There are numerous CRM options on the market, with HubSpot and Salesforce consistently ranking as top options by users. Salesforce, in particular, ranks high with enterprise and Fortune 500 companies. Yet, some companies, including large ones, have recently opted to move to HubSpot from Salesforce. If they’re both such high-ranking CRMs, you might be wondering, “why?” From reporting to flexible features, there are plenty of reasons. Get a high-level look here.
Ease of Use
Salesforce is widely regarded as a complex CRM for enterprise business, so it offers a wide range of customization and capabilities. But it’s always known for being hard to use. So difficult that it generally requires a dedicated CRM administrator or engineer to make it work for a business’s unique processes. HubSpot, on the other hand, is more flexible. While it may not offer as many custom abilities as Salesforce, it provides a lot, especially if you factor in custom objects (a way to store and associate data in any way). More importantly, you won’t need to hire additional overhead. In fact, HubSpot and other agencies offer onboarding and training programs that make learning it a cinch.
Scalability
HubSpot has platform levels for every business size. So, if you’re a small or midsize company, there’s something for you. If you’re a large organization, the all-new, comprehensive Sales Hub Enterprise will fit the bill. There’s also a free version so you can dip your toes into the water – then dive in deeper as your business grows.
Simpler Reporting
Most people in the sales industry know Salesforce offers robust reporting, but again, it requires time and training to learn it. In recent years, HubSpot has improved their reporting capabilities, and Inbound 2020 capitulated their efforts. With HubSpot CRM reporting, you can build an intuitive sales dashboard for a holistic view of your entire company’s sales efforts. Even better? You’ll spend less time building those reports and more time accurately answering your business’s strategic questions.
Straightforward Automation and Personalization
Both Salesforce and HubSpot have automated capabilities, but at the risk of sounding like a broken record, HubSpot’s are generally more user-friendly. You can build workflows around any contact, company, deal, ticket, or custom object. “If, then” branches can help show the right content to the right people. Other features, while gated behind center levels, take your sales to the next level. They include predictive lead scoring, recurring revenue tracking, and custom event triggers.
HubSpot also makes it seamless to personalize the sales experience while making your sales executives jobs’ more manageable. They can receive notifications when prospects and leads open emails, with all information being automatically tracked against their contact record. Personalization tokens and other contact data can make these emails more engaging. Again, your team can tap into automation for outreach sequences, automated meeting scheduling, and engagement tracking.
Better Insights into Buyer’s Journey
If you’re looking for a simple, out-of-the-box way to get real insights into where your leads are in the buyer’s journey, HubSpot is your bet. HubSpot stores all communication and personal information on an individual contact record. You can associate deals with contacts and companies right from your portal and view all the context and relevant records in one singular place. With their pre-set lifecycle stages, you don’t have to do much thinking to determine where customers or leads fall, either. And if we haven’t mentioned yet, it’s easy to learn how to do all of this. HubSpot has an internal academy with tons of lessons and certifications surrounding their sales software.
More Substantial Marketing and Sales Connection
Salesforce users typically use another platform to handle their marketing efforts, but with HubSpot, you can do it all with one login. HubSpot has sales, marketing, and service software built by their pros, ensuring an easy and cohesive experience. The CRM itself can automate certain marketing activities like email communication and have many more marketing tools than other CRMs. But when you use their sales and marketing systems together, you’ll have all the tools you need to align your teams at your fingertips.
The Bottom Line
Businesses who need highly customized CRMs will always opt for Salesforce out of the gate. But over the years, HubSpot has grown its enterprise capabilities while still being easy to use. So, if your sales team wants to switch and you have the budget for Sales Hub Enterprise, it may be a good idea. If you’d like to learn more about how we can help with a successful switch, check out our HubSpot onboarding page.
