HubSpot always puts on a great conference at INBOUND, and this year is no different. During his keynote today, CEO Brian Halligan announced a game-changing new feature of HubSpot – the HubSpot Sales Platform.
One of the hot topics in marketing and sales today is the alignment of the two teams within the organization. There are no tools that truly integrate marketing functions and sales functions – until now.
The Sales Process: Time for a Change
Forrester Research shows that company executives give salespeople a failing grade at everything except knowing about the company they represent.
The traditional sales process is broken. The web has changed the way companies and people buy things. It used to be that the seller had all of the information and fed it to buyers as needed. Today, the buyer has just as much information as the seller thanks to the web.
"The traditional sales process in broken. Instead of "always be closing," the next generation of sales leads will "always be helping."
- Brian Halligan, CEO, HubSpot
Google has become the trusted source of information, not the seller. As buyers interact with your website, sales reps must evolve by helping your customers, not beating them over the head with things they don’t want or need.
A Sales Platform for the “Always Be Helping” Sales Rep
Traditional CRM systems are much better for the sales manager to measure the pipeline, but not always sufficient to arm the modern sales rep to sell to the modern customer.
One shortcoming of the traditional CRM is that it requires lots of data entry. Sales reps often spend hours of their days importing information into their CRM (I can confirm this frustration in my own daily work).
The other shortcoming is that many traditional CRM tools fail to pull in marketing data that helps inform sales reps about what the customer may need.
Enter the HubSpot CRM, a CRM system fully integrated with the HubSpot marketing platform.
HubSpot CRM Benefits
Easy to use: While other CRM systems involve dozens of separate tools, the HubSpot CRM is all-in-one, designed to get your sales team up and running quickly with little training.
Saves your sales team time: Most CRM systems require lots of data entry and logging of emails and calls. Because it is integrated with HubSpot’s marketing platform, the HubSpot CRM logs events in the background so your sales team can focus on selling.
Built for the modern sales team: HubSpot CRM is built around the way people buy today. As people search for solutions, the sales process happens across multiple channels and touch points, from your website and social media to emails and phone calls.
The HubSpot Sales Platform dashboard.HubSpot Sales Platform Features
Robust contact database: As you might expect, HubSpot’s CRM makes it easy to collect and store data on your contacts, companies, deals, and tasks. It automatically creates company records, associates contacts with companies, and de-duplicates leads so you don’t have to.
Quickly and easily manage your contacts and add properties that matter most to your business.Contact timeline: Because today’s sales process happens across thousands of touch points, the HubSpot CRM incorporates a timeline that organizes all of your interactions with prospects so you can easily review their history.
Email: You can continue to use your Gmail, Google Apps, Outlook, and Apple Mail to email prospects while logging those emails in the HubSpot CRM easily and automatically. You can also send emails from the HubSpot CRM and track when your prospects open them.
Phone Integration: Your sales reps can make calls with one click inside the HubSpot CRM system. While on the call, they can log notes and even make recordings of the phone calls to store with the contact record (phone recording is optional and available at an additional cost).
Place phone calls to potential customers and record them within HubSpot’s CRM.Sidekick (Signals) Integration: As you type emails to your prospects, Sidekick will pull company and contact information, giving you a quick and easy reference to the contact and their timeline as you write your email.
As you write emails, reference your contact information and timeline in your email program.Armed with these tools, your sales team will be better equipped to service the needs of your customers, close deals faster and recapture valuable time for helping potential customers.
