The 8 Best Features of HubSpot Sales Pro and the HubSpot CRM

Over here at ZenPilot, we are avid HubSpot Sales Pro users. We spent A LOT of hours establishing a sales process for our agency (GuavaBox) in the HubSpot CRM and then took that knowledge and expanded upon it when we started our SaaS company.

Since Gray and I are often asked about how we set up our CRM and the features we use the most, we decided to make a list of our top 8 favorite features for you and how we use them.

Our 8 Favorite Features of the HubSpot CRM

1) Sequences

Nothing has saved me more hours in my week then HubSpot sequences (more to come on that next week). Sequences allowed me to automate my outreach to prospects and book more demos. Right now inside our portal we have over 200 templated emails. With Sequences I can send out emails sequentially until either a prospect responds or books a meeting. Since we use HubSpot meetings (more to come on that in a second), it automatically unenrolls the prospect from the sequence when the meeting is booked.

2) Templates

Custom emails get out of hand pretty quick. If you’re finding yourself sending the same email over and over to a prospect or a customer, do yourself a favor and save it as a template. Inside the HubSpot CRM you can create folders to organize your email templates and use them, whether you’re in sales, client service, operations etc… We use the personalization features to make the templates feel less generic. When you write a templated email, don’t write it as though you’re writing a templated email. Seems obvious, but I get them all the time. Write an email to an actual prospect and then copy and paste it over to the template section. This will help you to write a more personalized feeling template. Let your personality come through.

3) Meetings

Getting a prospect to book a meeting is tough, that’s why you need an awesome meeting scheduler. HubSpot meetings gives you just that. You can set up personal meetings for various amounts of time, or round robin meetings that multiple team members can be available for. As I mentioned in the sequences portion it also automatically will unenroll a prospect from a sequence after a meeting is scheduled to take the manual (and human error) part out of the equation. It’s simple and pretty slick, here’s an example of how we use Meetings.

4) Notifications

The old cliche “timing is everything” is actually really true when it comes to sales. Seeing real-time notifications when a prospect opens an email, clicks a link, or visits a page on your website could be, and has been for me multiple times, the difference maker in closing a deal. This feature isn’t unique to HubSpot, however having notifications appear live through their chrome extension and those actions housed right inside of the prospects individual contact profile is really helpful. Use notifications to your advantage to help know when to call or email a prospect.

5) Integrated Contact Profiles

Hopefully you have a full pipeline and are dealing with multiple prospects at once. If you’re anything like me, you may have a tendency to forget where you left off with each prospect. Integrated contact profiles are amazing because all of the calls, emails, notes, interactions etc. are all captured and documented right inside your prospects contact profile. If you take a vacation or are sick and need someone to cover your call, all of that prospects information is saved right with their profile so anyone can see exactly where that prospect is at and the history of your interactions. HubSpot has some great integrations with 3rd party apps that automatically capture data and put it right inside the timeline as well.

6) Deals

You need a way to visually see your sales pipeline and easily work your leads through the process. We really like the deals interface in the HubSpot CRM. It’s easy to make deals either too simplified or overly complicated, which we have encountered in other CRM’s. HubSpot does a great job of giving an awesome visual card-style view that allows you to drag and drop leads through the process. It also pulls in all data associated with the contacts in your CRM that are linked to the deal. That allows you to email and follow up with the prospect right from the deal itself. You also have the ability to create multiple pipelines to keep prospects moving through the appropriate funnel based on the service they fit best.

7) Tasks

This one is a life saver. As a sales rep you need a way to make sure that you aren’t forgetting about any prospects. The tasks feature inside the HubSpot CRM is the best way I have found to do that. Get yourself in the habit of checking your daily task list everyday. Any time that you have an interaction with a prospect there should always be a next step. Your task list is what you can use to make sure that next step is scheduled and happens, whether it is a call, an email, a document you need to send etc… The HubSpot CRM has a great task list to keep you organized and can even create tasks for you automatically if certain actions are taken by a prospect. For example, when a prospect visits the pricing page, I automatically have a tasked created for me to enroll them in a personal outreach sequence since they are likely a promising lead.

8) Streamlined Calling

Making calls and having them recorded right inside your CRM is a game changer for agencies. We do not use this feature as much with DoInbound, but with GuavaBox, it was awesome to have. You can set up call queues to reach out to your prospects quickly, and everything is recorded right inside the CRM. If you are out and someone needs to know what was discussed on your last call so they can pick up where you left off, they now have all of the information that they need.

Weaker Areas of the HubSpot CRM

We have a lot of good things to say about the HubSpot CRM. But what about the “bad things”? There are a few areas we think could use a bit of work, or frankly, we don’t find very helpful to have.

• Documents — You can store and attach documents to emails right from the CRM. This allows you to track when the documents are opened and for how long. Which sounds awesome… But the data often isn’t helpful because often times documents are opened, and then left open. There also is no ability to send a document and have it signed by the prospect. Which would be awesome for sending contracts or quick agreements for additional work that needs done with current clients.
• Messages — This is still a relatively new feature at the time of writing this post. Given that it’s new, it’s pretty light on features. We use Intercom for live chat and have really loved it. We have also tried Drift and enjoyed that, which has more features than Messages currently.
• Prospects — This feature is meant to give you insights on anonymous visitors to your website and help direct some of your outbound outreach. It’s not a bad feature to have in the CRM, but we just haven’t found a ton of value in it. If you were trying to build a larger outbound list and do some prospecting it could be a useful feature to check out.

Any features you really love or hate?

Pass them along!