I’m a big proponent of working smarter, not harder, and utilizing all the available resources to do so. As someone who has been using HubSpot for 3 years, I can say that it’s an amazing tool. I can also say that I learn about new capabilities and new ways to use the system all the time.
When I started using HubSpot, I saw it simply as a system to record outreach - calls and emails - in order to track my sales efforts. HubSpot, to me, was where I did the administrative part of sales development. As I’ve learned more about HubSpot, I’ve found it to be much more than an administrative tool.
At its most simplistic, yes, HubSpot is a CRM. However, the system has so many unique capabilities and features that it gives you the ability to decrease friction and increase velocity throughout your sales process. Here are my tips and tricks for using the HubSpot Sales Hub to your advantage, and using it in a way that will help you spend your time connecting with people and enable you to make the most out of those connections.
1. Log. Everything.
A contact or company’s activity log is my bible. I use it to keep track of absolutely everything having to do with that organization or person. Calls, emails, meetings, and any notes I have all go into the activity log. This makes it easy to look over all of the information before I talk to someone. I don’t have to remember anything, and I don’t miss anything relevant.
My tip: Even if a call is recorded, highlight the most important parts in the space for call notes right when the call is finished. This will save you a lot of time listening to recordings, and creates an easy reference for you the next time you reach out.
2. Use the task queue to your advantage.
Some things in HubSpot seemed more like hindrances than help at the beginning for me, and the task queue is one of those things. At first, I thought that it was inefficient to have to create follow-up tasks and organize my task queues each day before I began. It seemed to me that it would be much easier to just do what I had to do.
Then I learned that the task queue was actually my friend. It was a simple way to organize my day and keep track of everything. If my task queue is accurate and organized, I can plan out my entire week.
My tip: Use the different queues (email, call, or any custom queue that you create) to further organize your tasks. Get all of your calls done together, then all of your emails, for example.
3. Communicate with your team.
This is actually one of my favorite things about HubSpot. If you’re in the middle of your call block and on a roll, you do not want to stop to get feedback on one call. HubSpot allows you to tag other users on an activity record (notes work, or you can just tag them in the actual call record). It sends a notification to the person you tagged, so that they can view the record and review the call.
My tip: We created a contact field called “Coaching,” and when a user sets that property as “yes,” it automatically notifies them with a call review request.
4. Don’t be afraid of automation!
Sequences are probably the chief example of something I didn’t like at first in HubSpot. I didn’t like having to load contacts into the sequence in order to get tasks, then going through the tasks. This was just another example of learning how to make the system work for me. Sequences are great, because you can automate your call and email tasks. It saves you the time of creating tasks for each contact and cadence. You can bulk enroll contacts into a sequence, and the automation takes care of assigning out the call and email tasks.
My tip: Use sequences to give you tasks. This saves SO much time.
5. Get personal with templates.
I don’t mean to hyperbolize here, but personalization tokens might just be the best thing that HubSpot has to offer. Using templates is already a really great way to save time, but being able to add tokens so that HubSpot automatically populates with a contact’s info is amazing. I promise you will never, ever go back to typing in names!
My tip: Keep your templates organized in folders, and come up with a consistent naming schema. It may seem tedious up front, but the payoff of not hunting around for templates in one long list is huge on the back end.
6. Make your database bite-sized with filtered views.
I don’t know about your organization, but Imagine has a gigantic amount of contacts in our database. I have neither the time, nor the patience, to be scrolling through names to figure out which contacts I should be reaching out to.
HubSpot’s filtered views allow you to view specific lists of contacts based on any criteria. If you have a certain piece of information as a field in HubSpot, you can use filtered views to look at contacts who fit that criteria, and you can do it with amazing specificity.
My tip: Save different contact views to refer back to later. It might seem small, but it’s a lot more efficient when you’re not setting the filters every time.
Like any technology, HubSpot is only useful relative to how much you leverage its capabilities. It can certainly be just a CRM, if that’s how you use it. But, if you can figure out the system, you can make the system work for you.
