Starting a business has never been easier than it is today. Cloud technology streamlines key business functions like finances, operations, and sales, oftentimes for free. There is no better example of this trend than Hubspot CRM, a free and comprehensive tool that early-stage startups can use to build out their sales and marketing motion. Most of our early-stage customers at Salar Digital got their start using Hubspot CRM.
In this blog post, we’ll explore how HubSpot’s Free CRM can be a game-changer for startups. CRMs provide value ranging from creating a historical record of personal relationships, to integrating with growth tools, to providing reporting and analytics that can be used to build strategy and fuel future growth. Keep reading to uncover how this powerful tool can provide a strong foundation for your startup’s success.
Why Does This Matter?
Early-stage businesses need a reliable growth-focused system of record—a place they can go to measure the truth when it comes to growth touch points.
How many early-stage sales conversations have we had?
How many of those converted into legitimate opportunities to sell the product?
How much revenue should come in next year?
HubSpot’s free CRM acts as this system of record, absorbing all the information and interactions from your startup. It provides structure, organization, and valuable insights that help your business move quickly toward short and long-term goals.
HubSpot CRM Management
A core piece of Hubspot CRM’s functionality is its underlying database. As you’re growing your startup, you need to build relationships that eventually turn into sales. These relationships are tracked in Hubspot across Contacts (People), Accounts (Companies), and Deals (Opportunities to sell something to someone).
Contacts
Contacts are the lifeblood of your startup’s growth. HubSpot CRM makes it easy to manage your contact database efficiently. You can segment your contacts, add important details, and track interactions, allowing you to tailor your approach and foster better relationships.
Companies (AKA Accounts)
Managing accounts is crucial for understanding how your startup interacts with various organizations. You can track all sorts of information about each company like where they are located, their industry, and even custom fields relevant to your startup (ex. Is this a Fortune 100 company?). HubSpot CRM allows you to create and organize accounts in whatever way makes the most sense for your business so you can get a comprehensive view of your business relationships.
Deals (AKA Opportunities)
Closing deals and growing revenue is the ultimate goal for any startup. HubSpot CRM assists by letting you track deals from the initial stages to closing. This feature enables better sales processes and performance analysis. A core part of tracking deals is establishing reliable deal stages and likelihood percentages – these are used to estimate how far along each deal is on the path to becoming a customer.
Hubspot’s default stages are as follows: Appointment scheduled (20%), Qualified to buy (40%), Presentation scheduled (60%), Decision maker bought-in (80%), Contract sent (90%), Closed won (100% Won) and Closed lost (0% Lost).
If you build a repeatable sales process and reliably update these deal stages for all your deals, you will eventually be able to project how many deals should close in the future. This is critical information for a growing B2B SaaS startup.
HubSpot CRM Integrations
Another key part of Hubspot CRM’s functionality is its ability to serve as a system of record or single source of truth. If you commit to updating all interactions accurately in Hubspot CRM, you can then integrate a wide variety of growth tools into this high-quality data to streamline other functions like sales engagement and beyond.
Sales Engagement (e.g., apollo.io)
To supercharge your CRM, you can integrate it with sales engagement tools like apollo.io. This opens up opportunities for automating outreach, lead generation, and personalized interactions, saving your startup valuable time and resources in pursuit of meetings that can lead to sales.
Calendar (Google)
Efficiently manage your schedules and appointments by integrating your Google Calendar with HubSpot CRM. This ensures you never miss an important meeting or follow-up, making your business interactions seamless.
Zapier
If you have data or processes that you’d like to integrate with Hubspot and you can’t find a native integration, chances are that there is a Zapier integration. Zapier is a third-party integration tool that makes it easy for platforms to integrate with each other.
HubSpot CRM Analytics
Reports
Analyzing your startup’s performance is pivotal. HubSpot CRM provides basic reports that offer insights into your sales, marketing, and customer service efforts. These reports help you identify what’s working and what needs improvement.
Dashboards
Customizable dashboards in HubSpot CRM give you a bird’s-eye view of your startup’s key metrics. You can combine reports to visualize your data, monitor progress, and make data-driven decisions in real-time.
HubSpot CRM and Marketing – What is Included for Free
HubSpot CRM offers an impressive range of marketing features even in its free version.
- 2000 Blast Emails/Month: Reach out to your customers with up to 2000 blast emails every month, helping you keep them engaged and informed.
- Forms on Website: You can collect information from your website visitors and have it automatically populate in your CRM. This automated process saves time and minimizes manual data entry.
- Automated Follow-Ups: Automatically follow up with customers who fill out forms on your website. This feature ensures you never miss an opportunity to connect with potential leads.
HubSpot CRM and Marketing – What is Included for Free?
HubSpot’s Free CRM is a fantastic starting point for startups. However, there comes a time when you might need more advanced features.
Not Included for Free: More Robust Campaigns
As your startup grows, so do your marketing efforts. If you find yourself needing more advanced email marketing features, like detailed automation sequences or a larger number of monthly email sends, it may be time to consider upgrading.
Not Included for Free: Automation Beyond Emails Following Up on Form Fills
If your business needs to implement complex marketing automation beyond one simple follow-up email, you might want to explore upgrading to earn more advanced capabilities.
Not Included for Free: Custom Reports
Custom reports provide detailed insights tailored to your business’s specific needs. If your startup requires advanced analytics and custom reporting beyond the basic deal stages and activity reports, it’s a sign that you may have outgrown the limitations of the free CRM and should consider a more robust solution.
Final thoughts
HubSpot’s Free CRM is an invaluable resource for startups, offering a range of features for efficient CRM management, integrations to streamline your processes, analytics to make data-driven decisions and a generous set of marketing tools. It’s the perfect companion for startups. As your business expands, you may need to explore more advanced options—just make sure you capture the value of Hubspot’s free CRM while it makes sense earlier on in your startup’s growth journey.