7min
Sales CRM systems are designed to help sales teams manage their customer relationships more effectively. They provide tools for managing customer data, tracking sales opportunities, and automating sales processes. HubSpot CRM is one of the best sales CRM systems because it is easy to use, and provides a comprehensive set of features, including contact management, deal tracking, and pipeline management. It also integrates with other HubSpot products.
Sales teams that rely on spreadsheets instead of CRMs often have an unclear sales process, if any process at all. With no real rationale for why or how they're making sales calls, the entire team wastes time rewriting the same emails or copying and pasting text in the hopes of reaching out to prospects. Implementing a CRM can help streamline the sales process and save time in the long run.
Does That Sound Like You?
As a marketer, you need to understand not only the sales cycle but also how buyers interact with your company. This can help you create a more comprehensive lead list and avoid underwhelming your prospects. By understanding the buyer's journey, you can map out the steps that a potential customer follows before purchasing. Additionally, understanding buyer visibility can help you determine which prospects are most likely to convert and how to reach them.
With HubSpot, you have access to powerful tools that can help you track buyer visibility and journey. Use these tools strategically to gain a better understanding of your marketing efforts. The tool facilitates a better understanding of your leads, which at the end of the day will help you close more sales. It's not without some limitations, of course, but it makes HubSpot CRM easier to use.
So what features are available in the free version to help your team close more sales?
1. HubSpot Activity Feed
You'll be using this Chrome extension for a long time to come. The HubSpot activity feed is a great way to keep track of your sales pipeline in real time and increase your sales. It allows you to see which deals are moving through the pipeline and keeps you updated on the status of each deal. This extension allows you to monitor email opens, document views, form submissions, and many more activities. This feature allows you to filter your timeline by activity type and customer stage.
This way, you can follow up with customers and make sure that they are moving forward with their purchases. Additionally, the activity feed can help you identify any potential problems with a deal so that you can address them before they become an issue.
But that doesn't mean you have to use Chrome or install extensions if you don't like them. All of this information is available in the HubSpot CRM activity feed menu, which includes detailed analytics.
What type of notifications are you likely to receive? Check it out.
2. Contact Timelines
A contact timeline is like a history book that records all your interactions with potential buyers. It includes everything from emails and website activity to communicating with colleagues. This feature is useful when checking the status of contacts or deals so you or your sales team can be prepared for their next call.
How can it help me?
After several weeks with no response from Client X, your salesperson should take this opportunity to reach out and continue communication to try to close the deal. This is a perfect chance to reignite the conversation and extend the sales cycle.
3. Email Alerts
Sales are the lifeblood of any business, so it's critical to have systems in place that help you increase sales and close more deals. HubSpot’s Email Alerts is one such system. It allows you to automatically send alerts to your sales team when certain events occur, such as a new lead being generated or a deal being won or lost. This way, your sales team can take immediate action to follow up with new leads or address any deals that are in danger of being lost. As a result, you can close more deals and boost your sales figures.
Wouldn't it be great to know when someone has opened your email? With email alerts, you can see exactly when your recipient has opened your email - whether it's once, twice, or even twenty times. As they are still processing your message, you can follow up with them immediately. The email alert feature is a great way to stay on top of your important conversations.
Ideally, you should reach out to your customers within five to ten minutes after they open your email.
4. Lead Visit Alerts
A lead visit alert is a HubSpot feature that notifies a sales representative when a lead visits their website. Usually, you'll see an alert alongside the page your lead visited, indicating they are interested in similar topics. The sales representative can then reach out to the lead to try and convert them into a customer. This feature is beneficial because it allows sales representatives to quickly follow up with leads that are interested in what they have to offer.
5. ‘Click-To’ Functionalities
Salespeople often have trouble engaging potential customers in conversation. HubSpot's Click-to functionality allows you to add a clickable element to your site that will open a HubSpot form when clicked. This is a great way to increase conversions by making it easy for visitors to fill out a form.
By using HubSpot's "click-to" functionality, you can contact or email someone directly based on their above activities, thereby avoiding the need to search for their contact information. You can also automatically log your calls and emails, providing you with access to previous conversations, topics, and questions.
6. Email Templates and Snippets
Email templates and snippets are a great way to save time and ensure consistency in your email communications. With HubSpot, you can easily create and manage email templates and snippets, so you can focus on creating great content for your recipients.
With email templates, you can define the structure and design of your email once, and then use that template each time you need to send an email. This ensures that your emails always have a consistent look and feel, and makes it easy to insert your content into the template.
Snippets are a great way to save time when composing emails. With snippets, you can create and save small pieces of text or HTML, so you can quickly insert them into your emails. This is especially useful for inserting links, images, or other HTML elements into your emails.
How does it help me?
Just after speaking with Client X, you want to follow up with an email asking for a meeting. The email template allows you to send it within seconds. All of this is done automatically, so you need only click send to send the message.
7. Reporting
HubSpot's Reporting feature provides users with valuable insights into their website's performance. By tracking website visits, leads, and customers, users can see which areas of their website are performing well and which need improvement. Additionally, HubSpot's Reporting feature can help users identify trends and patterns in their website's data, allowing them to make informed decisions about their website's future.
Not just that, the reporting feature is a powerful tool that sales managers can use to monitor the progress of their team members in real time. Additionally, the tool provides a simple and secure way for line managers and salespeople to track progress toward their personal KPIs on a weekly or monthly basis. Additionally, dashboard visibility restrictions can be configured to limit access to sensitive data to Authorised users.
8. Meeting Scheduling
HubSpot's meeting schedule feature allows you to quickly and easily schedule a meeting with your team by selecting the date, time, and location that works best for everyone. You can also add a meeting agenda, notes, and attachments to keep everyone on the same page. Plus, you can use HubSpot's meeting reminders to make sure no one forgets about the meeting. If you agree on a mutual meeting time this way, you won't have to worry about long email chains.
How does it help me?
It can be tough trying to schedule a meeting with someone, especially when you're trying to accommodate their schedule. A week can easily go by without any headway being made. Instead of continuing to go back and forth trying to arrange a date and time, simply send a meeting schedule link. This way, you can decide on a time that works best for you.
9. Live Chat
HubSpot's Live Chat feature is a great way to connect with your website visitors in real time. By providing instant access to live chat support, you can answer questions, resolve issues, and build relationships with your customers quickly and easily. In addition, the live chat feature can also be used to proactively engage with visitors to your website, providing an opportunity to upsell or cross-sell your products and services.
How does it help me?
You've got a potential lead on your hands - congratulations! But before you get too excited, it's important to make sure they're the right target audience for your business. You can offer specific options to choose from instead of spending more time researching. For example, they might be looking for a job, looking to sell services, or just trying to get pricing information. Depending on the answer they provide, you can then direct them to the most relevant website page. By doing so, you'll be saving time and receiving qualified leads.
10. Documents
The HubSpot Documents feature is designed to make your life easy by letting you create and store all of your documents in one convenient central location. With this feature, it's a breeze to find and share documents with others, as well as keep track of versions and revisions. Plus, the document management features in HubSpot help you keep your documents tidy and easy to locate. Not to mention, you can also monitor the open rate of a document you've sent to a prospect via email thanks to a unique link that gets uploaded to HubSpot. This way, you can observe exactly how long they've viewed a particular page or section, giving you a great segue into your following subject of conversation!
You can also set up a document that requires the recipient's email address to open the document after forwarding it. This is the equivalent of two leads!
How does it help me?
When you notice that a prospect has spent an abnormal amount of time on a certain page of your pricing guide, it may be worth reaching out to them directly to discuss the content on that page. This shows that you're paying attention to their behavior and that you're willing to get straight to the point - something they'll appreciate.
11. Prospect Tracking
HubSpot's Prospect tracking is an incredibly powerful reporting tool that businesses can use to keep tabs on all the companies that have visited their website as of late. This is an immensely valuable piece of information for businesses, as it allows them to see which companies are interested in their product or service, and then follow up with those companies accordingly. Additionally, this data can be used to help businesses improve their website and marketing efforts, as they can see which areas are driving the most interest from potential customers.
12. Pipeline Management
HubSpot's Pipeline Management feature is a game-changer for sales managers. It allows them to build and track their sales process, so they can have better visibility into their deals. By being able to see the status of each client and how long they've spent at each stage, sales managers can more easily identify what it takes to move the deal along. Additionally, they can track the amount of activity for each client, increasing their understanding of their sales funnel. This way, they can make informed decisions about where to allocate their time and resources.
By taking the time to analyse your sales pipeline and understanding which activities work best in a successful deal, you can not only close more deals in the future but also learn what methods can be adapted to your current approaches.
This will allow you to not only increase your sales success rate but also understand your pipeline and what needs to happen at each stage to close more deals.
Grow Your Business with The Best Sales CRM System
If you're looking for a sales CRM system that can help you grow your business, HubSpot is a great option to consider. With its powerful features and easy-to-use interface, HubSpot can help you manage your sales contacts, track your sales pipeline, and close more deals. Plus, with HubSpot's integrations with other popular business tools, you can get even more out of the system. So, if you're looking for a sales CRM that can help you take your business to the next level, HubSpot is worth considering.
