HubSpot Architecture I Practicum Discovery Call

Video: HubSpot Architecture I Practicum Discovery Call

Meg

Hi there, Brenna! How’s it going? Can you hear me okay?

Brenna

Hey Meg! Yeah, I can hear you. Doing okay over here!

Meg

Awesome, glad to hear it. I'm excited to have the chance to connect and thank you all for
booking time with me. So just to kick things off, let me introduce myself. So my name is
Meg. And I’m your account executive here at Hubspot. So my role is basically to introduce
you all to any new products and services that you're not currently leveraging. I work
closely with your contract manager and customer success manager. Since we haven't met,
I’d love to hear a little about your role.

Brenna

Sure. I’m the admin here at Acorn. We make an accounting SaaS product for small
businesses. I’ve been with the company for about 3 years now.

Meg

Awesome. That’s great context. So I know from your booking that you might be interested
in the HubSpot CRM. I’d love to learn more about what made you want to book time with
me.

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Brenna

Yeah, we're interested in taking a look at the CRM. Our marketing team currently utilizes
the email automation portion of HubSpot. So we’re looking at the CRM to see how that's
coming together.

Meg

Love it. Yeah, we've made huge investments in our CRM over the past year. So I’m excited
to bring you up to speed on it. Okay. So tell me a little bit about the CRM that you all use
today.

Brenna

We use Brontosaurus. And we’re trying to see what else is out there, you know, if we can
find something better. There are a few limitations that we currently have surrounding
reporting and it not being web-based.

Meg

Yeah, that makes sense. If you don’t mind, it would be super helpful if you could walk me
through your current state and what that looks like. If you could go deeper on some of
those limitations or what you’d love to get out of a CRM in a perfect world, that would be
really helpful.

Brenna

Sure. Yeah, we have a list of features we would like to see as part of the new one that we
can send over to you. Our current system is very slow and limited because you have to be
on your desktop to access it. The load time to get it up and running, you know, is probably
close to 40 seconds.

And then, for reporting, not all of the fields are available. There’s only a limited subset of
fields that we can build reports on, so it doesn't really work that well.

Meg

And I would assume because of the load times that the reps probably aren't loving or
using the systems. Is that fair?

Brenna

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Yeah, adoption could be better.

Meg

So, would the sales reps be the main users of the CRM?

Brenna

Yep.

Meg

And how many reps are there?

Brenna

About 430.

Meg

Okay. Are you all looking to use Hubspot as a place to manage your database, update
pipelines, and things like that? Or are you also looking for some sales enablement tools for
your reps as well?

Brenna

So, we need a variety of items. We need the ability to intake new leads from web sources
and distribute those based on some very complex logic. And then, as the leads come in
and the sales reps would work them, we want to update the status of the contact record.
And then, we would need PandaDoc, our document workflow software, to sync and bring
in contracts and connect them to the contact records. And we’d want all the email
marketing campaign automation going through that.

Meg

Okay, that’s good information. We have an existing PandaDoc connector that can pull
CRM data into documents and create documents from Contacts, Companies, and Deals.
But I’d want to do further exploration of your needs with our solutions engineers to make
sure it’s the right fit for your needs. I’ll make a note of that.

Would you need to store financial information in Hubspot?

Brenna

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Ideally.

Meg

And that would just be for reporting purposes?

Brenna

Yes, correct. The goal is to get to a place where the sales rep never has to leave the CRM.
Currently, they're jumping back and forth between the CRM, PandaDoc, email, Proposify,
and all sorts of different applications. So if they could originate a quote or a contract and
send it to the contact, ideally, that's what we're trying to get to.

Meg

Right. Okay. Got it. Very helpful. As far as the reporting that you’re looking for, are you
looking for anything specific?

Brenna

The one that we've had challenges in the past with getting is any sort of speed to lead. So
from when the lead comes in to when a sales rep is actually reaching out to them, we
can’t put a number on it. We also can’t figure out how long it is between the time that the
lead comes in and the reps actually getting somebody on the phone.

Meg

Yeah, that sounds frustrating. So, how are you all passing leads to the reps right now?

Brenna

The leads come into a posting URL that gets fed into our existing CRM. And then, we have
a workflow that basically goes through all the rules, and changes the owner to whoever
that person should be for that particular lead. And then, the sales rep gets a lead
notification via email or text, and they would see it within their dashboard.

Meg

And how long does that process typically take?

Brenna

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From the time that they enter the CRM, probably seconds.

Meg

But how long does it take to get your reps the list of leads?

Brenna

It's live in real-time, but we just can't track it right now.

Meg

I see. So you don't have any visibility into, like, when these reps are actually following up
the leads that you're passing to them?

Brenna

Correct. Like, I told you before, with the data sources earlier, we don't have enough
visibility into all the different fields to generate a report like that.

Meg

Okay, yeah, that makes sense. As far as enablement tools, what are you all looking to
equip your sales reps with to help them do their jobs better? So like, as an example is that
you scheduled this meeting with me today using my meeting link. So instead of us going
back and forth trying to find a time that works best for both of us, you just like clicked on
that link, and that automatically populated on my calendar. Are you looking for something
like that for your reps?

Brenna

Hmmm…I don't know because we currently use Calendly for that. So I'm not sure if the
business would be willing to change from that. But yeah, I mean, there's definitely a
handful of features that we would like the ability to utilize. Being able to text from the
platform directly to the client is a big one.

Email automation is another one. We have all our campaigns automated within
Brontosaurus. So depending on, you know, the lead type and when they come in,
campaigns go out automatically. We can also send mass bulk emails, but it can only
handle so many, and the reporting is garbage. So that’s why our marketing department
uses Hubspot for that bulk email. But when that email gets sent out from HubSpot, there’s
no way to record in the CRM that the weekly email went out to each contact. It would take
way too long, and the system probably wouldn’t even be able to process that information.

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Meg

Right. No visibility for the sales reps to see that leads are interacting with the marketing
emails at all.

Brenna

Yeah, correct.

Meg

So that's a good point. So, right now, the sales reps don't know what people are doing on
the website or how they're interacting with anything that marketing is doing. Is that
correct?

Brenna

So, the leads that come in are from the websites, so we know when somebody’s reaching
out for information. But those weekly marketing blasts don’t always go on a regular
cadence. If a client calls in and says, “Hey, I got your email this morning,” and the sales
reps are in the CRM, they're kinda like, “What email?” They don't have any visibility into
what that email contained.

Meg

Right. Okay. That's definitely something that we can fix.

And I just want to make sure I'm hearing you, so I’m going to summarize what I’ve heard
so far. So you have today about 430 sales reps that would be using Hubspot CRM. And
you would need a way to distribute leads directly to those 430 sales reps and be able to
report on that handoff process, right? And once the leads get to sales, the reps need to be
in one system to do everything they need to do. And they also need visibility into what
Marketing is doing, specifically with those newsletters.

Brenna

Yes. And also the ability for multiple plugins. So integration with Aircall, integration with
industry-specific lead sources…

Meg

Could you tell me more about these sources?

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Brenna

So there are all these different lead sources that we can purchase leads from. So the
ability to quickly, through your API, get it set up so that we can receive those leads
automatically and then set up the lead routing for those lead sources without relying on,
you know, some other in-between party to relay it, which is kind of what we're currently
dealing with now.

Meg

Right. You can definitely use our API, and then we have an integration for Aircall that's
already built out. They would just be able to track and record and transcribe those calls on
that contact record inside of Hubspot. I'm trying to think: what other challenges are you
facing today?

Brenna

Do you have other companies like us that use HubSpot? One of the challenges is taking
data from our website and integrating it with the CRM. Right now, we offer prospects a
free trial period. But when a person signs up for a trial through our site, we end up with a
separate list of participants. It would be great to flag a lead as a product-qualified lead
when they sign up for a trial.

Meg

Okay. So that would be a custom object. You could create “trial” records or even “portal”
records that have a paid vs. trial status. And then, as far as like the, you know, if different
forms are filled out all over the place for one lead, that's easy for us to track on one
contact record.

And then, as far as pipelines and tracking deals, how many different pipelines do you all
have?

Brenna

Hmmm okay. I think we call them different things. So we have different dashboards that
we use. And so one of those dashboards will have all the different leads that are being
worked on. The second dashboard would be all of their in-process clients.

Meg

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Okay, perfect. That makes perfect sense. Um, how many teams are there? Like, do your
sales reps have managers that they roll up to?

Brenna

Yes. I don’t know how many teams there are, but that does bring up another issue that we
currently have. There are no hierarchies. So there’s no way to control the records reps see.
We’d love to be able to set up different permissions so that regional managers can see all
the reps underneath them.

Meg

We can clean that up for you. And then would those managers want to track things like
the different activities these reps are doing? Like calls they're making or meetings they're
having?

Brenna

Yeah, we’d love to be able to run reports on that.

Meg

Okay. And as far as the data that you're going to be collecting in a CRM, can you kind of
give me an idea like just standard information that you would want to house and
Hubspot… besides the like deal owner or sales rep, like first name, last name, email
address, city, or state?

Brenna

Yeah. I mean, it's… it's kinda the basics. It's all the phone numbers, business phone or
business mobile, different addresses, and business mailing. Lead source… lead… lead
description… current status… status, description, contact type, contacts category.

Meg

Nice. Okay. Cool. Well, you know, what I would love to do from here is put together a
custom demo for you all and bring one of my solution engineers to that call. And just walk
you through, you know, like, exactly how we would imagine you all using our CRM if that
sounds like a good plan.

Brenna

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Sure, and we’ll send that spreadsheet over to you as well.

Meg

Great, that info will help us put together the demo so you can see how everything fits
together. Let me know when you want to schedule it so we can get it on the books.

Brenna

Sounds good!

Meg

Alright, that’s great! Thanks so much again for your time. I'll talk to you soon. Okay, bye!

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