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If you’ve been in sales and marketing for longer than five minutes, you know what HubSpot is and how beneficial it can be for your business.
With dozens of available features in the Sales Hub alone, sales representatives around the world have been harnessing its power to better connect with customers for years now.
But there’s another side to the medal here – with so many features available, it can be complicated to know which ones to prioritize and how to leverage HubSpot best to make your sales team more efficient.
That’s why we decided to ask 102 HubSpot users to give us their best insights and share their most useful strategies for taking advantage of the HubSpot Sales Hub.
Here are the 10 best HubSpot Sales Hub features according to industry experts:
This article is a part of Databox’s broader research with SmartBug Media on “How Companies Actually Use HubSpot.” We’re still open to contributions and would love to hear your insights. Take the survey now to access preliminary results and have a chance to be featured in our final report. We also invite you to join SmartBug’s Benchmark Group for Top Performing HubSpot Customers.
Most sales reps spend a huge chunk of their day on emails – whether it’s tracking prospects, sending proposals, or updating a spreadsheet with the latest customer activities.
And while many sales teams used to do this manually, it wasn’t doing anyone any favors.
So, it’s no surprise that email integration was the most used HubSpot Sales Hub feature in the last quarter.
With HubSpot’s email integration, you can easily connect your account to the main CRM and streamline these processes.
You also gain access to email templates, track key metrics like open rates, check out how each prospect interacts with your proposals, and easily find relevant deals in a matter of seconds.
Furthermore, you can set up automated campaigns and directly update records in HubSpot’s CRM instead of wasting countless hours doing it manually in spreadsheets.
Vimal Bharadwaj of Optmyzr says that email integration is “extremely good” and that it “helped us improve our open and engagement rates, while also reducing our unsubscribe rate.”
Dominique B Dupuis of URAD also voted for the email integration feature but talked about the overall efficiency of HubSpot’s Sales Hub.
“We really enjoy how HubSpot helps us manage sales, set reasonable sales goals, and track sales trends so we have a better overall understanding of how our customers are interacting with our products and how we can better serve them.”
He also shared the following “HubSpot also helps us reach new potential businesses that we can work with. From manufacturing to design, HubSpot can assist one business in finding other businesses to work with them.”
For email integration, you don’t have to buy HubSpot Sales Hub professional features. It’s one of HubSpot’s free sales features.
HubSpot’s call-logging app is another big feature among sales representatives.
From easier call tracking and storing conversation details in the CRM to setting up daily queues and lead scoring, there’s a lot you can take advantage of.
For starters, you can create a list of your most profitable calls using engagement and contact data, and then build a daily calling queue based on the list.
This way, you can also see who are the ready-to-buy leads and better prepare for the conversation as you know where they are in the pipeline.
After you finish each call, you can automatically log the details into the HubSpot CRM so you spend less time on call notes and more time focusing on having a meaningful conversation with the customer.
Plus, your entire team will have a better understanding of what’s going on with each lead and can access the transcripts instantly if need be.
Keep in mind that this feature is only available in HubSpot Sales Hub premium editions – professional and enterprise pricing plans.
Want to have a clear visualization of the entire lead-to-customer process? The sales pipeline management feature helps you do just that.
As your business scales, tracking the sales process from start to finish becomes immensely time-consuming, especially if you rely on manual labor or use several tools for the job.
HubSpot’s sales pipeline management software lets you do all of this in one place, allowing you to spend more time engaging the leads properly rather than doing spreadsheet work.
You also get an instant view of each team member’s performance and can monitor how efficient they are in moving leads through the pipeline, which helps you spot potential opportunities for optimizing the process.
You can get started with the pipeline management platform for free on HubSpot, but you’ll need to pay for additional functionalities (e.g., adding more leads to the pipeline).
If you want to determine what works best and where there is room for improvement more efficiently you can track the sales pipeline in Databox using our free Pipeline Performance Dashboard.
The deal tracking software allows sales teams to quickly add new deals to their pipeline, assign specific tasks to individual reps, and keep an eye on the most important prospects in one dashboard.
There’s a lot that can go wrong when managing dozens of prospects, but HubSpot’s software reduces human error by making all the most relevant data for decision-making easily accessible.
When used properly, sales teams can drastically minimize the number of prospects that slip through the cracks and better predict future revenue by simply analyzing past deals.
Plus, the software is highly intuitive, and you can easily customize deal tracking with the drag-and-drop features.
Just like the pipeline management software, this feature is available for free but you’ll need to get a premium subscription for additional functionality.
Jay Perrill of Perrill says that HubSpot features like the deal tracking software “are the real game-changer for us.”
“The ability to accurately manage our sales activity and the deal pipeline has provided us with more data that has allowed us to improve our sales processes, focus our sales activity, and close deals faster. Our sales team logs everything in HubSpot, so we know exactly how many touchpoints it takes to close a deal, what the frequency should be, and what messages work to move a deal through the funnel.”
How well you track your data directly reflects your decision-making in sales. Why rely on improvisation when you have reliable data at your fingertips?
Of course, keeping a close eye on data isn’t that straightforward if you’re doing it manually, and that’s why HubSpot’s sales reporting software is so useful.
You can easily build visual reports with your most relevant sales analytics and keep an eye on pipeline updates as they occur in real-time.
This is especially important to implement as your business grows and monitoring your sales goals becomes more of a headache. You get access to dozens of free, customizable sales report templates to further quicken the process.
What’s more, HubSpot’s interface makes it easy for you to actually analyze the report and quickly see what’s going on in each key area.
With HubSpot Sales Hub professional features, you get access to 25 dashboards and 30 reports per dashboard. This feature is also available for a free and starter plan, but with limited capabilities.
For Michel Bonvanie of Webiteers, reporting “is one of the most appreciated tools.”
“This is because most of the data is integrated within HubSpot and it is quite easy and intuitive to set up. It gives our company and the clients we work with more insights on how the business is moving forward.”
Jonathan Delfs of Sprii says that the reporting and analytics features give them a “basic overview of our traffic, leads, and conversions.”
“This is important information – and helps us make more robust marketing plans and sales funnels. In this way, we can analyze and evaluate our marketing efforts and build more content for those channels essential to us.”
No doubt, your sales team is busy every day setting up appointments, making calls, creating and nurturing deals, and closing them to generate new revenue. A Sales Manager’s job is to monitor sales performance and work with team members to improve it. To do that, they need up-to-the-minute information at their fingertips, including details like:
Now you can benefit from the experience of our HubSpot CRM experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing some of the most important metrics for monitoring your sales team’s activity. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in sales reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your HubSpot account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
Repetitive tasks kill sales efficiency, which is why HubSpot’s sales automation tools are a must-have in your team.
For starters, you can set up automated sales email campaigns for different prospect cohorts and create follow-up tasks for each one as they respond.
What’s more, HubSpot offers a ton of email templates that allow you to personalize your messages and increase the chances of getting a reply. For the best outreach, you can customize your sequences based on the data from the CRM database.
Workflows are a big addition here as well, and you can use them to manage leads through the pipeline, automate certain tasks, and build new deals.
You can also set up that each time a prospect makes a meaningful interaction, the right person on your team is notified.
Aaina Bajaj of Signity Solutions says workflows are her favorite HubSpot feature.
“I enjoy creating different workflows for various user segments and nurturing the user journey with automation.”
“Workflows are my favorite HubSpot feature. I enjoy creating different workflows for various user segments and nurturing the user journey with automation.”
Aaina Bajaj
Brand Manager at Signity Solutions
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For Noel Cabral of NoelCabral, “Setting up automated workflows for email marketing, lead nurturing, and follow-ups has significantly improved efficiency and engagement. This has allowed us to effectively nurture leads throughout their journey, resulting in a 25% increase in lead-to-customer conversion rates.”
One important caveat regarding sales automation is that you can leverage its full potential only with a professional or enterprise plan, where you gain access to customizable workflow features. With a starter plan, you’re limited to trigger tasks and email notifications for deal pipeline changes.
Related: 19 Email Marketing Statistics That Will Help Marketers Maximize Their ROI in 2023
Going back and forth via email to schedule new meetings, staying organized with the ones you already have, finding the right time that also suits your prospects… all of this is a hassle to deal with on a daily basis.
But with HubSpot’s scheduling software, you can alleviate pretty much all of these pain points.
Instead of sending countless emails trying to find the right time for an appointment with your prospect, simply send them your personal scheduling link so they can check your availability and instantly book a slot that works for both sides.
Plus, you can integrate the software with your calendar and video conference tools, which allows you to automatically add the bookings to your calendar and automate conference links as soon as someone books an appointment.
When you log in at the start of the day, you can immediately see which meetings you have and when – no need to spend time figuring it out based on your inbox messages.
The scheduling software is available for all HubSpot subscriptions.
If you’re using several other tools to organize your sales process, why not combine all that data in one comprehensive CRM?
You can integrate hundreds of third-party apps with HubSpot’s CRM, which allows you to focus on your most relevant information in one place without having to juggle various tools to glue the pieces together.
Not only does this allow for easier customer communication, but your entire sales team will be on track with what’s going on at all times.
The CRM integration is free, but you’ll need a professional or enterprise plan for more advanced capabilities as you scale.
Nick Leffler of TechStructional mentioned specifically his integration with WordPress:
“The integration with WordPress because it can get data from other form plugins and track leads well. It includes where the lead came from as well as their path on a WordPress website. That tied together with all the tracked contact points and phone integration makes it a great tool to track lead journeys.”
Melissa Caverly of Imagine Maids says that the integration feature is “one of my favorite aspects of HubSpot.”
“This connection provides a thorough perspective of client interactions while streamlining operations and improving communication. Businesses can use it to effectively handle leads, foster customer connections, and monitor performance using analytics. The platform’s centralized approach frequently promotes more efficiency and improved teamwork, which helps organizations deliver a smoother and more customized client experience.”
As for Lucas Vitale of SEO Assistance, HubSpot’s CRM as a whole makes all the difference.
“HubSpot CRM provides a centralized database for managing contacts and leads, and it has allowed us to store and organize essential information about our prospects and customers. This feature enables us to have a comprehensive view of our customer interactions, track communication history, and effectively manage our sales pipeline.”
Lucas Vitale
CEO at SEO Assistance
For even more insights and visualization options, you can track data from HubSpot CRM in Databox with this Free HubSpot CRM Dashboard Template.
Whether you close the client or not, recording your sales calls so you can analyze them later is a massive part of becoming a better sales representative.
And while this used to be a hassle with manually logging calls in the past, you don’t have to waste time on that with HubSpot.
With the call tracking features, you can get instant transcriptions that allow both you and coach reps to analyze your calls and make useful suggestions on how to fine-tune your selling process.
For call recording transcripts, you’ll need to get HubSpot Sales Hub professional features or the enterprise plan.
Are you sending the same emails over and over again to different prospects?
If so, you can save a lot of time by creating your own templates within HubSpot that you can reuse without having to manually rewrite them or copy-paste previous emails.
You can create different templates for different purposes – getting on a discovery call, follow-up emails, cold outreach, etc. The best thing is that there are also personalization features that you can use to make sure your outreach efforts don’t feel generic.
Templates are available for all subscriptions, but are severely limited for free plans (only 5 templates are available). With a starter, professional, and enterprise plan, you get access to 5,000 email templates.
Related: 8 Sales Prospecting Email Examples to Help You Come Up with Yours
The HubSpot Sales Hub has the power to transform your sales processes – but only if you know which features to prioritize and combine for your specific needs.
And with dozens of features available, this is often easier said than done.
Luckily, it doesn’t have to be a guessing game… not when you have 100+ HubSpot users on your side guiding you through the features.
What are your thoughts on the features we talked about? How often do you leverage them in your own business?
Also, are there any Sales Hub features we didn’t mention that you think would be an important addition?
If there are, you can let us know in our HubSpot survey – we’re still open to contributions. Plus, you have a chance to be published in our final report!
We’re running the survey with our partner, SmartBug Media, who’ve also launched a Benchmark Group for Top Performing HubSpot Customers that you can join for free and instantly see how your HubSpot numbers stack up against competitors’.
And if you want to compare your data from other areas, you can join the free Benchmark Groups and quickly find the industry or metric you’re interested in.
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Filip Stojanovic is a content writer who studies Business and Political Sciences. Also, I am a huge tennis enthusiast. Although my dream is to win a Grand Slam, working as a content writer is also interesting.
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