I started Fibonacci Design Lab in 2013. Before that, I was the marketing and sales manager for a software company. I found that the most important tool I can have is a great CRM (contact relationship manager). I’ve tried so many that I’ve lost count. Highrise, Nutshell, ACT!, SalsesForce, Zoho, Agile, and that’s not nearly all of them.
All of them fell short in one way or another. Most of them are built for sales teams. I wanted something that integrated Marketing, Sales, and Service. I didn’t want people to get lost in the shuffle from one stage to another, the double-entry of going from one software to another was a pain in the ass. I also needed something that could integrate with my website, proposal software, scheduling software, and email marketing.
I searched for years and wasted ridiculous amounts of money in the process. A few years ago I stumbled upon HubSpot. I had tried HubSpot many years before but it hadn’t checked all of the boxes at that time. I knew I loved the HubSpot Academy. It was a great resource and I had learned so much about Inbound Marketing and Sales. Like a lot.
Why it’s so spiffy
HubSpot CRM had come a long way and it’s actually free, which makes it a bargain. It holds the most relevant information of any CRM I tried. It pulls a lot of information from the web. You can organize by Company AND by Contact (which a lot of the others did not. It was always one or the other). The CRM is flexible and you can create custom fields to suit your needs. The Google Mail extension is amazing. It lets me use my regular email but attaches all of the emails to the client record. No going back and forth or forwarding an email to the CRM. It is streamlined and simple to setup. And did I mention, unlimited users. You can create snippets to use in emails.
Sooner rather than later, you’re going to need something for Inbound Marketing. HubSpot has a free version of its Marketing Hub that connects to their CRM. You get access to forms, live chat, landing pages, email, and many other nifty things. The lowest level Marketing Hub is usually around $50.00/month. If at first, that is too pricey, you can integrate your MailChimp email marketing with the HubSpot CRM.
Hopefully, if your marketing goes well, you’ll need something to track your sales. Conveniently enough, HubSpot has a Sales Hub as well. There is a free version of the Sales Hub that lets you do many things. You can set up a scheduler, a chatbot, and track deals. Again, there several levels to the Sales Hub.
Woohoo! Your sales are going great and now you need something for service. Holy Sh*t, HubSpot just happens to also have a Service Hub. How so very convenient. Again, with the free and paid levels for the Service Hub. What is really great about all of this is that HubSpot CRM is fantastic, to begin with, but the additional Hubs make it easy to grow your business without having to worry about outgrowing your software and having to start over…again and again and again.
Solutions Provider
Over the last few years of loving HubSpot, I finally decided on becoming a Solutions Provider. That’s how much I love this stuff. What’s a Solution Provider? Well, it means I would be happy to set you up with HubSpot or answer any questions you might have. See, they even gave me a badge. It’s pretty spiffy.
