The Core Features of the HubSpot Sales Hub [Video]

Businesses seeking an integrated tool that maximizes the potential of customer relations management (CRM) while focusing on sales should consider the Sales Hub available through HubSpot. This suite of software and applications offers great value as a standalone module. Further, it allows your sales team to connect closely with other business functions using functionality such as the Content Hub, Marketing Hub, Operations Hub, Commerce Hub, and Service Hub.

We will keep updating this post as more information becomes available on HubSpot's acquisition and increasing integration of Clearbit, the leading Data Enrichment platform.

This defines a scalable option that provides flexibility for your company and an integrated platform that partners with the contacts in your CRM solution throughout the buyer's journey, from their time as prospects through their transition into loyal customers who value what you offer.

Like all the other Hubs, HubSpot's Sales Hub comes in free and paid versions from Starter to Professional to HubSpot Sales Hub Enterprise level subscriptions.

By seamlessly integrating with the comprehensive HubSpot Sales and Marketing Platform, the Sales Hub complements a unified suite of products that form the bedrock of your business operations: 

• Content Hub: HubSpot Content Hub is the content management system providing a firm foundation for successful CRM as prospective, current, and longtime customers access your website. This hub includes easy-to-edit features, website themes, and powerful SEO recommendations.

• Marketing Hub: HubSpot Marketing Hub houses powerful tools to fuel your Inbound Marketing, Blogging, Email marketing, Social Media Marketing, SEO, paid advertising, and Marketing Automation. Marketing Hub is HubSpot's first and arguably most mature hub, and using HubSpot Marketing Hub for Content Marketing is rather unparalleled in the industry.

• Operations Hub: HubSpot Operations Hub creates awareness, allowing your firm to attract customers within the chosen demographic and build brand loyalty. These tasks are accomplished by syncing apps, curating and cleaning customer data, and automating processes.

• Sales Hub: Allows teams to align and get a detailed revenue picture throughout the sales campaign. HubSpot Sales Hub is essential for improved communication between marketing and sales teams through advanced CRM, meeting scheduling opportunities, payment processing, and aligned marketing and sales.

• Service Hub: Creating a customer service experience that builds brand loyalty and creates an environment where long-lasting relationships thrive is essential for HubSpot Service Hub. The goal is to maintain two-way connections with customers, track service tickets and feedback, and develop a knowledge base that benefits many areas of operations, including marketing.

• Commerce Hub: The HubSpot Commerce Hub is a product bundle that helps small and mid-sized businesses sell products or services online. It includes features like a shopping cart, checkout, payment processing, and integrations with other HubSpot products. It offers different pricing plans to fit various budgets and is a comprehensive and user-friendly solution for growing your business.

An Overview of the Sales Hub Features

The suite of Sales Hub resources allows your company to start conversations, deepen relationships, manage your pipeline, and help sales teams close more deals.

Starting Conversations

Engage with new and current customers with helpful tools and software. Valuable features in this part of the Sales Hub include:

• Free Email Templates: This HubSpot feature includes a library of built-in template emails to guide your customers through their journey with your company. That option is also available for those who wish to develop other message variations. Metrics for open rates and click rates allow members of your firm to evaluate which attachments, buttons, and links your targeted recipients select and explore. Managers can also examine statistics for all templates combined or focus on those for a particular sales rep.

• Free Email Tracking Software: Get immediate notification when a prospect opens an email or investigates a link sent to them. Your firm can also develop personalized outreach strategies after contacts start to engage with emails sent to them. Follow-up notifications are possible immediately after a prospect opens a targeted email, a document sent to them, or a suggested link.

• Document Tracking: Know that someone has chosen to open a document or share content by receiving an alert informing your team that they are interested in the content you have sent. The team can share these document-tracking functions by developing a library of accurate and current sales content. A drop-down menu allows team members to select from documents already created.

• Conversation Intelligence: HubSpot's conversation AI functions offer insights from the customer conversations received by your business. This information proves to be incredibly valuable for both sales reps and management. You can also gather hours of voice data in your CRM to gain valuable insight into changing market dynamics and understand competitive trends. Conversation intelligence allows for the ramping up of new reps, better coaching, understanding of performance patterns, and sharing feedback.

• Call Tracking Software: The rich data in your company's CRM offers an excellent resource for developing sales call strategies and calling schedules. Enjoy prioritizing calls and setting up a daily queue for outreach efforts. You can maintain records of conversations with clients through the click-to-call options available.

• Sales Automation Tools: Old-school follow-up takes time and may lead to a prospect slipping through the cracks. Automation tools available through the HubSpot Sales Hub allow your team members to harness a series of automated emails and develop follow-up tasks and strategies for prospects so that you remain in touch with them. Working in tandem with the HubSpot CRM, you can personalize messages, develop sequential emails, and add a personal touch to your communications.
  
  

Deepening Relationships

After beginning valuable conversations, tools available through the HubSpot Sales Hub permit you to build trust and develop a relationship that encourages brand loyalty as prospects become loyal customers through these functions:

• Meeting Scheduler: Playing phone tag or handling to-and-from email messages to confirm meetings takes too much time. The meetings tool available through HubSpot allows a prospect or repeat customer to schedule a meeting with an individual team member or multiple workers at a company. Integrated with the contacts database, this tool allows booking and confirming appointments with a particular rep or the best person available at the desired time. Information from prospects is added to your HubSpot contacts database with this feature.

• Payments: The payments tool allows your firm to accept instant payments and get funds faster. Developed to offer a purchase experience both customers and sales team members will enjoy, this feature allows internal team members to track a customer's purchases and payment activity, offers online subscriptions and recurring payment options, and securely handles transactions.

• Free Live Chat Software: A live chat option allows prospects and returning customers to reach you on their terms, get the information they want when they want it, and handle communications in a way that allows cases to pass seamlessly between sales and service teams, with leads shared internally. Save and store conversations to track interactions, with the ability to incorporate chatbots to handle time-intensive or repetitive tasks -- such as basic customer support questions and scheduling meetings -- without the need to develop code.
  
  

Managing Your Pipeline

Automate tasks, track progress, and enable team members to use their top talents with helpful software and analytics available in these features:

• Sales Management Playbooks: HubSpot offers the ability to develop sales playbooks with pricing guidelines, product specs, information, and other content that will keep your sales team focused, empowered, and enabled. Capture essential details about competitors on a battle card, so your team members can communicate differences about your offerings that make them a better choice. Have a wealth of documents digitally available in the HubSpot CRM for immediate access.

• Quote Software: Have sales data and information stored and readily available so team members may respond to individualized client requests with a quote they see in seconds rather than hours. Stay fresh and relevant while the customer has your firm on their mind. Create detailed quotes in seconds with precise language that looks like it took much longer to prepare. Include a payment option so they can move from an interested party to a satisfied customer in a simple transaction.

• Sales Analytics and Reporting: Enjoy a macro view of sales metrics with reporting software that allows you to evaluate leads, performance, sales and marketing knowledge across the organization, and areas for improvement so team members may successfully meet their goals. Rather than fumbling through numerous spreadsheets of disparate origin, get answers to your questions from HubSpot's comprehensive and integrated analytical tools. Customize sales reports, keep real-time statistics on team performance, and have essential decision-making tools flow into your information pipeline.

• Access to the Mobile CRM App: Enjoy access to your HubSpot CRM on demand with helpful tools available on your mobile device for moments away from the office. Communicate, collaborate, interact, reach out, and respond to clients and other units without checking in since the app securely syncs with your HubSpot account. Record your message rather than having to type it, share tasks with colleagues, and maintain real-time communications.

• Sales Pipeline Management Software: Develop deals from your firm's CRM with software that allows your sales team to spend more time pursuing valuable contacts instead of entering rote information onto forms. Pipeline management software allows you to define the best processes for your firm's needs so you can devote precious time to finalizing deals rather than engaging in clerical tasks.

• Account-Based Marketing (ABM) Software: Integrate qualified leads and established customers so that information developed from the marketing and sales initiatives is readily available for the ABM strategy you wish to develop. Replace fractured silos with an integrated process that encourages collaboration within and across your firm's teams.
  
  

Core Features of the Sales Hub

With its robust features and tailored solutions, HubSpot Sales Hub equips Sales Teams with the tools to convert leads effectively, collaborate with prospects and internal team members, and track sales performance.

At its core, the Sales Hub revolves around five essential elements: Data, Content, Messaging, and Reporting, each playing a pivotal role in enhancing sales efficiency and driving revenue growth.

1. Data

The foundation of any successful sales strategy lies in data-driven decision-making. HubSpot's Sales Hub leverages comprehensive data management tools allowing businesses to centralize and organize customer information. This includes contact details, interaction history, deal stages, and more. By having a holistic view of customer data, sales teams can better understand their prospects, tailor their approach, and nurture leads effectively throughout the sales funnel.

CRM

Data management in HubSpot's Sales Hub revolves around two critical components: CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and Deals. The CRM system is the central repository for all customer data, providing a comprehensive view of interactions and history with leads and customers.

Lead Management

A new leads "object" has been added to HubSpot's prospecting workspace, enabling users to create leads from contacts without the need to assign them to reps, eliminating busy work.

Lead management is the process of identifying, qualifying, and nurturing leads until they are ready to become your customers. Lead Generation is essential to many marketing, business development, and sales processes. Using CRM properties like Persona and Lifecycle Stage helps you:

• • • define and manage who is where in the buyer's journey and

    • define appropriate action items, personalized and (on pro-level and above) automated nurturing.

Lead scoring approaches, manual or predictive, enable automatic prioritization of leads based on thousands of data points and machine learning approaches.

• • • Qualify leads and move them through the sales funnel. Ensure that your sales team only spends time on the most qualified leads.

• • • Track and measure your lead management process. Improve your lead management process and close more deals.

CRM and Deals

On the other hand, Deals allow sales teams to organize and track their sales pipeline, enabling them to efficiently manage prospects through different stages of the sales process. By leveraging these data-driven tools, sales teams can gain valuable insights into customer interactions, make informed decisions, and drive revenue growth.

Forecast Insights

Easily track how your revenue is performing compared to your sales targets for the month, quarter, or year with the new forecast insights data that is integrated. This feature allows you to keep a close eye on the progress of your forecast and pipeline throughout the quarter.

Forecast Accuracy Tracking

Track the accuracy of your predictions and evaluate your forecasting process's efficiency through forecast accuracy monitoring.

AI Forecasting

Evaluate the accuracy of the sales forecast generated by the team by comparing it with HubSpot's latest forecast, which utilizes AI and historical sales data to predict future sales. This AI-powered forecast has shown an improvement in accuracy for certain teams, reaching up to 95% or more.

Forecast Across All Pipelines

Easily handle your goals and predictions for all of your pipelines.

2. Content

Captivating and informative content is vital for engaging prospects and driving them toward conversion. HubSpot's Sales Hub empowers sales professionals with content creation and management capabilities, enabling them to craft personalized email templates, sales documents, and collateral. Moreover, the platform offers content tracking and analytics, allowing sales reps to gauge the effectiveness of their content and make data-backed improvements to their outreach efforts.

Advanced Playbook Recommendations

Provide suggestions for playbooks that utilize any attribute within any object, including custom attributes and attributes within custom objects.

Playbooks: Snippets and Rich Text Formatting

Playbook note fields now offer support for snippets, allowing you to conveniently save frequently used phrases and reuse them as needed. Additionally, you can utilize rich text editing tools to format your notes.

Playbooks on Custom Object Records

Direct access to playbooks from custom object record pages is now possible.

Coaching Playlists

Provide the functionality to create playlists for call recordings, simplifying the process of training and developing representatives on a larger scale.

Content Assistant on Mobile

The HubSpot mobile app has integrated AI technology which will revolutionize the way customers work while on the go. With this update, iPhone users will be able to enhance their communication efficiency during prospecting or sales by utilizing AI to assist with email composition, making it faster and simpler.

3. Messaging

Communication is the lifeblood of sales, and the Messaging component in HubSpot's Sales Hub ensures that sales teams can connect with leads and customers seamlessly. The platform provides communication tools, including email sequencing, live chat, and team email, to facilitate smooth and timely interactions. This helps build strong relationships with prospects and customers while allowing sales reps to manage and track conversations efficiently.

Sales Emails

Sales emails are a core component of any sales strategy, and HubSpot's Sales Hub provides a user-friendly interface for creating and sending personalized sales emails. With an array of customizable templates and the ability to track email opens and click-through rates, sales reps can gauge engagement levels and identify the most responsive prospects. HubSpot's email sequencing feature also enables sales reps to automate follow-up emails, ensuring consistent communication and increasing the likelihood of nurturing them into sales-qualified leads, opportunities/deals, and, eventually, customers.

Calls

Effective phone communication remains a crucial aspect of the sales process, and HubSpot's Sales Hub streamlines this through its call functionality. With the ability to make calls directly from the platform and automatically log call details and recordings, sales reps can maintain accurate records of their interactions. Furthermore, call analytics provide valuable insights, allowing reps to assess call duration, frequency, and outcomes, thus refining their approach and optimizing call performance.

Meetings

Scheduling meetings with prospects and customers can be time-consuming, but HubSpot's Sales Hub simplifies the process with its Meetings feature. Sales reps can share their availability through personalized meeting links, enabling leads to schedule appointments at their convenience. Additionally, automated reminders and integrations with calendar platforms reduce no-show rates, ensuring that sales reps can maximize their meeting opportunities and focus on building strong connections with prospects.

You can now schedule meetings for your colleagues, with the added benefit of round-robin routing to ensure the meeting is booked with the next available representative. This feature gives credit to both the person who schedules the meeting and the person who hosts it.

Templates

Streamlining communication is vital to maintaining consistency and efficiency in sales outreach. HubSpot's Sales Hub offers a library of customizable email templates that sales reps can leverage to tailor their messages to different leads. By saving time on repetitive tasks, sales teams can engage with more prospects and provide personalized experiences that resonate with potential customers. Analyzing template performance also allows reps to fine-tune their messaging for better results over time.

Quotes

Providing accurate and professional-looking quotes is essential when it comes to closing deals. HubSpot's Sales Hub simplifies the process with its quote creation and management features. Sales reps can generate quotes directly from the platform, ensuring all relevant deal details are captured and presented professionally to prospects. The ability to track quote status and receive notifications when quotes are viewed or accepted enables sales teams to promptly follow up and move deals forward, expediting the sales cycle and boosting conversion rates.

4. Reporting

To continually improve sales performance, it is crucial to have access to insightful data and analytics. HubSpot's Sales Hub excels by providing robust reporting and performance tracking features. Sales teams can monitor key metrics, track deal progress, and gain valuable insights into their sales processes. This data-driven approach allows them to identify strengths, weaknesses, and areas for improvement, facilitating more informed decision-making and increased sales success.

Reporting

The Reporting functionality in HubSpot's Sales Hub empowers sales teams to delve into comprehensive performance analytics. With detailed reports on key metrics like lead generation, deal progression, and revenue generation, sales managers can gain valuable insights into their team's overall performance. These reports enable data-driven decision-making, helping managers identify top-performing reps, spot areas that need improvement, and optimize sales processes for greater efficiency.

Lead Reporting

Gain clarity on the path from generating leads to generating revenue and motivate your marketing and sales teams with specific objectives and information. Discover how representatives are interacting with your quality leads and what factors contribute to their conversion with the lead contact rate report. Additionally, evaluate the performance and contribution of your inbound, sales, and product-qualified lead sources to generate high-value leads with the lead source report.

Prospect Activities Reporting

This report provides sales managers with valuable information on their team's and representatives' actions. It allows you to evaluate the efficiency of your sales procedures, resource allocation, and team's overall performance by analyzing various activities during the Prospecting process, such as scheduling appointments, adding contacts to sequences, making phone calls, and finishing tasks.

A/B Testing

For any email step, you can split sends 50/50 to experiment with different templates. Report on performance for both to quickly make decisions and optimize outreach. 

Sequence Step Analytics

Gain insights into your sales sequence performance by utilizing step-level analytics. This will allow you to track each individual step and evaluate how well your reps are following the process and converting leads into booked meetings.

Deal Inspection View

When managing Deals, you can now access insights on pipeline health and sales velocity. These new insights will help sales reps prioritize tasks more efficiently and managers to coach more effectively. It's recommended that you set aside a regular weekly time to review these insights as they provide a quick overview of your sales pipeline and process health.

Deal Funnel Reporting

HubSpot's funnel reporting underwent significant updates. The 'All stages in any order' funnels now include skips, conversions, and time in stage. The 'All stages in order' funnels also have these updates and offer Sankey and Funnel visualizations. Editing can be done in Journeys, with customization only available for Enterprise.

Deal Tags

Sales reps can now prioritize deals more easily with the introduction of colored deal tags. Up to ten deal tags can be created by super admins, each with its own set of conditions. When these conditions are met, the corresponding deal tags will be visible on board cards.

5. Automation

Efficiency is paramount in modern sales operations, and the Sales Hub leverages automation to save valuable time and effort. Through automation, businesses can set up personalized workflows and automated tasks based on specific triggers or actions taken by prospects. This allows sales reps to focus on high-priority activities, such as engaging with qualified leads and closing deals, while routine tasks are handled automatically.

Sequences

HubSpot's Sequences feature enables sales teams to automate personalized and timely email outreach to prospects. With Sequences, sales reps can create a series of pre-defined emails sent automatically based on the recipient's specific triggers or actions. This automation ensures consistent follow-ups and nurturing, even when dealing with a large number of leads. Sales reps can tailor the content and timing of each email to suit the prospect's behavior, ensuring a more personalized and relevant communication approach. Additionally, Sequences provide real-time notifications when a prospect interacts with the email, allowing reps to respond promptly to engagement and focus on the most interested leads.

Sequences on Mobile

The enrollment, un-enrollment, pausing, and resuming of contacts from a sequence can be managed through the iOS and Android apps.

Workflows

Workflows in HubSpot's Sales Hub empower sales teams to automate complex tasks and processes. Whether it's lead qualification, deal routing, or task assignment, workflows streamline repetitive actions and ensure no leads fall through the cracks. Sales teams can set up workflows based on specific criteria, actions, or time-based triggers. For example, when a lead meets specific qualifications, the Workflow can automatically assign them to the appropriate sales rep, send a follow-up email, and add them to a specific deal pipeline. This level of automation reduces manual efforts, enhances team productivity, and fosters a more systematic and organized approach to sales, ultimately leading to higher conversion rates and improved customer experience.

Prospecting Workspace

A workspace in HubSpot that consolidates prospecting tasks for sales reps, helping them stay organized, focused, and goal-oriented without switching apps.

HubSpot Embed for Sales Force

Effortlessly build meaningful relationships with your potential and existing customers through Sales Hub, regardless of your team's CRM of choice. With HubSpot Sequences, contacts can be enrolled, and meetings can be scheduled directly from Salesforce records, freeing up your reps' time to establish connections with customers instead of navigating between tabs.

Sales Force Activity Sync

Transfer your Salesforce activities to HubSpot for seamless analysis of your calls, meetings, tasks, and other details in Sales Hub, regardless of their source.

Essential Apps for Sales Hub

A new collection of recommended integrations will soon be available in HubSpot's App Marketplace highlighting the essential apps for Sales Hub, including ZoomInfo Inbound Enrich, Gong.io, PandaDoc, eSignatures, Aircall, and many more. 

QR Code Scanner

By utilizing a two-step process that involves scanning a QR code, salespeople can efficiently generate and store new contacts in their CRM. This feature is particularly useful when meeting potential clients face-to-face at events like conferences, trade shows, or conventions. Additionally, this QR code scanning capability works alongside HubSpot's mobile app's business card scanning feature.

Within the HubSpot Sales Hub, these interconnected components synergize to equip businesses with the tools and insights necessary to create influential sales strategies, foster enduring customer relationships, and attain continuous growth in the dynamic digital arena. By fully leveraging the potential of these elements, organizations can unleash the true power of the HubSpot Sales Hub and revolutionize their sales approach, enabling them to thrive in a competitive market landscape.

Grow Sales with the HubSpot Sales Hub

We understand the importance of continuous learning and professional growth for sales professionals. As a certified and accredited HubSpot Platinum Solutions partner, we offer additional help and support for HubSpot onboarding and usage. Our team of experienced marketers and sales professionals is dedicated to providing companies with personalized support in their sales, marketing, and HubSpot efforts. 

Whether you are looking at a HubSpot Sales Hub implementation or need guidance in implementing advanced strategies, developing custom campaigns, or leveraging key HubSpot features, we're here to help. Our expertise spans various sales disciplines, including prospecting, lead nurturing, and closing deals.

By partnering with Aspiration Marketing, you can access personalized consultations, strategic guidance, and hands-on assistance tailored to your needs and goals. With our Sales Enablement consultants, HubSpot Onboarding Accreditation, and access to world-class Sales Training and Coaching Resources,  we work collaboratively with you to understand your business objectives and develop tailored sales strategies that drive results.