How Lead Management Works In 2024

With HubSpot's smart CRM you can employ automation to keep your contact records clean and up to date. When you have clean data, you'll notice your lead quality improves, conversion rates soar, confusion about contacts dissipates, and you're going to have a much better alignment between your sales and marketing teams. Come, I'll show you how HubSpot's smart CRM works. Your HubSpot CRM is much more than just a contact database. It's a single source of truth for all of your customer facing teams, including marketing, sales and service. One of the benefits of using HubSpot as your CRM is that contact records are updated automatically. Here is what a contact record looks like. I'm going to click into CRM and select Contacts and here I have a list of all the contacts in my CRM. If I click into a specific contact, you'll notice on the left hand side I have a ton of properties where my reps can input information about this specific person. Now, something I highly recommend you do as you're setting up your CRM is to establish data quality quality standards. That means developing clear guidelines and standards for the data your reps input, which may include formatting standards and validation to maintain consistency throughout your entire database. Another thing you need to do to ensure that your CRM stays clean is to conduct regular audits. In these regular audits it's a good idea to look for duplications, get rid of contacts that you no longer need and and identify and correct any inaccuracies you see in your CRM. Now let's say you want to add a property to your CRM that doesn't come standard with HubSpot. No problem in your account. Navigate over to your settings and on the left hand side under objects, click into Contacts. Here you'll be able to manage your contact properties, including create new ones. When you create a property, you'll be able to select which group it should lie under as well as the name of the property. We have a ton of different field types you can select from, including single line text, multi line text numbers, radio selects, you name it. My favorite field type to select is a dropdown select if I can. Now, single line texts are all useful, but it gives a lot of freedom to the person filling out the property to do what they want. When you have a dropdown select, you have a finite number of options that a rep can choose from so there's less inconsistencies throughout your database. Now I do understand that you can't always use a dropdown select, and sometimes you do need to use a single or multiline text field. When you do use a single line text field, make sure that you pay attention to these validation rules. Validation rules specify what values are allowed for this property. So these rules apply when creating, editing and importing these records and they really make sure that people aren't going rogue and adding whatever they need to these properties. You can set a maximum character limit so people don't go on and on. You can restrict it to numeric values, not allow special characters. This really just again help your CRM properties stay consistent. Now as an admin you can also make certain properties required so reps must fill out that property on their contact records. Now you might be thinking, okay, all of this is great, but I have a lot of my information in another app. How do I get that over to HubSpot? One of my favorite things about HubSpot is that we have integrations with so many different apps. If you navigate over to this little Marketplace icon and click App Marketplace, you'll be able to view all of the other apps that you can seamlessly integrate with HubSpot. When you integrate these other apps with HubSpot, you're able to regularly and automatically update the data in HubSpot through another source. This is the data you can update, includes contact details, property information, or transaction records. When you are dealing with a CRM, another thing you need to keep in mind is how you're handling sensitive data. You should establish data governance policies and procedures in order to make sure that your data stays secure, stays clean, and is in compliance with regulations. If you want to know more about HubSpot and sensitive data, check out this video here. This is what a contact record will look like once it has a bit of information in it. So on the left hand side you'll see that we have all of those contact properties with good information in it. And then in this middle section you'll see you have an overview. In the overview tab you'll notice that you have quite a bit of information about Devin, including some recent activities, the companies Devin is associated with, the deals, and all of that good stuff. In the middle section here you'll be able to see all of the changes that has occurred with Devin and including if they have submitted any forms, what pages Devin has viewed, and more. You can of course filter down these activities, so if you just want to focus on what pages he's been viewing, you can see that at a glance. And then finally you can also customize this area to make it as useful to you as you want. So this means you can add certain cards like deals, tickets, subscriptions. You can add in data highlights. I highly recommend you coming here, taking some time to understand what are all the possibilities and then curating an activity feed that means the most to you. Pro tip Here is when possible with properties, use a dropdown instead of a single line. Text dropdowns make it easier to segment and just make it easier for your data to remain clean. Dropdowns also make it so much easier to filter down and segment your contacts by lists. List segmentations are super helpful when you want to email a whole host of people who share a common property. For example, let's say we want to email all folks who attended a certain webinar with us last week in order to create that list of all the folks who were on that webinar. I can go up here, click Create List and I'll be asked to define this list as either active or static. Active lists automatically update over time so records will join or leave this list as properties change and static list don't automatically update. This is just a single moment in time for this one. I'm going to say active list because I'm going to also host this webinar next week and from here I can add a filter for marketing events attended marketing event. It might take just a second for your list to appear, but HubSpot is hard at work getting all those contacts listed for you. And don't forget that list segmentation and email marketing is included in HubSpot's free CRN. When once you have a list you can export the list, send them all emails, create tasks for them. You can really use this list in a lot of different ways. Now you may be wondering, okay, this is all great, but how do I actually get my contacts into HubSpot besides through integrations. One way is by creating forms on your landing pages. Forms are a great way to capture leads and automatically add leads to specific lists. Pro tip make sure you are always sending emails after someone fills out a form, either a pop up form or a form embedded on your website to make sure that they know that you are interested in reaching out to them. Form automation is also included in HubSpot's free CRM. Now of course, what good is doing all of this work if you can't report on it? With HubSpot CRM you have a ton of robust reporting for free. You can create reports based on contacts based on contact conversion, list segmentation and more. We have a ton of pre made reports for you to add on your dashboards, but if we don't have something that you're looking for, you can always create your own report and add it to your own dashboard. A CRM stands out as the most crucial lead management tool due to its ability to centralize lead data, track interactions, and automate follow up. It enhances lead nurturing, improves conversion rates, and fosters better customer relationships through personalized communication. CRM systems also provide valuable insights for strategic decision making, align sales and marketing efforts, and enable scalability, making them indispensable for effective lead management in modern business environments. Based on G2 ratings, HubSpot is considered a top choice for small, mid market and enterprise companies. This allows you to begin with HubSpot's numerous free tools on a small scale, with the capability to grow as your business expands. So what are you waiting for? Sign up for HubSpot's free CRM today.