Sales teams use a variety of tools to help them hit their sales numbers, improve their sales strategy, and reduce time wasted on non-selling activities. Of all the software that reps use, though, there are none as popular as the CRM.
In fact, 91% of companies with more than 11 workers utilize a CRM. The current global CRM market is valued at $120 billion. Since its development over 30 years ago, CRM has become one of the most essential tools that companies use to grow their sales.
There are a lot of choices for sales teams when it comes to finding the right CRM to meet their needs. Two of the most popular CRMs on the market today are Salesforce and HubSpot. While both have advantages and drawbacks, in the debate of HubSpot CRM versus Salesforce, most sales teams are likely to find they will benefit from HubSpot the most.
In this article, we’ve broken down the HubSpot vs Salesforce debate to help you find the right CRM for you. We’ll discuss the pros and cons of both CRMs, plus some tips to manage a successful Salesforce to HubSpot migration.
Why is a CRM Important for Sales Teams?
First, though, does your sales team even need a CRM? In short, yes.
Far from another form of tracking software, CRMs offer a number of advantages that help streamline and optimize workflows. Companies that invest in properly deploying their CRM can experience greater sales. According to Nucleus Research, companies get anywhere from $5.60 to $8.71 back for every dollar they spend on CRM.
Some of the biggest benefits that sales teams can harness from CRMs include:
Enhanced Customer Data
In the modern world of sales, data is foundational to any successful sales strategy. However, information can come from a wide variety of sources. CRM enables sales and marketing teams to have a single place to store all of their data in a way that they can best utilize.
Better Insights
Not only does CRM put the information in one convenient location, but it can also help give deeper insights by visually showcasing data. For example, sales reps can see how well their prospecting emails are performing on CRM dashboards. It can quickly display who received emails and any positive actions that resulted, such as scheduling a demo.
Increased Productivity
For being in sales, reps spend surprisingly little time actually selling. According to Harvard Business Review, sales reps now spend about 25% less time in front of customers than they did just five years ago.
It’s critical, then, that sales teams invest in efficiency to see and talk to as many customers as possible. CRMs can help enhance this productivity by making customer information easier to find, as well as automate much of the data input. It can help reduce the time creating emails and reaching out to customers.
Encourage Collaboration
Silos are a particular challenge for outside sales. The rise of remote work in the past year has only exacerbated the problem for many companies. Without the exchange of information between both sales reps and other departments, though, sales reps cannot be as effective as possible.
CRMs help encourage collaboration because it gives everyone access to the same information and makes sharing simple. Marketing and sales, for example, can share stats and easily hand off lead information and history so that sales reps can have all the data and history they need to reach out to leads. Marketing also can get detailed information on how their campaigns performed and translated into sales. Even customer service can find critical contact information and see their history to provide the best service.
Improve Outreach
The CRM platform can also help the sales department in their outreach efforts and enables them to proactively reach prospects. It can give sales insights into what would interest each customer most. Sales can make their automated outreach more personalized so that they can concentrate on what would concern the prospect and how your company can best meet their needs. It both saves time and makes the prospect feel important.
Personalization
Customers no longer like it when emails and demos are targeted to their needs; they expect it. With a CRM, sales reps can personalize their outreach efforts while still harnessing automation to save time. Sales reps can put prospects with similar concerns into different drip campaigns, for example. Customers can either opt-in or out depending on what actions they take, so your sales team doesn’t have to worry about maintenance.
While CRM has much to offer sales teams, not all platforms are created equal. Each company has clear benefits and drawbacks that leaders should weigh before purchasing.
The Pros and Cons of Salesforce
Salesforce is the behemoth in the CRM world. In fact, it claims almost 20% of the global CRM market share.
When it comes to selecting CRM, most leaders turn to Salesforce because of their size. Many view it as a potent tool to meet the challenges of not only sales but marketing and customer service too. However, does that make it the best option for you? Here are some of the pros and cons when it comes to the Salesforce platform.
Pro
The main advantage of Salesforce vs HubSpot is its extensive ecosystem of integrations. When it comes to integrations, Salesforce has everyone beat. Whatever the needs of your sales team, you can customize your CRM to work best.
Salesforce also offers a mobile app that is especially useful for field sales. Sales reps can access their CRM from anytime, anywhere through the convenience of their phones. It also helps keep information as up-to-date as possible since reps can log their conversations and deal while they are still out in the field.
Many companies like the ability to customize the features of their CRM to meet the needs of their business and sales team. Salesforce CRM offers a number of integrations to enable them to do so. Plus, their robust reporting features gives sales teams and their leadership deeper insights and better information for decision making.
Salesforce also has a number of features that make them an attractive option for businesses. Salesforce’s Maps, for example, is useful for outside sales teams. Plus, Salesforce CRM integrates with other tools, like Map My Customers, to help improve the productivity and insights of sales teams.
Cons
Usability
While the main selling point of Salesforce is their customizations, it comes at a cost. One of the biggest is their clunky user interface. Even with the recent Lightning redesign, it still lacks the modern look and feel that HubSpot offers. Navigation can take longer, and it is more difficult for reps to glean insights from the data. The slow load time of pages can be frustrating for sales teams.
Likewise, it can also be more complicated to use. Sales reps are not always the most tech-savvy and will likely be frustrated at how difficult it can be to use at times. Plus, the Salesforce CRM can end up wasting some of the time that the software was supposed to save as reps try to figure it out.
Because of all of this, reps are likely to resist using it. CRM is only good if your sales team actually uses it. It is easy to over-customize to the point that salespeople are too overwhelmed to take advantage of it. It can be difficult for your reps to utilize all that CRM has to offer with the complex interface and custom fields. That often leads to both poor adoption rates and reduced productivity.
Cost
In addition, Salesforce is one of the pricier options. At first glance, Salesforce pricing is pretty comparable to the competition:
- Essentials: $25/month per user
- Professional: $75/month per user
- Enterprise: $150/month per user
- Unlimited: $300/month per user
However, there are other costs, such as user training, support, and customization that make the price of Salesforce far more expensive. In fact, a midsize company with 30 sales reps should expect to spend $252,200 on implementation. For SMBs, Salesforce can end up being a pricey option.
Salesforce is the behemoth in the CRM world. In fact, it claims almost 20% of the global CRM market share.
When it comes to selecting CRM, most leaders turn to Salesforce because of their size. Many view it as a potent tool to meet the challenges of not only sales but marketing and customer service too. However, does that make it the best option for you? Here are some of the pros and cons when it comes to the Salesforce platform.
Pros and Cons of HubSpot
HubSpot has grown to be a surprising contender in the CRM space. What started as a marketing automation tool a little over a decade ago has grown to be an impressive and robust sales platform.
It is now one of the most popular CRMs on the market today. HubSpot has a wide number of benefits that attract many companies to switch to them and make them the clear winner in the HubSpot vs Salesforce debate:
Pros
Strong User Interface
For starters, HubSpot’s user interface is by far the stronger of the two. The more modern UI enables sales teams to more easily use their CRM and take full advantage of its benefits.
HubSpot’s built-in Calendly-like meeting scheduling tool is also another advantage. Scheduling is a critical feature for outside sales. HubSpot’s meeting scheduling tool will help make setting appointments easy and reduce the number of tools reps need. It will also make it easier to share appointment times and keep records of all demos and meetings.
Affordable
Plus, HubSpot is the less expensive option of the two. If you’re new to the world of CRM, it might be challenging to decide which software is right for you and what features you’ll use. Depending on how new your company is, you might still be debating whether investing in CRM is the right move at all.
HubSpot offers a free basic CRM that makes it easy to get started. For smaller teams that only need basic capabilities, HubSpot provides the perfect opportunity to test out different capabilities and discover all that it has to offer.
While it is priced at a monthly flat rate versus per user like Salesforce, it does not require the same level of customization and oversight that makes Salesforce more expensive. The basic pricing for HubSpot CRM includes:
- Starter: $50/month
- Professional: $1780/month
- Enterprise: $4000/month
HubSpot’s flat pricing, versus Salesforce per-user pricing, means that companies with more users will end up saving money. A CRM is a tool that nearly everyone in your business uses. Unless you’re a small business with less than a dozen people, HubSpot’s flat rate will be less expensive. Also, HubSpot is currently offering discounts to help you save on the cost.
In addition, HubSpot is a great option for more than just sales teams. Because HubSpot’s software originally was targeted for marketing teams, it also has exciting marketing and reporting capabilities. Their marketing features far outweigh Salesforce to make it a better CRM for alignment between sales and marketing.
Cons
There are certain drawbacks to HubSpot for some companies. For example, their reporting features are slightly less robust than Salesforce. Also, their workflow is less customizable. However, most sales teams do not need the higher level of customization that Salesforce offers, especially small- and medium-sized companies.
For outside sales teams, HubSpot has integration partners that are comparable to Salesforce Maps, such as Map My Customers, GeoMapper, and Mapsly.
Tips for Moving from Salesforce to HubSpot
Although leadership may understand that changing CRMs could possibly serve them better, the concept of migrating all of their data to another tool is intimidating for most. However, it is actually a chance to improve data and processes in your sales team.
Here are some tips to help improve the migration process and create a smooth transition.
Discuss Changes with Your Team
It’s critical that everyone is on the same page when it comes to the migration. Enthusiasm from the team will help increase adoption rates and ensure that the new CRM is a success.
Explain how each rep can benefit from the switch to HubSpot and discuss the biggest obstacles your sales team will likely face. Consider a pilot team to lead the way and gain buy-in from the rest. Also, create a clear timeline for accomplishing each step of the migration to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Start with Clean Data
If you have been using Salesforce CRM for an extended amount of time, it is easy to have outdated and duplicated data. Migration is the perfect time to delete all of the contacts you no longer need to bring with you to HubSpot. Also, you can ensure you stay GDPR compliant and delete contacts for any EU customers that you might not have explicit consent to keep their information.
Next, consider what you might lose in the migration. For example, notes or timestamps are easily lost in the process. Back up all of your Salesforce data in case something gets lost.
Get Migration Tools
There are some options for getting tools to help migrate your data:
- HubSpot-Salesforce Integration. HubSpot offers integration with Salesforce to make the process easier. You can sync to the two systems and extract all of your data from Salesforce at once. That way, you can stop using Salesforce entirely and don’t have to pay for two CRMs.
- Third-Party Integrations. Integrations such as import2 and Trujay help with migration for almost every big CRM.
- API Endpoints. API endpoints enable you to import data and is the most technical route. If you have an IT team, it might be how they want to manage the migration.
- Technical Consultant. On the other hand, a HubSpot consultant is helpful if you do not have in-house IT and require a complex migration. A consultant can give you a personalized migration based on your needs.
Map the Data
Data mapping is where you define and create the properties in HubSpot. If the fields between Salesforce and HubSpot are mismatched, they won’t be able to import. Mapping enables you to identify where the information goes in HubSpot. For example, data identified as “Lead owner” in Salesforce will change to “Contact owner” in HubSpot.
By mapping your data, you won’t lose valuable information will everything migrates.
Test Your Migration
Before you’ve done a complete migration, test out a small set first to make sure everything is as you expected.
After you’ve imported your data, though, you’re not done. Prior to parting ways with your Salesforce CRM, you need to check to ensure that all the contact information came across as you wanted it to.
Harness HubSpot for Smarter Sales
The CRM platform you choose is foundational to your success as a sales team. It enables reps to work more efficiently, keeps your prospects from falling through the cracks, and encourages collaboration between departments.
The two biggest CRMs on the market, Salesforce, and HubSpot have a lot to offer companies. However, most businesses would benefit most from HubSpot’s superior UI, lower prices, and cross-departmental capabilities when comparing HubSpot CRM vs Salesforce.
A Salesforce to HubSpot migration is the best option for many businesses and is a great chance for improving your information.
