How to Best Use HubSpot in Your Sales Tech Stack

So you have HubSpot Sales but don’t know where to start? You’ve come to the right place.

I’m a certified HubSpot trainer with over 30 HubSpot certifications, and I use HubSpot every day. Here are some of my best practices and tips to make the most of HubSpot Sales and make it a true power tool in your tech stack.

Implementation tips: Set up HubSpot Sales for success

Let’s start at the beginning, with implementation. (This section is more for admins than for sellers — if that’s not you, jump to best practices for using HubSpot Sales.)

Set up your database migration for success

First, migrate all the databases from other CRMs or spreadsheets into HubSpot. Make sure you:

Clean your data. Before migrating your databases, go over them and assess the information you want to keep. Consider what brings insightful value and will continue to be useful for your daily operation as historical data, and what won’t be necessary for future activities.

Browse integrations in the app marketplace. Don’t worry! You don’t have to manually connect or migrate information to your new platform. Instead, visit the app marketplace to find native integrations with the other software in your tech stack.

Lean into HubSpot Academy. You don’t have to be an expert from the get-go. HubSpot Academy is a great resource for tutorials and more. If you’re a newbie, I’d recommend starting with this HubSpot Sales certification course.

Best practices for using HubSpot Sales

All set up? Great! Here are best practices for using HubSpot Sales:

Data analysis

We’re in the era where data represents critical business intelligence, so features that favor transparency and effectiveness will also provide clarity on profits.

Here’s how to set yourself up for success:

Migrate all your data into HubSpot. If you have other databases in other softwares or spreadsheets, make sure you migrate that information into HubSpot so you can manage all your leads, prospects and clients in one place.

Get your whole tech stack integrated. Don’t fight going back and forth to see your KPIs in different systems — context-switching is expensive, and consistency is key. I strongly recommend getting all your different tools integrated into HubSpot for ease and a single source of truth.

Create your own dashboards and reports. Don’t just use the report library; create your own reports and dashboards. If you typically have custom fields for contact and deals, use that information as part of the filters for your reports. You will get reports that truly reflect your operation and give you clarity into the different segmentations that can come from one metric.

Customize your experience

Having the ability to make your CRM truly yours is the secret to success. Here’s how:

Customize records to surface key info. As you browse through a contact’s record, you can see certain information by default. Determine which information is the most important to you and your team, and rearrange how the information appears.

Use properties to filter views. Similar to customizing your record view, use the properties as filters to have a specific view of a list of contacts or deals. This could be something simple like just showing the deals that a certain person is the owner of, or as detailed as having a view with the deals with a close date within this quarter, that have opened a marketing email in the last 15 days and has at least one contact associated with the “Champion” label.

Use deal board views. I use this feature to see what stage each open deal is in, plus, a quick overview of the fields that provide the most value to me, like the total amount, the date for the next activity scheduled, or notes from the last call.

Users and permissions

This one’s more for admins, but I don’t want to skip it. HubSpot doesn’t limit you on the number of users… unless you want to grant them special permissions. Here are some tips for that:

Create roles. Roles are the easiest way to add new people to your HubSpot instance. Pre-arrange what permissions and the level of access they’ll have. For example, you can create roles by the type of activities they’ll do, like “Marketer,” “BDR,” “Customer Support,” or by using the hierarchy of your organization such as “Manager,” “Supervisor,” or “VP.” Make sure you consider all their daily operations in HubSpot to grant them access to all their tools and not limit their productivity.

Create teams. Teams permissions allow you to provide specific views of the information they will need the most. So think of it like “Marketing team,” “Northeast sales team,” and “Customer onboarding team.” Once your teams are set you can create views specific to their required needs. This will also allow you to use them as filters on your reports and have detailed results on their department’s KPIs.

Syncing tips for productivity

Email and calendar: Don’t forget to connect your email inbox to HubSpot! This saves you from having to go back and forth between your inbox and HubSpot. Here’s how I use HubSpot tools in my email:

  • First, I have a copy of my email communication in the contact and deal record in HubSpot.
  • Second, I save time by not having to update the CRM if I now have a meeting booked.
  • Third, this feeds my productivity reporting. I can measure the total of emails sent, how many meetings were booked with my team or an individual, and the outcome of those meetings.
  • Fourth, I use that information to trigger automated actions like email confirmations to other people, tasks to follow up, updates to the information of contact or deal, create reminders, etc.

Extensions: If you use Chrome as your default internet browser, then I highly recommend you download the HubSpot Chrome extension so you can have immediate feedback on email tracking like opens and clicks, CRM notifications, and document views.

Mobile: I use the HubSpot app to access my contacts and deals and get notifications when I’m away from the computer.

Automation: the ultimate time-saver

There are two types of automation in HubSpot Sales, both equally important:

Workflows: Think of this as “bulk” automation. Workflows work with specific triggers in the CRM. So it’s something like “when X happens, then Y will occur.”

So basically, every time a specific criterion is met, HubSpot will execute actions around it. For example, when a new lead receives an email from your sales team, their lead status will be updated automatically to “in progress” without you having to go into HubSpot and update it manually. (If this doesn’t sound like a big lift, you haven’t manually updated a CRM before.)

Sequences: Sequences are a compilation of activities like emails, tasks, and calls, created by you, the seller (or a super nice person on your team). If this is new to you, hey, no shame. Here’s an example:

Seller (you) reaches out to Prospect. Prospect doesn’t answer, and you still have other leads to follow up on. So instead of manually reaching out again, you decide to enroll Prospect in a sequence made up of 4 activities during the following 8 business days, or until you receive a reply (or a connected call or a booked meeting) — whatever happens first.

This could look like:

  • Activity 1: An email to let Prospect know Seller called with no answer. This includes an attached one-pager.
  • Activity 2: After 2 business days since there was no reply, Seller has a follow-up task to call again. So make that call!
  • Activity 3: No answer? 3 days later, send a follow-up email inviting Prospect to book a meeting.
  • Activity 4: Finally, Seller will update the contact and company record to qualify according to their discoveries.

The great thing about sequences is that they can be as simple or as complex as your process requires, and they can be multiple sequences created to target specific situations.

READ: How to Create Sales Sequences Your Reps Will Actually Use

Those are my tips and best practices! I’d love to give a little shout-out to my company, RevPartners — if you’re looking to scale your HubSpot operations or onboarding journey, consider working with us to boost adoption and better leverage the many benefits of SalesHub.


Edited by Kendra Fortmeyer @ Sales Hacker 2022

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