Online marketing is a hot topic these days, with many people weighing in on the value of marketing automation, email marketing, and search engine optimization (SEO) and discussing how to drive traffic to your website and convert leads. However, what is often left out in these discussions is how sales fits in to this strategy.
Ideally, these powerful tools that are available to marketers should also be able to provide value to an organization’s sales team, helping them to take action on the great opportunities generated by their marketing efforts. However, while it may seem unthinkable in today’s age, many organizations’ sales teams are still using static resources like spreadsheets to track their sales, customer, and pipeline data.
These organizations are often hesitant to make the jump to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution or switch to a new system. This is usually due to the perception that migrating to a CRM seems prohibitive. There are a number of reasons for this, so we wanted to examine each of them and look at how HubSpot’s CRM addresses these concerns:
3 Reasons Why Organizations Don’t Migrate to a CRM
Cost
Many CRM solutions can be extremely expensive to adopt, due to licensing and subscription fees. CRMs which require licenses for each user can become rather costly, especially for larger sales teams. Depending on the size of the organization and the number of people who will need to use the system, proving the ROI of a CRM can be difficult, since the benefits provided may appear to be worth less than the immediate and ongoing costs.
Adoption
A CRM is only valuable if its data is kept up to date. In order to get the most value out of the software, salespeople need to be able to immediately update customer information and provide context about the people they contact and the status of prospective opportunities.
If an organization is going to invest in a new CRM, they need to be sure that their sales team is using it correctly in order to provide a return on that investment. If adoption of the new CRM is difficult, data will most likely not be kept up to date, resulting in an expensive investment that does not provide value to its users.
Complexity
Many CRM systems are highly complex, due to the multitude of configuration options that they provide. This complexity can present a barrier to entry due not only to the time needed to configure the CRM to meet an organization’s needs, but also in the training required for team members to learn how to use the new system.
What’s more, many CRMs do not easily integrate with other connected systems, which results in the need for team members to manually update multiple systems, resulting in a waste of time and effort, all of which negatively impacts the ROI of adopting the CRM.
How HubSpot Addresses These Concerns
At Diagram, we’ve been in the digital space for a long time, and we’ve dealt with a large number of different CRM systems. One thing that we’ve come to understand when working with these systems is that it’s easy to make them very complex, but it’s much harder to make them simple and easy to use.
When we look for a system to recommend for both our clients and ourselves, we take the philosophy to heart that it has to provide value by mitigating the concerns outlined above. This is why we recommend the HubSpot CRM for our clients, and it’s why we also use it ourselves. Let’s look at how this powerful tool addresses the concerns we’ve described:
Cost
Here’s the best news you’ll hear about the HubSpot CRM: it’s free! HubSpot provides this tool, which includes unlimited user accounts, contacts, and storage, completely free of charge. Compared to many other CRM solutions, this represents a significant cost savings.
Adoption
HubSpot’s CRM is built in a way that makes managing contacts, companies, and opportunities feel natural, and it makes it easy to import data and define custom properties. It’s easy to get started using the system in hours rather than months, and team members will be able to immediately find value from the powerful tools it provides.
Complexity
The HubSpot CRM was built to be simple and easy to use, meaning that the process of configuring the system to meet an organization’s needs will be fast and easy. The CRM is also built to integrate with HubSpot’s marketing automation platform (MAP), as well as hundreds of other products.
HubSpot also provides some great training resources to ensure that every user will be able to get the most out of the system. They’ve made a great product that provides their users with a great deal of value without overwhelming them with options, and this allows salespeople to focus on sales rather than struggling to use a complicated CRM.
By addressing the issues of cost, adoption, and complexity, HubSpot’s CRM provides a great value for any organization, allowing them to make the best use of the many opportunities for reaching their customers online. If you’re considering a move to the HubSpot CRM but aren’t sure how to get started, or if you want to know more about how it can bring value to your business, please contact us. We look forward to working with you to create a successful digital strategy!
