At LeadG2 and our parent company, The Center for Sales Strategy, we use the HubSpot CRM to manage our sales pipeline and activity. We also provide full customization, set-up, and training on the HubSpot CRM for our clients. Coming from a media sales background myself, I’ve seen my fair share of CRMs being rolled out, and ultimately never effectively used internally. This is why I love working with media companies today and helping them simplify the process of choosing, setting up, and using a CRM with the HubSpot CRM.
While no CRM (or really any software tool) is perfect—we personally think the HubSpot CRM is at the top of the list and provides unique benefits that other CRMs can’t deliver on. This is why I’ve developed a list of what I believe to be the top eight reasons media companies will love (and do love!) the HubSpot CRM.
The HubSpot CRM provides a variety of fields, pipelines, workflows, and reports that can all be fully customized to fit your organization’s needs. For instance, every company has different deal stages they want to track with their salespeople, and how they are labeled is likely going to be different. You can not only have multiple sales pipelines (for different teams or stations, etc.) but you can also customize the deal stages for each pipeline, the associated percentage likelihood to close for forecasting, and what fields must be updated at each of these stages.
There are certainly other CRMs out there with much more in-depth customization opportunities, but by design the HubSpot CRM was created to simplify the use of a CRM and to help sales teams get up and running on a CRM quickly. While lots of options is great for many organizations, we’ve found that most media companies allow these highly customizable CRMs to become so cumbersome and hard to use/manage that they end up never getting fully adopted and require a full-time person or team to manage the software because of the complexity of the customizations. The media companies I’ve worked with all agree on one thing… a CRM is nothing if it’s not being used. That has to be the top goal above all else.
Media salespeople are typically never excited about having to learn or use a new tool. They want to spend their time and energy out doing what they do best… selling. And when a CRM is introduced that is complex to use, not user-friendly, doesn’t have a great user experience, and feels overwhelming to even log into and learn—they aren’t going to use it the way they should be, or at all. This is just a fact. Not to mention, many media sales teams are made up of a variety of people with varying levels of tech savviness. From the gadget-friendly Millennial to the veteran radio rep, having a CRM—like the HubSpot CRM—that was designed with the SALESPERSON in mind first, is absolutely key.
The HubSpot CRM may have been created with the salesperson in mind, but that doesn’t mean it’s not incredibly useful to managers. The built-in reporting with customization add-ons allow for your leadership to have accurate and easy-to-read forecasting, as well as a variety of other metrics (as I’ll touch on in the next section). Managers are able to get an up-to-the-minute view of their entire sales funnel on a clean, visual dashboard. You can sort deals won and lost, appointments scheduled, and contracts sent over any time period, and track performance against quotas you set. You can also sort deals by name, owner, amount, or stage with custom filters for actionable intel in a fraction of the time.
Accurate and consistent forecasting that doesn’t involve plugging data into a spreadsheet will not only make your leadership team smarter and able to better coach salespeople, but it will save them a lot of time.
As mentioned above, there is a wealth of analytics and reporting available that will be valuable to both managers and salespeople. When starting a new partnership, I often ask media companies to share some basic metrics in order to identify gaps and opportunities in their sales process. And it’s incredibly common that they don’t have access to these metrics. This includes KPIs like:
This is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to metrics every sales manager needs in order to properly manage and coach their team. Without these team and individual numbers, how is one to know where to focus their attention? The HubSpot CRM makes it easy to begin gathering these insights so you can start utilizing them to shape your sales strategy.
The HubSpot CRM tracks customer and prospect interactions automatically, whether they’re in an email, across social media, or on a call. There are a variety of automated functions inside this CRM that save a few minutes here and a few minutes there but quickly begin to add up to hours a week when used properly. Some of the functions include being able to log activity including emails and calls with the click of a button, or having data filled in automatically for a contact or company record based on their website URL.
Plus, in addition to automated data entry there are other automation tools that allow salespeople to work smarter and faster. This includes automated workflows, sequences, and more. If you’d like to a demo of the HubSpot CRM and these tools, schedule one here.
One of the top benefits that I hear from salespeople when using the HubSpot CRM is that they can much more clearly have access to information that helps them prioritize their sales activities. Some common examples include:
Oftentimes, while out on the road, it’s hard to keep track of these things but with tools inside of the HubSpot CRM, salespeople can easily create tasks, reminders, call queues, and more that will simplify their lives and make sure they are doing the right activities at the right time with the right prospects.
HubSpot CRM is fully integrated with not only their full marketing automation system, but also with a Sales Hub that includes a variety of time-saving tools that help salespeople sell smarter and faster. These sales enablement tools include automated sequences, email scheduling and tracking, document sending and tracking, a meetings scheduler, and much more. Here are the benefits that media companies boast when they use the HubSpot Sales tools in conjunction with the HubSpot CRM:
While the sales enablement tools have a fee associated with them (contact us here to learn more about pricing and to get a demo) the HubSpot CRM does not…
This brings us to our final benefit which is that the HubSpot CRM is 100% free and will always be free. This might seem too good to be true, but it’s not. Yes, there are add-ons available like the sales enablement tools and more in-depth reporting, but everything mentioned in points 1-6 are included in the standard HubSpot CRM (and much more!) We don’t believe free is always better, because sometimes the old saying “you get what you pay for” really is accurate—but after being users and trainers on the HubSpot CRM since it was in beta, we stand behind the quality of this product and believe if it can also fit better into a budget then that allows media sales organization to invest in the other tools and training they need to use their CRM effectively. It’s a win-win!
If you’re interested in learning more about the HubSpot CRM, or hearing about some of our media clients who have found success with this tool and working with LeadG2, then reach out to us to schedule a call today.