Where to Start with HubSpot–CRM or Marketing First

Tonia Speir (00:14)
Hey everybody, welcome back to Smart Bug on Tap. I'm Tonia Speir and today we're unpacking a question almost every new HubSpot customer asks. It's the chicken and the egg. Should we start with HubSpot CRM or Marketing Hub? It's a foundational decision and the answer really depends on your goals, your team structure, and what kind of results you're trying to drive in the short term and in the long term.

So I'm Tonia Speir I'm Senior Sales Executive here at Smart Bug, and I am joined with one of our top strategy experts in HubSpot, and he's going to help us make sense of it all. That's John Suarez. So John, I'll pass it to you. Appreciate you coming back. Let you introduce yourself.

John Suarez (00:58)
Yeah, thanks, Tonia. So I am the director of HubSpot strategy here at SmartBug. So I lead a team of brilliant HubSpot experts who help manage in onboarding and configuring and implementing HubSpot instances for our customers. And I also work on some of our implementation projects as well over here. And I've been with SmartBug about five years, based in San Diego, originally from Illinois, but happy to be here today.

Tonia Speir (01:23)
Well, thanks, John. Thanks for coming back and helping us out and answering this burning question. So the first piece I want to talk about is understanding business readiness. What are the key factors that influence whether a company should start with Marketing Hub or Sales Hub? Or when do they need both?

John Suarez (01:43)
Right. To cut to the chase, a lot of the times it's both, but to really understand if it is the chicken or the egg or if it's both together, typically, whenever one of our clients come to us and have the same question, I probe around what their maturity is for their marketing operations, right? Do they have an understanding or do they already have built out their

life cycles journey for their customers from lead to marketing qualified to handing it off to sales, or do they have none of that? From the CRM side, do they already have a database or is this a brand new company? And, you know, they might have a few or a couple hundred contacts, but really it's not that many. just depends on the maturity of your business operations, the size of your database.

But I think for the most part because marketing hub and HubSpot CRM are intimately linked together It makes sense to do both at the same time most of the time

Tonia Speir (02:42)
And sometimes, especially in the startup world or if they're just bootstrapping funding, a lot of times it boils down to cost, right? And they're looking at maybe other tools or platforms that are a little less expensive, but maybe not as desirable. I know one of the things that I often tell people is,

John Suarez (02:49)
Listen.

Tonia Speir (02:59)
think about your scalability. Don't start on the cheap with a tool that can't grow with you. And so sometimes they're making that investment in HubSpot a little earlier because they know it can scale with them. And I've seen kind of seen it happen both ways, right? Like where they're like, hey, we have sales, we have people, we have no way to manage sales. Or it's the opposite. Like we've got to get marketing communications out and kind of prioritizing those two things. So that's where I really hear the question come up a lot.

Are there any red flags in your opinion that signal that a team isn't ready for one or the other?

John Suarez (03:33)
if the processes aren't built out, like for instance, from a CRM and sales perspective, if you don't even have a sales team, and you, because of that, you don't have any processes or it's a completely like salesless motion, right? Then obviously sales hub or getting, your CRM implemented inside of HubSpot may not make sense at that time. Now, if you are going to build that out though,

To your point, Tonia, think scalability is really important to consider here because if you just say set up marketing first and HubSpot, that is great and it will do what you need to and it will help your entire marketing operation. But if in three or six or however much time, you know that you're going to build out the CRM function and maybe the sales motion, making sure that that's already built out ahead of that happening.

helps with getting that operational efficiency up and running quicker. It helps with standing up those processes right away. And importantly, it helps to make sure that back from when you first implemented a marketing hub or your marketing operations, all of the data that you need for that CRM and sales motion is already in the database.

Tonia Speir (04:44)
And so let's say, let's say perfect world and it's our, our age tech company that we're starting with. When we talk about starting with HubSpot CRM, what are some of the things that we can benefit from first? If we take that route, like, and when I say CRM, which the terms I know a lot of times we'll get interchangeable with different people. HubSpot refers to themselves as a CRM, but most people, when they're thinking about CRM, they're thinking about that sales arm. so sales hub.

So let's say we're starting with Sales Hub. What are some of those benefits that we can start with first?

John Suarez (05:18)
Okay, so we're starting our own age tech company, T and J industries, Tonia. We're getting on the HubSpot for the first time. We're hiring SmartBug, yes. I think first and foremost, the lead generator, okay, where's your storefront? Typically that's a website, right? It's your digital storefront. So making sure whether that's on HubSpot, through their content hub or a tool like WordPress, whatever, Making sure that that is linked.

Tonia Speir (05:26)
We're hiring Smartbug to help us out.

John Suarez (05:47)
and integrate it into HubSpot so that all of that data, all that contact data, all that rich information that you need to segment and send out tailored communications lives inside of HubSpot. So that's probably the first thing we're going to do, Tonia. And we're going to have somebody help us do that if we don't know what to do. And let's say, because we're just starting out, we need to kind of do the sales motion ourselves. what we might...

do is probably start out with like a sales hub starter subscription, which is their cheapest subscription. And let's say, you know, we need to marketing hub professional for all the things that that does, but we needed only the starter tier. And for those that aren't familiar with the different tiers, HubSpot has three different tiers for each of their hubs, starter, professional, enterprise. And of course they come with different functionality, but they also come at different costs.

So professional being the middle of the road option for marketing hub gives us a lot of functionality with automations and segmentation and all that. I want that so that can really start building and working my pipeline at the very top of the pipeline. But we get sales hub starter because it's more cost efficient and Tani, you and I are just still figuring out what that sales motion looks like. So we start to play with the different processes we can build inside of HubSpot.

We start to train ourselves or smart book trains us on what can be done, how we can manage our entire database and set up HubSpot. And then from there, as we evolve our processes, as we want more functionality, you and I might say, okay, it's time to upgrade to Sales Hub Professional because of these three really big tools that come with, or excuse me, yeah, that come with the professional subscription. So I think you can take it at a tiered approach, but the starter.

subscription is so cost effective that I would almost always recommend that a new business start there as they're getting onto HubSpot.

Tonia Speir (07:39)
And what are the must haves? Like what do we have to have in place to make that successful? Someone selling and.

John Suarez (07:48)
Yes. you need somebody selling. Okay. So starting at the beginning, you need somebody at least setting up the marketing processes and that can be completely automated inside of HubSpot. You need someone doing that. But from a sales perspective, you need somebody selling, right? And when you have somebody selling, I guess you don't technically need a sales process, meaning a defined motion that you follow for these leads. But I would highly recommend you start there because otherwise you're just kind of

grabbing in the dark and you don't really know what's working, what's not working. You don't have the processes set in place, which means you don't have the data to look back on after a month or three months or six to tell you, yeah, like these deal stages, right? This process for moving somebody through, communicating with them five times and sending them this type of communication and pairing it with this document, this case study, right? All of those things can exist to be reported on in HubSpot.

but just having that defined process I think is pretty close to a must have, even if you don't know if it's gonna work, because if you have it, you set it up in HubSpot and then you can tell after a certain amount of time whether or not it's working.

Tonia Speir (08:56)
And so now we have four or five salespeople. And what do we have to consider for them to have in place to make this successful and get the most out of it?

John Suarez (09:05)
Yeah. So it comes down to a few things here. So assuming that, you know, you have four or five salespeople, there is a pipeline to feed those salespeople. If they're taking those different leads from marketing generated leads, they might be hunters. They might be going out BDRs getting their own leads and that's fine too. But of course the time that they're spending, they need to have something to do with it. Right? So assuming that that's all taken care of, you have the need for four or five salespeople.

Whatever need they're filling and by proxy, whatever process they're following to fill that need, you need to build it inside of HubSpot. So that is something that absolutely needs to happen as you scale. And for T and J industries, right, for our company, we might've said that with just us founders, these sales processes really worked. So we're just going to have this be the framework for all salespeople. But because we set it up intelligently, as we hired four or five salespeople,

They can use the same process we've built. So HubSpot allows for scalability in that way. Or you might be opening up a new sales function, right? You might have new BDRs coming in that are getting their own business and you might need to create another flow inside of HubSpot, another emotion inside of HubSpot for that. So it's just matching the activities that they're doing and their sales motion to what exists in HubSpot to A, make their lives a lot easier, right?

reduce administrative work and make sure like different things are automated. But B, allows you to report on their successes all the way to booked revenue.

Tonia Speir (10:38)
And so let's talk about that for a second when we're starting with Sales Hub. And so we want to have things like visibility into pipeline, sales adoption, data cleanliness. Is Sales Hub going to be able to answer all those problems for us?

John Suarez (10:48)
I'm

Absolutely. So whatever your process is, your sales process or processes are, you are going to set up HubSpot with your singular pipeline or your different pipeline. And you can report on the entire book of business, the entire pipeline. You can narrow down to specific pipelines, know, new business first renewal, for instance. That's when we see a lot. Or HubSpot has a lot of out of the box reports for individual reps.

all the way from how many calls are they making a day? How many meetings are they booking a week? How many deals are they creating for that month? What is that total pipeline revenue or value? And ultimately what's their, you know, sales cycle? What's their close rate and how much revenue is each sales person booking, right? And then you can umbrella that all up to the entire operation. So you can drill down.

and zoom out as much or as little as you need, depending on what data you are trying to have to make business decisions.

Tonia Speir (11:56)
Got it. So that's a great segue into or closure for if we're taking the CRM path. And we're thinking, okay, that sounds like us, but we're still not sure. Just a quick reminder that you don't have to do it on your own. know, folks like John, his team, we can help companies navigate this and making that kind of decision. But what we're hoping to do today is give you the tools and resources to figure out like where should I begin?

So now that we're talking about, let's flip the script and when does Marketing Hub become the first need and where you kind of want to begin? What are some things that, or let me put it to this way, when does it make sense to start with Marketing Hub? What does our organization look like if that's our first step?

John Suarez (12:42)
Our organization

might look like we are, you know, we have an MVP product, right? That we're just trying to gain traction for. It might look like where we have a sales process or buying motion that you don't need a salesperson, right? So it's a product led growth strategy and somebody can complete the journey in the purchase cycle.

online or without talking to a salesperson, which some people might prefer based on your product. It might look like when you have kind of your sales process living in a different system and it's working fine for now. And for one reason or another, it's not the right time to change that process. Right. So you say, okay, well, we don't really have a marketing function built or a marketing function isn't working or we don't have the data to make good decisions.

So let's just get it set up on Marketing Hub right now and then we'll worry about bringing over the sales motion, the sales processes in the HubSpot later.

Tonia Speir (13:39)
So then if a company is in the state that, I need to generate leads quickly and I haven't necessarily nailed down my sales process yet, is marketing hub the answer?

John Suarez (13:50)
I simply simple answer yes.

Tonia Speir (13:52)
Got it. So how do you make sure that marketing hub doesn't become this lead generation silo if it isn't aligned with a CRM or a sales hub?

John Suarez (14:04)
Yeah. So if you do, if you have see your sales process, right. And say it exists in a different system or no system at all, right. Just understanding where to connect the bridge, where to bridge the gap of, okay, different leads are coming in for marketing and where do, where does the sales process need to take over? Where's that handover? and that's going to be different for every company. We've seen it a hundred different ways. So it really just depends on, okay.

at what point to sales need to take over, if at all. And then once you understand that, creating the segmentation, creating the reports, creating the integration to make sure that those leads aren't just sitting there untouched, that they are actually being followed up on by a salesperson so that you aren't spending all this time and resources and energy creating a sales operation, or excuse me, a marketing operation.

that ends up never passing over leads to sales. So it's really just about knowing what the handoff is and making sure that that bridge exists to pass over leads.

Tonia Speir (15:09)
Got it. And so John, when we are giving advice to teams that are saying, okay, I'm ready to make the leap and there's still a little shaky on which one's best. Our perfect world advice is always to go through a rub-up strategy to understand where there's marketing and sales alignment. Sometimes that's a luxury when it, budget-wise, but also ideal state is onboarding marketing hub and sales hub in tandem.

I know when we're doing a full suite, we'll do marketing hub, sales hub together, and then we might do service hub separately because it's very, it's distinctly different, right? But there is some synergy to doing marketing hub and sales hub at once. Are there any risks or downsides to doing them together?

John Suarez (15:43)
Mm-hmm.

that's, I have not been asked that question before. risks or downsides. None come to mind. I'm thinking that if, you are, well, yes, I guess one is cost, right? We talked a little bit ago about like, if there isn't a need for sales for one reason or another, it exists on a different platform or system, or it's not built out yet. You might decide if you're.

you know, if you don't want to make the investment yet or can't make the investment yet for that sales hub subscription for one reason or another, it doesn't make sense, right? Now, if you have the ability to make it for reasons we talked about earlier around scalability and creating the process upfront does really help you in the long run. But I think investment is one thing really to take into account there.

And besides that, if you have both functions and both motions, I think that completes the entire revenue cycle. And there's not many reasons not to have both if HubSpot and its capabilities make sense for your organization.

Tonia Speir (16:51)
What about time? You know, if we're two founders and we're both hands on, is it much more of a time investment or do you feel like HubSpot's pretty intuitive enough that learning them in tandem is manageable?

John Suarez (17:06)
Um, if you're a startup, think that yes, of course, implementing any new process is going to take more time, but I think the time is, uh, marginal. I suppose if you're doing it upfront, because you're in our case, right? You're still getting your, your sales processes might be, um, still evolving or not as advanced as, you know, um, a later stage company. So to set up all of the.

the processes in HubSpot becomes very easy with a lot of these standard sales motions, because that's just how HubSpot, Sales Hub, and CRM were built, right? It's built to be able to pass off leads from marketing to sales. It's built to be able to trigger alerts or reports for the sales team to engage with these leads. It's built to schedule meetings and to document all the activity inside the contact record. It's built to...

create the deal and log all the revenue that is related to that deal, so on and so forth, all the way to reporting on bookings on whatever frequency you're looking for.

Tonia Speir (18:11)
Got it. Well, John, if you were to onboard HubSpot at your organization, would you start with marketing hub, sales hub, or would you do both at the same time?

John Suarez (18:23)
I would do both. It makes too much sense to do both. And while I've seen situations where it makes sense to do one or the other, I think that the cost, investment for, you know, certainly starter subscriptions on HubSpot make it a low risk investment. And it just also kickstarts the conversation. It kickstarts the mapping and process creation for your sales motion.

which a lot of people kind of just say, we'll get to it later. Well, if you're paying for this subscription, well, we know we got to get to it now or else we're wasting money.

Tonia Speir (18:53)
Yeah, and one other thing I'd add there too is that I've seen it be really attractive as well to investment partners because the data is organized, it's easy to show reporting, it's easy to track how the business is pacing and things like that. So there's some advantages there too, if that's part of your growth strategy.

John Suarez (19:01)
Yes.

Tonia Speir (19:09)
All right, well, thank you, John. We appreciate the quick insights today. This has been such a helpful conversation for anyone out there struggling to make that first big decision to tackle bringing on HubSpot and making that investment and also making sure they're getting the most out of that investment. If you're listening and you're still unsure where to start, whether it's Sales Hub, Marketing Hub, or how to...

know, phase a rollout plan, don't worry. You don't have to figure it out all on your own. We're here to help you make that decision. Just head over to smartbugmedia.com or email us directly. Our contact info is in the description. We'd love chatting with you about this and all things HubSpot and happy to point you in the right direction. If you found this episode helpful, don't forget to subscribe so you'll never miss future tips, insights and real world HubSpot strategies. Thanks for joining us on SmartBug on Tap and we'll see you next time.