Your sales software is critical for your sales team to be able to communicate with and serve prospects, so building out a tech stack that they love using and get value from is extremely important .
If you come to the conclusion that HubSpot is the right platform for your business, you will need to begin thinking about implementation and adoption, as well as which HubSpot tier and package is right for you.
I sat down with New Breed’s Inside Sales Manager, Beth Abbott, to hear what you should consider before switching from Salesforce to HubSpot.
1. Your Team’s Wants and Needs
Before making any change in software, whether for sales or any other department, you should always make sure you have a real understanding of your team’s current processes.
Second to that, you need to know how receptive your teams will be to change and what the overall sentiment toward Salesforce is currently.
“Does your sales team consist of people who have been on Salesforce for years, and they don’t even know any other way? Or are they people who got on Salesforce recently, and they don’t feel like it really suits them well?” asks Beth.
There are a ton of questions you should be asking about the features and benefits of the platforms as well, but the first thing you want to gauge is if a new platform is even necessary and how well that will be received by the teams as a whole. This is often the area that is overlooked and should really be your first step if you are considering making the change.
“The size and scale of your organization will play a huge role in the physical change from one software to another,” says Beth.
Training and implementation
Training and implementation among a team of five will be much faster, easier and more efficient than that switch with a team of 60.
“If you have a huge team, you should consider implementing the new software or process to smaller groups at a time rather than making one giant shift all at once,” says Beth.
Team size and sentiment will have an impact on what the actual consolidation process will look like for your company, how long it will take and how feasible it is. The size will also be a guiding factor in deciding what level of HubSpot to purchase.
If you have a huge team and need more complex features like hierarchy of teams or playbooks inside of HubSpot, you will need to consider HubSpot Enterprise which will take a bit more time to implement and get up and running as opposed to a lower level of HubSpot Software Subscription.
Sales enablement tools
Because HubSpot offers the ability to serve as your sales team’s outreach tool, you should also consider what your team is currently using for their outreach now. If your teams are currently using an outside platform for that, switching to HubSpot may help slim down your overall tech stack. This will be another consideration for implementation as well as factor into the budget as you may end up getting rid of another platform.
On the other side, you should also be asking what features and benefits your sales team wishes they had. What could they benefit from adding to their toolbelt by switching to HubSpot?
At the end of the day you should not only be asking yourself what are the key functionalities and capabilities that we need to be able to replicate, but also amplify inside of HubSpot if we are going to make this switch from Salesforce.
2. Current Processes
You can’t make a decision about the software your teams are using unless you first understand how they are using their current software every day to serve your customers and prospects.
As far as the actual features and offerings inside the platform, you should be looking at the way your automation and handoff process is set up inside of Salesforce now and how that process would have to, or should change, if you were to make the shift over to HubSpot.
Essentially, you will need to understand the items that will move over easily and the things that will need to be built from the ground up in HubSpot in order to achieve the same, or an elevated set of processes in the new platform.
For example, if you don’t already have a solid understanding of the lead flow process at your company, now would be the time to assess that fully. If your marketing team or sales team is already partially using HubSpot, then that will look a bit different than if you are not using HubSpot at your company at all right now.
“Taking a hard look at the processes of your teams and what will change in their daily tasks for this switch or consideration is also a great time to find areas that can be optimized in your process as well,” says Beth.
3. Data Management, Features, and Integrations
These considerations are diving into the more technical side of choosing to migrate to HubSpot from Salesforce.
“Take a look at the data you have available to you inside of Salesforce today and ask yourself what data you would really want to move over into HubSpot if you were to migrate,” says Beth. “This lets you audit and clean up your existing data to only bring over what’s really important and needed.”
Consolidating CRM data
If you decide to consolidate, you only want to bring over the cleanest and most useful data into the new platform. Not only do you want to isolate and retain active, good data, but the more data you want to copy over the more time and resources are required to do so. Take a minute to ask yourself how you will use this data once it’s transferred over, and if you don’t have a good answer for it, then it’s probably not worth the time and effort.
“Consolidations provide great opportunities to clean up data which benefits both marketing and sales,” says Beth. “Leave behind any of the contacts or companies that are bogus, unqualified, or stale and shouldn’t be in your CRM in the first place.”
Next, make sure you understand what technical features your teams use right now inside of Salesforce that would need to either be available to you in HubSpot or may require an integration to replicate that action:
- Are you using products, properties or reporting features inside of Salesforce?
- To what extent are you doing reporting in Salesforce right now and is that something that you can replicate inside of HubSpot after the switch?
Salesforce also has a bit more functionality with roles and permissions than HubSpot does. This may be something that will matter to you if you make the switch.
“The more functionality and features you rely on inside of Salesforce today, the more important it is going to be for you to lean toward purchasing HubSpot Enterprise, which will be more of an investment all around in HubSpot,” says Beth.
HubSpot-Salesforce Integration
Integrations are something else you will want to have a full understanding of. What platforms are currently integrated with Salesforce that your teams are using or need access to data in? Can you then do the same integrations with HubSpot, and if so, how much of a lift is that going to be to get the platforms integrated? Is an integration already built into HubSpot, or do you have to do this manually?
“Not only should you consider integrations with the sales team, but your entire business too,” says Beth. “You may have to consider if your finance software is integrated with Salesforce or service tools as well.”
What CRM you use will affect teams outside just sales, and it’s critical to consider everyone who may be affected by this change before drawing any conclusions as to what the best decision is for you and your company.
The Takeaway
Deciding to switch from Salesforce to HubSpot is a big decision, but it is one that can offer major benefits for your company if it's the right decision for you. This is a great opportunity to reduce cost spent on software, have more of your teams on the same platforms, increase alignment, and it’s also an opportunity to clean up the data in your platform and optimize your processes.
You don’t want to leave any stone unturned when evaluating whether to switch platforms or not, because the worst thing that can happen is you have already committed to the switch or are in the middle of that process and you realize there is a huge hindrance that you have to overcome.
We have an entire worksheet that we use when speaking to companies that are evaluating a switch from Salesforce to HubSpot. This document includes all the questions and considerations that we need answered by a company in order to guide them on whether consolidating from Salesforce to HubSpot is right for them, and you can get your copy of this worksheet below.
