Streamlining sales pipeline, setting up HubSpot CRM, and marketing automation for an IT company

Client:?Perfsol, an IT Software Development Company

Objective: organizing and boosting sales efficiency for better revenue prediction and individual performance evaluation.

Preface

So, let's talk about Perfsol, a robust IT software development company with a big sales team working across various channels like email outreach, LinkedIn, Upwork, and inbound leads through the website form. But here's the catch — they were using different tools to manage and store data for each channel. Hubspot for Upwork leads, Pipedrive for LinkedIn, and no CRM for inbound leads.?

Disclaimer: there’s nothing bad about using different tools for different channels, as long as you are satisfied with the work speed and convenience and no data is lost.?However, in my client’s case, there was a little data mess making it hard for the sales team to keep things in order and for the CEO to make a funnel analysis.?

That's where I came in. My mission was to simplify and optimize their sales process while implementing a CRM system as a single source of truth.

Before:

- Hubspot pipeline for Upwork reps

- Pipedrive + Spreadsheets for Linkedin reps

- Emails for sales team and website form

Customer Journey Flow

First, before diving into process optimization and CRM setup, we needed to understand Perfsol's customer journey and marketing and sales funnel. So, I sat down with the team, chatted to explore their work principles, and visualized the whole workflow.?

Sales and Lead Generation HubSpot Pipeline

Alright, time to choose the ultimate CRM that would meet all their needs. After careful consideration, I decided on HubSpot. It has the flexibility they need for the Leads and Deals stages, unlike Pipedrive, which is more deal-focused.

I suggested they work with two entities:?Contacts?and?Deals?while using Properties to manage the rest.

Here's the deal: a lead starts as a?Contact?until it becomes a Sales Qualified Lead. Once qualified, the?Contact?gets attached to a?Deal, transitioning from the lead generation funnel to the sales funnel.

We customized the Lead Status property in HubSpot to keep track of lead generation. We settled on a few key statuses:

● Prospect: Contacts involved in cold email outreach. Campaigns are initiated for them.

● Replied: Those who replied to any outreach source (email, Upwork, LinkedIn).

● Lead: Contacts that passed the initial qualification (usually in writing).

● Call Scheduled: Contacts for whom a call is scheduled.

● SQL (Sales Qualified Lead): Contacts qualified for buying; the deal is opened.

● Unqualified: Contacts that didn't meet the initial qualifications.

● Recycle: Contacts without an established need, going into lead nurturing activities.

As a Contact moves into the Deal stage, it progresses through the next steps:

● New Deal: The contract is ready to buy, and you prepare the proposal.

● Proposal Sent: You've estimated the project and sent the proposal to the client.

● Negotiation: The client responds to the proposal, and you work back and forth, finalizing terms, NDAs, and documentation.

● Closed Won: Congratulations! You've won the deal!

● Closed Lost: Bummer, you lost the lead. Remember to select the most appropriate reason when marking a deal as "Closed Lost".

I also recommended different follow-up rules, qualification criteria, and lead nurturing strategies for each stage.

Integration and Automation

I dove into integrating and automating all the routine tasks to save time and effort. One of the frequent and mundane tasks was assigning leads from the lead gen team to sales reps. I streamlined this by integrating Google Sheets with HubSpot.

Each lead gen had their own Google Sheet with the contacts they messaged. Whenever a contact responded, a lead gen manually entered their data into the CRM and assigned them to a sales rep. Pretty about time-consuming.

So, I devised a simple but elegant solution: I created separate scenarios in Make for each lead gen. When a contact replied, and the status changed to "Replied" in the specific Google Sheet column, a webhook automatically created a new contact in HubSpot. This contact also grabbed the relevant data from columns in the Google Sheets, like Name, Country, Company name, Email, and so on. Also, a new engagement for this client was created and assigned to the right sales rep.

But what if some fields in the Google Sheets were empty? In such a case, Makes sends an error message and stops the scenario. Pretty uncomfortable. So I added an error handler (Ignore) that lets the scenario keep running even if there's missing info. Smooth sailing!

Teaching the Team

Now that the new process was up and running, it was time to enlighten the team about all the incredible changes I've made. We had an explanatory call, and I created a super handy document with detailed guidelines for everything.

The document covered:

● Contacts page in HubSpot: What fields to fill in and an overview of Lead Status properties.

● Deals in HubSpot: What fields to fill in and an explanation of Deal Stage properties.

● Lead Sources: All about each source and how to work with them.

● Make automation process: Instructions for setting up new scenarios in the future.

● Cold outreach process: Integrating HubSpot and Reply.io for killer cold outreach campaigns.

Conclusion

By streamlining its sales process, implementing HubSpot CRM, and automating routine tasks, Persfsol achieved impressive results. They now have an organized and efficient sales pipeline, transparent revenue predictions, and improved individual performance evaluation. With a better grasp of its sales funnel and a more agile approach, Persfsol is taking its sales game to the next level.?

Kudos to the team! (and to me:)