Implementing HubSpot can be a transformative journey for businesses. As one of the most user-friendly CRM platforms, it makes sales and marketing alignment accessible and straightforward.
But when HubSpot isn’t implemented strategically, covering the blindspots that many businesses aren’t even aware of, it's easy to end up with one of the most powerful business tools in the world gathering dust in a proverbial corner closet.
So in this blog post, we'll explore the necessary steps of an effective HubSpot implementation and emphasize the importance of working with a HubSpot implementation partner.
Whether you're new to HubSpot or failing to achieve the desired results with an existing implementation, read on to find out how a partner can help you unlock the full potential of your sales and marketing teams.
The Necessary Steps of an Effective HubSpot Implementation
Implementing HubSpot goes beyond simply creating an account and diving in headfirst. It requires careful planning and execution to ensure that HubSpot aligns with your business goals and connects seamlessly with your existing infrastructure.
To ensure that that happens, your implementation journey needs to start before you even create your login password. Because the preliminary groundwork you lay down for your HubSpot journey is where its effectiveness begins.
These are the essential steps that every HubSpot implementation should cover:
Understanding Business Goals and Direction:
Before diving into HubSpot, it's crucial to have a clear understanding of your business goals and direction. A HubSpot implementation strategy only works if it’s aligned with what the business wants to achieve. But connecting the dots between objectives and the HubSpot features that can help realize them is often easier said than done.
Creating the Most Effective Account Settings and Permissions:
Properly configuring your HubSpot account settings and permissions is vital for maintaining data integrity and ensuring that the right people have access to the right information at the right time. When opting for the DIY implementation route, it’s easy to miss key personnel who require access to operations. The result? Delays that directly influence product/service delivery and reliability.
Analyzing Existing Performance and Identifying Necessary Changes:
A thorough analysis of your existing marketing and sales performance is essential to identify areas where HubSpot can improve performance. This isn’t always easy when you’re accustomed to the daily operations of your business along with the challenges that aren’t even apparent to you anymore. An implementation partner is vital in this step, assessing your current processes, identifying gaps or bottlenecks, and seeing the possibilities that could optimize your HubSpot implementation.
Assessing Workflows and Finding Room for Improvement:
HubSpot provides powerful automation capabilities, but leveraging them effectively requires analyzing and optimizing existing workflows. To do this you need to take a step back and analyze the workflows across your sales and marketing teams from a bird's eye view. Creating holistic workflows that break down operational silos can change the way your teams work together towards a shared objective.
Setting up Reporting and Analytics:
Tracking and measuring the success of your marketing and sales efforts is crucial for continuous improvement. Because just as your business evolves and adapts to the needs and demands of the market, so too your HubSpot implementation should evolve over time to stay relevant to your needs and optimize your marketing performance. And with HubSpot’s analytics dashboards, that insight is easy … if it’s set up properly.
Training Teams to Ensure Effective HubSpot Adoption:
Introducing HubSpot to your teams requires proper training to ensure that they can utilize the platform to its full potential. While the internet is filled to the brim with vital resources that can help teams find their way around HubSpot, a business loses valuable production time if people are in a constant search for how that information applies to their specific challenges. Tailored training sessions and ongoing support empower teams and help them embrace HubSpot from day one.
What Does a HubSpot Implementation Partner Bring to the Table?
Covering the necessary groundwork during implementation may seem like a daunting exercise. Especially when you consider how big each step impacts creating an effective HubSpot ecosystem.
But with an experienced HubSpot implementation partner, you get to every step of the journey with confidence and walk away with a far more intuitive CRM ecosystem than DIY implementation would have allowed.
Here are the top advantages a HubSpot implementation partner brings to the table:
Save Money, Time, and Headaches:
Implementing HubSpot can be a complex process, and attempting it alone may lead to costly mistakes and wasted time. An implementation partner's expertise helps you avoid common pitfalls and streamline the implementation journey, saving you money, time, and headaches down the road.
Ensure an Effective, Error-Free Setup:
An implementation partner has in-depth knowledge of HubSpot's features and best practices, which go a long way to ensuring your setup is done accurately and effectively. An implementation partner can configure your account, integrate third-party tools, and ensure smooth data migration, minimizing the chances of errors and data inconsistencies.
Embrace Insights on All Fronts Under One Roof:
Experienced HubSpot implementation partners provide a holistic view of your marketing, sales, and customer service processes. And by consolidating your data and insights in one place, they can help you gain a comprehensive understanding of your customer's journeys, helping you make data-driven decisions at every turn.
Get Tailored Training and Support Over the Long Term:
Partnering with an implementation expert means having access to ongoing training and support. HubSpot implementation partners can provide personalized guidance based on each business’s unique needs, ensuring that your team is equipped with the knowledge and know-how to make the most out of HubSpot in the long run.
Scale Your Platform as Your Business Grows:
As your business expands, your HubSpot implementation needs to evolve. An implementation partner is with you for the long run, helping you scale your HubSpot platform, implementing advanced features, and adapting your processes to accommodate growth and changing business requirements.
Enjoy Effective Change Management:
Change management is a crucial aspect of any implementation process and an implementation partner helps guide their clients through the transition, effectively managing change within the organization, and ensuring a smooth adoption of HubSpot across teams.
Why it’s time to make things personal
Implementing HubSpot is a significant undertaking not only for the company but for the people as well. That’s why a partner that takes HubSpot implementation personally when they go on an implementation journey tailored to your business. Just like 1406 does.
Building a framework that works
At 1406, we use an implementation framework based on previous implementations, bringing years of insights to your implementation. And with each implementation, we update our framework to bring only the most intuitive and impactful journey to the next client.
Over the years, we’ve learned to ask the right questions to make sure each client’s HubSpot environment is set up in alignment with their environment. Because HubSpot is a shell that can fit around any workflow, streamlining operations and output no matter what business model it’s introduced to.
But if it’s not set up for your unique business model, then the implementation will be like fitting a round peg in a square hole.
Never say never
While HubSpot may offer one of the most inclusive integration environments out there, there are a few exceptional outliers. But where others opt to move clients to existing integrations when limitations come to light, we embrace the challenge to work around the roadblock through custom integrations.
Been there, done that
1406 has worked with hundreds of HubSpot customers and our experience of what works and what doesn’t can fill a library. It’s that empirical knowledge that drives our implementations and allows us to create a HubSpot ecosystem tailored to your business model and infrastructure.
From the initial setup to ongoing training and support, 1406 can help you unleash the full potential of HubSpot for your business.