“Sales Falling Through the Cracks”
Lean Discovery Group had so many leads coming in, they didn’t have the processes or tools in place to follow up with them all.
Ethan Halfhide, CEO of Lean Discovery Group, explains the challenge:
“We brought on a new lead of sales to ramp up our sales process. As we were doing that, things started to get really busy. We needed to evolve our follow-up process because a lot of sales were falling through the cracks.”
Disconnected tools
The company had some tools in place, such as Asana to manage projects, Calendly to schedule prospect calls, and Stripe to issue invoices, but each tool existed in relative isolation.
Sales calls booked in Calendly, for example, weren’t integrated with other sales-related activities.
“Calendly has no follow-up process,” says Ethan. “It’s a great scheduling tool, but it's not great for sales-oriented action items.”
Lack of comprehensive, real-time data
With this disconnected tech stack, Ethan didn’t have the data insights he needed to drive strategy.
For example, Ethan’s goal was to close most deals with two calls: a discovery call and a requirements workshop. To achieve that goal, he needed to track average conversion rates at every stage and average deal size for different types of leads. He also needed to know where his best leads were coming from.
Unfortunately, none of the tools he had in place could give him complete, end-to-end information for every stage of the sales process.
Choosing HubSpot Starter Customer Platform
To get data insights across the customer journey, Ethan’s new head of sales recommended that Lean Discovery Group take advantage of HubSpot Starter Customer Platform. The bundle gives subscribers access to starter editions of all six HubSpot products along with the Smart CRM: Marketing Hub, Sales Hub, Content Hub, Service Hub, Commerce Hub, and Operations Hubs.
“Starter gives everyone the tools they need to track every sale and every item that’s required at each stage,” says Ethan.
The Lean Discovery Group team implemented HubSpot Starter in just two weeks. Although HubSpot support was available to them throughout the process, the team didn’t need the help.
“We handled it right out of the box,” says Ethan. “I don’t think we spoke to HubSpot support at all.”
Real-time data at their fingertips
With HubSpot Starter in place, Lean Discovery Group had real-time sales data at their fingertips in the form of dealboards.
“The dealboard is awesome,” says Ethan. “Being able to visualize our pipeline is one of the best parts of HubSpot.”
Ethan and his team discovered that they close 10% of new leads, 20% at phase two in their sales process, and 30% at phase three.
“We started to understand where we needed to focus our attention to reach our goals,” says Ethan.
Seamless connection in one ecosystem
Ethan likes that his sales team can do all their work in the HubSpot ecosystem with everything seamlessly connected.
Rather than using Calendly to schedule calls with leads, for example, the team uses HubSpot’s meeting link tool. Now, every time a prospect books a meeting, a new contact record or an existing record is updated automatically.
Stripe payments in the HubSpot ecosystem
Lean Discovery Group is using the HubSpot payments tool to bring even more functionality into their ecosystem.
Ethan’s team uses the HubSpot + Stripe integration to extend the HubSpot platform to include invoicing and payments. Sales reps can create trackable quotes in HubSpot and collect payment by credit card, eliminating the need to send out invoices via Stripe.
For Ethan and his team, having everything live in one intuitive ecosystem is a big plus.
Ethan explains:
“I’m a big Apple fan. What they do really well is have everything integrate really nicely with each other, such as iMessages, FaceTime, and all that good stuff. It’s the same thing with HubSpot. You can go to one place and view your revenue, view your sales data, view your client data, and see your ideal customer profile.”
5x Increase in Value of Deals Closed
Two weeks after implementing HubSpot Starter Customer Platform, Ethan could see the impact on deals closed, driving them up 5x when compared to the previous year.
Ethan attributes part of this massive increase to the streamlined processes with the HubSpot platform, which helped the sales team book more calls—with few leads, if any, slipping through the cracks.
“Meetings booked, close rate, and revenue—everything is going up,” says Ethan.
Just as importantly, the sales team feels emboldened to go after larger companies and bigger deals knowing that they have the platform and processes in place to support those deals.
“It was like a light bulb went on,” says Ethan. “We were like, ‘Whoa, this gives us the confidence to pursue other lead channels and bigger sales because we know we can execute.’”
Reinvesting back in the business
Ethan estimates that his team is saving 10 to 20 hours a week with HubSpot Starter Customer Platform—time they’re reinvesting into improving operations. In fact, Ethan recently hired a COO.
“We’re making sure we have the people and processes in place for the next big push,” says Ethan. “And that push will also happen on the HubSpot platform.”
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