5 Things I learned getting started with Hubspot ??

At Sievo we recently started using Hubspot as our inbound marketing solution. Quite a few people have asked about our experiences as a new customer, so I thought I'd share a few of my observations of the on-boarding process.

Start with some expert advice

Before settling on Hubspot we did our due diligence choosing our inbound marketing solution. We worked with a specialist agency AdvanceB2B to assess the right software solution to fit our unique needs.

Here are the types of questions we considered when comparing alternatives:

• How well do the key features fulfill our inbound marketing needs today and over the next 5 years?
• How compatible is the solution with our existing software stack. CRM, webinars, SEO, etc?
• Can the solution replace some software or solutions we are using?
• How much training resources are available and required for our team to up-skill?
• How well does the solution comply with international data privacy regulations?
• What is the total cost to value ratio against the next best alternative?
• What kind of customer ratings and feedback to the solutions have on platforms such as G2Crowd or Capterra.

Thanks, coach. I got this!

We had a long list of detailed questions to choose our inbound marketing solution and it was helpful to enlist a specialist agency to help us shortlist and choose the right option.

Make first contact early

Once we decided we wanted to work with Hubspot the big mistake we made was to get in touch with their sales team too late.

Earlier this year we totally rebuilt our website. It was a major project that required much of our team’s attention at the time. Our plan was to get the majority of the website development project completed first and reach out to Hubspot only when we needed to activate key features like landing pages and web forms. Think of it as the icing on the cake.

Dude, we're busy. Our website is under construction.

As a temporary solution we got started with the free version of Hubspot for marketing and we assumed the switch over would be easy.

It was a mistake to contact Hubspot late in the website development process for two reasons:

1. Some of the features in the free version of Hubspot are different to the freemium version intended for smaller businesses. We ended up having to build and rebuild forms and landing pages on our new website, and this took unnecessary time and effort from us and our website development partners.
2. It also wasn't easy to switch from a freemium to a professional Hubspot for marketing account and this in turn had a direct impact on how quickly we could implement changes on our website.

The key point is we would have been better off including Hubspot right from the start of our website redevelopment process.

Every sales engine has a (human) weakness

This brings me to the only major criticism I have for the on-boarding process with Hubspot. These guys are famous for building software to connect marketing and sales. Why did it take so long for their sales guys to respond to our contact request?

After we had done all of our due diligence, decided to pick Hubspot and built 90% of our new website I reached out to Hubspot directly by filling a contact request on their website.

Then I waited… and waited…

After a week I filled out the form again and also reach out via website chat. I instantly got a friendly response in the web chat that they would get back to us. Then I waited … and waited…

I was so desperate I even crafted a Tweet to Dharmesh Shah but never shared it. Then came the holidays.

I'm not stalking. Call me!

We launched our new website with a stopgap solution and regrouped after a month. We did eventually hear back from Hubspot and once we got talking to a real person the sales process was smooth sailing.

I don’t exactly know what caused the delay but I inferred that the cause was because a sales person had transitioned away from their role. If this was the case I don’t blame anyone. It’s only a good reminder that even the best sales engine is vulnerable to human error.

If you know you’ll be starting with Hubspot, my advice is to reach out early.

4.  The key to effective on-boarding is structure

Enough criticism. Let’s get to the fun part.

Once all the paperwork had been signed it was time for an introduction to our on-boarding specialist Andrea. She called us over video conference from Dublin and you could hear a touch of Irish mixed with her warm Mediterranean accent.

From the first call you could hear Andrea knew what she was talking about. She guided us through the different activities we’d go through together over the next 90 days and answered a lot of our questions.

Even when you take notes over a call it’s easy to forget a thing or two. The interesting thing about Hubspot’s on-boarding process is that they have built a customisable task list within their application. See the screenshot below.

I found it really useful that this task list lived within our Hubspot account. It was readily available whenever we needed it and it gave us a sense of accomplishment whenever we ticked off activities as completed.

Let's start by moving this one...

Having a structured outline of activities also made our biweekly on-boarding calls easier, as we could talk through accomplished tasks and together decide the priorities for the following weeks.

5.  Experience brings quicker time-to-answer

Another impressive thing about the Hubspot on-boarding process is how quickly on-boarding specialist was able to answer our questions.

She would always send us links to relevant information straight after our calls, or answer straight away to our emails with resources from Hubspots help center.

At first I was convinced Andrea had a second brain to remember all the information she was sharing with us, but it’s more likely she had built up the experience to find information by asking the right questions.

My poor brain hurts. Too much new stuff!

The key point is that a new user can sometimes get stuck in an on-boarding process when they don’t necessarily know how to describe their problems well enough to find an answer themselves.

You can’t overestimate the value of a quick intervention from an experienced on-boarding specialist to speed up time-to-answer.

Conclusion: raising the bar for SaaS on-boarding

 I’ve gone through on-boarding processes with much larger enterprise software solutions but overall the experience with Hubspot is one of the best I've experienced.

The combination of having a structured yet flexible shared action plan within the SaaS-app itself and a knowledgeable on-boarding specialist to guide us through made the overall process clear, fast and efficient.

The process wasn't fully immune to human error on our side or theirs, but the key learning would be to start the dialogue early and get ready to learn a lot.

Hope this was useful. Let me know your thoughts and questions in the comments below.