Ahead of IPO, HubSpot Unveils CRM At INBOUND 2014
- Written by Kim Ann Zimmermann, Managing Editor
- Published in Industry News
At its INBOUND 2014 event, HubSpot unveiled a sales platform that includes a free CRM as well as Sidekick, a sales acceleration product designed to provide sales reps with context about prospects and customers to improve sales productivity. This move comes as the company prepares to launch its IPO.
The HubSpot CRM is currently in public beta for hundreds of HubSpot customers, and will be more widely available — starting with a broader group of HubSpot's 11,500 customers — in 2015. Sidekick, which is currently available, can be used as a stand-alone product or integrated with CRMs, including HubSpot’s new CRM platform and Salesforce.
“We started HubSpot because the way people shop and buy had fundamentally changed and felt marketing had to change accordingly,” said CEO Brian Halligan at the keynote address during the event. “We started HubSpot because the way people shop and buy had fundamentally changed and felt marketing had to change accordingly. But marketing isn't the only function that can transform the customer experience: far too many sales reps still sell exactly the same way they did a decade ago. The HubSpot sales platform is designed to drive more sales instead of driving people crazy, and to deliver a more relevant, timely, and effective sales process to potential customers while making it significantly easier for sales reps to do their jobs."
Industry reaction has been generally positive. “I'm excited to see a deeper level of integration between CRM and marketing automation and I think the offering really targets the upper small and early-enterprise clients very well,” said Ian Michiels, Principal and CEO of Gleanster Research. “I think HubSpot was smart to support marketing and sales in its platform, but only if they target the small and mid-market with the offering and develop some sort of plan for transitioning clients who may be over-paying for CRM capabilities they don't use. The switching costs are real barriers — and so are the existing contracts clients may already be in with CRM providers.”
Michiels noted that companies are focused on empowering and optimizing the customer lifecycle. “I would argue most are overly expensive, overly complicated, and downright insufficient. So, HubSpot's simplicity and cost are a step in the right direction.”
While the features are fairly standard for a CRM system, David Raab, Principal of Raab Associates, noted that the integration of marketing and sales automation are attractive. “The product looked quite nice, although I think most of the features are already available in other CRM systems or add-ons,” Raab wrote on his blog. “Having them easily available in a single product is convenient, but what’s really interesting is the integration of CRM with HubSpot’s marketing features and underlying database. This provides a combined sales and marketing system that’s quite unusual for mid-market companies.”
Halligan noted that sales people find that CRMs add to their workloads without providing the information needed to have productive sales conversations. “Sales people spend one hour and 32 minutes every day filling out forms,” he told the audience. “CRMs create more work for them without providing the context they need to have meaningful conversations with buyers and they don’t help with prospecting.”
HubSpot CRM connects to Gmail, Google Apps, Outlook, and Apple Mail, automatically logging email exchanges between sales people and contacts. It also features a database of contacts, companies, deals, and tasks, and offers a timeline view to help sales teams navigate and chart opportunities and leads.
The CRM is available on HubSpot's app for iOS and Android, and integrates with Sidekick and HubSpot's marketing software.
Sidekick is a rebrand and relaunch of HubSpot's Signals tool, which debuted last year. Sidekick is a browser extension to support prospecting, connecting, and engaging with potential leads. Real-time notifications provide information on when, where, and how prospects are engaging.
Patrick Elverum, COO of Century Interactive, an early beta user of the HubSpot CRM, said "Our company was seeking a CRM that delivered meaningful impact on the metrics that are important to our business. Using HubSpot's CRM has shown us that this is a tool that can get our sales team and our business.