CRM Management tips

Smart CRM & Sales Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
1

Just wanted to get your guys thoughts on how to best utilise a CRM for sales and prospecting.

We are a small MSP (2 senior techs, 2 Helpdesk) with myself as the sole sales guy. We are using the free Zoho CRM currently, but wondering if you guys had any experience or tips on how to best organise it.

Do you have a separate section for suspects, prospects, those you have already spoken to/pitched to in previous years? Any intergrations with Outlook or calendars etc?

How do you use your CRM in terms of your existing clients and what kind of information do you put in there?

2

Hi @augusvena,

That’s an interesting question. I think with the range of integrations that exist these days, it’s really easy to manage e.g. customers in one system (e.g. ZenDesk) and sales/prospecting in another. Whether you just use native API integrations or something custom, it’s generally quite simple to get one tool to talk to another, and your information is far more portable (i.e. if you decide to switch to another provider) than perhaps it was a ew years ago.

That said, I put EVERYTHING in HubSpot. We’re a SAAS provider and use HubSpot for sales and marketing, but our service desk team use in-house systems for support. At present. In the not-too-distant, I’m going to be transitioning everyone onto HubSpot.
I’d like to get to a position where HubSpot is our one source of truth for both customer and prospect data. Not quite there yet, but getting there. The idea is that if it isn’t in HubSpot, it didn’t happen - support tickets, sales, marketing email opens, website visits, social interactions… it should all be in there.

To differentiate customers, prospects, people who are in sales funnel, etc., I use Lifecycle Stages. These give you the facility easily to distinguish between all of the above. You can e.g. mailshot all contacts who are customers and evangelists… or just prospects… or just people you’ve pitched to in the past, but didn’t proceed. (you may need custom properties to help with this one!).

I use the HubSpot Outlook add-in for Outlook desktop. I actually use the slightly older version of this, which works better for me than the newer version. HubSpot Meetings integrates with my Outlook calendar so prospects (and customers) can book time for me using my Meeting links with live access to my calendar. I have separate links for customers and prospects, so there are days/times when I’m only available for prospects and this works really well for me.

I’m sure the vast majority of tools, such as Zoho, SalesForce, etc., etc. will offer most of the above functionality. One thing I love about HubSpot is the fact that it can grow with you… you can take the free offering at the outset (as we did), then buy individual paid seats/licences. As you need additional functionality, you can add this to your subscription.

3

Hi @augusvena,

I’d echo the excellent advice that @AdamLPW provided. When it comes to using a CRM to manage existing clients vs. prospects, HubSpot makes this incredibly easy. There are a ton of ways you can do this, but one of the most common methods people use to track data like this is through the default Lifecycle Stage property. Alternatively, if you have the necessary paid HubSpot subscription tier, you can create a custom property that tracks the ultra-specific “segments” that you want to capture -- e.g. the suspects, prospects, customers, etc. You can then use these properties to segment for emails, workflows, reporting, etc.

I find that the Lifecycle Stage property is the perfect place to get started, and as things evolve and HubSpot usage around your organization grows, you can explore the upgrades to unlock features such as custom properties.

Since you mentioned you’re an MSP, you may also want to explore the Service Hub. It could provide a ticket management solution (e.g. Zendesk) that would allow people to email in requests/issues to your team, and the ticket can be worked by your technicians/helpdesk reps through its resolution. An email inbox such as help@yourcompanyname.com can also be integrated to HubSpot and allow tickets to be auto created when inquiries are received to that address.