Purchasing any type of new software comes with a learning curve. You have to earn buy-in from your C-suite and your employees to make it work. So then the big question is, how DO you make it work? The answer is onboarding.
If you’ve just signed on with HubSpot (or you’re considering the purchase), you and your leadership are probably excited about the possibilities this platform can provide — everything from streamlining workflows to growing and scaling your business with successful marketing and sales campaigns. Adoption is crucial to the successful launch of HubSpot, and you need to make sure you’re getting the most out of your investment.
Here are some ways Lynton’s onboarding team has helped set our clients up for success by not only building up their HubSpot competence but also their confidence within the platform.
Why is HubSpot Onboarding Important?
Customer onboarding can increase customer lifetime value, decrease churn, and transform new users into ongoing, loyal supporters of a product or brand. A successful onboarding strategy can also help with team buy-in because let’s face it: not everyone loves change. If they’ve been making your existing CMS/CRM work for them, they may be reluctant to start over with something new.
Lynton’s Methodology for HubSpot Onboarding
Creating an effective onboarding strategy starts by keeping the end in mind. Each step in your onboarding plan should contribute to your overall goal. Some reasons companies sign on with HubSpot include:
- Its various marketing tools and features that help you manage all aspects of your marketing campaigns.
- The ability to streamline marketing, sales, and service processes in one place.
- The separate functionality of Hubs, allowing you to choose what you need to add to your tech stack. When used simultaneously, they’re more powerful.
When you work with Lynton for HubSpot onboarding, here are some steps we take toward helping you reach your goals. Please note that there may be additional steps depending on which onboarding package you choose. Overall, these are the actions we take for every onboarding client.
Understand Your Business
In order to help you get the most out of HubSpot, we need to become experts on how you run your business. Early in the sales process, we ask you questions about what your business looks like today and how you want it to look in the future so we can understand your goals and recommend which of our onboarding packages is the right fit for your business.
Set Milestones
Once you’ve signed on with Lynton, we gather all your stakeholders for this project so we can create a roadmap for your onboarding journey. Each onboarding project is unique and comes with different needs. Luckily, our team has been in hundreds of portals, and we leverage our HubSpot expertise to craft a project roadmap and milestones to meet your goals.
Roadmap Execution
Now that we’ve created your roadmap, it’s time to bring it to life. During this stage, we will use guided calls to walk you through various tools and features of HubSpot. Depending on your onboarding package, we’ll also facilitate working sessions so that you can get more hands-on within HubSpot. During working sessions, you’ll get to build, create, and automate your processes.
Refine Your Business Processes
Our onboarding consultants help you not only replicate but also streamline and automate your operations. We help you think about your business strategy and identify areas you can make even the most tedious tasks more seamless across your organization.
Gather Data, Measure Success
Data is crucial for measuring success with your onboarding process and beyond. But data is also what helps your business run. Whether it's one of the many out-of-the-box reports HubSpot provides, or you have custom reporting needs, we help you better understand your data by exploring which reports and dashboards can capture your data needs and lead to organizational success.
6 Useful Tips for HubSpot Onboarding
A number of useful tips can enhance your onboarding experience even further.
1. Identify Your Project Stakeholders
Think about who should be involved with your onboarding process. When setting up your HubSpot portal, a lot of decisions need to be made by leadership to ensure your processes are clearly defined and replicated into your instance. This means the right people need to be available to weigh in on any process conversations.
Additionally, you need to think about who your HubSpot Super Users are on your team. Understanding who will be using the tools on a daily basis and what access they'll need is important when it comes time to train your team on HubSpot.
2. Consider Project Timing
Do you have any important deadlines that need to be met? Are you canceling a subscription to other tools in your tech stack because of your HubSpot purchase? Are you hiring new staff to add to your HubSpot user team? How soon will any of this happen?
It's important to note any time constraints so we can understand how to build a more accurate and realistic project roadmap to make your goals a reality.
3. Establish Onboarding Goals
What do you hope HubSpot will help you achieve? What problems are you hoping HubSpot will solve for you? What metrics are critical for you and your team to track?
While these questions will definitely come up in conversations throughout the onboarding process, having a clear vision of your goals will help guide these conversations in the right direction.
4. Devote Time to Onboarding
Whether you only need help with the basics or are looking for additional support in configuring your HubSpot portal, your team needs to allocate time and resources to ensure the successful implementation of your instance.
You or your team will often have action items (think homework) in between meetings with us. While the amount of time varies from project to project, it could require anywhere from 2-6 hours per week needed from your team.
5. Open Communication
Solving complex business problems is hard enough, but without an open line of communication, it can be even more difficult. Frequently communicating your ideas and questions during and outside project meetings can help us stay aligned on your project progress. Without proper communication, you can expect project delays.
6. Build Organizational Buy-In
Your adoption of HubSpot will only be as successful as those aligned with your goals. Ensure your leadership team has thought through a realistic rollout plan and communicated that internally.
Setting expectations and a shared understanding of why your company is making this change will help your team members feel more at ease and confident during this transition.
HubSpot Onboarding Success
When we work with clients for HubSpot onboarding, our main goal is to enable our clients for long-term success by building HubSpot confidence — not just competence. By the time offboarding comes around, you will have a HubSpot portal configured to meet your organization’s unique needs and goals.
Our team of dedicated HubSpot onboarding experts is ready to help your business thrive. Ready to get started?
