot partner, we’ve done our due diligence by working with a number of CRM platforms—HubSpot CRM continues to earn our recommendation. 

Just like some of the greatest things in life, the core functionality of HubSpot CRM is free.  

Whether you have a team of 1 or 1,000, HubSpot’s “freemium” CRM platform provides everything you’ll need to manage your contacts and foster customer relationships. You’ll have access to unlimited users, up to 1,000,000 contacts, and best of all, there are no time limits or expiration dates.  

Plus, the deals pipeline allows full visibility for reps and managers to create, customize, and forecast sales in order to move them between deal stages with ease.

(Above: example of HubSpot's sales pipeline management tool) 

Here are just some of the tools you’ll have access to with HubSpot’s CRM system: 

• Contact management  
• Contact website activity 
• Tasks and insights 
• Gmail and Outlook email integration  
• Ad management  
• Reporting dashboard 
• Meeting scheduling
• Custom properties

(Above: example of simple meeting scheduling: no more back-and-forth emails trying to figure out schedules to go over a sales proposal.) 

(Above: task management tool to make follow-ups a breeze.) 

Given its price point, HubSpot CRM is an accessible and enticing option, especially for smaller marketing and sales teams or companies that might not know where to start with customer relationship management systems. But the perks don’t end here. 

Simple but Scalable

HubSpot CRM is completely scalable, so it’s ready to grow with your business.  

• The platform’s app marketplace gives you access to more than 100 free tools and many more that you can pay for that join seamlessly with their marketing, sales and service tools (like automated emailing, goal setting, and lead routing). 
• You’ll have access to the HubSpot Community where you can ask questions, find answers, and discover best practices for everything you need.
• If and when you are ready, you can also pay to upgrade your CRM to HubSpot’s Professional or Enterprise Sales Hub versions for added functionality or incorporate HubSpot’s marketing, sales, and/or services hubs into your CRM platform.  

With this level of adaptability, HubSpot CRM is easily capable of growing into an end-to-end martech solution for your company.  

PLUS, you'll never again have to worry about salespeople who take their lists with them and all interactions with that rep's clients are lost.

Getting off to the right start with setup is important. When you’re planning to implement and optimize or upgrade your HubSpot Sales Hub, it’s a good idea to get help from a HubSpot partner agency to ensure that your team will run efficiently and you can increase user adoption and change management within the organization. 

A partner agency can really help make your life easier.  

 Need help implementing and optimizing your HubSpot CRM or Sales Hub? Learn more here.