The company that started the inbound marketing revolution is at it again! At this year’s Inbound conference in Boston, HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan announced a brand spankin’ new CRM that will be fully integrated with the HubSpot marketing software as well as an updated version of Signals now called Sidekick. Halligan says, "Traditional sales technology is necessary but not sufficient. HubSpot's Sales Platform is designed to arm sales teams with the context they need to improve how they engage with companies, prospects, and leads to drive sales instead of driving people crazy." We agree!
WHAT’S NEW
HubSpot has put together a collection of tools that makes the day-to-day sales process much easier and it frees up sales to do what they do best. Sell!
Let’s start with Sidekick. When Signals was released last year, it was revolutionary. The real time notifications you got on email opens, link clicks and site visits from leads was integral in giving you the context needed for effective sales conversations. With Sidekick you now have Insights, a tool that lives in your browser that gives you details on leads and companies you are researching, delivered to your inbox and as you are navigating around the web. And if you’re using Gmail in Chrome you can now tee up an email and schedule it to send at the most opportune time.
The CRM allows you to concentrate on important selling activities while doing the mundane and boring tasks like logging emails, de-duplicating leads and other tasks that cause to distract you from the big picture. With Timeline, you can organize all activities like calls, emails and notes in an easy to follow view in addition to being able to see data for that contact from Sidekick. You can also easily connect the HubSpot CRM to email clients like Gmail, Google Apps, Outlook and Apple Mail. Your emails are then automatically logged into the CRM allowing you to stay focused on selling. You can also send emails from anywhere in a contacts record within the CRM if you would prefer.
Want to make calls from the HubSpot CRM? Done. With one click right from the contact record you can connect with your lead while taking notes and recording the call(optional). This option does come at an additional cost but being able to be more agile in your sales process should justify the cost. And when you’re done you can schedule your next meeting from the same location and easily integrate with your Google Calendar as well.
Final Thoughts
When HubSpot decides to do something they’re definitely not doing it half-assed. "HubSpot's CRM and Sidekick are perfect for companies that want to transform how they attract, engage, and delight prospects, customers and leads and want sales technology that matches today's buying process", says Halligan. These great new tools from HubSpot are already making a difference in our sales process by allowing us to focus on what’s important. Our leads are also benefitting because conversations are being had with context. It’s safe to say that HubSpot has their finger on the pulse of what’s needed in marketing and sales and we are excited to see the results from these new innovations.
