Your sales team is likely using email, phone, social media, and more to reach out and connect with potential customers. But how are they keeping track of these conversations?
Spreadsheets?
Notes?
This kind of documentation is unreliable and inconsistent. It also requires a lot of unnecessary time and energy. That's why many small business owners invest in a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool like HubSpot's.
The HubSpot CRM has a high ranking on both G2Crowd and Capterra, due to the customizable database and exceptional customer support. It's easy to upload all of your contacts and get started. And most importantly, it's free.
However, if you have a smaller team, are all of the bells and whistles of HubSpot CRM necessary? The short answer: yes. HubSpot's CRM, dare we say, is the only CRM out there that can give a small business everything they need.
Why HubSpot Is The Best CRM For Small Business
With the right CRM, you can increase productivity, drive sales, and attract, nurture, and retain more customers. For smaller teams working with limited resources, budget, and bandwidth, an exceptional CRM can be a game changer. Here are the top reasons that HubSpot's free CRM is that game-changing tool, and the very best for small businesses.
Intuitive and Easy To Learn
"HubSpot CRM handles the basics of a CRM system -- contacts, companies, deals, tasks -- very well. The user interface is easy to use, and HubSpot updates both the UI and the features regularly. Support is easy to deal with and quick to respond. Plenty of training materials and not that hard for users to learn on their own." - Ken R.
When you implement any new resource or tool, there's going to be an onboarding period for your team. If you select a cumbersome or overly complicated CRM, it'll take much longer to get up to speed. Plus, when it comes to maintaining your contact records and customer information, you want to get it right. This where HubSpot shines.
The actual UX of the HubSpot CRM is easy to understand, despite your background or skill set. Anyone can go in, and intuitively understand how to make it work. Additionally, HubSpot provides a lot of resources, tools, and best practices to get started with their CRM. As long as you follow their recommendations and processes, your team can seamlessly upload and organize all of your contacts.
Provide Better Customer Insights
"The platform is great for tracking all prospect activity, from web and email activity to form completion. It's nice to see the history of the prospect over time so you can derive the value in that lead." - Alisa M.
When you're a small business, every decision matters. Your sales team needs to know they're talking to the most qualified customers. On the marketing side, you need the data to develop and execute effective strategies. The HubSpot CRM supports both initiatives.
You can install HubSpot's tracking code to extract data from non-HubSpot pages (if the CRM is the first HubSpot tool you're using.) The code can be easily installed on website and landing pages and will collect the data necessary to target your leads, opportunities, and customers. This data is vital for the sales team, putting them in the best possible position to have meaningful conversations.
Organizes Your Sales Pipeline
"Between the ability to call through the CRM, leave notes, schedule follow-ups, track deals, send emails all through one program, we have the ability to make sure that everyone is on the same page."- Sarah Z.
For a small business, having an accurate sales pipeline is crucial. If you don't document your sales pipeline in one central place, or don't update the information, it won't have much value for your team. An unorganized sales pipeline will lead to a lot of confusion and miscommunication internally and can result in a lot of missed opportunities.
With HubSpot's CRM, you have a real-time view of your entire sales funnel. You can see the meetings or demos that team members are scheduling, the deals that are closing, and new customers. Over time, you can track and monitor how you're performing on the sales side. The CRM organizes all of your sales data and keeps it in one central place.
Automates Sales Activity
"Keeping track of leads and setting reminders to follow-up with potential clients is maddening without the proper tools. HubSpot CRM has put us on the right path and created organization in our sales and marketing. It helps us track communication between our sales and marketing team with our current and prospective clients. In this industry, roles change quickly and the ease of use with this CRM, helps us keep up and stay on top of everything within these changing markets. No more searching through emails, business cards or cell phones for numbers. Everything is in one place. It keeps a timeline of every touch made to a client or prospective client. You can send emails and documents with this site and create teams, truly awesome." - Carrie G.
Your sales team is likely using email, phone, social media, and more to connect with potential customers. Tracking this information over a period can provide invaluable insight. With the HubSpot CRM, you can follow every customer interaction automatically. You can see exactly where a customer has engaged, whether it's on your website, on your Facebook or Twitter channel, on a call or in an email thread with a sales rep.
It's a start to finish story of the customer experience. Not only does this help you stay organized, but it also shows the paths customers are taking to discover and move forward with your company.
Has Useful Integrations
"I work in Hubspot all day every day. Hubspot is one of the only tools that lets you put all your marketing under one banner. It integrates with so many other services, and additional integrations are available from Zapier. Creating experiences is easy, and Hubspot makes it quick and easy to capture leads and reach out to them." - Aaron G.
If you're a small business considering the HubSpot CRM, you're in one of two positions. The first is that you're already using HubSpot's sales and marketing tools, and you're switching to the HubSpot CRM to integrate everything. The second is that you're looking for a new CRM, and spreading out your marketing and sales efforts across a few different platforms. Either way, the HubSpot CRM is the way to go because of all the ways it can integrate and sync up with other tools.
To start, the CRM can sync with Gmail or Outlook. If you integrate the CRM with your email inbox, you can capture conversations with leads, such as phone calls, emails, or meetings. It can also connect with platforms such as MailChimp, Google Contacts, and Slack. You can use these integrations to automate even more sales activity, such as updating deals and contacts.
Moving Forward with HubSpot's CRM
The most important thing that HubSpot's CRM does is unify marketing and sales teams. Your entire organization can operate from the same accurate insights and updates about where customers are in their buying journey. Having that full visibility into your funnel, from start to finish, can be the key to finally getting your team communicating and collaborating.
HubSpot's CRM will also grow with your organization. When the time is right, you can easily upgrade and integrate the CRM with HubSpot's other marketing and sales tools. The combination of these resources gives small businesses everything they need to execute the perfect customer experience. We work with teams that choose to implement HubSpot all the time. Using our free savings guide, our clients could sign up for HubSpot's CRM and use it alongside HubSpot's marketing and sales tools, while saving up to 60% in their first year.
