How Can HubSpot Help My Business? The Importance of an Advocate

We've heard the question before: is HubSpot easy to use? 

Our answer: with the right training and implementation, HubSpot is as easy to use as it should be to help businesses generate and convert more leads for growth. 

How's that for a non-committal answer?

The reality is: a tool as robust as the HubSpot platform isn't easy to use. It's not even easy to set up, but that's not the right question leaders must ask when considering an investment into the best resource available for real estate businesses, roofing companies, SAAS businesses, and other small businesses to improve marketing and sales efforts. 

The better question to consider is: "how can HubSpot help my business grow," followed closely by, "how can I be the best possible advocate for the platform within my company and my team so we can maximize every aspect of it?" Here's why being an advocate for HubSpot (or any software or tool you implement for your business) is crucial for its success!

If You Don't Believe, They Won't Either

You might not find this critical element on a HubSpot implementation checklist, so make a note of it somewhere that you'll remember to go back to it. 

Any new software, process, resource, training, etc., requires a company's leadership to advocate for it. Without that critical element, a business will struggle to get the hands-on team interested and acclimated to something new. 

Why? Because no one likes change. 

• Not the new guy who still doesn't know where the coffee machine is. 
• Not Betty, who has done it the same way on a spreadsheet for the last 20 years. 
• Not even other leaders who probably approved the software because they know it's the right thing to do, but they're still not entirely on board yet. 

So, because no one likes change, not changing holds your company back. Whether it's selling more roof replacements in your market or getting rid of the Rolodex and bringing your sales and marketing team into the 2020s with a CRM, change for the better is still change — and it's tough to get a team on board and adapt without leadership leading the way. 

You Have To Champion Anything New

Whether you brought HubSpot or Slack or any other tool to your leadership team and got their buy-in (or you're the one who begrudgingly gave your approval even though your mind hasn't yet rationalized the expense of the HubSpot Hubs your company is about to launch), as a leader, you have to champion anything new.

It's about morale. It's about leading. It's about advocating for what's best for the company (even when it's going to take some work to implement the system and get the team up to speed). 

Failing to Lead the Charge Launches Failure as the Only Option

HubSpot is a remarkable tool. With the right experts helping you implement the platform and train your team, any business can ramp up and use it efficiently sooner than they might think.

As a HubSpot Diamond Partner Agency, we've conducted many training sessions with a HubSpot implementation checklist that walks sales and marketing teams through every step of using their portals. Through our experience, we see clear differences between leaders and teams that believe in the product vs. teams that don't have a clear internal advocate for the change in software and processes. 

Leaders who encourage their teams, participate in training sessions, ask questions, and stay engaged throughout the process experience much better success rates (and shorter implementation timelines) than company or department leaders who are clearly not on board with the move to HubSpot. 

The second scenario becomes an unfortunate and costly situation because the company has already invested in the HubSpot Hubs (whether Service Hub, HubSpot Sales Hub, HubSpot Marketing Hub, or all of the Hubs) and the levels they need. They've also invested in an agency partner like Geekly Media to implement their HubSpot portal and conduct video calls and training sessions. 

That's a lot of time and money to commit to something half-heartedly with the future growth of a company could be at stake, and budget dollars are already committed to HubSpot as "the" resource to help boost success. 

You Don't Have to Be an Annoying HubSpot Cheerleader

We're not saying that when HubSpot is a "go" for launch with your company, you need a daily (or even weekly) hype session about it to start everyone's day. If being perky isn't your leadership style, there's no need to adopt that for your HubSpot implementation. 

HubSpot functionality does not depend on the level of perky cheer you bring or your marketing or sales teams deliver.

However, we see far better results, better adoption practices, and overall happier HubSpot users when teams have a trustworthy, mature, and determined leader who empowers their team and communicates the value of changing to a new platform and taking precious time to implement it properly with expert training from a HubSpot Diamond Partner agency.

Become a Resource

There's another pretty great perk of being an advocate for new things for your team: better relationships. Your team will be on the frontline of operating within your HubSpot portal. They may already have ideas about what will work (and what won't). However, if they don't see that you're engaged in the implementation process, they won't feel comfortable speaking up or being engaged enough to ensure the implementation goes well. 

If they don't think you care (or worse, they're pretty sure you aren't in favor of the decision to bring HubSpot into your company), your team won't engage with you, share potentially valid concerns, and work toward solutions that help things work smoothly. Instead, as an active participant and listener, you become an ally to help overcome obstacles, consider feedback, and even bring things to the attention of other leaders in your company so solutions can happen. 

A team without an advocate becomes a resentful group that feels forced to work in a system they're not sure anyone wants. Your business can't grow that way. 

How Can HubSpot Help My Business? Be a Believer

We completely understand that change is hard. It's also hard to lead change that might not be the most popular thing to happen within your company. 

A change of the magnitude of getting your business up and running on something like the HubSpot CRM platform is significant, and that's not lost on us or any agency that helps implement a new HubSpot portal. 

However, in our own experiences as business owners and company leaders, we recognize the times that advocating what we believe is best for the business improved the team's involvement and overall outcome of a new or a changed initiative — by leaps and bounds. We've seen the same scenario play out with leaders delivering "sponsorship" and support to their teams while encouraging them and staying involved throughout the HubSpot portal implementation process. As a result, they get much more out of their investment into HubSpot (and their businesses grow)!

If you're ready to learn how we believe HubSpot can help your business or how we train teams (and leaders) for success with this platform, reach out to Speak to a Geek!