Onboarding to
HubSpot CRM
Guidebook

Why CRM's are Important

Media Garcia is committed to teaching small business owners about marketing and sales systems to grow their business. One of the more important systems to a small business is a customer relationship management (CRM). As a small business owner, you have a lot on your plate. Keeping all of your customer and contact information in one place will give your business a single source of truth and closed loop data reporting. In any business, a functional CRM is core to marketing and sales activities. Keep reading to learn more about how a CRM can help you boost your small business growth.

What a CRM Can Do for You

Without a CRM, many business owners must resort to managing their contact records in spreadsheets or piles of business cards in file boxes. These methods are hardly efficient and create more confusion in trying to find customer or client information. You want to be able to easily access records, documents and email conversations you had with your customers.

A CRM can help you do all of these things and more, in one centralized location:

• Keep track of contacts, prospects, leads, and customers
• Take and store notes on contacts and customers
• Send emails and track communication logs
• Make and record calls
• Create and delegate tasks to your sales team
• Manage your sales pipeline

HubSpot is a great example of a CRM that allows you to do all of the above with just a few clicks. By providing a single database for every prospect and client you form a relationship with, it’s easier to stay organized and ensure that your entire team is able to be on the same page with each contact. This will increase your business’s efficiency and allow you more time to work on marketing, sales development, and other aspects of business development. 

Benefits of a CRM

Ultimately, you want to make sure people feel served, heard, cared for, and not slip through the cracks of communication. A CRM engages you with your community, which is important to sell and delight people with your product and service. What specific benefits can a CRM provide you?

Data shows that a CRM can:

• Shorten your sales cycle 8-14 percent by improving organization and accessibility of information
• Provide an average sales increase of 30 percent
• Increase customer retention and satisfaction rates

Boost Your Small Business Growth Today 

For more in-depth information on using HubSpot CRM to grow your small business, Media Garcia can help you get started with a free onboarding session. Simply sign up for a free account with HubSpot and get in touch with us for an introductory walk-through of the platform – at no cost to you. 

By using HubSpot’s easy-to-use CRM suite of tools, you can expect to reduce the length of your sales cycles, increase sales, and improve customer satisfaction rates – all through efficient and organized client communication. This CRM takes just minutes to learn and makes it easy to track every detail of your business relationships all in one place. Now that you’re ready, sign up for HubSpot's free CRM here!

Using HubSpot Contacts Tool

Keeping Client Records in a CRM

From your homepage portal within HubSpot, click on “Contacts” to view a list of your clients. From this page, you can add new clients and update existing records. When you click on each contact, you can view and add all sorts of properties and notes about that customer. 

An example of a custom property that’s helpful to note is what specific products or services the customer has purchased from you or has expressed interest in; when there are promotions or new information regarding these services, keeping these kinds of notes makes it easier to reach out directly to the right clients. Consider jotting down notes during conversations you have with your contacts so that you can refer back to them when necessary.

Communicating with Your Clientele

Within each contact page on HubSpot, it’s easy to get in touch with the client. There are options for calling and emailing each client right from their contact page, making it easy to follow up on a consistent basis.

There are several other functionalities that help you keep track of communications with the client:

1. Log for recording where the customer is at within the sale lifecycle
2. Web activity, such as whether the customer has visited your business website, what they’ve clicked on, etc. 
3. Record of deals, such as active contracts, purchases, etc. 
4. Summary page of all interactions – calls, emails, notes, tasks, etc. – with the client that the whole team can view

Using Tasks for Your Contacts

You can also create tasks within each contact page. This ensures accountability for client communication and helps organize your many to-dos. You can assign a task to yourself or anyone on your team and set a due date for each item. When you assign a task to another member of your team, they will receive an email with the to-do and a direct link to the client’s contact page to complete the job. 

Benefits of the Contact Page in HubSpot

Utilizing all the functionalities of the HubSpot contact record tool is a great way to stay organized and ultimately increase the efficiency of your small business. Not only can you keep detailed records of your most valuable assets – your clientele – but you can easily ensure that your entire team is on the same page. By delegating tasks, keeping detailed notes, and checking in on the activity summary, you’re able to keep all team members in the loop at all times with your clientele.

It’s no secret that consistent and personalized communication with your valued clients will only build their trust in your brand, so why not make it as easy as possible?

Get Started with a CRM Today

For more in-depth information on using a CRM like HubSpot for organizing your contact records and keeping up with valuable clientele, Media Garcia can help you get started with a free onboarding session. Simply sign up for a free account with HubSpot and get in touch with us for an introductory walk-through of the platform – at no cost to you. Getting a good handle on a CRM will help you stay organized and work more efficiently as you continue to acquire more leads and build deeper relationships with your target customers.

Using HubSpot Lists Tool

In addition to contact organization and streamlined client communications, HubSpot’s free CRM has a list segmentation functionality that can help take your business operations to the next level. List segmentation, a way of grouping your contacts by various criteria, can help your small business target customers with the information they want and need instead of bombarding them with communication that may or may not be relevant. This ultimately becomes a cornerstone of all your marketing activities. Keep reading for more CRM list segmentation tips.

Types of Lists You Can Use in HubSpot

There are countless ways to organize your contacts into various lists in HubSpot. You can base criteria on property values or characteristics, as well as activities, such as those clients who visit a certain portion of your website or click through the landing page. If you’re not sure where to start, a few commonly used lists include the following criteria:

• Industry
• Company Size
• Product Type

Even with these basic groupings, you already get a better view of which contacts you have that could benefit from different communications. For instance, you can now market specific products or services to only those industries in your database that would benefit. 

Active and Static Lists

No matter the criteria you choose, there are two main types of lists that you can build in HubSpot: active (smart) or static. Active lists automatically add new contacts based on whatever criteria you set for them, while static lists require you to manually add new contacts. 

It’s up to you to decide how to use each list for your small business, but static lists often work best for:

• One-time email blasts or infrequent email campaigns
• Internal communications, such as an employee roster for a company newsletter
• Deleting contacts from your database in bulk
• Manual grouping of outlier contacts 

With that in mind, consider the following ways to best use active lists:

• Regular newsletter sends (active lists automatically update to include new subscribers)
• Marketing based on specific criteria
• Outbound calls to unique contacts that share behavior or property values
• Grouping based on criteria that change often
• Lifecycle stage organization

Using Lists for Marketing Reports

Not only can you use lists to send marketing emails more efficiently, but you can also use them to run powerful reports that give you deeper insight into your marketing campaigns’ successes and opportunities. You can run high-level reports in HubSpot based on all contacts in your database, but by segmenting your clientele into various criteria, you get much more detailed results. 

Use a CRM to Target Preferred Customers 

Media Garcia can help you get started using a CRM with a free onboarding session to HubSpot. Simply sign up for a free account with HubSpot and get in touch with us via our website or email for an introductory walk-through of the platform – at no cost to you. HubSpot and its many customer management tools, such as the handy list segmentation function, make it easy for you to stay in touch with your target customers and zero in on the right marketing strategies that will help you grow your small business. 

Using HubSpot Documents Tool

The HubSpot CRM documents tool is a great place to store frequently sent files and build a content library for your entire team. 

The documents we recommend uploading to HubSpot for storage and sharing are:

• Sale sheets and brochures
• Pricing guides
• Onboarding documents
• Work portfolio
• Testimonials and case studies
• Billing and account forms
• Marketing content assets (ebooks, guides, whitepapers, etc)
  

Why should you upload these documents to HubSpot?

Having all your document assets in one collective area will save time for your team to share documents with current or prospective customers. 

When sharing documents with your contacts in HubSpot you can create a shareable link from the documents dashboard and add the link to your emails or sales templates. This will give you notifications of when contacts viewed that specific document.

You are also able to do the same thing within marketing emails to track engagement while lead nurturing. 

Uploading documents will also shorten the time for onboarding or signing important documents you need customers to complete. Easily having those documents on HubSpot can cut time from having to find the file, attach it and email to the contact. Within HubSpot, you simply click "documents" and it is attached!

Using HubSpot Templates Tool

Within HubSpot, there is a great tool for email templates. Email marketing is a crucial part of growing any small business, especially in regard to acquiring new leads. Having a consistent email communication with existing clientele is also key for maintaining and strengthening their trust with your brand, services, and/or products. Keep reading for tips on utilizing email templates for small business profitability. 

When you want to send an email to one of your preferred contacts, it’s important that the voice of the message as well as the pertinent information is accurate and true to your small business brand. Without a CRM (customer relationship management) tool like HubSpot, your options of either dictating your words to an assistant or delegating the entire task to another team member may result in a mismatch of information and voice throughout email communications to customers.

In order to save time and increase efficiency – a key aspect of building profitability – consider using the email templates function of HubSpot to communicate with your contacts. 

Create Multiple Templates for Types of Emails

Successful email marketing revolves around consistent communication to build trust and rapport between your client and your business. One of the best ways to maintain consistency is to utilize the email templates functionality of HubSpot. 

A best practice for small businesses is to create a template for customers at each phase of the sales lifecycle. When you want to reach out to prospects or current customers, this can save you tons of time as well as ensure each client within a respective phase of the lifecycle is receiving the same type of messaging. Examples of templates to create may include:

• Onboarding
• Follow-up
• Schedule Meeting
• Special Requests

Browse the Templates Library

Within HubSpot’s CRM, you can download free email templates for all sorts of communication, such as marketing, sales, or even startup-specific email. If you’re stuck not knowing what to say or having trouble with brevity in your communications, look through the library and use these templates as your own or as inspiration for your specific needs.

Save Time with Email Scheduling

You can even schedule emails to be sent to your contacts right from their individual records. Not only is this convenient, it allows you to time your communications just right so that the emails are reaching your client at optimal times. For example, even though you may be working on drafting an email at the end of the business day, you’d ideally want to send it during business hours so that it reaches their inbox when they’re more likely to see it. With the schedule function, you can choose from several options for scheduling the email send at a future optimal time.

Delegate Tasks and Reduce Workload

The schedule function can also be used when delegating tasks to your team members. If you need a colleague to send a specific email to a client, you can assign them the task within the contact page and rest assured that they will be able to easily and quickly complete the job with the template already provided. This can drastically reduce the workload for all teams.

Ensure Consistent Communication 

The scheduling function is another tool of the HubSpot CRM that ensures your prospects, one-time customers, and repeat clientele all receive the most consistent communication at the times that are best for each specific contact.

Get Started with HubSpot Emailing Today

For more in-depth information on using HubSpot for organizing your contacts, Media Garcia can help you get started with a free onboarding session. Simply sign up for a free account with HubSpot and get in touch with us for an introductory walk-through of the platform – at no cost to you. With their easy-to-use CRM suite of tools, you can use email templates, scheduling, and delegating to ensure you deliver the best communication possible to your contacts, leading to greater chances of profitability for your small business.