Everything You Need to Know HubSpot Implementations: Everything You Need to Know

Why Your Company Needs a CRM

Do any of the following sound familiar?

• Your sales team manages their process completely independently. Think unorganized spreadsheets, untracked texts and phone calls from personal cell phones, and a mix of different software tools (or scraps of paper) to manage tasks and follow-ups. 
• There is no source of truth system for sales reporting or pipeline management. Anything that happens up to a won deal is unclear, so you don’t have visibility into what’s working and what’s not working. 
• Nothing and no one “talks” to each other. Not only are sales reps operating independently, but the software you use for your website, order management, finance, etc. are not integrated, resulting in tons of duplicate data entry and incorrect or outdated data across systems. 
• If a team member leaves, a lot of the information about their accounts goes with them. 
• You’ve tried to implement a CRM in the past, but it wasn’t set up properly, and/or the sales team was reluctant to adopt the new platform. 

If this is you, you’re not alone. We encounter these situations more often than not when onboarding new customers to HubSpot’s CRM.

When set up the right way, a CRM can solve these issues by providing:

• Centralized Data Management. CRM software helps you consolidate customer information into a single platform, making it easily accessible to reps, managers and other internal stakeholders. This centralization ensures that all customer interactions and data are securely recorded and organized. With one source of truth system, your company can ensure that everyone is working with the most accurate and up-to-date information.
• Improved Customer Relationships. By tracking interactions and understanding customer needs and behaviors in one system, you can tailor your communications and services to enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty. 
• Increased Efficiency. Working out of the same platform allows you to streamline communication across departments, enabling teams to collaborate more effectively. Automating routine tasks such as data entry, follow-up emails, and customer segmentation can save time and reduce errors. This efficiency allows employees to focus on more strategic tasks. 

What’s A CRM?

A Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a software platform that helps businesses manage and analyze interactions with current and potential customers. It centralizes customer data, allowing teams across departments – such as sales, marketing, and customer service – to access and update information in real-time. 

This unified view of customer interactions enables businesses to provide more personalized experiences, improve communication, and streamline processes. By using a CRM, companies can better understand customer needs, enhance satisfaction, and ultimately drive growth through stronger, more informed relationships.

Why HubSpot CRM?

Why should you choose HubSpot vs. another CRM software? I could list a number of reasons why, but from my personal experience onboarding sales teams over the last 6+ years, it usually comes down to one simple reason: HubSpot is easy to use. 

Clients and employees alike have told me how much easier it is to use HubSpot than other CRMs they’ve used. My anecdotal experience is not unique to me. HubSpot’s CRM boasts a 4.4 rating on G2 Crowd, with “Ease of Use” listed as its number one “Pro.”

One reviewer notes:

Despite its ease of use, HubSpot is very powerful software. Other advantages include:

• All-On-One Platform. HubSpot’s software was built in-house, not cobbled together through acquisitions. Website, marketing, and customer service tools are available additions built right on top of the CRM software, so everything works together seamlessly. 
• Scalable. You can get started with a free version of HubSpot and upgrade as your needs and business grows.
• Automated and organized data entry. With built-in automation and thousands of app integrations available via their marketplace, you can easily centralize, organize, and automate data collection and analysis.
• AI-Powered. HubSpot’s AI-powered sales tools ensure your reps deliver an authentic buyer experience at scale. Leverage email content writing, chatbot tools, and AI-generated reporting to maximize your sales efforts. 

Your HubSpot Implementation

So you’ve purchased HubSpot. You’re ready to start using some new features and seeing the benefits. But where to begin? 

Let’s dig into the process of implementing HubSpot successfully. 

First, a word of warning….

Maybe I’m just a huge nerd, but HubSpot is fun to use. With that fun comes the impulse to explore and rush ahead to use the tools. 

Exploration isn’t necessarily a bad thing. You’ll get familiar with the software and can start to use some features in your daily workflow.

But…

Diving in without a plan is like trying to build a house without a blueprint.

Imagine you have a pile of bricks, wood, and tools sitting in front of you. You’re excited to start building your dream home, so you begin stacking bricks and hammering nails without any clear direction. Before you know it, you’ve constructed something unstable and mismatched, and you’re stuck wondering where it all went wrong.

While it’s great to explore your new CRM tools, you need a solid plan to build a strong foundation for company-wide adoption. Without it, you risk ending up with a chaotic system that costs you time, money, and efficiency.

The most successful methodology we’ve found in implementing HubSpot (or any large technology implementation, for that matter) is Objectives-Based Onboarding.

Use an Objectives-Based Onboarding Plan

What is Objectives-Based Onboarding?

With objectives-based onboarding (OBO), you’ll tailor your implementation of HubSpot to your team’s unique objectives and desired outcomes. With all of its power and capabilities, it’s easy to become overwhelmed when implementing HubSpot. However, if you work backward from your objectives, you can identify the top priorities for your onboarding tasks and determine your metrics of success for a successful implementation. 

Examples of Objectives:

• Increase number of meetings booked by 15%
• Increase topline sales by 20%
• Increase conversion rates by 2%

Determine Resources Needed

You need to get buy-in across your organization in order for your HubSpot implementation to be successful. Buy-in starts at the top. Executive leadership must fully support the implementation and remove any blockers that would prevent key stakeholders from being involved in the process. 

Using the RACI framework, determine the stakeholders that will need to participate in or be consulted on the project. RACI stands for the four primary responsibilities commonly assigned in projects: responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed. It's a tool used to clearly define and outline roles and responsibilities within cross-functional teams or across different departments during projects and processes.

[Download a free RACI template from HubSpot to identify and assign needed resources for your implementation.]

Consider assigning these key roles for your project:

• Project manager (Responsible): Whether you’re self-implementing or leveraging a Solutions Partner, a Project Manager (PM) must be designated to drive the implementation. The PM will be responsible for aligning tasks with overall project objectives, prioritizing tasks, and holding other stakeholders accountable for their participation in the process. 
• Implementation Specialist (Accountable): This role will be accountable for ensuring that key implementation tasks are completed. Oftentimes, the PM role wears multiple hats, including this role. 
• IT/Finance/Legal (Consulted): Financial, technical and legal implications may need to be considered within the project’s execution. Invite these stakeholders to consult as needed to ensure you don’t hit any unforeseen roadblocks prior to launch. 
• Executive Sponsor (Informed): Whether a leadership committee or single business owner, keep the executive sponsor informed to ensure buy-in remains strong and that they remain aware of the resources and time needed to ensure a successful project completion.

After identifying your principal stakeholders, it’s important to think through involving another key player from the “boots on the ground,” or the user level. Look for someone who generally has buy-in from their team, is excited about the move to HubSpot, and can overall help drive user adoption from the bottom up. This is your “HubSpot Champion.” This person should be included in key process decisions and system design configurations to help ensure the CRM will work for users. 

Finally, even though it’s early days in your implementation, think about how you will maintain HubSpot going forward. A “HubSpot Admin” is responsible for managing the HubSpot platform within an organization, ensuring that it is configured correctly, optimized for the company's needs, and that users are properly trained. This resource can be internal or external. Involving them early in your HubSpot implementation is crucial because their expertise ensures a smooth setup, alignment with business objectives, and helps prevent potential issues that could arise from improper configuration or lack of user adoption.

Perform a Platform/Tech Stack Audit

As your organization grows, your tech stack (aka all the software your team uses) grows alongside it. Oftentimes, the tech stack growth outpaces organizational growth and you end up with disparate systems, using more than one tool to complete similar tasks, or paying for tools that you don’t even use. 

A CRM implementation is the perfect time for you to take a lay of the land and get the full picture of the technologies you’re using and how they all work together. 

Conducting a tech stack audit for your company begins with a comprehensive inventory of all the tools, software, and platforms currently in use. This includes everything from CRM systems and marketing automation tools to project management software and communication platforms. Start by creating a detailed list of each tool, noting its primary function, the departments that use it, and any overlapping functionalities with other tools.

Here’s a tech stack audit template you can use for your company. (And no, you don’t have to give us your email address. You can just have it.)

It’s also important to document the costs associated with each tool, including subscription fees and any additional expenses. This inventory helps you visualize your current tech stack, identify redundancies, and spot areas where your tools may not be fully integrated or optimized.

Next, evaluate the effectiveness and efficiency of each tool in your tech stack. This step involves gathering feedback from employees who use these tools daily to understand their strengths and weaknesses. Consider whether each tool aligns with your company’s current goals and if it's scalable for future growth. Additionally, assess the integration capabilities of each tool – whether they work well together or create silos of data. The goal is to ensure that your tech stack is streamlined, cost-effective, and supports your company’s overall strategy. After the audit, you can make informed decisions on consolidating, upgrading, or replacing tools to better meet your company’s needs.

In summary, conduct a tech stack audit to determine:

• The tools your company is using
• Which tools can be eliminated
• Which tools can be replaced with HubSpot
• Which tools need to be integrated into HubSpot

After you’ve completed your tech stack audit, use your findings to prioritize the tools that can be replaced or integrated with your CRM. Then, create an action plan to optimize your tech stack, ensuring alignment with your company’s goals and improving efficiency across departments. Finally, commit to revisiting your company’s tech stack audit every six months to document any changes and continue to ensure your company is maximizing its usage of all tools.

[Ascend has earned the HubSpot Solutions Architecture Design Accreditation, validating our advanced expertise in designing, configuring, and customizing complex and innovative solutions to solve advanced customer use cases across HubSpot’s CRM platform suite. More on what this means here.]

Conduct Your Initial Setup Tasks

Setup tasks should be customized based on the project’s initial objectives and priorities.

Looking at the top example objective listed earlier – to increase the number of meetings booked – these are some top-priority tasks you might include in your onboarding plan:

• Create meeting links for all sales reps (or train sales reps on how to create their own)
• Add meeting links to email signatures
• Incorporate meeting links into email sequences
• Develop reports to show the number of meetings booked by rep for a specified timeframe. 

There are certain setup tasks that should be standard in any implementation, however. These include:

• Account Defaults
• Global Configuration – think your Branding, Logo, Social Account Connections,  Email Footer, and more
• User Permissions – what users should and should not be able to do. Make sure to leverage role-based and Team permissions where possible. Here’s a permission set template for Sales Reps and Sales Leaders you can use for your company. (And again, no, you don’t have to give us your email address. You can just have it.)
• User Connections to Emails/Calendars
• Automation Setup (Sequences, Workflows) 
• File Management Structure – define how your team will load and store their content, from marketing assets to sales sheets
• Document/Content Import – import key documents such as presentations  
• Naming Conventions – define how your team will name key items in HubSpot such as Lists, Marketing Emails, Sales Sequences, and Workflows so so everyone is speaking the same language and it’s easy to find what you need, when you need it

Prepare Your Data for Import or Migration

Clean, accurate data is a must-have for your implementation. In fact, you’re usually better off starting from scratch with no data than porting over inaccurate data. 

Best Practices for a Data Migration:

• Determine which data needs to be migrated into HubSpot. For example, will you conduct a historical import of all previous sales and customer data, or will you only import open deals and current customers? 
• How will data be migrated? Depending on the system you’re migrating from, there may be a native migration integration available in HubSpot’s marketplace or you may need to conduct a manual import via CSV. 
• Define your cutover period and catch-up data migration timeline. A cutover period is when your company will transition from your old system(s) or processes to HubSpot CRM. During this time, your team will be working out of the old system while you’re finalizing preparation for your HubSpot go live. You’ll need to plan for a catch-up data import after cutover to ensure that no data is lost and that HubSpot is fully synchronized with any changes made during the transition.
• No matter how you’re migrating your data – whether by native integration or CSV import – make sure to test the integrity of your process by bringing over a small subset of data first. Verify it files in HubSpot as expected and there are no unforeseen errors. Then you can look at bringing in the rest of your data. 

Develop an Effective Reporting Structure

Using HubSpot's reporting tools is essential for measuring your KPIs and proving the success of your implementation. To get started, define the right KPIs that align with your business goals, such as lead generation, customer retention, or sales conversions.

Key Steps:

1. Define KPIs: Identify specific, measurable metrics that reflect your business objectives.
2. Create a Reporting Structure: Focus on 5-10 key metrics per role to avoid overwhelming data.
3. Customize HubSpot Reports: Build dashboards tailored to your KPIs, providing real-time insights for strategic decision-making.
4. Continuous Monitoring: Regularly review and optimize your KPIs to ensure they remain relevant and effective.

For more details, read the full blog post.