By
Many businesses — often brick-and-mortar retail stores — do not have a clear picture of where their leads are coming from or the ability to follow-up with leads through a sale.
That’s where HubSpot CRM comes in.
CRM — Customer Relationship Management — technology can do a myriad of things. But the primary way in which it will support your business goals and growth is through its lead tracking capabilities as implementing a CRM into your sales process ensures you have an active hand in moving qualified leads through an organized sales funnel.
A typical sales funnel starts with brand introduction and awareness. Once a potential customer knows about you, they can move onto the consideration stage. This is the usual entry point into a CRM, when a customer willingly shares their contact info in exchange for more information or a special offer. At this point internal teams are able to track and nurture the lead through to a conversion and then ultimately into a brand advocate or loyalty program.
In addition, a CRM that ties in sales and profit data will help you to link end value back to specific marketing efforts. That information is crucial if you want to continually improve your marketing program, be efficient with your spend, and quickly launch high-converting campaigns in the future.
At Integrity, we are technology-agnostic and have implemented and managed multiple CRMs for our clients but we do have our favorites! HubSpot is a known player amongst CRM platforms, and after implementing it for two of our retail flooring clients we’re even more convinced of it’s value for retail professionals.
HubSpot is one of the most popular and most-used CRMs around. With more than 86,000 users in 120 countries, its easy-to-use and customizable platform suits a variety of businesses and needs.
While HubSpot also offers marketing tools, their CRM is an attractive entry point for traditional businesses looking to leverage digital tools in their sales processes.
Who is your customer? That is the one question we ask across the board for every client we work with. Do you know who’s coming in the door or emailing you? Have you talked with them? Where are they at in the sales process? Who on your team is responsible for working with each lead.
A properly set-up CRM can help answer these questions and more. Not only can HubSpot CRM track your leads — it can assign personas, notes and dollars to them too, so you can see exactly what you’ll get by following up with a lead and you’ll be better prepared and more likely to close the sale.
One of its most attractive selling features is that you can use the baseline version of HubSpot CRM for free. In our case, this allowed our budget-conscious clients to try something they had never done before without feeling as though they were pouring money into a tool that hadn’t yet proven to be effective.
Many of our retail clients have multiple stores in multiple cities. This can make it incredibly difficult to track leads and success across all locations. A potential customer would contact the store to express interest, yet no one could say what happened to them or if anyone followed up.
HubSpot CRM is like Marie Kondo for retail leads. Everyone, in their right place. When you can find, assign and manage a lead using a single tool you’re more likely to contact them in a timely manner, follow-up when needed or requested, and save a lead that’s about to be lost. You can also prioritize leads that have a greater potential value. Unfortunately the tool can’t do everything.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight the importance of buy-in and consistency of entry from your sales team. If actions and conversations outside of the tool aren’t being plugged back into it, you’ll lose valuable information and ultimately, valuable leads.
What we, and our clients, enjoy about HubSpot is the fact that it can be tailored to your unique business and its terminology. For instance, our flooring client’s lead process includes Pre-Measures, Design Services, Quotes, Installation and Closing. HubSpot’s customization features allowed us to structure the CRM to fit the language that the client had been using for decades.
While Integrity offers start-to-finish support when implementing new technology, we like how intuitive HubSpot is. Because we promise transparency on our projects we prefer shared tools that can be easily accessed and digested by our clients. In those situations we don’t have to focus on teaching or interpreting the tool, we can focus on tweaking it to improve performance.
Rather than relying on manual spreadsheets that may or may not be up to date, using a CRM has given our retail clients visual proof that their sales efforts — as well as our marketing expertise — is working.
A benefit of HubSpot CRM is that it integrates easily with other tools that you are likely already using. Their motto is, “If there is a data source, we can connect to it!”
Many retail businesses already have some form of marketing programs in place before they’ve implemented a CRM. While not often formalized, there is typically a sales process in place as well.
What HubSpot CRM can do is tie those two major efforts together, and formalize the process to reduce wasted ad spend, wasted personnel effort and, most importantly, prevent lost leads.
For businesses that are used to a more manual way of tracking sales, implementing a CRM can take some getting used to.
We’ve also seen clients express interest in a CRM but when it comes to actually using the CRM, it’s another story. HubSpot can be exceptionally automated, though it does require work and commitment from the relevant team members. If this doesn’t happen, then the tool won’t work properly.
Clients who aren’t used to relying on technology for their business may feel hesitant to try something new. While HubSpot is user-friendly, it does require a ramp-up period to get familiar with the system.
Luckily, HubSpot offers great tutorials and if you partner with an agency like Integrity, you’ll never feel left in the lurch.
Using a CRM may take a couple of extra steps, but in the end, if you can sell to 10 more customers by the end of the month, isn’t it worth it?
At Integrity, we don’t throw our clients into the deep end and expect them to swim. We are business partners, in addition to being digital marketers, UX designers and technologists.
While other agencies are great at finding and setting up the right tool for clients, Integrity offers ongoing training and support — from the start of the project to beyond the CRM’s implementation.
We will not implement tools that we haven’t educated both ourselves and our clients on. And at any point during our support contract, we keep our clients informed and supported to make sure the tool is as effective as possible.
---
Are you interested in finding the right CRM for your retail business? Integrity offers strategy and business consulting services to clients to refine your lead generation and growth goals. We're here to chat!
