If you're anything like me, you're guilty of requesting to download every PDF over the years but not reading them! True?

To combat that, we have divided our 'PDF' into eight emails, one chapter per day.
Each chapter will only take a few minutes to read and will be your daily development guide for CRM—or maybe not.

Sales Productivity: The Key to Better Business

HubSpot CRM is your secret weapon because people want to use it. Productivity is the name of the game for sales experts in any field. To perform at the highest levels you’re capable of, you need to make the most of your time. It’s also not just about the individual. A productive sales rep means better service for clients, and happier customers mean more deals.

Plus, being more productive keeps the entire sales team moving forward, making progress toward quarterly and annual goals. Considering how productivity impacts all company levels, it’s worth having people and tools to make all sales world elements operate smoothly. 

Hubspot is one of those essential tools. It’s designed to significantly boost your team’s sales productivity and give you the core sales tools you need to grow your business.

In this email series, we’ll explore 25 features included in Hubspot that will bolster your productivity. From how you manage your contact list to where you can work to how you assess your performance, here’s how Hubspot can make you a lean, mean, productive sales machine.

Sales Management

For a busy sales executive, strategically approaching sales management is one of the most significant ways to impact productivity. Whether you’re in charge of agents hitting the pavement or a manager overseeing operations in the office, Hubspot’s approach to sales management includes features that save time and maintain focus. Look at the essential sales management experiences in Hubspot that will make your reps 10x more productive and you 10x smarter. Hubspot sales management software gives you the core sales tools and information you need to grow your business, such as

Accurate And Visual Sales Tracking.

Sales tracking is how you follow deals' development through their lifecycle. Every deal you close should move through a well-defined and predictable sales process, which should be the backbone of your sales team. 

With Hubspot, you have a written and visual representation of how your clients move through the sales funnel. See exactly where each opportunity stands in the simple drag-and-drop interface, which can be customised to fit your company’s specific steps. For reps, tracking helps you stay on target because you’ll always know exactly where you stand with your assigned deals. This is excellent information for managers, too, since you can coach your team effectively and ensure the right opportunities receive attention at the right time.

Sales tracking with Hubspot gives you a detailed picture of where you and your team stand. When you know the status of each opportunity and which opportunities your team members are pursuing, you can coach them effectively and help them focus on the right opportunities.

Ability To Set & Measure Goals And Quotes

Sales pros need to stay focused on the final result. Achieving the desired customer outcome means setting goals and quotas to benchmark progress. Goals keep you and your team on track.

Hubspot helps you communicate goals and quotas with your team and allows you to track everybody’s progress. It’s a valuable tool for aligning the sales team around a shared objective. To use the feature, select “Tracking & Analytics > Goals” from the navigation bar.

Assigning goals and quotas of different amounts to different players is easy in Hubspot's straightforward, intuitive interface. After the goals are set, you’ll see a quick view of where you stand whenever you’re on the Dashboard screen. 

Smartphones and tablets are the tool of choice for many sales professionals thanks to their easy portability and ever-growing computing power. More sales teams are shifting from the traditional world of desktops to include a range of mobile devices and operating systems. Support this change with full-blown native mobile CRM apps that put all the necessary features and functions on their tablets and phones.

Native Mobile Apps

The application is the key to a great CRM experience on your phone or tablet. With free native apps, Hubspot brings the whole CRM experience to your phone or tablet. The native apps are designed for maximum function and easy navigation on your device’s screen and they sync all of your data instantly. 

With apps for iOS, Android, and Windows phones, your entire team can be ten times more productive when on the go, no matter what operating system they prefer.

To further the seamless mobile experience, Hubspot automatically syncs all of your data across devices. It is the ideal CRM for anyone who relies on a mobile device in their sales process.

Offline Access

Part of working in our hyper-connected world is getting by when the connection is lost. Everyone knows the stress of being in the middle of a project when the network crashes or the signal goes haywire. HubSpot takes that worry away with offline access. Even when you can’t be online, HubSpot lets you see all your leads, contacts, sales, tasks, and stored emails. Whenever you reconnect to the Internet, all your activity will automatically be synced and updated across all devices. Never miss a beat.

Geolocation - Locate Your Contacts, Leads & Deals On A Map

Powerful mobile tools mean more than just a CRM on your phone. Hubspot’s mobile CRM amps your productivity even when you’re on the road. Geolocation helps you make intelligent decisions about your client visits. You can visualise your leads, contacts, and deals in a map area to see whom you should visit and where you should spend your time. And with one-touch driving directions, Geolocation makes it easy to reach your customers. When you’re going on the road, you should spend time prepping for your meeting, not looking for it.

Learn how you can use Geolocation to build stronger bonds with your clients and prospects.

Reports & Analytics

As sales leaders, we must understand how to obtain and analyse data to make sound business decisions. Otherwise, we’re operating in the dark.

To help make reps 10x more productive and executives 10x smarter, we designed Hubspot with meaningful out-of-the-box reports that drive actionable insights.

Reports are more than just a looming threat to your weekly meetings. They help everyone on the team to know what is working well and what isn’t. They assess the health of the pipeline and the bottom line. And yes, they can do wonders for productivity.

We’ll show you how easy it is to get the insights you need with the beautifully designed, valuable reports in Hubspot.

Insights Dashboard

The home screen is your insights dashboard. Every time you log in, you’ll be greeted by all the most important stats and facts. See your progress toward sales goals, a solid overview of account activity, and notes on your upcoming assignments. Think of it as the CRM gatekeeper, the first look at what you have on the horizon.

Visual Reporting

One of the risks of data-heavy reports is getting lost in a sea of numbers. Reports should communicate important facts and trends in your sales team’s performance to be effective. There is a treasure trove of data housed in your CRM, and the trick is to have a tool that can unlock it.

Hubspot accomplishes this by making reports visual. With zero setups required, the CRM will automatically pull from all your data to give you crucial insights into your business. Visual presentations of activities can help your leaders optimise processes, coach teams, and calculate revenue.

As with so many features, you can filter reports by date, user, team, and tags for a close-up look. Whether you need a bird' s-eye view or you need to put one rep under a microscope, Hubspot’s visual reports have the perfect combination of knowledge and detail.

Sales Forecasting

One of the best insights Hubspot can give you is in sales forecasting. This report uses the numbers in your pipeline to calculate how much revenue you can expect down the line. Forecasting helps you take control of your business by helping you weather the ups and downs of your industry.

It works by determining the likelihood of winning the deal and each sales stage. By crunching those odds with the predetermined close dates, Hubspot presents beautiful, easy-to-read reports that will become required reading for your managers and executives.

Predicting the future might seem like the work of fortune-tellers and psychics. But when your leaders have that power, they can make better decisions, keeping everybody at the company in a better position for success.

Call Analytics

Another report that will make a massive difference in your sales team’s operation is the Call Analytics data. Considering how much time your reps need to spend on the phone, having a chance to dig deep into the process and success rates will show them which tactics are producing results. From learning the best times for calls to being able to predict outcomes, Call Analytics reports are a must.

How can you get all of this great insight into your team’s calls? By taking advantage of Calls. 

Hubspot unites your contemporary CRM with the most traditional sales tool, the telephone. Conversations with clients, whether a cold call to a new prospect or a follow-up with a longstanding customer, are still at the heart of good sales work. Combining an old-school phone with your nimble, powerful CRM means more productivity and knowledge for your reps.

Make and Receive Calls Right In Your CRM

You can make and receive calls from within your CRM. Each rep gets a dedicated phone line to always be available for customer chats.

In addition to making a rep more easily available to clients, Hubspot has a full suite of other features to make phone time more convenient. During the conversation, reps can access a digital notepad, read from prepared call scripts, or review related deals. Plus, every incoming call is connected to the appropriate contact card, keeping the information you need where you know you can find it.

Call Recording

Hubspot also makes phone communication a powerful learning tool. The Call Recording feature lets reps keep an audio file of any conversation they make or receive, on any platform they’re using. 

This is an excellent resource for double-checking the details discussed with a client during a deal's lifetime. The recordings are always available in case you need a reminder of any pertinent information or want to confirm what was said in a particular discussion. In addition, listening through old calls can be a learning experience, especially for newer reps. If they can replay conversations, they’re more likely to see what went well and what went wrong. This will strengthen your team and keep everybody performing at their best.

Automatic Call Logging

Even if you don’t want to use the Call Recording feature, Hubspot still tracks conversations as they happen. Any call made or received is entered as an activity on the contact, lead, or deal card it is associated with. Calls are time—and date-stamped. Hubspot is all about automation. Call Logging doesn’t take any effort on the rep’s part. Nothing will be forgotten or entered incorrectly, and your team can keep its focus on making the sale.

Email Automation

Today’s sales reps spend as much time in their inboxes as they do on the phone. Email can significantly drain your time if you don’t manage it carefully.

Here’s how Hubspot can help you to make the most of this communication tool.

Complete Integration

Closing a deal takes a considerable number of emails. Hubspot can keep track of them for you. If you connect your email account, any time you send or receive a message from a contact in your CRM, a copy will be attached to that person’s card. Thanks to Hubspot’s complete integration, copies will automatically be added whether you’re working in Hubspot's inbox or in a different email client. 

Integrating email with your CRM is just one more step to creating a truly centralised source of your work information. The setup process is simple, and Hubspot will remember your account information and take care of everything from there. This level of automation allows you to focus on work, resting, and ensuring that all of your customer info is stored and available to you in one safe place. Organised and easy access to your email history will ensure you have the information you need to close the deal.

Google App & Outlook

Google’s email service has attracted fans thanks to its flexibility and ease of use. With Hubspot's Google email gadget, you can make both your email and your CRM even more powerful. Add new contacts directly into Hubspot or create notes, tasks, and deals from within your Gmail account.

For over 25 years, CRM systems have faced criticism over the lack of user adoption. Look at Avon’s failed implementation of SAP, where they wrote off 125 million dollars because their end-users said, "Sorry, not going to use it". While this was a recently publicised example of a lack of user adoption, it always happens. Any salesperson will tell you that CRMs slow them down. 

That’s a big problem because CRM systems cater to managers, not sales reps. Instead of focusing on the end-user, the sales rep who wants to crush their quota, CRM systems expect them to enter data so that managers can generate reports and track how their sales team is performing.

It’s also why many sales reps reject their CRM systems, leaving managers high and dry with incomplete data and faulty reports.

Well, Hubspot is changing that. Our tool is designed to increase your team’s sales productivity.