So you’ve finally bitten the HubSpot bullet. You’ve got your platform set up, you’ve gone through HubSpot onboarding (or at least something that looked like it), and you’ve spent a lot of money to get there. But when you take a moment to reflect on the impact it’s had on your business, you feel like it hasn’t changed that much in the end.

It’s a story I’ve heard plenty of times before. What makes it so frustrating is there can be any number of reasons behind it. Maybe the people on your team aren’t using HubSpot the way they’re supposed to, or maybe they’re just not aware of everything HubSpot can be doing differently.

Whatever it is, you’re nearing your wits’ end as you watch such a fantastic tool not living up to its potential. But don’t panic, all is not lost for your HubSpot journey. Here are five ways HubSpot mentoring can help you wring out the true value of your setup.

Get everyone batting for the same team

If you spend even the slightest bit of time looking at what HubSpot can do, you’ll know it’s a pretty amazing piece of kit. But all the bells and whistles in the world won’t matter if the culture around using HubSpot isn’t right.

That’s especially true when you’re dealing with prickly sales and marketing teams. Friction between them is hardly rare – marketing doesn’t think sales are following up on leads properly, and sales don’t think the marketing leads they’re being given are good enough. They both want the credit for generating leads and neither wants to change what they think is working for them.

The beauty of HubSpot is that it doesn’t take sides – all it wants to do is help the entire business work better together. For that to happen everyone needs to take the time to understand best practices and processes, and come together as one cohesive team.

For an idea of how to approach this, check out HubSpot Academy’s session on Aligning Marketing and Sales or join Jon and me for the Sales Enablement HUG, first Thursday of every month. 

Shout about the benefits, soothe the pain

Part of the difficulty with spreading a culture change is that convincing people to get on board with a new way of working is often easier said than done. You might have 80% of your team happy to give HubSpot a go, but that last 20% can be all it takes to derail the whole operation.

That 20% are typically more senior and they’re convinced that HubSpot isn’t going to work as well as what they’re used to. They’re either very loud about their objections, or they’re silently refusing to use it and holding everyone’s efficiency back as a result.

Part of what mentoring can do is amplify the people who are excited about what HubSpot can do, and get them shouting about it to tide the others over. But it’s not just about being louder than the holdouts. Effective HubSpot mentoring also means bringing them on board, first by letting them vent about what a pain HubSpot is going to be to adopt, then showing them how easy it’s actually going to be.

Keep focused on the features you need

One of the best things about HubSpot is the amount of functionality it’s got to explore once you pull back the curtain. But all that scope can slow you down if you’re not careful. If you don’t need everything HubSpot can do, you should narrow your focus to what’s essential before your team gets consumed by HubSpot’s cleverness.

Mentoring can help your team to zero in on making the relevant parts of HubSpot sing without getting bogged down by what you don’t need to worry about. In other words, it can empower them to know how to use HubSpot properly so they aren’t afraid of logging in.

Start on a diet of consistent data

Speaking of using HubSpot properly, that all starts with what you’re feeding into it – and yes, I am talking about best practices for data entry.

It might sound obvious, but HubSpot needs the right ingredients to play with if you’re going to get the most out of it. You might have one person adding long form job titles – for example “Chief Executive Officer” – while someone else is writing “CEO”. There’s no consistency there, and you need that if you’re going to do things like data segmentation for sales campaigns.

When data input is done right, HubSpot can help you remove the emotion from your sales process and know what’s actually going on. You can define what proper MQLs and SQLs look like (and stop your sales and marketing teams arguing over lead quality while you’re at it), and clearly see what’s happening with each lead coming in.

Get HubSpot talking to your other tools (or replace them altogether)

I’ve said it before, but I’m a HubSpot geek so I’ll say it again – the amount of stuff HubSpot can do is mind-boggling. Most people start looking at what it can do with nurturing Inbound Marketing leads. Once they lift the lid they see it can also do automated marketing emails, lead forensics, meeting links, support ticketing, and pretty much everything in between.

Once you realise what it can do, you start looking awkwardly at all your other pieces of software. Do you need to keep paying for separate meetings and email tools if HubSpot can do those jobs too? How can you get HubSpot to take over without losing anything? And if you do need to keep any other software, how can you get it talking to HubSpot so you don’t miss out on any insights?

If you’ve got too many tools doing duplicate jobs or not sharing data properly, there isn’t much HubSpot can do for improving efficiency. HubSpot mentoring can help you identify where your overlaps are and how to connect everything into one cohesive process.

A trusted HubSpot partner can help you transform your setup from a toolbox to an indispensable treasure. Find out how Noisy Little Monkey can help.