10 Hubspot Sales CRM Red Flags 🚩
Hey Friends,
I'm a big fan of Hubspot.
Although I have no affiliation or partnership with them, I believe Hubspot is the best CRM for early-stage startups and scale-ups.
It works up to 10M ARR, after which you may consider switching to Salesforce.
While HS is intuitive, easy to implement, and sales-friendly, it has dozens of shortcomings if your business grows.
But that's another story.
99% of startups I work with use Hubspot, and as a Fractional Sales Leader, I either implement or optimise many Hubspot setups.
And I see all the mistakes...
I call them red flags. 🚩
Everyone using Hubspot should be aware of red flags, whether you are an SDR or a Founder.
I also like to set up a dashboard with all the red flags for each salesperson so they can go and fix them on their own time.
Last week, one of the founders I worked with asked me, "Which are the top 10 red flags each salesperson should look at?"
And it got me thinking...
So, I sat down and started writing down all the red flags I fix and optimise daily. Here is the list for you and your teams:
1. Too many deals in each stage
If you have 15+ deals in each stage, unless you have a big sales team, you may have a problem.
Go in there, deep-dive each of those, and close lost deals if needed.
2. No close date, no amount, no company, no contact
These are classics, like Paperino or Micky Mouse Classic!
If you miss this information, you are poorly managing your CRM.
Each deal (past discovery) must have a close date, amount, contacts, and associated company. That's all, folks!
3. Closed date too soon -> deal stage too far
If you tell me that you are closing a deal in 10 days but the stage is discovery, and your sales cycle takes 30 days, Houston, we have a problem!
4. Only one contact per deal
If you only talk to one person, you have another big problem, my friend.
Almost 99% of B2B deals involve more decision-makers. Talk to them, and don't forget to add them to Hubspot!
5. No scheduled activity
No next steps, no deal. You need to always have a scheduled activity in your deals.
Otherwise, you will end up like my friend Tom. Do you know Tom the Chaser? 😅 Don't be like Tom!
6. No activities for 7+ days;
I'm not saying you need to stress out your prospects and touch base with them daily, but I start worrying if you leave more than a week between interactions.
7. Amount too big (compared to average)
If your deal is too big compared to average, I wanna help and get involved.
8. Amount too small (compared to average);
If your deal is too small compared to the average, I wanna help and get involved, too.
9. Past closed date
It's the most popular here, so congrats! Like Taylor Swift concerts, this is one of the things that Founders have requested to fix the most.
This means we are not controlling the deal, the CRM, or our forecast - and we need all those!
10. No emails, meetings or tasks within records
I don't care about what you write to your prospects (I do sometimes), but every interaction should be associated with the deal, company, and contacts.
Otherwise, when you go to Ibiza enjoying your sales commissions, how can we help your clients if we don't know what happened?
Summary
Hubspot is straightforward and should stay that way.
The goal is not systemising everything; salespeople should be free to manage their deals and CRM as they think.
But within a process, within a system - easy and efficient systems that, like highways, give you infrastructure and rules to get from point A to point B.
Thanks for reading this far. I will see you all next week.
